New York State Citizens' Coalition for Children

This website never ceases to amaze me. For a great example of an exceptional foster parent / child advocacy / adoption / permanency / sibling rights / children's rights organization website visit the New York State Citizens' Coalition for Children. Not only does Executive Director Judith Ashton put out some great information (she's been doing this since 1975!), she also advocates, lobbies and puts on a fantastic annual conference. Whether you are in New York or New Delhi, a visit to NYSCCC's site will enrich your mind and provide a great model of grassroots advocacy. Way to go Judith and the New York State Citizens' Coalition for Children! Keep up the good work.

Snowflake Adoptions

Last year Nightlight Christian Adoptions received a federal grant to promote so called Snowflake (a/k/a embryo) adoptions. The pro-life community views this largely as a means to protect the "life" inherent in every embryo which are commonly used and discarded in assisted reproduction procedures. Nightlight is forging new ground in this area which is largely unregulated and in a legal gray area. Are snowflake "adoptions" really adoptions? Are embryos "property"? Does contract, adoption or estate law govern alone or in combination? Nightlight attempts to answer some of these questions in this FAQ, but raises more questions than answers. What do you think?

Snowflakes - Frequently Asked Questions

UPDATE: Snowflakes now "flying" in Britian! Also Frozen dreams

Great Lakes Reality Check

What's going on in Michigan? I completely agree with this editorial - it's a no brainer - convicted sex offenders should not be allowed to adopt. My question is why was a sex offender allowed to adopt in the first place? What happened to the criminal background check? The homestudy? Judicial review? That's the more important story here. Why were Michigan adoption professionals duped? Even worse, did they know and do nothing? Anyone with some insight drop me a line.

UPDATE: On November 12, 2003 the Michigan legislature passed a law which states that a "child shall not be placed with a prospective adoptive parent and an adoption order shall not be issued if a person authorized to place the child or the court authorized to issue the order has reliable information that the prospective adoptive parent has been convicted" of a sex crime.

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 increase in adoptions in recent years--from 31,000 in fiscal year 1997 to approximately 51,000 in fiscal year 2002.

Despite recent progress made, many more children are in need of adoptive families. At the end of fiscal year 2002, 532,698 children remained in foster care, and 116,653 of the children in foster care had adoption as their permanent placement goal. About half of the children waiting to be adopted are over the age of nine. Today, national data show that a child over the age of nine is more likely to remain in foster care through his or her 18th birthday than to find an adoptive home.

The Adoption Promotion Act of 2003 is intended to change that statistic by encouraging states to focus greater effort on finding adoptive families for children ages nine and older. Under the legislation the Adoption Incentive Program will now include a targeted bonus for states successful in increasing the number of older children adopted from foster care, as well as continue to recognize overall progress in increasing adoptions from foster care.

Reactions?

For a 2001 report on how the money was spent last time see A Carrot Among the Sticks: The Adoption Incentive Bonus

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 the bastard bonuses based on the rate of reduction, not on raw numbers.

After a significant amount of digging I discovered that the District of Columbia--which is just one example--reduced out-of-wedlock births from 4626 in 2000 to 4376 in 2001. Its federal bonus for 250 fewer illegitimate children . . . almost $20 MILLION (which is $5 million more than the feds spent on the entire adoption incentive program nationwide). The federal bonus PER CHILD was $80,000 or 20 times the bonus for each adoption. A similarly-funded adoption bonus program would cost almost $300 million.

After digging around a bit more (no wonder this data is so hard to find) I found this interesting tidbit from a February 2003 HHS study of the out-of-wedlock births bonus program:

"Officials in nearly all study states said that potential availability of the bonus had little, if any, impact on state efforts to reduce nonmarital childbearing, and among study states receiving the bonus, only one of three directed bonus funds toward nonmarital pregnancy prevention activities. Many state officials perceive the bonus outcome measure as either inappropriate or relatively difficult to influence, or both, discouraging attempts to do so."

My conclusion: we are spending $100 million per year on a program which probably doesn't work and $15 million on a program which probably does work. You economists out there tell me, how much money are we saving by reducing the foster care rate versus the amount of savings for each out-of-wedlock birth (the scope of this study is beyond my meager stats 101 abilities). You policy people tell me which program is more effective. And for everyone else with front line knowledge or lack thereof, post your comments (anonymously if need be) on the blog site for the entire world to see (we have some very influential readers among our 3500 subscribers).

One potentially good piece of news is that a bill is pending in both the Senate and the House which will reauthorize the adoption incentive program which expires this year. Funding is set at $43 million. Perhaps we can fund it with some of money we're spending on out-of-wedlock births. Or even better, maybe we can somehow reclassify illegitimate foster children who are adopted into a reduction in births. Hmmm. Let me get my calculator.

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 adopted each year. President Bush wants to extend the adoption bonus program in fiscal year 2004.

While adoption is a great idea for many foster children, a "permanency bonus" should be implemented to increase the total number of permanent placements through guardianship, kinship care and reunification. More on this, including a federally subsidized permanent placement for older foster children, in future blogs . . .

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 in how the funds can be spent. In fiscal year 2003, appropriations were $292 million for subpart 1 and $405 million for subpart 2.

This GAO Report examines the following: (1) How do the services provided and populations served under subpart 1 compare with those under subpart 2? (2) What has the federal government’s role been in overseeing the use of Title IV-B subpart 1 funds? (3) What does the research say about the effectiveness of services unique to subpart 1?

The GAO found that little research is available on the effectiveness of unique services funded by subpart 1 at the state level because few states have evaluated these services.

The GAO discovered that in Fiscal Year 2002, states spent less than 3% of Title IV-B subpart 1 and 14% of subpart 2 funding on adoption services. Although one essential purpose of Title IV-B subpart 1 funding is adoption assistance, only 7 states out of 46 that responded used the funding for adoption subsidy payments which accounted for less than 2% of the funding. Additionally, though adoption promotion and support is one of four major purposes of subpart 2, just 16 states of 44 responding spent less than 3% of that funding on recruitment and training of foster and adoptive parents and 27 states spent 11% of it on adoption support and preservation. Finally the GAO found that 13 states spent 5% of subpart 1 funds on services for children waiting for adoption, adopted children and adoptive parents, while 31 states spent 16% of subpart 2 money on that group.

The GAO recommended that the Secretary of HHS (1) provide the necessary guidance to ensure that HHS regional offices are providing appropriate oversight of subpart 1, (2) consider the feasibility of collecting basic data on states’ use of these funds to facilitate its oversight of the program and to provide guidance to help states determine appropriate services to fund, and (3) use the information gained through enhanced oversight of subpart 1 to inform its design of the child welfare option that would allow states to use Title IV-E funds for the same range of services allowed under Title IV-B.

CHILD WELFARE: Enhanced Federal Oversight of Title IV-B Could Provide States Additional Information to Improve Services.

Hague Intercountry Adoption Regulations Released Today

The U.S. Department of State today issued long-awaited proposed regulations to implement legislation which was signed into law nearly three years ago to implement a global treaty that streamlines the international adoption process affecting tens of thousands of children adopted by U.S. citizens each year.

The 2000 law, known as the Intercountry Adoption Act, put in place a structure that should provide greater safety, accountability and transparency for adoptive families who seek to adopt children from other nations.

The proposed regulations are designed to implement those goals by ensuring that adoption service providers are properly accredited to provide intercountry adoption services and meet appropriate quality control standards; that families receive timely and meaningful disclosures about fees, procedures, and their children's medical well-being; and that those involved in the adoption process have official recourse when problems arise.

The comment period has been extended 30 days!

Comments must reach the Department of State on or before December 15, 2003. Commenters may send hard copy submissions or comments in electronic format. Commenters sending only hard copies must send an original and two copies referencing docket number State/AR-01/96 to:

U.S. Department of State

CA/OCS/PRI

Adoption Regulations Docket


Room SA-29

2201 C Street, NW

Washington, DC 20520

Hard copy comments may also be sent by overnight courier services to:

U.S. Department of State

CA/OCS/PRI

Adoption Regulations Docket

Room 2201


C Street, NW

Washington, DC 20520

Do not personally hand deliver comments to the Department of State.

Comments referencing the docket number State/AR-01/96 may be submitted electronically to adoptionregs@state.gov. Two hard copies of the comments submitted electronically must be mailed under separate cover as well. The electronic comments or the hard copy comments must be received by the date noted above in the date section of this proposed rule. Comments must be made in the text of the message or submitted as a Word file avoiding the use of any form of encryption or use of special characters. If you submit comments by hard copy rather than electronically, include a disk with the submission if possible. Hard copy submissions without an accompanying disk file, however, will be accepted.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

Edward Betancourt or Anna Mary Coburn at 202-647-2826 or Jessica Rosenbaum at 202-312-9717. Hearing- or speech-impaired persons may use the Telecommunications Devices for the Deaf (TDD) by contacting the Federal Information Relay Service at 1-800-877-8339.

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 hitting commentary in the Wall Street Journal praising Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle for vetoing a well meaning but ultimately flawed safe haven bill.

Finally longtime adoption gadfly William Pierce struck back at both the Donaldson report and Hunt in a vitriolic ad hominem discourse on About.com. A well-reasoned response on About.com addresses the issue from a birth father perspective.

I agree with Hunt and Donaldson. Most safe haven laws are ultimately anti-adoption because they sacrifice best practices in the rush to make it easier for birth parents to legally abandon their children. Instead of properly placing a child for adoption, parents are allowed to dump their children without fear of criminal prosecution. What the advocates of safe haven laws fail to understand is that prosecution for child abandonment is not an adoption issue at all but a criminal justice issue which should be addressed exclusively in the criminal law.

I'll never forget when a well meaning but ill-advised safe haven advocate spent the afternoon with me several years ago at The Children's Law Center in Washington, DC. After she finished her expensive glossy presentation on the merits of proposed safe haven legislation for the District of Columbia, I spent the next hour explaining to her that she needed to be speaking to the U.S. Attorney's Office since the problem she was trying to solve was rooted not in the adoption code but in the criminal law.

There is no reason to abandon a proper adoption to spare someone a criminal conviction. Adoption is not just shuffling some papers and visiting a judge. It involves Constitutionally protected rights: the rights of birth fathers, birth mothers, relatives and even the child. I have no qualms about waiving the criminal law in order to facilitate a couple of adoptions. We should be very careful, however, when we create an incentive to bypass years of best practices (such as a full medical and social history, valid consents and Due Process) in our zeal to save babies.

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

When Children Take the Stand

There is undoubtedly an increase in the number of children involved in the judicial system either as victims (there are 500,000 children in foster care all of whom were in court last year), perpetrators (there were 1 million court involved delinquents and status offenders in 1999), and witnesses in divorce, domestic violence and other civil cases.

One of the best books on child witnesses remains Anne Graffam Walker's Handbook On Questioning Children: A Linguistic perspective. Another good publication is Evidence in Child Abuse and Neglect Cases by John E.B. Myers.

Both of these books should be mandatory reading for anyone who questions children in court or in a forensic context. The biggest problem with children in the legal system remains the attorneys who are for the most part ill prepared and untrained in dealing with the range of issues of child witnesses.

National Law Journal -- When children take the stand

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 that. Were her children neglected or just poor?

The chronicle of inadequate social and legal work in this case is a damning example of how state involvement in these types of cases does little to promote child "health and safety" (ASFA-speak for baseline standards): the court authorized removal without notifying the parent (what was the emergency basis for this action?); the social worker placed the boys into two different homes; no visitation occurred with Barbara for six weeks; the social workers had between 18 and 24 family cases; the children were placed in a different school district; Barbara was given improper mental health treatment. (Why the boys had to be removed at all during state involvement is unclear.)

State involvement clearly did not help Barbara overcome her problems. Pressure to change, in fact, may have made them worse. What's also clear to me is that Barbara's children could not realistically live with their mother in a tent in the woods and make ends meet by shoplifting. In many ways the neglect case led to a self-fulfilling result: a neglectful parent who loved her children but just couldn't get it together in the way the state demanded.

The article wrongly attributes the following as the primary motivation for ASFA: "The theory is that the best way to break the cycle of poverty and fractured families is to move children, and swiftly, out of troubled homes." Although it is a good thesis for the article and may be an unfortunate effect of ASFA, social engineering was not the moving force behind ASFA. The prevention of foster care drift was the biggest factor which led to ASFA.

The use of permanency mediation is also highlighted (a process which I support). Clearly, however, the outcome - adoption with limited visitation - seems inadequate and unfair. After all, Barbara is a parent of two adolescent boys who was never abusive or in any way a danger to her children. Still, children need permanency and the outcome in this case seems fair, although far from ideal.

This is also a realistic story about the difficulties adoptive parents face navigating a state adoption process which rarely returns telephone calls or even says "thank you."

Overall this is an excellent saga - well worth the 40 minutes spent reading it. The story also reminds me of one of my favorite sayings from Judge Zinora Mitchell-Rankin, former presiding judge of the Family Division of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia: "A termination of parental rights only changes the legal relationship between parent and child, not the biological relationship." This is especially true in this story.

A mother, her sons, and a choice

Read the comments too!

Sperm Donor Introductions for Lesbian Couples and Single Women

Okay - close on the heels of Snowflake adoptions we have e-sperm "adoptions." This gives spam a whole new meaning. Be careful ladies when opening any unknown e-mails or you could get more than a virus or worm! Trojan horse comes to mind . . .

Seriously now I'm not sure how I feel about this new business model in assisted reproduction. If, as they say, every sperm is sacred - or at least half as sacred as a frozen embryo - then new legal models will have to develop to address e-sperm babies. Or will they? Given the radical nature of internet dating, file sharing and now blogging I forsee a time when you can do "peer-to-peer" sperm donation. Just log into Spermster and hook up with a willing donor in a chat room in cyber space.

Can this be regulated? Should it? Is this even adoption related? Are snowflake adoptions? More questions than answers.

Sperm Donor Introductions for Lesbian Couples and single women - Man Not Included - Private-Professional

Adopted Children and Stepchildren: 2002 Census Special Report

Check out this Census report on the number of adopted children and stepchildren. The numbers are surprising. Adopted Children and Stepchildren: 2000 - Census 2000 Special Report

Welcome to the World of Blogging!

Welcome to the world's first adoption and child welfare law blog! A blog is a simple way to publish on the internet. Think of it as an online newspaper filled with rich content such as discussion threads, documents and links to other websites. You can even comment on my commentary (coming soon)! It is an exciting new format which is sweeping the internet. This site is still in a somewhat beta format so excuse any gliches. Any comments - just e-mail me at JamesMarsh@MarshLaw.net.