[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 8]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 10904]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 RECOGNIZING NATIONAL FOSTER CARE MONTH

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. STEPHANIE TUBBS JONES

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, May 21, 2008

  Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I rise today both in recognition 
of May as National Foster Care Month and to acknowledge our shared 
obligation to do everything that we can to help the more than half a 
million children currently in our Nation's foster care system. I 
applaud the thousands of devoted adoptive parents in Ohio and across 
the country who provide children and youth in foster care with 
permanent, loving families.
  Twenty-one-year-old Ashley Flucsa entered Ohio's foster care system 
at age 10. She spent the next 8\1/2\ years in foster care, longing for 
a family to call her own. ``I wanted to have the same sense of security 
that children in non-foster families have,'' she recalls. ``I wanted to 
have a place to go during college break and I wanted to be able to 
fully trust that I would always have a place to call home. I wanted a 
mom to shop with and a dad to someday walk me down the aisle. I wanted 
stability.''
  Today, Ashley is a nursing student at Lakeland Community College. Her 
foster parents, Yvette and Jim Goldurs of Cleveland Heights, are in the 
process of adopting Ashley. She hopes to someday become a nurse 
practitioner or a doctor, and she is very involved with the Ohio Youth 
Advisory Board, which allows her to share her experiences and advocate 
for reform on behalf of Ohio's children and youth who are still in 
foster care. Most importantly, she has found the permanent family that 
she longed for.
  Currently, Ohio has more than 17,000 children living in foster care. 
In 2005, a quarter of these foster children were waiting to join 
adoptive families. They had to wait an average of nearly 4 years to do 
so. More worrisome still, many of Ohio's foster youth will never find 
the permanent family they need. More than 1,200 youth ``aged out'' of 
Ohio's foster care system in 2005 completely on their own, with no 
family to rely upon.
  The Federal Adoption Incentive Program, which was first enacted in 
1997 as part of the Adoption and Safe Families Act, encourages States 
to find foster children like Ashley permanent homes through adoption. 
The Adoption Incentive Program is due to expire this year, on September 
30, and should be reauthorized so that it can continue to serve as a 
vitally important incentive to States for finalizing adoptions for 
children in foster care, with an emphasis on finding adoptive homes for 
special needs children and foster children over age 9. I am proud of 
Ohio's success in finalizing more than 10,400 adoptions of children 
from foster care between 2000 and 2006, earning $5.4 million in Federal 
adoption incentive payments, which are invested back into the child 
welfare program.
  We need to help more foster children in Ohio and across the Nation 
join loving, permanent adoptive families. The Adoption Incentive 
Program is effective in encouraging more adoptions from foster care, 
and I look forward to seeing that it is reauthorized this year.

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