Bush Signs Law to Encourage Adoption 
 
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
 
WASHINGTON — President Bush signed legislation Tuesday expanding government incentives that promote adoption.

  
 
Bush renewed the Adoption Promotion Act (search), a law passed in 1997 that sends $4,000 in federal money per child to state governments that exceed their placement performances from the previous year. His signature also provides new financial incentives for states to place children 9 and older with adoptive families. 

Under the reauthorized law, states will get an additional $4,000 for every adoption of a child 9 or older, over a baseline set by the Department of Health and Human Services (search). The department is also required to monitor efforts on adoption by the states, which oversee the foster-care system. 

Bush said the 1997 law, an expansion of an adoption tax credit (search) he enacted in 2001 and a new government Web site had fueled a surge in adoptions. 

"In just five years, from 1998 to 2002, the states placed more than 230,000 children in adoptive homes, about the same number that had been adopted in the previous 10 years," he said, speaking in the Roosevelt Room surrounded by four adoptive families. And 33 states and the District of Columbia have at least doubled foster-care adoptions, he said. "We're making some progress here in America." 

But, Bush said, of the more than 126,000 foster children who need an adoptive family, nearly half are over age 9. 

The president's eyes grew moist when he said: "It would take less than 1 percent of the American population to provide a home to every child awaiting adoption." 

"Welcoming a child into your home and calling that child your son or daughter is a major decision. It is never to be made lightly," Bush said. "Yet so many parents who have made that decision count it among life's greatest and happiest turning points." 

Bush was flanked at the event by the Martin family of Brunswick, Md. -- a mother, father and seven children, four adopted. "It's what we call a good-sized American family," Bush said. 

 

 
It Takes A Family: The Adoption Promotion Act of 1997
by Patrick F. Fagan and Dorothy B. Hanks
Executive Memorandum #477


April 23, 1997 |  |  



Congress soon will consider the Adoption Promotion Act of 1997 (H.R. 687), sponsored by Representatives Dave Camp (R-MI) and Barbara B. Kennelly (D-CT). This bipartisan legislation is a responsible attempt to speed up the adoption process, especially for children who have been abused and neglected. It also seeks to change federal policy from one that, through fiscal incentives, rewards ineffective methods that merely expand the current system to one that promotes adoption and provides many more children with a chance to enjoy a normal family life.

Foster care has been a black hole for many of America's neediest and most neglected children. During each of the past 10 years, more children have entered the foster care system than have left it. Congress now has the opportunity to ensure that these children will be placed with stable families. The policies embodied in H.R. 687 offer solid solutions to some of the most serious problems in the U.S. foster care system. Specifically:

Increasing the Ability to Protect Children
At present, foster care is controlled by the Adoption Promotion and Child Welfare Act of 1980, which established family preservation as the goal of child welfare services. This law required states to make "reasonable efforts" at family reunification while making it very difficult to terminate the custodial rights of habitually abusive natural parents, even when the best interests of the child demanded it. The result: Every year, 1,500 children have "graduated" from the foster care system at age 18, after a childhood spent bouncing between abusive parents and different foster care families, with no permanent families to call their own.

The Camp-Kennelly bill, however, requires expeditious termination of parental rights in chronic cases of abuse or neglect. If a child under the age of 10 has spent 18 of the past 24 months in state foster care, the state must file a petition with the court on that child's behalf for termination of parental rights.

Cutting the Cord of Abusive Parents
That the policy of family preservation has become increasingly dangerous to children is confirmed by disturbing trends revealed in the Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect. Although moderate abuse did not grow significantly during the seven years between 1986 and 1993, severe abuse nearly quadrupled. In many cases, efforts to reunify the child with the abusing adult have been lethal. According to the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse, 39 percent of the children who died of abuse or neglect between 1989 and 1991 were known to child welfare agencies before their deaths.

The Adoption Promotion Act clarifies the "reasonable efforts" requirement. When it is determined that a child has been subjected to such chronic, serious mistreatment as abandonment, torture, repeated injury, and sexual abuse, the state no longer would be required to make any effort to reunite that child with the abusive parent or parents. States also could forego efforts for children whose parents already have been convicted of killing or seriously injuring another child--an exemption, incredibly, not allowed under the current system.

Removing Perverse Federal Disincentives
Federal incentives currently reward states for keeping children in foster care rather than finding adoptive homes for them. Not only do states not have the financial incentive to place children in adoptive homes, but as more children enter the foster care system more federal tax money flows into the state to support them. Even though private adoption agencies are paid for each successful placement, public agencies make money by keeping children from being adopted.

The Adoption Promotion Act changes these incentives and offers payments to the states for adoptions. Each state that increases its annual finalized adoptions of children in the foster care system would receive $4,000 for each adoption and an additional $2,000 for special needs adoption. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has determined that the cost of these incentives would be offset by reductions in federal spending on foster care.

Removing Restrictions
States have been slow to respond to the needs of foster children, even when there are many generous couples who offer them homes and families. While thousands of children are bounced around a failing system, thousands of stable families await the opportunity to adopt. Couples who want to adopt are not always looking for healthy or Caucasian infants, despite assumptions to the contrary. Many organizations across the country--such as the National Down's Syndrome Adoption Exchange and California's Adopt a Special Kid--have lists of literally hundreds of couples willing to adopt children who are more difficult to place because of disabilities or background characteristics.

The Adoption Promotion Act requires states to document their efforts (for example, their use of state, regional, and national adoption exchanges) to find permanent homes for children who are legally free to be placed with adopting families, regardless of background or condition. This is a reasonable measure of accountability to expect in return for the $5 billion in federal money that is sent to the states each year for foster care programs. The bill also provides grants to states to promote adoption through such means as concurrent planning to enable family preservation and adoption to be pursued simultaneously; developing risk-assessment tools to identify children who would be at risk of harm if returned to their natural homes; arranging a fast-tracking system for placing children under one year of age into pre-adoptive families; and developing programs to place children in pre-adoptive families before the termination of parental rights. The CBO believes the cost of these grants also would be offset by reductions in federal spending on foster care.

The new policy embodied in the Camp-Kennelly bill could cause well-intentioned states to refocus their efforts on the well-being of children, ensuring that the neediest, most neglected, and most abused are no longer denied permanent, safe, and stable homes. The Adoption Promotion Act addresses many of the deeply ingrained problems of the current foster care system. Most important, it offers hope to children who now are trapped in an outdated system burdened with unintended consequences and plagued by tragedy.