Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee,
I am pleased to appear before you today to discuss the Adoption Promotion Act of 1997. This
legislation would further our efforts to ensure the safety, permanency and well-being of children
in the child welfare system and closely mirrors the goals set forth in our Adoption 2002 proposal.
On behalf of the Administration, I would like to commend the members of this Subcommittee
and the bill's chief sponsors. Representatives Camp and Kennelly, for your interest in and
dedication to improving child welfare services. The bipartisan Congressional attention and
support being given to these issues in both the House and the Senate, coupled with the reforms
and innovative practices being undertaken around the country, present us with an unprecedented
opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of some of America's most vulnerable children.
The President's Adoption Initiative
President Clinton is committed to "giving the children waiting in our Nation's foster care system
what every child in America deserves -- loving parents and a healthy, stable home." In his
December directive on adoption to federal agencies, the President directed HHS to conduct wide
consultations and report to him with specific recommendations on strategies to move children
more quickly from foster care to permanent homes and to double the annual number of adoptions
and other permanent placements over the next five years.
In response to the directive, the Department developed the report Adoption 2002. which reflects
the bipartisan interest in and commitment to promoting adoption and strengthening permanency
planning for children in the public child welfare system. To prepare this report, the Department
consulted with state and local government officials, child welfare professionals, policy experts,
advocates, and foster and adoptive parents at the national, State and local levels.
Through this process of consultation, we heard about many of the barriers to expediting
permanency for children in foster care. Delays in making timely permanency decisions result
from high caseloads for judges and caseworkers; incorrect beliefs and outdated assumptions
about the adoptability of children; the limited pool of permanent families for children with
special needs; and the varied interpretation of the "reasonable efforts" requirement to reunify a
child in foster care with his or her birth family before another goal, such as adoption, can be
pursued for the child.
Our report outlines an agenda to help overcome these barriers and to accelerate the path to
permanency for all waiting children in the public child welfare system. First, the report
articulates a guiding set of principles centered on the needs of the child in order to give direction
to the overall agenda. These principles include: that every child deserves a safe, permanent
family; that the child's health and safety should be the paramount considerations in all placement
and permanency planning decisions; and that foster care is a temporary situation -- it is not an
appropriate place for children to grow up. It establishes unequivocally that the Federal goals for
children in the child welfare system are safety, permanency, and well-being.
Our proposed agenda is multifaceted in order to address the broad range of barriers and
challenges that exist in the child welfare system. The report presents strategies to establish,
track, and meet State-by-State annual, numerical targets for adoptions and other permanent
placements -- targets that will bring us to a national doubling of adoptions and permanent
placements in the year 2002. To help States reach their targets, the Department commits to
providing expanded technical assistance, rewarding States for incremental increases in adoption
levels with per-child financial bonuses, and otherwise recognizing successful performance.
Perhaps most important, the report also addresses the need to clarify the "reasonable efforts"
provision to make it clear that in determining whether and when to remove a child from his or
her family and whether and when to reunify the family, Federal law requires that the child's
health and safety shall be the paramount concern. It also calls for providing guidance to the
States to emphasize that child health and safety must also be of primary concern when making
decisions to terminate parental rights. Furthermore, the Adoption 2002 report supports the
passage of legislation that shortens the time before a child's first dispositional hearing -- the
hearing in which a permanency decision is first made -- from 18 months to 12 months, and
changes its name to "permanency planning hearing" to emphasize that the purpose of the hearing
is to establish a definitive plan for permanent placement.
Provisions in H.R. 867
We are extremely pleased that H. R. 867, the Adoption Promotion Act, proposes many of these
critical actions, including clarifying reasonable efforts, earlier dispositional hearings,
performance targets, technical assistance and adoption bonuses.
Reasonable Efforts
Current Federal statute language requires that "reasonable efforts" be made both: (1) to prevent
the unnecessary removal of children from their families; and (2) to reunify children, when
possible, who have been placed in foster care with their families. The goal of the reasonable
efforts provision is to prevent children from languishing unnecessarily in foster care and to avoid
the unnecessary disruption of families.
The Adoption Promotion Act would unequivocally establish that the child's health and safety be
of paramount concern in making placement and permanency decisions. We strongly support the
legislation's goal of providing greater clarity about what is meant by "reasonable efforts. " This
change is critical because it has become clear that there is wide variation in how the current
"reasonable efforts" law is interpreted by caseworkers, agencies, and judges around the country.
We also believe it is necessary to provide illustrations of the circumstances in which concerns
about a child's health and safety take precedence over family preservation or reunification.
We also strongly support two other provisions of H.R. 867, recommended in the Adoption 2002
report, that would help children who cannot go home move more quickly towards permanent
homes. First, we support the inclusion of statutory language requiring States to make
"reasonable efforts" to secure a permanent home for children in foster care when adoption or
another permanent placement, rather than reunification, is established as a goal. Likewise, we
support language that will clarify that States may concurrently work toward reunification and
develop an alternative permanency plan, in the event that the child cannot safely be returned
home.
We would, however, be interested in working with the Subcommittee to refine the legislative
language used to achieve these objectives. In particular, we want to ensureresident's Executive Memorandum, the Department has committed to issue
an annual State-by-State report, beginning in the- Spring of 1999, on the Nation's progress in
meeting the adoption goals. The annual report will provide State-by-State figures on key
measures of success including not only the number of children in foster care who are adopted or
placed in guardianship, but measures that reflect the experience of children in the child welfare
system, such as the length of time in care and the timeliness of permanency decisions.
In addition, through the revised child and family services monitoring strategy that we have been
piloting with States, we are asking States to use data submitted to the Adoption and Foster Care
Analysis and Reporting system (AFCARS), as well as to the National Child Abuse and Neglect
Data System (NCANDS), to help assess their performance in achieving safety and permanency
for children. Our approach is to help States assess their own performance, including strengths as
well as deficiencies; to provide technical assistance, and to assist States to make ongoing changes
and improvements. We believe that this approach, focusing on continuous improvement and
tracking State performance over time, will prove more effective in achieving improved outcomes
for children than a State ranking or rating system.
Technical Assistance
As reflected in Adoption 2002, the Administration believes that providing effective technical
assistance to the States in a range of areas, incresident's Executive Memorandum, the Department has committed to issue
an annual State-by-State report, beginning in the- Spring of 1999, on the Nation's progress in
meeting the adoption goals. The annual report will provide State-by-State figures on key
measures of success including not only the number of children in foster care who are adopted or
placed in guardianship, but measures that reflect the experience of children in the child welfare
system, such as the length of time in care and the timeliness of permanency decisions.
In addition, through the revised child and family services monitoring strategy that we have been
piloting with States, we are asking States to use data submitted to the Adoption and Foster Care
Analysis and Reporting system (AFCARS), as well as to the National Child Abuse and Neglect
Data System (NCANDS), to help assess their performance in achieving safety and permanency
for children. Our approach is to help States assess their own performance, including strengths as
well as deficiencies; to provide technical assistance, and to assist States to make ongoing changes
and improvements. We believe that this approach, focusing on continuous improvement and
tracking State performance over time, will prove more effective in achieving improved outcomes
for children than a State ranking or rating system.
Technical Assistance
As reflected in Adoption 2002, the Administration believes that providing effective technical
assistance to the States in a range of areas, including those mentioned in Section 10 of the bill, is
critical to ensuring the success of our efforts to double the number of children who are adopted
annually by the year 2002 and to improve the quality and timeliness of decision-making for all
children in foster care. The President's budget for fiscal year 1998 requests $10 million for
technical assistance directed toward meeting the goals of the Adoption initiative. We appreciate
the sponsors' support of this request.
Adoption Bonus
The centerpiece of the President's Adoption Initiative is a proposal to provide States with a
financial bonus when they succeed in increasing the number of children who are adopted each
year. We believe that this is an example of common-sense government, as it not only provides a
concrete incentive to States for increasing the number of adoptions, but also pays for itself, with
the cost of the bonuses offset by savings in foster care costs. We are very pleased that H.R. 867
includes provisions similar to the Administration's proposal for this adoption bonus.
However, we are very concerned about the funding authority for this provision. H.R. 867 would
authorize Congress to appropriate funds for paying the bonuses each year. We believe that it is
important to assure the States that the funds will be available to them throughout the five years
during which the bonuses will be paid, since we are asking them to make long-term
commitments to increasing the number of adoptions. We are in agreement with CBO that the
bonus program will be cost neutral or will even save funds. We also support providing States
with discretion to use the bonus funds in a manner that they determine best supports the needs of
children in the child welfare system. We hope to work with you to develop language to assure
funding to the States for this key provision to be used for a broad range of purposes.
There are only two provisions in H.R. 867 which raise concerns. We believe that we can work
with the sponsors and the Subcommittee to modify these provisions to achieve our shared goal of
permanency and health and safety for the child.
Requiring Initiation of Proceedings to Terminate Parental Rights
Section 5 of H.R. 867 establishes certain circumstances under which State agencies would be
required to seek the termination of parental rights of a child who is in foster care. The
Administration supports the goal of ensuring that timely permanency decisions are made for
children who cannot return home. For those children for whom adoption has been established as
a goal, filing for termination of parental rights or securing voluntary relinquishment of rights
from the parents, is a key step in freeing children for adoption. However, if a goal other than
adoption has been set, requiring termination of parental rights might not be in the best interest of
the child.
Because it is the permanency goal for a child that should drive the decision to seek termination of
parental rights, we would like to explore with you the development of an alternative proposal that
would require States to move expeditiously to terminate parental rights once a judicial
(permanency planning) determination has been made that adoption is the goal for a child. The
Administration believes that this framework will serve children better than one that ties states'
decisions to terminate parental rights to Federal standards regarding either the age of the child or
the length of time that the child has spent in foster care.
Notifying Foster Parent of Reviews and Hearings
We also have concerns with the provision in section 4, requiring that foster Parents be given
notification and an opportunity to be heard in reviews and hearings. We agree that foster parents
play a key role in providing for the safety, permanency and well-being of children who have been
removed from home. As the primary caregivers of children in out-of-home care, they have
valuable firsthand knowledge that can help inform decisions made at administrative reviews and
judicial hearings. However, we are concerned that the provision, by providing foster parents
legal standing as a party to the case, places these parents in a position incongruent with their role
as temporary caregivers of children. This provision could result in the creation of unnecessary
adversarial relationships between foster parents and biological parents and/or between foster
parents and the State child welfare agency. The Department proposes to address through
policy guidance, rather than legislation, the importance of assuring input from foster parents in
case planning, administrative reviews and judicial hearings.
Finally, we wanted to share some additional information with the Subcommittee as you
consider two other provisions in the bill.
Report and Recommendations on Kinship Care
Section 6 of the bill calls for the establishment of an advisory panel and the collection of
additional information on relative or kinship care. As you know, relatives, other than parents,
increasingly play a role in caring for children, both in informal caretaking relationships and in
kinship foster care arrangements. In 1990, it is estimated that just over 2 percent of U.S. children
(about 1.4 million) lived in a relative's household without a parent present. However, only a
small fraction of those children were in formal kinship foster care settings.
Congress recognized the important role of relatives when in the Personal Responsibility and
Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 it included a provision requiring the States to
consider giving preference to relatives as caretakers for children eligible to receive foster care
maintenance payments and adoption assistance subsidies under Title IV-E of the Social Security
Act. Given the increasing role that relatives are likely to play in caring for children in the future,
it is critical that we improve our understanding of the role of kin in providing either a temporary
or permanent home for children.
The Department has already begun important work in this area that will address some of your
issues and may help guide future policy development. We will soon release the findings of a
study that examined several national and State-level data sources to describe the characteristics
of both informal kinship care arrangements and kinship foster care. Later this year, we will
release the findings of a descriptive study of children placed in foster care with relatives.
This study used interviews with State and county staff and reviews of case records in seven
States to gather information on children in both kinship foster care and non-kinship foster care.
In addition, the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) is now
being implemented and has just begun to yield data improving our knowledge of children in
foster care. While currently many States are not able to distinguish between relative and
non-relative foster parents in their data, we do expect the data to improve over the next several
years as States complete development of new automated child welfare information systems.
Finally, the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act authorized funding demonstration
projects in the area of kinship care. We expect to fund demonstration grants in this area in the
future to improve our knowledge of the role of relatives in ensuring children's safety and
permanency. Possible areas of exploration include issues around licensing and training kinship
care providers.
We hope you find this information useful as you explore ways to address this critical area. We
will share with the Subcommittee the findings of these studies just as soon as they are finalized.
Expanding Use of the Federal Parent Locator Service
Section 7 of the bill addresses another proposal discussed in the Adoption 2002 report,
expanding the use of the Federal Parent Locator Service (FPLS). Currently, the FPLS is used by
State child support enforcement officials. We propose to work with State child welfare and child
support enforcement agencies to facilitate use of the FPLS to identify and locate absent parents
of children in foster care. In this way, child welfare agencies may locate parents or other
relatives who may be interested in providing a permanent home for a child in foster care- Even if
an absent parent is unable to provide a home for the child, ruling out this alternative early in a
child's placement will allow the agency and court to move expeditiously towards adoption or
another permanent alternative. We believe that a legislative change in this area is not necessary
because there is sufficient statutory authority to allow use of FPLS in child welfare cases.
Conclusion
On behalf of the Administration, I want to express our enthusiasm about the opportunity to enact
bipartisan child welfare legislation during this Congress. Together we can work to improve
significantly the lives of hundreds of thousands of children in our Nation's foster care system.
Again, I commend the members of this Subcommittee for your leadership and I would be pleased
to answer any questions you might have.
