For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
November 5, 2001
National Adoption Month Proclamation
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
Children deserve to be raised in loving families with parents who
protect and nurture them. For some children, adoption is
their best chance for a healthy and happy life. Each year,
American families adopt approximately 120,000 newborn or older
children, providing them with a loving and supportive environment.
Despite this substantial number of annual adoptions, more than
134,000 children are currently waiting adoption. While our
foster care system can provide a safe, temporary home for these
children, adoption would give them the love and stability of a
permanent family that would better enable them to develop to their full
potential.
My Administration is working to help states promote and support
adoptions. This year, 35 states and the District of Columbia
received adoption incentive awards for increasing the number of
children they placed from foster care into permanent
homes. States have reinvested these bonuses to enhance their
adoption and child welfare programs, which has resulted in an
unprecedented 79 percent increase in adoptions from 28,000 in 1996 to
50,000 in 2000.
Although we have made dramatic advances in encouraging adoption, we
must strengthen our efforts to find a safe, loving, and permanent home
for every child awaiting one. One important way to advance
towards this goal is to ease the financial burden on families that
adopt children. The tax relief bill that I signed into law
earlier this year extends and increases the adoption tax credit for
qualified expenses from $5,000 to $10,000 per child. The new
law also increases the tax credit for adoptive parents of children with
special needs from $6,000 to $10,000 per child, regardless of
expenses. Parents who adopt children with special needs will
benefit from this meaningful tax credit because it will help cover
unique adoption costs.
Ensuring the provision of post-adoptive services also plays an
important role in facilitating successful adoptions. I
sup-port the Promoting Safe and Stable Families proposal, currently
before the Congress, which would improve post-adoptive services by
-prioritizing research and evaluation for these services and
establishing systems to ensure that they are available to meet the
needs of adoptive families. In addition, this proposal
provides for education and training vouchers to children adopted after
the age of 15.
Adoptive parents have a special calling -- sharing a loving home
with children in need, offering them hope for a brighter
future. Federal, State, and local governments must continue
supporting these quiet heroes as they make the considerable sacrifices
and receive the countless blessings of parenthood that come from
providing a child with the chance of a lifetime -- an upbringing in a
happy and healthy home.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States
of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution
and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim November 2001, as
National Adoption Month. I call on all Americans to observe
this month with appropriate programs and activities to honor adoptive
families and to participate in efforts to find permanent homes for
waiting children.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand
this fifth day of
November, in the year of our Lord two thousand one, and of the
Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and
twenty-sixth.
GEORGE W. BUSH
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