Hidalgo County held a ceremony celebrating nine kids being adopted into seven Rio Grande Valley families on Friday morning.

"This is a day, children walked in as foster children and walked out as children," Texas Department of Family and Protective Services' spokesperson John Lennan said.

There are some qualifications for anyone interested in fostering children and when it's time to pay for college, the state offers families who adopt financial aid.

"If you adopt a child from the state of Texas, that child can go to a university in the state of Texas, if it's a state sponsored school, tuition-free," Lennan said.

In the Valley, there are around 200 children in foster care.