On April 8, the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources held a hearing to examine the implementation of the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) (P.L. 105-89), which is slated for reauthorization this year. The law is designed to promote the adoption of children from foster care by providing financial incentives to states and emphasizing children’s safety over family reunification efforts in cases of chronic or severe child abuse.
Under the law, children’s health and safety must be the “paramount concern” in making decisions regarding adoption versus family preservation. Specifically, the ASFA allows states to pursue permanent placements for children at the same time as termination of parental rights. The length of time a child must be in foster care before authorities are able to conduct initial permanency hearings was reduced from 18 months to 15 months. Additionally, an Adoption Incentives Program was established to provide $4,000 for every child adopted from foster care above the state’s previous annual adoption level and $6,000 for every special needs child adopted.
Noting that the number of children adopted has increased substantially since 1997, Subcommittee Chair Wally Herger (R-CA) said that “no system is perfect,” adding, “We will continue our review of whether the 1997 changes are working as intended, and what other changes might be needed to improve child safety.”
Ranking Member Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) agreed that there had “been some positive strides for children” since the enactment of the ASFA. “More children are being placed in safe, stable and permanent environments at a faster rate.”
Dr. Wade Horn of the Department of Health and Human Services detailed the successes of the ASFA, as well as the administration’s reauthorization proposals, including the Adoption Incentives Program. Dr. Horn noted that one of the strengths of the ASFA was “its emphasis on tracking results for children and families.” The department developed a set of national child welfare outcome measures to track state performance and is about to release its third annual report detailing state performance. “While these reports show some areas of progress, they also point to areas that deserve more attention,” he said.
Praising the current law, Dr. Horn pointed out that older children are still the most difficult to place. “Data from AFCARS [the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System] show that by age 9, the probability that a child will continue to wait in foster care exceeds the probability that the child will be adopted.” As a result, the administration is proposing an additional adoption incentive of $6,000 for each child aged 9 and older adopted from foster care above the state’s previous annual adoption level that age group. “Awarding the incentive funds in this way will provide a special focus on the adoption needs of older children, while maintaining the goal of increasing adoptions for all waiting children,” he said.
Cornelia Ashby of the General Accounting Office testified that “while the annual number of adoptions has increased by 57 percent” since the enactment of the ASFA, “the lack of comparable pre- and post-ASFA data makes it difficult to determine ASFA’s role in this increase or changes in other foster care outcomes.” She said that most states have reported that the “ASFA has played an important role in helping them focus on achieving permanency for children within the first year that they enter foster care.” However, evidence of the ASFA’s effect “may not be available for some time.” She did recommend that HHS attempt to collect data on states’ use of the ASFA’s “fast track” provision, which allows states to bypass family reunification efforts in egregious cases, and on states’ use of the “15 of 22” provision, which allows states to file a petition to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the previous 22 months.
Additionally, Jennifer Miller of Cornerstone Consulting Group, a consulting firm that conducted a study of states’ experiences with the Adoption Incentive Program, detailed the results of that study. Overall, the study found that states were “already changing their adoption systems to respond to internal and external pressures” prior to the enactment of the ASFA. “The bonus provided an extra incentive to keep moving in the same direction, but in no case were improvements in the adoption process motivated solely by the existence of the bonus,” she said. Rather, the bonus “stimulated improved data systems” and “fostered better collaboration with the courts.”
The survey also found that states were reinvesting their adoption bonuses into their adoption systems and many states used the bonuses for post-adoption counseling and recruitment of adoptive families. Many states responded that “while the adoption bonus is a useful strategy to create incentives toward adoption in the short-run, many other areas must be addressed to promote permanency in the long run.” Ms. Miller recommended that the adoption incentive be awarded to states for all permanency outcomes, including reunification, guardianship, and adoption.
S. Truett Cathy of WinShape Homes agreed. Mr. Cathy established WinShape Homes to serve children in the child welfare system who do not have severe behavioral problems, as well as siblings in the system. He told the subcommittee about three sisters who had lived in a WinShape Home for over six years when the state began to seek adoptive placements for the girls. They were “happy, well adjusted and had bonded with their houseparents and other family members.” After two failed placements, WinShape Homes petitioned for, and was granted, custody of the girls.
“What I am asking this committee and Congress to do is give courts and child placing agencies the flexibility to consider plans like ours on equal footing with adoption and other permanency alternatives when developing permanency plans for children, which would include the incentive payments to state agencies,” stated Mr. Cathy.
The subcommittee also heard testimony from the National Conference of State Legislatures, the American Public Human Services Association, Baltimore County Department of Social Services, and the National Child Welfare Resource Center on Legal and Judicial Issues.
