[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
.
INCREASING ADOPTIONS FROM FOSTER CARE
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
of the
COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 27, 2013
__________
Serial No. 113-HR01
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Ways and Means
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COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
DAVE CAMP, Michigan, Chairman
SAM JOHNSON, Texas SANDER M. LEVIN, Michigan
KEVIN BRADY, Texas CHARLES B. RANGEL, New York
PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin JIM MCDERMOTT, Washington
DEVIN NUNES, California JOHN LEWIS, Georgia
PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio RICHARD E. NEAL, Massachusetts
DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington XAVIER BECERRA, California
CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
PETER J. ROSKAM, Illinois MIKE THOMPSON, California
JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
TOM PRICE, Georgia EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
VERN BUCHANAN, Florida RON KIND, Wisconsin
ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey
AARON SCHOCK, Illinois JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
LYNN JENKINS, Kansas ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
ERIK PAULSEN, Minnesota DANNY DAVIS, Illinois
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas LINDA SANCHEZ, California
DIANE BLACK, Tennessee
TOM REED, New York
TODD YOUNG, Indiana
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania
TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas
JIM RENACCI, Ohio
Jennifer M. Safavian, Staff Director and General Counsel
Janice Mays, Minority Chief Counsel
______
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington, Chairman
TODD YOUNG, Indiana LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania JOHN LEWIS, Georgia
TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
JIM RENACCI, Ohio DANNY DAVIS, Illinois
TOM REED, New York
CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana
C O N T E N T S
__________
Page
Advisory of February 27, 2013 announcing the hearing............. 2
WITNESSES
Rita L. Soronen, President and Chief Executive Officer, Dave
Thomas Foundation for Adoption................................. 7
Kelly Rosati, J.D., Vice President of Community Outreach, Focus
on the Family.................................................. 18
Pat O'Brien, MS, LMSW, Founder and Executive Director, You Gotta
Believe! The Older Child Adoption & Permanency Movement,
Incorporated................................................... 29
Nicole Dobbins, Executive Director, Voice for Adoption........... 36
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Lilliput Children's Services..................................... 59
Statewide Adoption and Permanency Network........................ 63
Family & Youth Initiative........................................ 65
Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.)............. 68
Human Rights Campaign............................................ 71
Family Equality Council.......................................... 76
Listening to Parents............................................. 80
Northwest Adoption Exchange...................................... 86
Adoptive Parent and Advocate..................................... 89
Marie Dolfi, LCSW................................................ 91
Center for Fiscal Equity......................................... 96
Children's Home + Aid............................................ 98
NYS Citizens' Coalition for Children (NYSCCC).................... 101
Hillside Family of Agencies...................................... 104
INCREASING ADOPTIONS FROM FOSTER CARE
----------
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2013
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Ways and Means,
Subcommittee on Human Resources,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 4:13 p.m., in
Room 1100, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Dave Reichert
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
[The advisory announcing the hearing follows:]
ADVISORY
FROM THE COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
CONTACT: (202) 225-3625
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
No. HR-01
Chairman Reichert Announces Hearing on
Increasing Adoptions from Foster Care
Congressman Dave Reichert (R-WA), Chairman of the Subcommittee on
Human Resources of the Committee on Ways and Means, today announced
that the Subcommittee will hold a hearing on increasing adoptions from
foster care, including through the Adoption Incentives program. The
hearing will take place immediately following the Subcommittee
organizational meeting that begins at 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, February
27, 2013, in Room 1100 of the Longworth House Office Building.
In view of the limited time available to hear from witnesses, oral
testimony at this hearing will be from invited witnesses only.
Witnesses will include experts from organizations that have had success
in increasing adoptions from foster care. However, any individual or
organization not scheduled for an oral appearance may submit a written
statement for consideration by the Committee and for inclusion in the
printed record of the hearing.
BACKGROUND:
Congress began providing Federal financial support for adoption as
part of Public Law 96-272, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare
Act of 1980, with a goal of reducing the number of children in foster
care. In 1997, Congress enacted Public Law 105-89, The Adoption and
Safe Families Act, to further increase the number of children leaving
foster care for adoptive homes. This law created the Adoption
Incentives program, which provides incentive payments to States that
increase the number of adoptions over a base year level. Initially,
States were eligible to receive incentive payments either for increases
in the number of foster children adopted or for increases in the number
of foster children with special needs placed in adoptive homes.
The program was extended by Public Law 108-145, the Adoption
Promotion Act of 2003, which reset the State baselines and also added a
new incentive payment category for adoptions of children age 9 and
older. This new incentive category was created in response to research
showing that once a child reached 8 or 9 years of age, he or she was
more likely to remain in foster care than to be adopted.
Public Law 110-35, the Fostering Connections to Success and
Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008, again extended the program and reset
the State baselines. This 2008 law doubled the incentive payments for
adoptions of special needs children under age 9 and for older child
adoptions. The 2008 law also authorized incentive payments for States
that increased the rate of children adopted from foster care. The
Adoption Incentives program is currently authorized through September
30, 2013, as is the Family Connection grants program which provides
grants designed to better connect children in foster care to their
relatives.
A number of organizations have developed proven methods for
increasing the number of children who are adopted from foster care,
contributing to recent success in advancing this goal. For example,
some organizations focus on reexamining the adult relationships a
foster youth has had during their time in foster care to determine if
any of these adults may be possible adoptive parents. Others are
building more in-depth relationships with a smaller caseload of foster
youth to better understand their needs and desires to find the right
home for the child.
In announcing the hearing, Chairman Reichert stated, ``While tens
of thousands of children are adopted from foster care each year, twice
as many foster children are still waiting for a permanent home. Past
Federal efforts have increased support for adoptions and have helped
States reduce the number of children in foster care each year. As we
review the Adoption Incentives program in preparation for its
reauthorization, we need to make sure these measures are still working
well so we can ensure all children have a permanent home as quickly as
possible. I look forward to hearing from leaders and experts alike
about ways in which we can safely increase the number of children
adopted from foster care, so every child has a permanent home and
parents to call their own.''
FOCUS OF THE HEARING:
The hearing will review successful efforts to increase adoptions of
children from foster care. Leaders of several private organizations
achieving significant success are expected to testify about their
programs, as well as their views on reauthorizing the Adoption
Incentives program.
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Chairman REICHERT. I call this Subcommittee meeting to
order. We welcome you to today's hearing. I can't think of a
more important or more bipartisan topic than promoting
adoption. This is an area where both parties have worked
together to improve outcomes for children, which is what I
would like to do whenever possible as the Chairman of this
Subcommittee. I know Mr. Doggett agrees with that goal, and I
look forward to working with all the Members to work
productively toward that end. Of course, we won't always agree,
but whether it involves adoption, data standards, or preventing
wasteful spending, there is a lot we can do, and should do,
together.
As Mr. Doggett mentioned, I have a background with 33 years
in law enforcement, but also some personal experience in the
adoption/foster care arena. Two of my grandchildren are
adopted. I was a foster grandparent for a while for a number of
children and also now, of course, an adoptive grandfather, and
we are very proud of the fact that my daughter and her husband,
my son-in-law, have adopted two little children: Emma, who was
a crack cocaine, heroin-addicted baby when she was born; and
Breyer, who was a meth-addicted baby when he was born. And you
can imagine some of the challenges they now face as they grow
older at 9 and 10 years old. But they now have a strong
foundation, a loving family, and a good, strong base to start
their lives from, which gives them so many more opportunities
than they would have had.
On the other hand, as the sheriff and as a detective, a
homicide detective, working in King County--and especially my
memory goes back to the days working the Green River murder
cases, if you are familiar with those, a series of murders of
street people, women and young girls, 51 cases were closed. The
suspect pled guilty to 49 murders. I worked with a lot of those
young kids on the street. Those were kids who were in and out
of foster homes, who weren't adopted, who were in their teens,
early teens and late teens, some even younger. I would get
calls at night at home: ``I am at a phone booth, I ran away
from my foster home.'' You take them to the YWCA and the YMCA;
they run away from there.
You folks on the panel know this, have seen this
yourselves, and have experience there. I know members on this
panel have heart for this issue, and I wanted to share those
stories with you so that you understand how close this is to me
personally in so many different ways. And I could tell so many
other stories, but we will move on.
As I said, not every child has been so lucky to have a
home. For example, in the 10 years from 1987 through 1997, the
number of children in foster care rose dramatically, climbing
from 300,000 to 537,000. That surge in foster care caseloads is
one of the reasons why Congress, led by our current Chairman
Dave Camp, passed the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997.
That law was designed to ensure more foster children were
quickly adopted when they couldn't return to live safely with
their parents.
The Adoption Incentives program, created as part of that
law, was one key measure to encourage more adoption of children
from foster care. In short, it rewards States if they increase
the number of children leaving foster care for adoptive homes.
We all know it worked. Since the passage of the Adoption and
Safe Families Act, foster care caseloads have fallen
dramatically. After peaking at 567,000 in 1999, foster care
caseloads have fallen by almost 30 percent. At the same time,
adoptions from foster care increased in the late 1990s and
remain much higher than before the law's passage.
Today we will review how the Adoption Incentives program
supported these improvements. We will hear directly from
adoption experts, including from organizations that have proven
they can increase the number of children adopted from foster
care, and we will start to consider whether we need to make
changes to encourage even more adoptions.
In my view, the Federal Government should continue to
support efforts to increase adoptions, as there are still over
100,000 children in foster care waiting to be adopted. These
kids deserve a place to call home. They need someone who will
commit to caring for them, and they deserve our best efforts to
ensure that they are adopted.
Again, I look forward to the testimony of all of our
witnesses today and also thank you so much for your patience. I
am really interested in how we can work together to ensure more
children grow up in a safe, loving, and permanent family.
Without objection, each Member will have the opportunity to
submit a written statement and have it included in the record
at this point.
I would like to recognize Mr. Doggett for his opening
statement.
Mr. DOGGETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I believe that our Federal Adoption Incentives program,
which provides financial awards to the States that increase the
number of children adopted out of foster care above a certain
baseline, is an important part of the effort, the joint
bipartisan effort, to try to encourage permanent loving homes
for children who are placed in foster care. These awards are
due--and this program is due to expire at the end of September,
not that far from now, and I am hopeful that we will be able to
work together to reauthorize the program.
Under the Adoption Incentives program, the States become
eligible for awards if they increase the number of total
adoptions, those for children over age 9 that are adopted, and
the adoption of children with special needs. The goal of the
program is to incentivize and encourage the States to increase
the adoptions out of foster care and to quickly move children
who are unable to return to their parents into permanent homes.
States must reinvest these payments back into services, such as
postadoption services for children and families and other
services generally provided under the child welfare system.
Forty-three million dollars is available for the program in
this fiscal year. Since the program was created, as the
Chairman described, roughly $375 million has been awarded, and
every State in the country has participated in the funding. In
fiscal year 2011, Texas, my home State, received about $7
million in incentives, the largest amount of any State in the
country. San Antonio has been viewed as a particular model of
success.
Bexar County has been creative in safely moving children
into permanent homes. Each month there at the county
courthouse, the county hosts an adoption day event that allows
dozens of families on the same day to complete their adoptions
in a single day, and that happens every month. These
proceedings have allowed countless children to have shorter
stays in foster care and move more quickly into stable homes. I
believe that judges in Bexar County understand they are
responsible for getting children who experience abuse and
neglect into a safer foster environment and, in addition, are
responsible for placing that child with a permanent family if
it does not become safe for the child to return home.
These improvements to the local adoption system, encouraged
and utilized by child advocates like District Judge Peter
Sakai, who has been a leader in the area over the last decade,
and CASA San Antonio, have allowed faster and more efficient
placement of foster youth into permanent families.
We will hear from all of our witnesses finally this
afternoon, but specifically I share the concern that I believe
Nicole Dobbins will be expressing about the lack of clarity
regarding how the States use these award payments. I know that
some States under budget pressures have tended to use the
Federal money for perhaps what they had been doing previously,
and I think it is important
that our Federal resources add to, not supplant money that was
already being invested on adoption activities. The inclusion of
a maintenance-of-effort requirement as part of reauthorization
could help us ensure that the dollars that are so precious here
that we are expending are actually being used to improve and
strengthen child welfare.
I welcome the opportunity to discuss how we can continue to
increase adoptions for children in foster care, but I do think
one step that is important is to avoid any cuts in these
modest, federally-funded adoption initiatives that will occur
within just a few days under the sequester. Cutting funding for
this program could
mean less funding for postadoption services for families that
have adopted a foster child, or less funding to recruit
adoptive homes through online adoption exchanges and
promotional materials, or less support for training adoption
workers.
Another issue that requires our attention this year is the
more recent Family Connection grants initiative. It is also
scheduled to expire at the end of September. It has provided
$15 million each year in grants for State agencies and
community organizations. It has been a more narrow program, but
it is designed to connect or reconnect children with their
biological relatives when it is safe and appropriate to do so.
This small program, fairly new, created only in 2008, is
currently being evaluated, but it looks like a program, from
the preliminary review that I have seen, that could be
effective in improving the lives of at-risk children.
I look forward to hearing from today's witnesses and
working with our colleagues to continue to improve the well-
being of all children in foster care.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you, Mr. Doggett.
I want to remind our witnesses to limit their oral
testimony to 5 minutes. However, without objection, all of the
written testimony will be made part of the permanent record.
On our panel this afternoon we will be hearing from Rita
Soronen, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Dave
Thomas Foundation for Adoption; Kelly Rosati, Vice President of
Community Outreach, Focus on the Family; Pat O'Brien, Founder
and Executive Director, You Gotta Believe! The Older Child
Adoption & Permanency Movement, Incorporated; and Nicole
Dobbins, Executive Director, Voice for Adoption.
Ms. Soronen, you are recognized.
STATEMENT OF RITA L. SORONEN, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, DAVE THOMAS FOUNDATION FOR ADOPTION
Ms. SORONEN. Thank you, Chairman and Members of the
Committee. I am Rita Soronen, President and CEO of the Dave
Thomas Foundation for Adoption. I am honored to be with you
today.
I would like to start with a short video before I make my
comments, and I think that is cued to run.
[Video shown.]
Sometimes a video can say it all, but I will try to sum it
up in a few words as well.
You all know, and thank you for your comments, that
children come into the child welfare system through no fault of
their own. They are victims of traumatic abuse and neglect, and
when they are permanently freed for adoption, our promise to
them is that we will find them a family. Last year in this
country, we negligently failed to live up to our promise of a
family for more than 26,000 children who aged out of care.
This child-focused recruitment model, or Wendy's Wonderful
Kids, that was developed, tested, and, until 2012, privately
funded by the foundation, proves that there is a family for
every child. We started the program with 7 pilot sites in 2004
and now provide individual grant commitments to public and
private agencies that support 169 adoption professionals in 49
States, the District of Columbia, and 4 provinces in Canada. We
have served 8,800 children, 3,400 of whom have had a finalized
adoption, and another 500 are in their preadoptive placement,
and these numbers are even more compelling when we understand
the children successfully served.
The average age of a child served through this program is
12. At the point of referral into Wendy's Wonderful Kids, 30
percent of these children had already experienced six or more
placements, and 50 percent had been in care 4 years or more.
Half of the children have at least one identified clinical
disability, and one in five of these children have already had
a failed or a disrupted adoption. Critically, prior to Wendy's
Wonderful Kids, more than half of these children had
experienced no adoption recruitment activities on their behalf,
none.
Child-focused recruitment demands that rather than ignoring
these children because of a perception of unadoptability, or
casting a broad net of general recruitment, or funding public
displays of children, experienced adoption professionals work a
model that includes smaller caseloads of typically harder-to-
place children, intensive contact with the child and others,
extensive case file review, diligent search for families and
expert adoption preparation, and we know this works at a cost-
effective level.
For example, before the State of Ohio took our program to
scale, their fiscal experts estimated our grant commitments of
$3 million for seven Ohio recruiters had already saved nearly
$32 million for the State of Ohio. With a financial partnership
that added 32 more recruiters focusing on youth, they
anticipated savings of more than $105,000,000.
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, no child has to
age out of care, hoping to make it on their own in this complex
world. We can and we must keep our promise of finding families
for all of our children. I will welcome your comments at the
end of the testimonies.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Soronen follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you for your testimony.
Ms. Rosati, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF KELLY ROSATI, J.D., VICE PRESIDENT OF COMMUNITY
OUTREACH, FOCUS ON THE FAMILY
Ms. ROSATI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the
Committee. It is an honor to be here. I am very grateful that
this is the subject of your hearing today, and it is a
privilege to be able to be a part of it.
My name is Kelly Rosati, as you said, and I am the Vice
President of Community Outreach at Focus on the Family, and as
a part of our community outreach, Wait No More, our event to
focus on foster care adoption recruitment, is a cornerstone of
our work.
Focus on the Family is a donor-supported, global Christian
ministry that reaches about 238 million people in 130
countries, and as I said, we are very passionate about foster
care adoption. Our President, Jim Daly, was, in fact, orphaned
as a child and lived in the foster care system, and so part of
that experience has been what fuels his passion for this.
I am blessed. My husband and I are parents to four
children, who came to us through the blessing of foster care
adoption, three of whom have special needs, the kind that are
the subject of the children who are still waiting for families.
Wait No More began in 2008, and the idea was that we would
use the voice and the reach of Focus on the Family to try to
increase awareness about the needs of kids that are in foster
care that need families, just like we saw in that video, and
the idea was that we would partner with local child welfare
officials, adoption agencies, church and ministry leaders in a
given community to try to work collaboratively to raise
awareness and help recruit families for these kids.
Since 2008, we have had 15 Wait No More events in 12
States, and we have had some very encouraging outcomes. We have
seen 8,300 attendees at our events, representing 4,700
families. We have worked with 200 county, State, private
agencies and ministries all across the United States, and those
folks that have attended have represented 2,100 different
churches in communities across the country.
The best news of all, though, is that at the end of the day
at these events, we have seen more than 2,100 families who have
begun the process of foster care adoption. They are beginning
this process with a full understanding of the challenges that
they are about to encounter.
Frankly, one of the things that we do at our events is that
we give the attendees the opportunity to hear perspectives from
adoptive parents, to hear the perspective from young adults who
were adopted as teenagers or as a part of sibling groups. We
give them the opportunity to hear from social workers about
what the process is going to be like and what some of the
barriers may be. And, frankly, we talk an awful lot and almost,
you could say, try to talk them out of it in a way, because we
want them to be very serious that this is about the needs of
the child. And again, as you saw in the great messaging on the
video, it is about the needs of the child, not the wants and
desires of the adults.
We are talking specifically about teenagers, sibling
groups, and kids with special needs, and so that is why we are
encouraged that knowing all of that, knowing some of the
barriers and the challenges, including the specific behaviors
that they may encounter, and why they may encounter those
behaviors, and what strategies might be effective in helping
that child, after all of that we have seen more than 2,000
families that have begun the process of foster care adoption.
We are very passionate and committed to postadoption
support. We want to have integrity in recruiting these families
for our kids, and we want to also be there for them after the
fact, when they encounter difficulties, and so as a part of
that commitment, we have spent an equal amount of money on
complementary postadoption support for families. We have
provided about 50,000 units of resources that are designed to
be adoption competent to meet
the needs of the families. We have trained 200 counselors
across
the country in partnership with Texas Christian University's
Insti-
tute on Child Development; we have helped train them to have a
greater adoption competency. We underwrite the training, we pay
for it, but we say to them in return, we ask that you would
provide counseling to a family at no cost to the family so that
we can increase access to the kind of help our families need.
We have a 1-800 hotline that families are able to call.
Actually it is a warm line where they can receive free
counseling and also referrals then to adoption-competent
counselors in their areas.
Finally, I would like to say, as you think about barriers
to adoption and to increasing foster care adoption, one thing
to be mindful of, I suppose, is the fact that I think we have
perverse disincentives built into the system. So right now if
you are a teenager in foster care, you may have access to
certain benefits, including mental health services and
postsecondary education, if you stay in foster care, but if you
choose a family, you don't have access to those same benefits,
and we don't believe that children should have to choose
between those things.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Rosati follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. O'Brien, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF PAT O'BRIEN, MS, LMSW, FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR, YOU GOTTA BELIEVE! THE OLDER CHILD ADOPTION &
PERMANENCY MOVEMENT, INCORPORATED
Mr. O'BRIEN. Thank you.
I am Pat O'Brien, founder and CEO of You Gotta Believe! The
Older Child Adoption & Permanency Movement, an organization
that first and foremost considers itself a homelessness
prevention program. And the way we prevent homelessness is to
find permanent parents for teens and young adults before they
are discharged from the foster care system to no one but
themselves.
When we started You Gotta Believe back in 1995, I noticed
an interesting statistic when homeless populations were
surveyed. In every survey we looked at, over half the homeless
reported having grown up in foster care as youth. They had
actually come into our system for their own safety and well-
being, only to be placed in harm's way when they were
discharged from the very same system.
I believe the sad result is the direct product of two
primary barriers. The first barrier is simple: Lack of belief
that we can find permanent parents for teens and young adults
as they are aging out of foster care. This lack of belief keeps
laws from being created that would mandate concurrent planning
at the exit end of the system. My over 25 years of experience
has taught me that our child welfare system must never stop
recruiting permanent parents for children at any age that they
are at risk of aging out to our Nation's streets.
The second barrier is actually a child welfare permanency
planning goal referred to or called in the law Some Other
Planned Permanent Living Arrangement which May Include a
Residential Educational Program. Many in our field refer to
this permanency planning goal as Another Planned Permanent
Living Arrangement, or APPLA.
APPLA is focused on preparing youth for adulthood. APPLA
focuses on skills development and teaching youngsters the
important skills to survive in the world on their own. And
though skills development in preparing for adulthood is very
important, there are still very few, if any, young people in
the general population, including yours and my children who are
over 21, making it on their own without the help of their
parents.
For example, as you know, the overwhelming majority of 22-
year-old college graduates who come from fairly well-off one-
or two-parent families return home to their parents after they
graduate college with a 4-year bachelor's degree.
But we, as a child welfare system, are putting youth
between the ages of 18 and 21 in harm's way without even trying
to get them permanent parents before they are discharged from
our foster care system because there is no law that mandates
even the effort.
So how do we find permanent parents for aging-out youth?
You Gotta Believe has a three-pronged approach. The first we
call the friend's approach. You see, once you believe that a
permanent parent must be found for every youth before they age
out of care, the first place you look for this permanent parent
is by talking to the constructive adults who are already in an
individual young person's life. And when we identify someone
who is known to the youth, we ask these folks to take a 10-week
learning experience we call Adopting Older Kids and Youth, or
A-OKAY, to see if making a lifetime commitment to this young
person they so much care about is something that they can do.
Our statistics and research show us that this is the single
most effective way to recruit a lifetime parent for youth aging
out of care. During a 4-year period under a Federal adoption
opportunities demonstration grant, it took nearly 1,000
prospective applicants from the general public to walk through
our door to get 37 young people a parent. However, during the
same 4-year period, it only took 154 prospective applicants to
walk through our doors who knew a teen to get 83 young people
placed in a lifetime family. This approach is a simple, highly
efficient means of recruiting permanent parents for aging-out
teens.
Our second approach is the acquaintances approach. There
are many young people in the system where it is believed by the
people around them that they have no constructive adults in
their lives. For these youth we set up opportunities for them
to share the same time and space with our prospective and
certified families. We do this by bringing young people into
our A-OKAY parent preparation classes as consultants to teach
our prospective families what it is like to be a teen growing
up in foster care.
Many families who come forward having no interest in
adoptive teens have decided a teen on our panel was someone
they could adopt. Dozens and dozens of youth have been placed
as a direct result of sharing the same time and space and
becoming acquaintances with the prospective and certified
families who have taken our A-OKAY course. This is the second-
best way.
The third approach is community education. Years ago our
organization realized that we were having little success trying
to sell what we were doing to the general public in 15- or 30-
second sound bites. That is why we created our own media, both
TV and radio. These broadcasts serve a local purpose of
recruiting local parents and a more global purpose by inspiring
the rest of the world by introducing them to the wonderful
youth who need permanent families and the parents who adopt
them, all in one-half hour thoughtful interviews and
conversations.
Finally, where should adoption incentive rewards be
reinvested? There are two equally important areas. The first is
funding to continue to recruit the very permanent parents that
we know are out there for each and every youth. Reinvesting
these incentive dollars to utilize the three strategies noted
above would be an impactful way to get more youth into
permanent families before they are discharged from the foster
care system.
Parents and families are the foundation and springboard to
every child's future. Parents and families give youth access to
the village we so often talk about needing to raise children.
It sure does take a village to raise a child, but only if the
child has a parent in that village to provide the foundation he
or she needs. This is equally true for the 18-, 19-, 20- or 21-
year-old as it is for the infant, toddler, latency-age, and
tween-age child.
Second, we must support families after the youth move in.
Almost all the youth at the age range we place had serious
trauma in their lives. We prepare parents for what to expect,
but we must also be there to support them during their hard
times.
If we could provide these two basic adoption services, then
each youth will have what the child welfare system promised
them when they first came into foster care, and that promise
was a home that provides safety, the opportunity for well-
being, and a permanent parent and family who will be there for
them long after their years in foster care are over.
I want to thank you very much for the time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. O'Brien follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you, Mr. O'Brien.
Ms. Dobbins, you are recognized.
STATEMENT OF NICOLE DOBBINS,
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, VOICE FOR ADOPTION
Ms. DOBBINS. Chairman, Ranking Member, Members of the
Subcommittee, I direct an organization that is an advocacy
organization called Voice for Adoption. Our members recruit
families, and they provide postadoption support services.
I would like to shed light on four key areas within my
time: The rate of adoption from foster care is increasing, but
adoption of older youth continues to be a struggle. Our aging-
out youth population you heard about, we need to connect them
to permanency before exiting. Postadoption services is a
critical need identified, but there are a lack of resources to
support these efforts. And lastly, accountability for Federal
funds that have been dedicated to adoption, we need to make
sure that we are reviewing those to ensure that reinvestment is
happening as required by law.
The Fostering Connections Act as well as the ASFA of 1997
took great strides in increasing adoptions. The rate of
adoption has increased by 77 percent, but more needs to be
done.
Consistent with the national number of children in foster
care decreasing, so is the number of children waiting to be
adopted. As adoption populations decline, States won't be able
to continue to meet and exceed the rates they are basing their
adoption incentives on, which is fiscal year 2007.
Voice for Adoption recommends adjusting the baseline level
so that more current levels are reflected so that the Adoption
Incentives program can continue to be an effective approach.
We also request that detailed reports on the number of
adoptions by each category be reported by HHS, because
currently only information about the amounts is being reported.
It is hard to have a clear picture of what types of increases
States are having because of this amount-only information being
reported.
Despite the achievements we have seen, connecting waiting
children with adoptive families still is a struggle within
these States. It is critical that we find ways to increase the
likelihood of adoption of older youth, and as you understand
from what you have heard, promising practices for older youth
differ from that of young children. These efforts include a
variety of things that should be strengthened, encouraged at
the State level, including youth engagement, permanency
planning, smaller caseloads, intensive family finding, kinship
connections, and reunification efforts when possible. Voice for
Adoption recommends reauthorizing the Family Connection grant.
Another way we see to continue to promote the effective
practices to encourage State leverage of public-private
partnerships is to promote a key provision of the Fostering
Connections Act, which is the Federal Title IV-E reimbursement
training for a range of services. We believe that this benefit
has not yet--the expansion has not yet been realized, and we
recommend that some clarity in successful State examples be
pushed through HHS, specifically toward effective models that
we know work for adopting children, specifically older
children.
When we take these youth from their homes, we know that we
have an obligation to create better circumstances for them, and
right now as a system we are failing older youth. An area that
warrants greater examination is something you have already
heard about, the APPLA case goal. It replaced long-term foster
care in the legislation 16 years ago, but we fear, and there is
a growing concern in the field, that it simply changed the
terminology and not the trajectory of these young people's
lives.
Voice for Adoption recommends providing incentives to
States for the reduction of youth who exit without permanent
connections. Furthermore, I urge the Committee to hold future
hearings on this specific issue.
I have two last points. Postadoption services help adoptive
families and children move through the stages of becoming a
family, especially children who have been adopted from foster
care, as they work through past traumas and strengthen the
family as a unit. The Federal Government has invested millions
of dollars into increasing adoptions without reciprocal
mandates to services to support these families after
finalization.
There has been a great deal of research about the quality
of postadoption services, and parents sometimes are faced with
seeing practitioners who don't understand the dynamics, which
escalates the issues. For this we recommend greater development
of implementation of adoption-competent mental health providers
and appropriate funding streams to accomplish this goal.
Specifically we recommend that States be required to use the
adoption incentive bonuses to meet the needs of families
postadoption.
Lastly, I would like to highlight an issue that you may be
interested in, which is the Fostering Connections maintenance-
of-efforts provision that came out of the Federal de-link for
the adoption assistance. States are seeing a greater increase
in their budgets. Due to this, the Congressional Budget Office
scored the Fostering Connections Act at a $1.4 billion savings
to States. The Federal Government required States to reinvest
the savings back into child welfare and adoption services, but
despite legislative attempts, it has been unclear whether these
funds are being reinvested.
As States continue to accrue savings on what they would
have been spending on State adoption assistance, there is an
even greater opportunity for the investment in making sure that
postadoption services are available. With that, we recommend
that a percentage of these funds be designated if no other
funds are, and that public reporting of these uses by States
are reported by HHS.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Dobbins follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you.
And now we move into the question phase, so we will have an
opportunity to use up 5 minutes and ask you some questions,
too.
We will focus on some of those things you just mentioned to
us in your testimony. For example, in fiscal year 2011, HHS
reported that there were over 38,000 children who had been in
foster care for over 5 years. In the same year over 26,000 kids
aged out of foster care with no permanent family connection,
and this, again, was a point most of you made during your
testimony.
Why do some of these kids stay in foster care so long?
Ms. SORONEN. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee,
based on our experience with this child-focused program across
the Nation, in all of the States, what we see are a number of
layers of challenges to getting these children out of care. You
saw the ``unadoptable'' word. Unfortunately, with lack of
training at the feet-to-the-ground level with social workers to
show that the children on their caseload are adoptable, we hear
time and again caseworkers assuming that they can't be adopted,
so let's put our resources into helping them age out of care.
So first we have to train, I think, the frontline workers a
little bit better about these children, their needs, and their
adoptability.
We also have the very children themselves who have suffered
such trauma in their lives, who have moved--what I didn't share
is 10 percent of the children in the Wendy's Wonderful Kids
program had moved 10 or more times before they landed on the
caseloads. So when a child moves multiple times, attends
multiple schools, there is no reason to trust a notion of an
adoptive family being any better for them. But what we found is
when we had dedicated adoption recruiters who could work with
those children, talk to them, explain and maybe work away some
of their fears about simple things like changing their name or
that they may not have to move again, the value of a family,
the majority of the children who had previously been opposed to
adoption then moved toward considering adoption. This is
critical because those are the children who express a voice in
court, and the court makes a designation of another planned
permanent living arrangement or long-term foster care for that
child.
So it is that sort of devil's mix of wanting to respect a
child's wishes, but sometimes those wishes are based on further
trauma in the system that has said to them, I don't want to be
adopted. So training for the frontline workers, I think, and
making sure that they are working with the children so that
they can understand the value of adoption.
Chairman REICHERT. I am going to follow up on that just a
little bit. On page 3 of your testimony, you noted that half
the children Wendy's Wonderful Kids worked with never
previously had anyone work with them to find an adoptive home.
Are there any Federal policies that contribute to that or other
reasons why children might stay in foster care so long without
anyone helping them or finding them an adoptive home?
Ms. SORONEN. I don't think so much there are Federal
policies that push that they stay in care, but the way that we
have trained our workers to deal with older youth has not been
beneficial to getting them out of care. So putting their face
on a website, for example, is one tactic, but then that
charismatic wish that someone will see their face and come
adopt them, let's face it, when we are all in a social setting,
and we talk about teenagers, we all kind of screw up our faces.
In just normal families teenagers are a challenge. Imagine a
teenager who has been in care for 10 years, who has multiple
challenges, who has pushed back against adoption, and a worker
simply stops working on their behalf and says, what I think is
best for this child is moving forward, and parents aren't
stepping forward, either.
So I think it is we can't legislate changing attitudes, but
we can show success, that these children can be served, that
they can be adopted and help drive a public will for getting
them adopted.
Chairman REICHERT. Yes. One of the biggest frustrations I
had working on the street and working with kids, was trying to
get them convinced that they were adoptable, that they could
move into an adoptive home. So I have been a witness to that. I
think you are very accurate in your description.
One last quick question. Mr. O'Brien, your organization
works with youth who are close to aging out of foster care. Why
have those kids been waiting so long, in your view?
Mr. O'BRIEN. In my view, it is because no law mandates that
we must continue to never stop looking for a family. Almost all
of those kids are receiving APPLA services, teaching them to
prepare for adulthood, when they have everything provided for
them up until a certain birthday, whether it is 18, 19, 20 or
21, and then after that birthday they have been prepared for
aging out, they age out, and they have absolutely nothing
provided for them.
If at the exact same time we were preparing them for
adulthood we never stopped looking for a family, by law we
would have found many, many more kids, because the crime is not
not finding the family, the crime is not even having to look
for the family, and when kids get old, we don't have to look.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you so much for your answers.
And, Mr. Doggett, you are recognized for 5 minutes for
questioning.
Mr. DOGGETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to each of
our witnesses not only for your testimony, but for the devotion
you show to this very important and challenging cause.
The small role that we can play relates to the
reauthorization of these two specific laws, and I gather that
each of you favor our reauthorizing the Adoption Incentives
program. Have you had--I believe, Ms. Dobbins, you mentioned
the Family Connection grants, which is the newer program. Have
any of our other witnesses, have you had experience with that
program, and do you favor its reauthorization?
Mr. O'BRIEN. Well, I mean, I would certainly favor anything
that is good for kids.
Mr. DOGGETT. Right.
Mr. O'BRIEN. It is just that it almost avoids the real
issue. I mean, as we are providing more and more services, we
are not--there is no mandate to continue working with kids to
try to get them parents at the same time. So I would absolutely
recommend the reauthorization of it, but I would like it a
little bit stronger where there is a mandate to look for
families at the same time.
Mr. DOGGETT. Ms. Rosati.
Ms. ROSATI. I would like to add that I think not only do we
not have that mandate, we unintentionally create these
incentives that end up pushing things to the outcomes that none
of us would actually desire. And so as the issue that I
mentioned, sometimes you may have benefits that are there for a
child only when that child stays in the system and ages out of
the system, so that if you are a parent--if you are a foster
parent in the life of that child, or if you are an acquaintance
or a friend, and you have a connection there, and you want that
child to support--to be supported, to go to college, or to
access the mental health services that they may need, you can't
also say, let's go ahead and I will adopt you and be your
forever family, because the minute you do that, you are going
to sometimes in some places then lose the opportunity to go to
college, lose the opportunity for the mental health services
that you need that will be the foundation for a successful life
going forward. And so I think replacing some of those
disincentives in the system would also go a long way to
providing the outcomes that we all desire.
Mr. DOGGETT. Thank you.
Ms. Dobbins.
Ms. DOBBINS. Yes, I just want to make a point trying to get
to both questions there. One of the questions is how come kids
stay in care so long. There is a correlation between placement
setting of children in care, especially for older youth. A lot
of older youth are in group home facilities, congregate care
settings. What we know about those youth is that recruitment
efforts don't typically happen, but what we have seen with
Family Connection grants, at least preliminary evaluations, is
that these are actual efforts in reviewing caseloads for some
of the harder children to find homes for, which are the
intensive family findings, so who are the relatives of these
children.
And so, again, back to the correlation, if, you know, we
have large populations of older youth in these facilities, then
those are the ones not getting the attention that they really
need to be working down some of the things that we talked about
of, you know, what are their fears, do they want to be adopted,
can we convince them that, you know, there is a family that
wants them and that kind of thing.
So I hope that kind of answers both questions. I think the
Family Connection grants start to work toward the practice that
we are seeing greater improvements in.
Mr. DOGGETT. And why is it that we need additional data
from HHS? And I guess in turn they are getting that from the
States.
Ms. DOBBINS. Additional data on which, I am sorry?
Mr. DOGGETT. You indicated in your testimony that you
wanted to see HHS reports by category. I am just asking you to
expand on that.
Ms. DOBBINS. Oh, a very good question.
Mr. DOGGETT. I assume that means also they are requiring
that from the States.
Ms. DOBBINS. I am sure they are. I just haven't seen
reporting at, you know, the public level, because, you know,
what is reported is how much States actually earn, but I think
it is important to also know what States are receiving the
bonuses for, so in which categories? Are they receiving them
because they are increasing the adoptions of older youth ages 9
and older; or is it because they are increasing the special
needs adoptions; or is it because their rates of adoption are
increasing, which is something important to note, because the
rates of adoption are only provided as an incentive to States
if there is money left over in the allotment? And so what we
have seen is that rates of adoption have increased, but are
there States that possibly have rate increases, but can't reach
the individual adoptions over a certain baseline that aren't
getting the incentives because that is an afterlook?
And so that is a question of, you know, a better reporting
on the categories, or at least a deeper look into this as it is
being reauthorized.
Mr. DOGGETT. Do the maintenance-of-effort requirements need
to be altered?
Ms. DOBBINS. That is actually another issue. The
maintenance of effort from the IV-E adoption assistance de-link
is another issue. The Federal Government did a great job of
legislating that these reinvestments do need to go back into
child welfare services, but what we have seen is we are not
really sure where they are going. We had hoped that States were
spending them in the right places, but there is not a good
reporting of that. And at Voice for Adoption we do believe
since this money is coming from increasing adoptions, and we
want to support that, that a modest percentage of that, 20
percent, be dedicated to continuing to support these families
so that we are not seeing families, you know, disrupted and
that their needs for trauma and abuse are looked at at the, you
know, family level.
Mr. DOGGETT. Thank you.
Chairman REICHERT. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Young is recognized.
Mr. YOUNG. Well, I thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking
Member. This is a very important topic. I appreciate everyone's
patience and presence here today. I know it has been a long
day.
Lowering barriers to adoption and to supporting families
postadoption, I think there has been a Federal precedent for
this effort. It is something we need to make sure that we
continue and improve upon, and so your testimony has been
helpful in guiding us in that regard.
I will start off with this question for anyone on the
panel, feel free to respond, but from the standpoint of those
who are seeking to adopt a child from foster care, how
efficiently do the various Federal and State programs
supporting adoption appear to work together, in your
estimation?
And as you think about answering that, there may be some
particular areas of focus that you want to attend to; perhaps
the information that would-be adoptive parents need to access
tax credits supporting adoption, do they receive sufficient
information? Do they receive sufficient information about
maintenance payments for children with special needs? Are they
told of postadoption services from programs like Promoting Safe
and Stable Families and Child Welfare Services?
I will leave this open to the panel.
Ms. DOBBINS. Yes, I will try to take a stab at that.
I think one thing you mentioned specifically that I would
like to touch on is the adoption tax credit. What we have seen
with the changes in the adoption tax credit that have happened
in the last few years is that a lot of adoptive families are
not able to access it because they don't have a tax liability
high enough. I can follow up; there is great information behind
this. So that is one issue. So it became refundable in 2010 for
2 years.
It takes a certain amount of time and effort for that
information to trickle down from the Federal level to States,
to families, to caseworkers, and what we have seen most
recently that when it was just reauthorized in January, it was
not refundable, and for 2012 it is not. But what families were
told, and we keep hearing from families, that it was
refundable, so they were looking forward to using those
services, that money, to support, you know, their children
after adoption. So there is a lack of, you know, what knowledge
is really getting to the families, and so that could be shored
up.
There was one other question that I wanted to get to.
Mr. YOUNG. I will actually be coming back to you.
Would others like a crack at that question?
Ms. ROSATI. Yes. As someone who went through the process
four times, I think those are really great questions. We were
not aware of the adoption tax credit in the beginning. I guess
for some reason we just assumed it was only for intercountry
adoption and not for foster care adoption, so we missed it for
one or two kids. That was a bummer. But we were then able to
access it after the fact.
I think that for the families that are going through the
process, things are pretty overwhelming. The amount of
paperwork is overwhelming, the time that things take can be
overwhelming, the level of intrusiveness that it feels like
into your life can be pretty overwhelming.
I don't say all of those things, however, to say that we
need to change them all. I actually have a little bit of a
counterintuitive perspective on that. I think if you are going
to welcome home a child who has experienced previous trauma,
you have to be ready for a lot of situations that do not fall
under the umbrella of nor-
mal parenting, and so when you go through these processes that,
frankly, are very difficult, I actually think it helps prepare
you for the difficulty to come. And so I think there is a
balance in how much we want to streamline.
Mr. YOUNG. Sure.
Ms. ROSATI. And so many of the processes, of course, are
for safety, and so there is really not much that should be
done.
Mr. YOUNG. Thank you.
I am going to follow up with Ms. Dobbins in my remaining
time here. You mentioned a menu of different policy options
that are available to us to both promote more adoptions and
perhaps improve those postadoption connections. Mr. Doggett, I
think, questioned you about more detailed HHS reporting. It
makes great sense to me.
You mentioned State examples of best practices need to be
better enforced or regulated by HHS. If you could briefly--we
have about 30 seconds left--indicate what you are referring to
there or speak to the reduction of incentives for States that
do not end up with permanent connections at a high level.
Ms. DOBBINS. I think one thing is the IV-E training. We
talked a lot about practices. I think it could be encouraged,
especially with public and private partnerships, by using good
examples of what this looks like. There is a reimbursement
level that can be expanded, and--sorry, I am blanking on the
next thing, but I hope that answers your question. I am happy
to follow up after.
Mr. YOUNG. That is all right.
I yield back. Thank you.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you.
The gentleman's time has expired. Mr. Griffin is
recognized.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Rosati, I want to ask what are your funding sources for
each of your groups, and how much of that is composed of State
funding or Federal funding versus private sources?
Ms. ROSATI. We receive no government funding. We are funded
by the generosity of our donors. And we are able to go into the
areas that we work and essentially pay for the events ourselves
so that we are able to hopefully add to the good work that has
already been done in the community. And I think one of the
reasons we are received well is that we are not asking for
funds, we want to contribute our funds if they would like to
have us.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Before I hear from the others, I just want to
ask you, does that model represent a very unique sort of small
percentage of the groups that assist, in your experience?
Ms. ROSATI. It seems like it, because people are pretty
shocked and happy when we come in and offer that we want to
contribute our resources to make those efforts work. So we are
not aware of too many other things like that, but we are really
happy to be a part of the good work that is already going on on
the ground. And the public-private partnership is key. Having
all of those stakeholders working together has been a real key
to the success.
Mr. GRIFFIN. To the others, do you care to comment about
your funding sources?
Mr. O'BRIEN. Sure. Our primary funding comes from local
counties and the city of New York. And also the Dave Thomas
Foundation funds three of our full-time staffers.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Great.
Mr. O'BRIEN. And then we raise some money, and we have a
State contract through Adoption Opportunities Federal grant. So
it is somewhat diverse, but it comes a lot from governmental
local sources.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Ms. Dobbins, Ms. Soronen, do you wish to
respond?
Ms. SORONEN. We are a national nonprofit public charity.
Until 2012, we were exclusively funded through private donors
and through our philanthropic partnerships.
When we released the research on the Wendy's Wonderful Kids
model in 2011 and then approached the State of Ohio to scale
that program as a test site for scaling was the first time we
took State funds in order to scale that program, but we still
manage them. The funds come through us, and we manage those
grants as a nonprofit organization.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Ms. Dobbins.
Ms. DOBBINS. We are a very small advocacy organization. We
are membership based, so our members actually pay in dues,
annual modest dues. We don't receive government funding,
Federal funding, and we receive donations as well.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Got you. Ms. Rosati, is your group the only
faith-based group here today, or do any others represent faith-
based organizations? And you would characterize yours as faith-
based?
Ms. ROSATI. Absolutely, yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. I am familiar with your group.
Mr. O'BRIEN. Well, we do a lot of believing at my place,
but we don't----
Mr. GRIFFIN. Sure. Yes.
As a faith-based group, have you found that there are
additional legal barriers because you are a faith-based group?
Ms. ROSATI. I am pleased to say that we have not really
experienced barriers. We went into this with our eyes wide
open, understanding that there may be some issues. We have had
tremendous working relationships with our government partners.
I think there are some basic rules we all observe about how it
is that we interact, and it has worked very, very well.
I do know, however, that there are places where those who
are involved in child welfare from a faith-based perspective
have had difficulty maintaining their continued presence in
those areas. And certainly the ability for those faith-based
organizations to continue to operate in accordance with the
dictates of their faith is something we think is very
important. So while we haven't seen those barriers, we know
that they exist, and we certainly hope that they won't expand
any further in the States where we have already seen that
happen.
Mr. GRIFFIN. I am running out of time, but I just want to
real quickly ask, you mentioned, Ms. Rosati, that there were
some Federal incentives that you thought were not necessarily
accomplishing the stated goal. And that happens a lot with the
Federal Government; well intentioned, but misses the mark. Can
you elaborate on that a little bit?
Ms. ROSATI. Yes. The two biggies that we see a lot are the
opportunity for those who age out of the system to go on to
college and to have that funded and benefited. I think
legislators at the State level are afraid it will break the
bank. In fact, it will do no such thing. And because they limit
it, if you go on and get adopted, you lose that benefit. You
shouldn't have to choose between higher education and an
adoptive family.
Another big one that we see a lot relates to certain kinds
of mental health services that are fully funded and accessible
if the teenager stays in foster care, but if they get adopted,
then it becomes much more difficult to access.
And those would be two things I think where we would need
parity in order to eliminate the disincentive that currently
exists.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Thank you. Sounds like something we need to
look at. Thank you.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you.
Mr. Davis, you are recognized.
Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much.
Let me thank the witnesses for coming. Chairman Reichert,
Ranking Member Doggett, let me, first of all, thank you for
this hearing. I think it is a very important one as we attempt
to improve the Adoption Incentives Act.
For almost a decade now, I have advocated to draw on the
successes of the Adoption Incentives program in increasing
adoptions to amend the focus of the law to promote permanency.
The witnesses have discussed the need to focus on finding
permanent homes for foster children, and, as I understand it,
there are three paths to permanency for foster youth:
reunification, guardianship and adoption.
We know from research, including the GAO report requested
by the Ways and Means Committee, that African American children
stay in foster care longer because of difficulties in
recruiting adoptive parents and a hesitancy to terminate
parental rights as is required for adoption.
African American and Native American families tend to
choose guardianship as a route to permanency rather than
adoption because they do not see a need to legally sever the
relationship or connection between parent and child.
Given the fact that my congressional district has the
highest percentage of grandparents raising grandchildren in the
Nation, followed by two other congressional districts in
Illinois, one right next to mine and then the other one a
little further away, guardianship as a permanency option is
critically important. A grandmother raising her grandchild does
not want to erase the legal connection of her own child to her
grandchild. In the Fostering Connections law, this Subcommittee
and Congress recognize the disproportionate negative effect of
excluding guardianship with regard to foster care parents.
Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member and other Members of this
Subcommittee, I ask you to help make sure that we improve the
Adoption Incentives Act by encouraging States to promote
permanency for foster children so that more children, and
especially more children of color, can exit care to permanent
homes faster.
Ms. Dobbins, you have done a great deal of work in this
area, and Voices for Adoption does a great deal to promote
permanency. Based upon your expertise on the Adoption
Incentives program, what are some of the ways in which we can
amend the law to better promote permanency?
Ms. DOBBINS. Thank you. And great question. I think what is
important is permanency. We do support permanent options and in
broadening the incentive, especially as we can look to what the
Federal Government has done in this area of really promoting
this and seeing a really big increase in States taking this on
and those resources becoming a permanent family for kids who
otherwise would be in foster care for long periods of time.
I think we also have to understand how to measure the
incentive and make sure that it is the right fit, so we do
support it.
Mr. DAVIS. My time is going to expire, Mr. Chairman, but if
the other witnesses could just indicate whether or not they
view this as a very important recognition.
Ms. SORONEN. Congressman, we do. And, in fact, when we
provide our grants and set aggressive goals for those grants,
we have included guardianships as those goals. And of those
numbers I told you, nearly 200 of those finalized permanent
numbers are guardianships.
Mr. O'BRIEN. And a lot of the homes that we find for older
teenagers are with people that they are related to, and that is
a very important source of permanent parents.
Ms. ROSATI. I concur as well. We have a partner out in the
Seattle area who just formed what is called The Children's Law
Center to provide volunteer lawyer services for the
grandparents and others who are in the situation you described
to allow them to lock in and get what they need in terms of
permanent guardianship.
Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I yield
back.
Chairman REICHERT. Thank you, Mr. Davis, and I look forward
to working with you on this important issue that you just
raised.
Mr. Renacci, you are recognized.
Mr. RENACCI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank all
the witnesses for being here.
Ms. Soronen, I want to thank you as a fellow Buckeye for
being here and testifying as well.
Ms. SORONEN. Thank you.
Mr. RENACCI. Adoption is generally always a better outcome
for kids than remaining in foster care. In addition to the
benefits the child receives, I believe adoption has the
potential to have huge economic benefits.
Ms. Soronen, you mentioned on page 7 of your testimony that
your program is resulting in State savings as well, just in
terms of the cost of foster care versus the cost of the
program. Can you tell us more about the impact your program is
having on State spending in Ohio?
Ms. SORONEN. Yes. And we were pleased that the Ohio
Department of Job and Family Services came forward and said, we
want to move these children out of foster care into adoptive
homes. And I believe in their heart of hearts that is their
first goal, but they also understand the financial impact.
Ohio is one of those States that has not been able to hit
the threshold of adoption incentives for a number of years. And
so this program, as we looked at it and worked with the fiscal
manager at the Ohio Department, we said, help us understand
what is the financial impact in Ohio, so as we potentially move
this to other States, we can use this as both the human and a
financial template as well.
What we found is with a $2.3 million investment from this
budget from the Department, and then in--hopefully negotiated
in the next biennial with Ohio, over a 3-year period with a
potential $6 or $7 million investment, what they believe is the
savings to the State will be in excess of $100 million, and
that is because we are getting children age 9, 10 or 11, and we
know that by the time a child turns 8, the likelihood of
adoption is significantly decreased. So to keep a 9- or 10-
year-old in care for 8 or 10 more years, if you look at those
costs, take out the subsidy that the State provides, that
savings is still significant.
And the State has said to us they look forward to using
those savings to continue to invest in embedding and growing
this as best practice for Ohio's older youth.
Mr. RENACCI. Thank you.
Ms. Dobbins, I want to go a little further on the incentive
payments. You know, as you mentioned in your testimony, 22
States did not receive incentive payments for fiscal year 2011.
I know this is an issue that does affect the State of Ohio. Not
only did Ohio not receive incentive payments for 2011, but the
last incentive payment Ohio received was for fiscal year 2003.
But I know Ohio has made great strides to increase the rate
of adoption, yet the way the program is currently structured,
Ohio does not receive incentive payments for its progress.
Should the current baseline remain, or should it be changed
again?
Ms. DOBBINS. I think there are two things, and I did
highlight this as an example, where there is opportunities
where States are increasing the rates of adoption, but the rate
of adoption is afterlook, so States only get that incentive if
there is still funding allotted for the adoption incentives.
So the first way that States get money is that they have to
increase the numbers of adoptions of older youths and children
with special needs above a baseline which was set in fiscal
year 2007, but if then they can show that they have also
increased the rates of adoption, then whatever money is left
over, the States receive that incentive.
So we do think this should be looked at more closely,
especially by people who do data analysis, to see if changing
it affects the rate, and if that is a greater indicator of
success among States, we think that might be an issue that the
Subcommittee could look at.
Mr. RENACCI. Do you see waiting periods for foster youth to
continue to decline?
Ms. DOBBINS. Well, populations of foster care are
declining, yes. So these numbers have steadily declined over
time, even the number of waiting children. So, yes, we do.
Mr. RENACCI. Ms. Soronen, do you have any comments on the
baseline, especially since it affects Ohio?
Ms. SORONEN. I think I agree with everything that Nicole
has mentioned. I would also add that we should look at what Mr.
O'Brien talked about, those caseloads of children in long-term
foster care, and scrub those caseloads and see what we can do
relative to the Adoption Incentives program of also assuring
that those children aren't simply in that indeterminate status
for their lifetime in foster care of another planned permanent
living arrangement.
Mr. RENACCI. Do any of the other witnesses have any
comments on the baseline at all to add?
All right. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman REICHERT. Well, you made it. That concludes the
questioning. So we just appreciate you waiting, being patient
with the rest of what we were doing here today. And then just a
real heartfelt thank you for what you do for our young people
across the country.
And I know this was a good hearing, because Mr. Young just
whispered in my ear, ``This is an excellent hearing.'' And you
heard Mr. Davis' comments about, thank you for holding this
hearing. So we take this issue very, very seriously. And just
again, thank you so much for being here and for your patience
today.
So if Members have additional questions for the witnesses,
they will submit them to you in writing, and we would
appreciate receiving your responses for the record within 2
weeks.
And now the Committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:20 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Submissions for the Record follow:]
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