Click Here to be helped in California!


Pregnant? Click Here

Adoption 2002: One Size Doesn't Fit All

Adoption Isn't the Only Answer
 Related Resources
• Adoption & Alternatives
• Adopting Parents Center
• Becoming a Foster Parent
• Foster Children Have Right to Sue for Speedy Adoption
• Parental Rights
 
 Elsewhere on the Web
• Adoption 2002
• Adoption and Safe Families Act 1997
• "DSS Snatched Child Prodigy; Searching for Another 'Adoption Bonus'?"
• The Foster Care Conundrum
"Six years ago, Congress passed a law designed to help kids move quickly out of foster care. It created a deadline for parents: clean up your act or lose your parental rights so your children can be adopted by someone else. Some say the law has helped to speed up adoptions, but critics claim that it is creating a whole new class of orphans, orphans whose parents are still alive." - WBUR Boston & National Public Radio
 


It wasn't a bad idea. As a matter of fact, it was basically a great idea. The goal of Adoption 2002, a program instituted under the Clinton administration and based on provisions of the Adoption & Safe Families Act of 1997, was to reduce barriers to adoption and to double the number of adoptions of children in foster care, from the 1996 number (27,000) to 54,000 in 2002.

Children are spending far too long in foster care following termination of their parents' parental rights before being adopted - the 2000 median being 14 months.
(Source: AFCARS Interim FY 2000 Report, August 2002)

BUT...

Over the course of the program, a total of $82.7 million has been paid out: In "Follow the Money" (see above for link), Madelyn Freundlich of Children's Rights, Inc. noted the following:
How States are Using Adoptive Incentive Payments




Notably absent from this list is the hiring of additional staff for our notoriously overburdened and understaffed foster care system - often cited as the reason for a series of serious problems such as abused or killed foster children, "lost" children, inadequate follow-up, and poorly prepared paperwork.

To be fair, Adoption 2002 met its goals in terms of numbers, but as long as money needs to be doled out as a reward to states for timely and appropriate family solutions for our children in foster care, the goal of removing obstacles - to adoption or other placement alternatives - has not been met.

Reducing the time children spend in foster care is universally supported, without question. Going forward, as legislators consider this and other initiatives, this writer hopes we can learn from past oversights so that future programs will give equal weight to all permanency options and require accountability so that our children's lives become as stable, healthy, and loving as possible. One size (adoption) doesn't fit all.

More:
For a complete breakdown of individual state numbers, see the Fostering Results report from the Children and Family Research Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (in .pdf format).
  Adopt in California

Comments

This writer clearly doesn't understand the ramifications of "other options" for the lives of children in care. To suggest that they be treated equally with adoption is to suggest a horribly cruel situation, one in which our family finds itself now.

The state of Virginia is one of only five renegade states that doesn't list adoption as the second permanency goal (after return home). Forty-five states, three territories and the DC all comply with federal laws by bringing adoption in as the next goal after return to a parent.

This situation is a nightmare for children as local DSS agencies seek to kick kids out of the federally established and funded foster-to-adopt programs and dump children and their non-TPR'd parents on helpless relatives who've been "guilted" into taking on financial and legal burdens they can't begin to be equipped to handle even if they are "well to do."

The local agency we are working with insists that, because we are related to our foster child, they will not pursue termination of the parents' rights to free the child for adoption. Although I am licensed, they deliberately refuse to recognize her placement as in a foster home. They insist we just accept simple legal custody, shut up and go away or send her back into the system--to be adopted by strangers!!!

If we took legal custody, it would leave our "daughter" with no real permanency, no family she can legally call her own, no legal protection from the continued legal actions of her parents seeking return of custody, visitation etc., and us no resources financial or legal to protect her with. She would become ineligible for continued medical and mental health coverage, ineligible for her federally funded subsidy, etc., and we would be ineligible for family services to help our other children make the transition. This child is "special needs"--a 6 y.o. FAS case with an almost 20% chance of developing severe mental illness given her genetics. They don't care. They simply want to dump her out of the system with nothing.

Virginia has no kinship care program, no guardianship status let alone subsidized guardianship, not even formal permanent legal custody. Yes, all of this is in direct violation of federal policy and code BUT THE STATE OF VIRGINIA DOESN'T CARE AND CAN'T BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE LEGALLY.

Other options are NOT equal to adoption in desirability in any way, especially for children under the age of 12. To suggest other options should be treated equally is absurd and would codify deliberate cruelty. This is a life-and-death battle, literally, for the lives of kids who are at enormous risk. At the least, they need a real family, real permanency and commitment and guaranteed medical and mental health coverage. Except perhaps for the older teen, "other types of placements" that fall short of adoption and deny children the services and benefits they need are second-rate loopholes used by states to save money and should be treated as such under the law.

Posted by: Hadley at 01/03/2006 08:03 AM

View all comments (1)

Add Your Comments!

We want to know what you think. Your comments are important to us and the other readers. You are what makes this site special.

You must be logged in to comment

You must be registered to post. Register here | Forgot your password?

AdoptHelp
Want to Adopt?
AdoptHelp
AdoptHelp
Pregnant?
click here
AdoptHelp