BATON ROUGE - The East Baton Rouge Parish Juvenile Court held its fourth Annual National Adoption Day Program on Friday to celebrate the adoption of children and the creation of "forever families."

With more than 100,000 children in foster care across the country, the holiday recognizes over 90,000 children moving from foster care to permanent families, according to the National Adoption Day website.

"Every child deserves a family, and we have been busy all year helping to complete those families. Now, it is time to celebrate the efforts of numerous individuals and entities who work tirelessly throughout the process to make adoption a reality and to bring children into their forever families," officials from the court said.

The Juvenile Court finalized adoptions and created forever families alongside courts and organizations in over 400 communities.

National Adoption Day began in 2000 as a joint effort between the Dave Foundation for Adoption, Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute, Alliance for Children's Rights and Children's Action Network and the Freddie Mac Foundation to open courts on the Saturday before Thanksgiving to finalize and celebrate adoptions.

The effort was inspired by former judge of Los Angeles County's Juvenile Court, Michael Nash, who opened court on Saturdays to reduce the backlog of one of the busiest courts in the nation by finalizing adoptions.