Congress Passes Adoption Promotion Act of 2003
On Friday, November 14th, the Senate passed the House version of The Adoption Promotion Act of 2003. The legislation extends the ASFA-created Adoption Incentive Program for another five years and focus greater attention on finding adoptive families for older children in foster care.
The bill authorizes $43 million per year in performance-based incentives to states that are successful in increasing the number of children adopted from foster care. The bonus program, first created as part of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, has contributed to the substantial ...
HHS Awards $100 Million in Bonuses to States for Reductions in Out-Of-Wedlock Births
Coming just weeks after HHS announced its ASFA adoption bonuses, the $100 million bonus for reducing out-of-wedlock births is an interesting contrast. I must admit that I do not know much about the federal bastard reduction program, but it's probably a good idea. As far as the adoption incentive program goes, the feds spent about $15 million to encourage 3700 adoptions in 2002 or about $4000 per child. This got me wondering, how much are we spending per child to reduce out-of-wedlock births? This seemingly simple task was actually quite difficult because states receive ...
HHS Awards Almost $15 Million in Adoption Bonuses
Last week HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced almost $15 million in adoption bonuses paid to 25 states and Puerto Rico for increasing the number of children adopted from state-supervised foster care in fiscal year 2002. In states that qualified for bonuses, 3,703 more children were adopted in fiscal year 2002 than in the previous year.
The highest award was Florida with an eye popping $3.5 million in bonuses. New Jersey got almost $2 million. Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin each got around $1.1 million. HHS reports that around 51,000 foster children are ...
GAO Report on Title IV-B
Title IV-B of the Social Security Act is the primary source of federal funding for services to help families address problems that lead to child abuse and neglect and to prevent the unnecessary separation of children from their families. Title IV-B is divided into two parts. States can use subpart 1 funds on almost any child welfare activity.
Subpart 2 provides grants to states for similar types of child welfare services, such as family support services to enhance family stability and services to help parents reunify with a child in foster care, but is more restrictive ...
Safe Haven Laws
The battle over safe haven laws is heating up! These laws are intended to allow parents to leave their newborns at designated safe places, including hospitals and police stations, while guaranteeing those parents anonymity and freedom from prosecution. Sounds good huh? Read on. There are some serious issues.
First there was the excellent report by The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute - Unintended Consequences:
Safe Haven Laws are Causing Problems, Not Solving Them - which was critical of safe haven laws. Then noted columnist (and adoptive parent) Al Hunt wrote a hard ...
Website of Interest
This is a nice site and great resource for tracking national child welfare legislation. This page, at least, is a fancy blog! I don't know Marcia but she is doing a great job. The only change I would make is to provide the legislation as a PDF instead of HTML. Check it out.
Best Interests: Legislation
The Boston Globe – TPR Series
I found this article moving and profound. The reporter clearly did an excellent job of presenting the nuances of terminating the parental rights of so-called chronically neglectful parents.
Barbara's story is, sadly, typical of the families who are all too frequently involved in the child welfare system: often impoverished, with mental disabilities, inadequate parenting skills (or is that inadequate middle class parenting skills?), unstable employment, no family support and poor decisionmaking skills. She was clearly not abusive; even the social workers acknowledged ...