[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 70 (Wednesday, May 16, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3236-S3238]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         SUBMITTED RESOLUTIONS

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  SENATE RESOLUTION 462--RECOGNIZING NATIONAL FOSTER CARE MONTH AS AN 
 OPPORTUNITY TO RAISE AWARENESS ABOUT THE CHALLENGES FACED BY CHILDREN 
IN THE FOSTER CARE SYSTEM, ACKNOWLEDGING THE DEDICATION OF FOSTER CARE 
PARENTS, ADVOCATES, AND WORKERS, AND ENCOURAGING CONGRESS TO IMPLEMENT 
   POLICY TO IMPROVE THE LIVES OF CHILDREN IN THE FOSTER CARE SYSTEM

  Ms. LANDRIEU (for herself and Mr. Grassley) submitted the following 
resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Health, Education, 
Labor, and Pensions:

                              S. Res. 462

       Whereas National Foster Care Month was established more 
     than 20 years ago to bring foster care issues to the 
     forefront, highlight the importance of permanency for every 
     child, and recognize the essential role that foster parents, 
     social workers, and advocates have in the lives of children 
     in foster care throughout the United States;
       Whereas all children deserve a safe, loving, and permanent 
     home;
       Whereas the primary goal of the foster care system is to 
     ensure the safety and well-being of children while working to 
     provide a safe, loving, and permanent home for each child;
       Whereas there are approximately 408,000 children living in 
     foster care;
       Whereas there were approximately 254,000 youth that entered 
     the foster care system in 2010, while over 107,000 youth were 
     eligible and awaiting adoption at the end of 2010;
       Whereas children in foster care experience an average of 3 
     different placements, which often leads to disruption of 
     routines and the need to change schools and move away from 
     siblings, extended families, and familiar surroundings;
       Whereas youth in foster care are much more likely to face 
     educational instability with 65 percent of former foster 
     children experiencing at least 7 school changes while in 
     care;
       Whereas children of color are more likely to stay in the 
     foster care system for longer periods of time and are less 
     likely to be reunited with their biological families;
       Whereas foster parents are the front-line caregivers for 
     children who cannot safely remain with their biological 
     parents and provide physical care, emotional support, 
     education advocacy, and are the largest single source of 
     families providing permanent homes for children leaving 
     foster care to adoption;
       Whereas children in foster care who are placed with 
     relatives, compared to children placed with nonrelatives, 
     have more stability, including fewer changes in placements, 
     have more positive perceptions of their placements, are more 
     likely to be placed with their siblings, and demonstrate 
     fewer behavioral problems;
       Whereas an increased emphasis on prevention and 
     reunification services is necessary to reduce the number of 
     children that are forced to remain in the foster care system;
       Whereas more than 27,900 youth ``age out'' of foster care 
     without a legal permanent connection to an adult or family;
       Whereas children who age out of foster care may lack the 
     security or support of a biological or adoptive family and 
     frequently struggle to secure affordable housing, obtain 
     health insurance, pursue higher education, and acquire 
     adequate employment;
       Whereas foster care is intended to be a temporary 
     placement, but children remain in the foster care system for 
     an average of 2 years;
       Whereas volunteers, guardians, mentors, and workers in the 
     child-protective-services community play a vital role in 
     improving the safety of the most valuable youth and work hard 
     to increase permanency through reunification, adoption, and 
     guardianship;
       Whereas due to heavy caseloads and limited resources, the 
     average tenure for a worker in child protection services is 
     just 3 years;
       Whereas on average, 8.5 percent of the positions in child 
     protective services remain vacant;
       Whereas States, localities, and communities should be 
     encouraged to invest resources in preventative and 
     reunification services and postpermanency programs to ensure 
     that more children in foster care are provided with safe, 
     loving, and permanent placements;
       Whereas Federal legislation over the past 3 decades, 
     including the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 
     1980 (Public Law 96 272), the Adoption and Safe Families Act 
     of 1997 (Public Law 105 89), the Fostering Connections to 
     Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 (Public Law 110 
     351), and the Child and Family Services Improvement and 
     Innovation Act (Public Law 112 34) provided new investments 
     and services to improve the outcomes of children in the 
     foster care system;
       Whereas May is an appropriate month to designate as 
     National Foster Care Month to provide an opportunity to 
     acknowledge the child-welfare workforce, foster parents, 
     advocacy community, and mentors for their dedication, 
     accomplishments, and positive impact they have on the lives 
     of children; and
       Whereas much remains to be done to ensure that all children 
     have a safe, loving, nurturing, and permanent family, 
     regardless of age or special needs: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate--
       (1) recognizes National Foster Care Month as an opportunity 
     to raise awareness about the challenges faced by children in 
     the foster care system, acknowledging the dedication of 
     foster care parents, advocates, and workers, and encouraging 
     Congress to implement policy to improve the lives of children 
     in the foster care system;
       (2) encourages Congress to implement policy to improve the 
     lives of children in the foster care system;
       (3) supports the designation of May as National Foster Care 
     Month;
       (4) acknowledges the special needs of children in the 
     foster care system;
       (5) recognizes foster youth throughout the United States 
     for their ongoing tenacity, courage, and resilience while 
     facing life challenges,
       (6) acknowledges the exceptional alumni of the foster care 
     system who serve as advocates and role models for youth who 
     remain in care;
       (7) honors the commitment and dedication of the individuals 
     who work tirelessly to provide assistance and services to 
     children in the foster care system; and
       (8) reaffirms the need to continue working to improve the 
     outcomes of all children in the foster care system through 
     parts B and E of title IV of the Social Security Act (42 
     U.S.C. 601 et seq.) and other programs designed to--
       (A) support vulnerable families;
       (B) invest in prevention and reunification services;
       (C) promote adoption and guardianship in cases where 
     reunification is not in the best interests of the child;
       (D) adequately serve those children brought into the foster 
     care system; and
       (E) facilitate the successful transition into adulthood for 
     children that ``age out'' of the foster care system.

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, as cofounders and cochairs of the Senate 
Caucus on Foster Youth, Senator Landrieu and I offer a resolution to 
recognize May as National Foster Care Month.
  The resolution is an opportunity to raise awareness about the 
challenges faced by children in the foster care system. It is also a 
time to acknowledge the dedication of foster care parents, advocates, 
and workers who are changing the lives of children every day.

[[Page S3237]]

  National Foster Care Month was established more than 20 years ago to 
bring foster care issues to the forefront. Today we continue to see 
almost a half million children who are unable to remain at home because 
of abuse or neglect or because of other family issues.
  During this separation, foster youth face loneliness, instability, 
and grief. Unfortunately, children in foster care experience an average 
of three different placements which often lead to disruption of 
routines. Some are required to change schools and move away from 
siblings, extended families, and familiar surroundings. They face 
educational instability and, as a result, score lower on all academic 
measures than peers.
  Foster youth have to overcome misperceptions and stigmas and deal 
with emotional pain and trauma that comes from such separation. It 
becomes a reality for many children every day. In 2010, about 254,000 
children entered into care. While many are reunified with their 
families or adopted into new ones, more than 107,000 children were 
awaiting adoption at the end of 2010.
  The Senate Caucus on Foster Youth is providing a voice for these 
foster young people. Senator Landrieu and I founded this caucus in 2009 
to raise awareness of issues challenging foster youth, including 
educational stability, substance abuse, sexual exploitation, and the 
overprescription of psychotropic drugs.
  We hear from youth about policies that affect their quality of life. 
Among other activities, the caucus sponsors a speakers series to bring 
the best ideas from the field to us policymakers in Washington, DC.
  Today I invite my colleagues to join us on this caucus, to get 
involved and to make a difference. Senator Landrieu and I created the 
foster care caucus in the Senate to focus on all youth in the system, 
but we have particular focus on older children who may lack the 
security or support of a biological or adoptive family. These kids tend 
to age out of the foster care system, then struggle in creating a 
stable life that many of us often take for granted. More than 27,900 
youth age out of foster care without a legal, permanent connection to 
an adult or family. We must focus on how to reduce this number from 
year to year. We have made great strides over the years, and we have 
done so in a bipartisan manner.
  In 2006, the Senate Finance Committee held the first hearings on 
child welfare in more than a decade. The hearings led to passage of the 
Child and Family Services Improvement Act, which improved programs 
designed to help troubled families, provided grants for States and 
community organizations to combat methamphetamine addiction and other 
substance abuse, and increased case worker visits for children in 
foster care. It also supported grants to strengthen and improve 
collaboration between courts and child welfare agencies.
  In 2008 I introduced the bill that became the Fostering Connection to 
Success and Increasing Adoption Act. This bipartisan bill made it 
easier for children to stay in their own communities and be adopted by 
their own relatives, including grandparents, aunts, and uncles. It 
provided incentives for States to move children from foster care to 
permanent adoptive homes, and it made all children with special needs 
eligible for Federal adoption assistance.
  The law also broke new ground by establishing opportunities to help 
kids who age out of the foster care system at age 18 by giving States 
the option to extend their care in helping them pursue educational and 
vocational training.
  Last year, to try to prevent children from having to enter the foster 
care system in the first place, I worked to reauthorize grants that 
support families who struggle with substance abuse and improve the 
safety, permanency, and well-being of children who are not in their 
homes or are likely to be removed from their homes because of substance 
abuse by parents.
  Children in the foster care system yearn for permanency, and these 
grants help keep families together when possible so the children are 
not subject to the many difficulties they face in the foster care 
system.
  But Congress, as you know, must be vigilant. We must always keep our 
eyes on the prize; that is, a safe, loving and permanent home for every 
child. We must always stress prevention as well as reunification and 
the reunification services because these two key components are 
necessary to reduce the number of children who are forced to remain in 
foster care.
  Finally, let me take a moment to pay tribute to many volunteers, 
guardians, mentors, and workers in the child protective service 
community. Every person in this field plays a vital role in improving 
the safety of our most vulnerable youth, and our country is better off 
for that. They are dedicated and important to thousands of children and 
can be very positive influences for families across the country.
  This month of May is the time to pay tribute to the community. It is 
time to remember these young people. More important, it is time to 
encourage others to get involved and, hence, make a difference. It is 
my hope that this awareness will extend beyond me, and people will 
recognize the need to step up and to fight for these vulnerable youth 
on a daily basis. I encourage Members to cosponsor our resolution, and 
I especially appreciate the cooperation and working relationship I have 
had with Senator Landrieu on this subject of adoption, foster care, 
and, in particular, for aging-out young people.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I appreciate the eloquent statement our 
colleague from Iowa has put into the Record and his passionate advocacy 
on behalf of this special group of children in America. From his 
position as senior member on the Finance Committee, both serving as 
chair and as ranking member, his support has been essential to their 
well-being. In a committee that has a lot of important issues, from tax 
reform to international trade, the Senator from Iowa, Mr. Grassley, 
never fails to keep the needs of foster care children and their 
families and the support community on the front of that agenda. I could 
not have a better partner, and I am very grateful for his partnership 
on this issue and his friendship.
  I also want to recognize some of our colleagues from the House: 
Representative Karen Bass, Representative Tom Marino, Representative 
Michele Bachman, and Representative Jim McDermott, who worked very 
closely with Senator Grassley and myself. As you can see, this is 
across party lines, across geographic lines, and across different 
political philosophies.
  We want to say one thing very loud and clear to the country: Foster 
children are not criminals. They are not delinquents. They are children 
who are in desperate need of love and care and support. Our foster care 
system in many ways works beautifully and in some ways needs, of 
course, to be fixed, repaired, and strengthened. But overall the foster 
care system should, at all times, be temporary. It is a temporary place 
for children to go to be protected and healed and nurtured until they 
can be returned to their birth family or to their extended family with 
sibling groups intact or until they can be processed to a kinship 
adoption, which Senator Grassley has been a tremendous advocate for, or 
to a domestic adoption.
  I cannot add anything to the very excellent and comprehensive 
statement the Senator made. I would like to add just a few points. 
Because of the work many of us have done--and we do not hear good news 
around here that often, so I want to share that in the last 20 years, 
because of the work that our group has done, and others in the 
Congress, we have doubled the amount of children being adopted out of 
the foster care system. That is a tremendous victory because of the 
legislation that has been passed, the focus across party lines.
  In 1990 we only adopted 14,000 children out of foster care. In the 
last year of record, 2010, we adopted 53,000. It is a tripling of 
adoptions out of foster care.
  I do not have the numbers in front of me for reunifications, but 
Senator Grassley and I know that number has increased as well. We are 
making progress in the bills we are proposing and passing, the 
appropriations that we are investing. It has not been a lot more money 
over the last few years. It

[[Page S3238]]

has just been a real strategic focus which I would like to believe our 
caucus and the adoption caucus as well, the foster care caucus, has 
helped to produce.
  We have had more adoptions out of foster care. We have had more 
reunifications out of foster care. We have shortened the time that 
children are in foster care. But we have, and in this month of May 
still have, many challenges. That is why Senator Grassley and I urge 
our colleagues to join us in this resolution, S. Res. 462. Be a 
cosponsor. Step up and say by your cosponsorship that you care about 
this issue, that you want to help us continue to make progress.

  I want to remember our former colleague, John Chafee, who, when he 
was in the Senate, was an extraordinary advocate for foster care 
children. We named the John Chafee Foster Care Independence Program in 
his honor. As Senator Grassley said, we are making progress with 
helping our children who age out when we failed to reunite them with 
their birth family, we failed to find them an adoptive home. They are 
aging out, but we are trying to give them more help and support. That 
is still a challenge.
  Some of our Members are working on foster children and school choice. 
If children are brought into the foster care system and they are 
separated from their families, it is quite traumatic. Of course it is 
for their own good. Sometimes their families are being abusive. 
Sometimes their families are being grossly negligent. Unfortunately, in 
this day and age sometimes their families are deported and they are in 
the home alone. We want to make sure the children get to stay at least 
in the school of their choice. It is one thing to be pulled from your 
family; it is another thing to have to lose your family 1 day and your 
school the next day and all of your teachers, all of your friends.
  There is legislation pending that would give foster children the 
opportunity to stay in the school they are in when they enter care, if 
that is their choice. That would be a great reform.
  We also want to continue to promote kinship adoption, reaching out to 
the extended family, trying to keep children placed in their extended 
families who are willing and responsible to raise them--but not placing 
children with kin if the kin or the relatives are not responsible and 
not willing; that is not a solution.
  Finally, we want to promote quality foster families. This is a 
problem that is easily solvable. It seems like it is a lot, this 
number, 450-some-odd thousand children. But it represents only one-half 
of 1 percent of all children in America. This is not a big number. It 
sounds like it when we say 450,000, but the percentage, one-half of 1 
percent--we calculated it 1 day on just the back of a napkin. If one 
family for every four churches in America would say yes to taking in a 
foster child or to adopt a child out of foster care, there would be no 
more orphans in our country.
  Again, if one family out of every four churches stepped up for the 
children available for adoption, we would have no more orphans in 
America. Then we could focus on recruiting quality foster families who 
can help these children to find their way--to find their way back to 
their biological families with their sibling groups intact or find 
their way to a new family who will love them and nurture them and 
protect them and support them forever.
  That is what families do. We do not support our children until they 
are 18 and let them go on their merry way. We are with them until the 
last breath. That is what parents do. We are with our children forever. 
Every child in this world deserves a forever family.
  Senator Grassley and I have come together. We work to strengthen our 
foster care system. We know it is broken in places. We know it can be 
fixed. We work on fixing it every day.
  I thank our colleagues who have joined us in just recognizing Foster 
Care Month. As Senator Grassley said in his conclusion, and I will say 
in mine, we want to thank everyone who helps on this every month of the 
year, not just May. We want to thank the teachers who reach out 
especially to the foster children they know are in their classrooms. We 
want to thank the judges who process their cases quickly.
  I particularly want to thank the CASA workers. I am a big believer in 
CASA, Court Appointed Special Advocates. I think it is a great 
organization for all the volunteers who worked to help make our foster 
care system in America better.
  Again, this is S. Res. 462.
  I would like to thank our counterparts in the House.
  It has been a real joy and pleasure to work with Senator Grassley 
these many years on helping to promote the very best practices in the 
country on reforming our foster care system in America and trying to 
help who we can around the world.

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