Tom Campbell remembers his birth mother was present and able, in the beginning.

And he understands she took care of him and his twin sister for as long as she could.

Until she couldn’t. That was when Tom and his sister Taylor began circulating friends’ homes for shelter, until the state intervened and the Coeur d’Alene children entered the foster system.

They first met their representative from CASA (court appointed special advocate) when they were 5 years old, Tom said.

“We can tell you from experience, it’s nice when things aren’t going so well to have someone in your life who’s nice, caring and reliable,” the teenager said on Friday.

It was a long trajectory, the several years leading up to the twins’ eventual adoption by Janelle and Dave Campbell.

They were years of attending CASA Christmas parties, where the children received a Battleship game and a jewelry box when they didn’t have much otherwise. Years of their CASA worker explaining court procedure and providing bits of relief where she could, like free tickets to a hockey game, from which Tom still has the winning puck.

Now both 15, their lives are full of board games, movies, missionary trips with their adopted parents.

“We feel very blessed to live in a family that enjoys spending a lot of time together,” Tom said.

And Taylor said they have come to appreciate the myriad people, and the system itself, that kept the brother and sister together all that time.

“We are just two kids who want what kids want,” Taylor said. “To play and laugh and have friends. To have a home where we are taken care of.”

The twins, neatly dressed, polite and poised, spoke as part of a National Adoption Day celebration on Friday at a courtroom in the Juvenile Justice Center, where so many other adoptions have been sealed.

The event, which included speeches from various judicial and municipal figures, underscored the still-prevalent need to place children in protective foster and adoptive homes.

And how so many could help by stepping up.

“Don’t ever think a handful of people can’t change the world,” said Magistrate Judge Clark Peterson, who spoke of the love behind the many adoption forms he’s signed. “In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

According to Idaho Department of Health and Welfare statistics, there are more than 1,300 Idaho children in foster care due to abuse, neglect or family crisis, 300 of them in the five northern counties.

Most foster homes are full of children these days, IDHW adoption case worker Tricia Mettler said.

“We are in desperate need of foster parents,” Mettler said. “There is always a need.”

The hardest children to place are siblings wanting to stay together, she said.

It’s also tricky finding folks to take in older kids, ages 9 to 17, she said, who come with a little more emotional baggage and aren’t as appealing as newborns to prospective parents.

“Most kids we do adoption with have been in the foster system,” Mettler said. “Some of their stories are more traumatic than others.”

Dave Campbell admitted he thought his parenting days were over as he and his wife watched the last of their eight biological children grow up.

But after meeting the twins at a respite home, and eventually inviting them into their own home, the Campbells became attached, the Post Falls mission pastor said.

“We just fell in love with the kids,” he said. “We couldn’t let them go.”

It wasn’t difficult for them to also adopt a distant relative, Alex Campbell, about eight years ago, when the baby was in need of family, Janelle said.

“It’s really rewarding,” she said. “We get a lot of love in return.”

Fitted in a tie at the event Friday, the now 10-year-old Alex said the Campbell couple has gone from being his great aunt and uncle to just “great parents.”

Julie Gardner, recruitment coordinator with the Idaho Child Welfare Research and Training Center, said folks wanting more information on foster parenting and adoption can dial 2-1-1, or go to www.fostercare.dhw.idaho.gov.

Foster parents must go through 27 hours of training, she added.

“We get all types of foster parents,” Gardner said. “They will care for different kids, then one will come in who’s just the right fit.”

Ingrid Berning-Carnie hadn’t always planned on being a parent, she said.

But after Megan had lived with the Carnies as a foster child for years, separation felt impossible on both sides.

“I felt if I left, it would be really hard,” said Megan, 11, standing by her now-adopted mother. “I didn’t want to leave.”

Now Berning-Carnie’s life includes play rehearsals and checking homework.

She wouldn’t have it otherwise, she said.

“It has benefited me in so many ways,” she said. “I feel like I’m needed.”