Adoption Opportunities
Program Description
The program provides discretionary funds for projects designed to eliminate barriers to adoption and help find permanent families for children who would benefit from adoption, particularly children with special needs.
The major programs areas, as mandated by the legislation, are:
- The development and implementation of a national adoption and foster care data gathering and analysis system;
- The development and implementation of a national adoption information exchange system;
- The development and implementation of an adoption training and technical assistance program;
- Increasing the placements in adoptive families of minority children who are in the foster care and have the goal of adoption with a specials emphasis on recruitment of minority families;
- Post-legal adoption services for families who have adopted children with special needs including day treatment and respite care;
- Support the placement of children in kinship care arrangements, pre-adoptive, or adoptive homes;
- Study the efficacy of state contracting with public and private agencies (including community-based and other organizations);
- Increase the number of older children adopted from foster care, emphasizing several child specific recruitment strategies (media campaigns to inform the public of the needs of older children available for adoption; training personnel in older children’s needs and recruiting families to adopt older children);
- To improve efforts to eliminate interjurisdictional adoption barriers;
- Study manner in which interstate placements are financed; best practice recommendations for inter and intra state adoptions and how State definitions of special needs differentiate and/or group similar categories of children;
- Research adoption outcomes and factors that affect these outcomes;
Statistics
There are currently 34 grants funded under this program. Grant awards generally range from $200,000 to $500,000 per year. The National Adoption Information Clearinghouse and the Special Needs Adoption Resource Center are also funded under this project.
Awarded Grants
To view information about current and previously funded grants under this program, go to either:
- ACYF Directory of Funded Grants - for abstracts and contact information for grant awardees starting with FY 2002--use the "guided search", select "year", select "Children's Bureau", and select the Adoption Opportunities program.
- Children's Bureau Listing of Discretionary Grant and Competitive Grant Awards - For awardees names and funding levels from FY 2000 and later.
Budget Information
The program is funded at $27,119,000 for FY 2006.
