- Email: [email protected]
Adoption and other permanency considerations
OI!B74c9/92 s5.OQt.M Copyright 8 1992 Pergmon Press Ltd.
Adoption and Other Permanency Considerations William Pierce National Committee For Adoption
Some improvements in foster care have resulted from policy changes over
the last two decades. But as we look at the role of adoption in the child welfare services system, it is not adequately utilized, This is particularly so for children of color, especially those who are black, and very young children of mothers who were users of alcohol or controlled substances while pregnant. The public welfare system, for a variety of reasons, has failed to adequately serve a reasonable proportion of the children at risk assigned to its care. If anything, public welfare systems are less able to function effectively today than they were a decade ago. The inadequate response has led some to suggest additional investments in solutions of dubious merit, rather than turn to adoption. The author suggests seven features that should be part of any new legislative scheme to improve the foster care, adoption and permanency system.
A headline in The Washington Post on the last day of 1990 (Stepp) provided a marvelous example of understatement. It said, “A Year of Frustration for D.C. Foster Care.” As we look back at 1990 in the District of Columbia, or the 198Os, or the last three decades, we could say the same thing and focus on one word from that headline: f~st~tion. First, although Maas and Engler (1959), with their phrase “orphans of the living,” first brought to our attention, in 1959, the problem of foster care “drift” or “limbo,” we still face grave difficulties. California, the state which gave us the predecessor of P.L. 96-272 in SB 30, witnessed a 44 percent increase in the number of children in foster care in the decade following the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act’s (or P.L. 96” 272) enactment (Leefeldt, 1990; Wiltse, 1978). I have no reason to doubt the findings of the Center for the Study of Social Policy on state family preservation programs, and California is one of the states with an in-home care services demonstration program, but can our children bear to wait for Requests for reprints should be sent to William Pierce, President, National Committee For Adoption, 1930 17th Street, N.W., Washington, DC, 20036.
61
62
Pierce
still another promising approach to be piloted, evaluated, enacted and followed up? (Center for the Study of Social Policy, 1988) I have no quarrel with those who say that the majority of children in the child welfare system are better off for our having enacted P.L. 96-272. My concern is for the minority who are not better off. My plea is to take the steps necessary to increase, if only by a few percentage points, the children who would be better off if adoption were truly promoted and considered. Second, although we still maintain a national consensus about the priorities -- family preservation first, reunification second, adoption third and foster care fourth--and most assuredly there are benefits for children under each of these options when the services are appropriate and of high quality--we are in some ways farther than ever from a consensus about Witness the when we should move to achieve permanence for children. situation in New York when a child who had been abandoned at birth was removed at age two from the custody of the foster parents, the only family he had ever known, and who wanted to adopt him, only to be returned to his mother in a drug-rehabilitation center. The social services agency director described the decision as “Solomon-like” (Rev. Msgr. John T. Fagon, as cited in Dunlap, 1989); I think the official who revealed the mismanagement was more on target when he called it “Kafka-esque” (Andrew J. Stein, as cited in Dunlap, 1989). When pressed, the agency official admitted “I have no excuses“ and said the child should have been freed for adoption long ago. Third, although adoption of these “orphans of the living” has increased, we can and must do better. We are told by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that fewer than 65 of the 2,500 children in the District of Columbia’s custody have been made eligible for adoption (DeFrank, 1989). These 65 children are 2.6 percent of the children in care. Nationally, adoption is the plan for 14 percent of the children in care (American Public Welfare Association, 1985). Meanwhile, one private agency tells me that it had 70 qualified black families waiting to adopt (Adoption program supervisor, personal communication, February 13, 1991). Perhaps we will never get 350 children freed for adoption, but we can do better than 65! And even when we do get them freed, they can wait for the most incredible of reasons: In one city, 50 healthy black babies waited for a year simply because it was claimed there was no money to pay to get their photographs taken to be put in the photo listing books (Adoption exchange administrator, personal communication, date unknown). I will not review the history of P.L. 96-272 or the events of the decade following its enactment; there are textbooks and other documents which do that. I will grant that in expending rather large sums in furthering our In goals of permanence, we have had some fairly impressive results. 1986, the last year for which any national adoption statistics are available,
Adoption
and Other Permanency
Considerations
63
of 5 1,157 unrelated adoptions of U. S. children, fully 13,568, or 26.5 percent, were children with special needs (National Committee For Adop tion, 1989). VCIS data suggest that adoption was the outcome for about 8 percent of children in out of home care, not bad considering the goal was adoption for 14 percent of the children (American Public Welfare Association, 1985). Whether we read the research or what flows out of the Congressional Committees or the Administration or we follow the issue in the mass media, there is no question but that a national consensus holds that children need permanence and that the priorities listed above are reasonable and fair. The problem is that the continuing frustration so many of us feel has, with the best of intentions, led to very different and sometimes In preparcompeting suggestions of ways of achieving that permanence. ation of this article, I have talked to people in the public and voluntary child welfare system all over the country, and their complaints sound very much like what was being said and written in 1959, 1975 and 1980. One group, the reprivatizers, is epitomized by the Washington, DC. Rivlin Report recommendation that the entire child welfare system should be turned over to the private sector (‘I. . . And D.C. failure,” 1991). And in California, the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services can no longer license foster homes; its half-billion dollar child welfare program may be put under state receivership (Stolberg, 1990). Apart from Washington, the ACLU also has statewide cases pending in Kansas, New Mexico and Louisiana. Cases are also pending in Kansas City, New York City, and Philadelphia. Another group is made up of family preservationists, frustrated by judges who seem to refuse to terminate parental rights or monitor case plans. This group has given up on the concept of removing children at risk, and instead opts for massive new spending to try and maintain or patch up marginal families. A third group, whom I have been unable to label appropriately, is convinced that a combination of family interest and economic incentives will do the trick, and therefore turns to kinship care. In New York City, out of a total foster care population of 45,500 in December 1990, 42 percent, or 18,000 children, were in arrangements where the foster parent relatives had not been screened or subjected to the home inspections required for other foster parents (“Equal Care,” 1990). A fourth group, composed of many case workers and foster parents, frustrated at the lack of ability to find, train and keep competent foster parents, wants to invest in a new cadre of professional foster care providers. Such providers would be paid more than the $291 a month the District pays those who care for healthy infants. And I am not even going to begin to touch the issues related to prenatal child welfare issues and the
64
Pierce
corresponding controversy over what sorts of steps the system ought to take when it is confronted with an alcohol or drug abusing pregnant woman. Out of a profound sense of frustration, people of good will are conferring on young, unprepared women who happen to be pregnant or have a child the questionable status of “families.” Many of these can no more be called “families” than a 16year-old girl with a doll or teddy bear. There is emotion and there is possession, but there is almost no understanding of “family” as a nurturing, responsible environment for children. The result is growing conflict within the policy community over the meaning of “reasonable effort,” over timing decisions, and a host of other issues. The impact of this growing impasse among policy makers is reflected in the fact that, try as we may, we are not doing enough. On the CBS evening news, in December 1990, a feature discussed a 16-year-old young black man who still hoped to be adopted. He wants what only a family can really provide: a sense of belonging, nurturing, protection that is lifelong and that is not bureaucratic, however competent and wellmeaning it may be, whether it is public or voluntary. This is what the ACLU suit in Washington, D.C. was all about. This is what gets translated into the system, not just in Washington but nationally, a full decade after P.L. 96-272: more children in care, staying longer, with fewer foster homes and caseloads that keep increasing.
Key Principles
to Guide Reform
It is a crime to leave children who could be adopted in foster care for 15 to 18 years. It is a crime to remove children from competent foster parents who want to adopt them, sometimes simply because they are not ethnically a “politically correct” match (Bartholet, 1991; Hopkins, 1990). Here are, in briefest summary form, the key principles I believe we should consider as we contemplate any major new child welfare reforms. And I make these points while strongly supporting family preservation and reunification strategies but while also recognizing that permanency started with a focus that included freeing for adoption children caught in the system. . Any new legislation, including any new demonstration projects, should include a strong adoption focus. . As we look at the child welfare system, we need to learn a lesson from the “stretching” and pressures we put on the public welfare system in the past, which resulted in wrongful adoption and other errors being made. We should not expect “stretching” in preservation or reunification or foster care to be beneficial (Rosenberg, Seader, & Pierce, 1989).
Adoption and Other Permanency
Considerations
65
. The implementers of any major plan must be involved in its design (and these include voluntary sector purchase agencies). . Any new plan and existing programs need to offer quality services. We need to revive the role of licensing by separating it and requiring all public services to meet licensing standards. (Public agency licensing experts in two high population states with large urban areas., personal communication, February 1991). At the moment, the ACLU seeks to play the policing role state governments should fulfill. - We should not rely on an already overburdened and beleaguered public welfare system to devise new innovations when the track record of the past two decades has been so dismal. Any new program must have strong public-private collaboration (including non-sectarian and sectarian entities) built in. . Evaluations must be adequately funded and sufficiently separated so that we get an arms-length look at effectiveness and outcomes. . The final principle is accountability. As Fanshel(l992) and others have said, we must have data about all adoption and all foster care placements, and the collection of this data must be mandated in federal law.
References . . . And D.C. failure. (1991, February 17). The Washington Post, p. C6. American Public Welfare Association. (1985). Characrerisrics of children in substitute and adoprive care. Washington, DC: Author. Bartholet, E. (1991). Where do black children belong? The politics of race matching in adoption. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 139, 11631256. Center for the Study of Social Policy. (1988). Stare family preservation programs: A descriprion of six stares’ progress in developing services to keep fanzilies,rogerher. Washington, DC: Author. Child protection report. (1991, January). Silver Spring, MD: Business Publishers, Inc. DeFrank, M.J. (1989). December mailin g, ACLU fund of the national capital area, 4. Wahington, DC: ACLU. Dunlap, D.W. (1989, October 22). Foster parents tell of child welfare failures. The New York Times, p. 37. Equal care for foster children. (1990, December 16). The New York Times, p. E14. Fanshel, D. (1992). Foster care as a two-tiered system. Children and Yourh Services Review, 14, 49-60. Hopkins, E. (1990, May). Adopting: The color line. Mirabella, 64, New York: News America Publishing Inc. Leefeldt, E. (1990, October 16). Reform the delinquent foster-care system. The Wall Srreer Journal, p. A26.
66
Pierce
Maas, H.S., & Engler, R.E., Jr. (1959). Children in need ofparents. New York: Columbia University Press. National Committee For Adoption. (1989). Adoption factbook. Washington, DC: Author. Roeder, L. (1991). ACLU settles law suit against Connecticut. Child protection report, 4. Washington, DC: Business Publisher, Inc. Rosenberg, J., Seader, M.B., & Pierce, W.L. (1989). Ensuring the survival of families who adopt children with special needs--An invitational meeting. Washington, DC: National Committee For Adoption. Stepp, L.S. (1990, December 31). A year of frustration for DC foster care. The Washington Post, p. B 1. Stolberg, S. (1990, July 2). State may seize county’s abused children agency. The Los Angeles Times, p. Al. Wiltse, K.T. (1978). Current issues and new directions in foster care. In U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Child welfare strategy in the Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health, coming years (pp. 57-89). Education, and Welfare, OHDS 78-30158.
Adoption and Other Permanency Considerations William Pierce National Committee For Adoption
Some improvements in foster care have resulted from policy changes over
the last two decades. But as we look at the role of adoption in the child welfare services system, it is not adequately utilized, This is particularly so for children of color, especially those who are black, and very young children of mothers who were users of alcohol or controlled substances while pregnant. The public welfare system, for a variety of reasons, has failed to adequately serve a reasonable proportion of the children at risk assigned to its care. If anything, public welfare systems are less able to function effectively today than they were a decade ago. The inadequate response has led some to suggest additional investments in solutions of dubious merit, rather than turn to adoption. The author suggests seven features that should be part of any new legislative scheme to improve the foster care, adoption and permanency system.
A headline in The Washington Post on the last day of 1990 (Stepp) provided a marvelous example of understatement. It said, “A Year of Frustration for D.C. Foster Care.” As we look back at 1990 in the District of Columbia, or the 198Os, or the last three decades, we could say the same thing and focus on one word from that headline: f~st~tion. First, although Maas and Engler (1959), with their phrase “orphans of the living,” first brought to our attention, in 1959, the problem of foster care “drift” or “limbo,” we still face grave difficulties. California, the state which gave us the predecessor of P.L. 96-272 in SB 30, witnessed a 44 percent increase in the number of children in foster care in the decade following the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act’s (or P.L. 96” 272) enactment (Leefeldt, 1990; Wiltse, 1978). I have no reason to doubt the findings of the Center for the Study of Social Policy on state family preservation programs, and California is one of the states with an in-home care services demonstration program, but can our children bear to wait for Requests for reprints should be sent to William Pierce, President, National Committee For Adoption, 1930 17th Street, N.W., Washington, DC, 20036.
61
62
Pierce
still another promising approach to be piloted, evaluated, enacted and followed up? (Center for the Study of Social Policy, 1988) I have no quarrel with those who say that the majority of children in the child welfare system are better off for our having enacted P.L. 96-272. My concern is for the minority who are not better off. My plea is to take the steps necessary to increase, if only by a few percentage points, the children who would be better off if adoption were truly promoted and considered. Second, although we still maintain a national consensus about the priorities -- family preservation first, reunification second, adoption third and foster care fourth--and most assuredly there are benefits for children under each of these options when the services are appropriate and of high quality--we are in some ways farther than ever from a consensus about Witness the when we should move to achieve permanence for children. situation in New York when a child who had been abandoned at birth was removed at age two from the custody of the foster parents, the only family he had ever known, and who wanted to adopt him, only to be returned to his mother in a drug-rehabilitation center. The social services agency director described the decision as “Solomon-like” (Rev. Msgr. John T. Fagon, as cited in Dunlap, 1989); I think the official who revealed the mismanagement was more on target when he called it “Kafka-esque” (Andrew J. Stein, as cited in Dunlap, 1989). When pressed, the agency official admitted “I have no excuses“ and said the child should have been freed for adoption long ago. Third, although adoption of these “orphans of the living” has increased, we can and must do better. We are told by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that fewer than 65 of the 2,500 children in the District of Columbia’s custody have been made eligible for adoption (DeFrank, 1989). These 65 children are 2.6 percent of the children in care. Nationally, adoption is the plan for 14 percent of the children in care (American Public Welfare Association, 1985). Meanwhile, one private agency tells me that it had 70 qualified black families waiting to adopt (Adoption program supervisor, personal communication, February 13, 1991). Perhaps we will never get 350 children freed for adoption, but we can do better than 65! And even when we do get them freed, they can wait for the most incredible of reasons: In one city, 50 healthy black babies waited for a year simply because it was claimed there was no money to pay to get their photographs taken to be put in the photo listing books (Adoption exchange administrator, personal communication, date unknown). I will not review the history of P.L. 96-272 or the events of the decade following its enactment; there are textbooks and other documents which do that. I will grant that in expending rather large sums in furthering our In goals of permanence, we have had some fairly impressive results. 1986, the last year for which any national adoption statistics are available,
Adoption
and Other Permanency
Considerations
63
of 5 1,157 unrelated adoptions of U. S. children, fully 13,568, or 26.5 percent, were children with special needs (National Committee For Adop tion, 1989). VCIS data suggest that adoption was the outcome for about 8 percent of children in out of home care, not bad considering the goal was adoption for 14 percent of the children (American Public Welfare Association, 1985). Whether we read the research or what flows out of the Congressional Committees or the Administration or we follow the issue in the mass media, there is no question but that a national consensus holds that children need permanence and that the priorities listed above are reasonable and fair. The problem is that the continuing frustration so many of us feel has, with the best of intentions, led to very different and sometimes In preparcompeting suggestions of ways of achieving that permanence. ation of this article, I have talked to people in the public and voluntary child welfare system all over the country, and their complaints sound very much like what was being said and written in 1959, 1975 and 1980. One group, the reprivatizers, is epitomized by the Washington, DC. Rivlin Report recommendation that the entire child welfare system should be turned over to the private sector (‘I. . . And D.C. failure,” 1991). And in California, the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services can no longer license foster homes; its half-billion dollar child welfare program may be put under state receivership (Stolberg, 1990). Apart from Washington, the ACLU also has statewide cases pending in Kansas, New Mexico and Louisiana. Cases are also pending in Kansas City, New York City, and Philadelphia. Another group is made up of family preservationists, frustrated by judges who seem to refuse to terminate parental rights or monitor case plans. This group has given up on the concept of removing children at risk, and instead opts for massive new spending to try and maintain or patch up marginal families. A third group, whom I have been unable to label appropriately, is convinced that a combination of family interest and economic incentives will do the trick, and therefore turns to kinship care. In New York City, out of a total foster care population of 45,500 in December 1990, 42 percent, or 18,000 children, were in arrangements where the foster parent relatives had not been screened or subjected to the home inspections required for other foster parents (“Equal Care,” 1990). A fourth group, composed of many case workers and foster parents, frustrated at the lack of ability to find, train and keep competent foster parents, wants to invest in a new cadre of professional foster care providers. Such providers would be paid more than the $291 a month the District pays those who care for healthy infants. And I am not even going to begin to touch the issues related to prenatal child welfare issues and the
64
Pierce
corresponding controversy over what sorts of steps the system ought to take when it is confronted with an alcohol or drug abusing pregnant woman. Out of a profound sense of frustration, people of good will are conferring on young, unprepared women who happen to be pregnant or have a child the questionable status of “families.” Many of these can no more be called “families” than a 16year-old girl with a doll or teddy bear. There is emotion and there is possession, but there is almost no understanding of “family” as a nurturing, responsible environment for children. The result is growing conflict within the policy community over the meaning of “reasonable effort,” over timing decisions, and a host of other issues. The impact of this growing impasse among policy makers is reflected in the fact that, try as we may, we are not doing enough. On the CBS evening news, in December 1990, a feature discussed a 16-year-old young black man who still hoped to be adopted. He wants what only a family can really provide: a sense of belonging, nurturing, protection that is lifelong and that is not bureaucratic, however competent and wellmeaning it may be, whether it is public or voluntary. This is what the ACLU suit in Washington, D.C. was all about. This is what gets translated into the system, not just in Washington but nationally, a full decade after P.L. 96-272: more children in care, staying longer, with fewer foster homes and caseloads that keep increasing.
Key Principles
to Guide Reform
It is a crime to leave children who could be adopted in foster care for 15 to 18 years. It is a crime to remove children from competent foster parents who want to adopt them, sometimes simply because they are not ethnically a “politically correct” match (Bartholet, 1991; Hopkins, 1990). Here are, in briefest summary form, the key principles I believe we should consider as we contemplate any major new child welfare reforms. And I make these points while strongly supporting family preservation and reunification strategies but while also recognizing that permanency started with a focus that included freeing for adoption children caught in the system. . Any new legislation, including any new demonstration projects, should include a strong adoption focus. . As we look at the child welfare system, we need to learn a lesson from the “stretching” and pressures we put on the public welfare system in the past, which resulted in wrongful adoption and other errors being made. We should not expect “stretching” in preservation or reunification or foster care to be beneficial (Rosenberg, Seader, & Pierce, 1989).
Adoption and Other Permanency
Considerations
65
. The implementers of any major plan must be involved in its design (and these include voluntary sector purchase agencies). . Any new plan and existing programs need to offer quality services. We need to revive the role of licensing by separating it and requiring all public services to meet licensing standards. (Public agency licensing experts in two high population states with large urban areas., personal communication, February 1991). At the moment, the ACLU seeks to play the policing role state governments should fulfill. - We should not rely on an already overburdened and beleaguered public welfare system to devise new innovations when the track record of the past two decades has been so dismal. Any new program must have strong public-private collaboration (including non-sectarian and sectarian entities) built in. . Evaluations must be adequately funded and sufficiently separated so that we get an arms-length look at effectiveness and outcomes. . The final principle is accountability. As Fanshel(l992) and others have said, we must have data about all adoption and all foster care placements, and the collection of this data must be mandated in federal law.
References . . . And D.C. failure. (1991, February 17). The Washington Post, p. C6. American Public Welfare Association. (1985). Characrerisrics of children in substitute and adoprive care. Washington, DC: Author. Bartholet, E. (1991). Where do black children belong? The politics of race matching in adoption. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 139, 11631256. Center for the Study of Social Policy. (1988). Stare family preservation programs: A descriprion of six stares’ progress in developing services to keep fanzilies,rogerher. Washington, DC: Author. Child protection report. (1991, January). Silver Spring, MD: Business Publishers, Inc. DeFrank, M.J. (1989). December mailin g, ACLU fund of the national capital area, 4. Wahington, DC: ACLU. Dunlap, D.W. (1989, October 22). Foster parents tell of child welfare failures. The New York Times, p. 37. Equal care for foster children. (1990, December 16). The New York Times, p. E14. Fanshel, D. (1992). Foster care as a two-tiered system. Children and Yourh Services Review, 14, 49-60. Hopkins, E. (1990, May). Adopting: The color line. Mirabella, 64, New York: News America Publishing Inc. Leefeldt, E. (1990, October 16). Reform the delinquent foster-care system. The Wall Srreer Journal, p. A26.
66
Pierce
Maas, H.S., & Engler, R.E., Jr. (1959). Children in need ofparents. New York: Columbia University Press. National Committee For Adoption. (1989). Adoption factbook. Washington, DC: Author. Roeder, L. (1991). ACLU settles law suit against Connecticut. Child protection report, 4. Washington, DC: Business Publisher, Inc. Rosenberg, J., Seader, M.B., & Pierce, W.L. (1989). Ensuring the survival of families who adopt children with special needs--An invitational meeting. Washington, DC: National Committee For Adoption. Stepp, L.S. (1990, December 31). A year of frustration for DC foster care. The Washington Post, p. B 1. Stolberg, S. (1990, July 2). State may seize county’s abused children agency. The Los Angeles Times, p. Al. Wiltse, K.T. (1978). Current issues and new directions in foster care. In U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Child welfare strategy in the Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health, coming years (pp. 57-89). Education, and Welfare, OHDS 78-30158.