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A REPORT TO CONGRESS ON
INTERJURISDICTIONAL ADOPTION OF CHILDREN IN FOSTER CARE
The passage of the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act (PL 108-36) in 2003 reaffirmed the commitment of Congress and the Bush Administration to placing children in foster care into safe, nurturing, permanent family homes as quickly as is feasible. The Act included provisions that clearly indicate support for the use of interjurisdictional placement of children for adoption or reunification with relatives. Interjurisdictional placements are those made in States or counties outside of the children's residence. While they are a key strategy to achieve the goal of permanency for children in foster care, the involvement of more than one jurisdiction in the placement of children presents many challenges, some of which are unique and others that are common for the child welfare system as a whole.
To inform Congress about these challenges and current efforts to address them, Congress included in the Act a requirement for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (U.S. DHHS) to produce a Report to Congress that describes the nature, scope, and impact of interjurisdictional adoption placement efforts and the strategies that improve outcomes for children in foster care who are placed for adoption in other jurisdictions. In response to this legislative requirement, U.S. DHHS conducted a survey of all States and territories to identify promising practices and possible strategies to overcome barriers to interjurisdictional placements. The survey was the first comprehensive compilation of current, promising strategies and supports required to improve the interjurisdictional placement process for children in the child welfare system. This report provides background information on children in foster care, especially those for whom interjurisdictional adoptive placements are viable options, and describes key steps in the process to achieve permanent placements for children exiting foster care. The legal and procedural frameworks that govern the movement of children in foster care to homes in jurisdictions outside their State or county of residence are presented. Barriers that interfere with or delay interjurisdictional placements are described, and strategies States are using to address them are summarized from the national survey on interjurisdictional placement. A synopsis of strategies employed by U.S. DHHS to support improvements in interjurisdictional adoptive placements is also presented. The report concludes with a summary of the issues and the strategies employed to improve outcomes for children in foster care whose permanent families reside across jurisdictional lines.
1. Background
Children enter foster care when they are unable to live safely with their families, usually because of abuse or neglect in the family home. At the end of fiscal year (FY) 2004 (September 30, 2004), there were 518,000 children in foster care, a reduction from the high of 567,000 children at the end of FY 1999.1 The average age of these children was 10.1 years old, and there were slightly more boys than girls (53 and 47 percent respectively). Forty percent of the children were White, Non-Hispanic; 34 percent were Black, Non-Hispanic; 18 percent were Hispanic; and 8 percent were other races or ethnicities. Nearly three quarters (74 percent) of these children were residing in family-like settings: pre-adoptive, relative, and non-relative family foster homes. The remaining 26 percent were primarily in group homes and institutions.
To best understand the role of interjurisdictional adoption for children in foster care, it is helpful to first understand the process of moving children out of foster care into permanent homes.
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Foster care is meant to be temporary. To facilitate the removal of children from foster care, a permanency plan must be established for all children in care, stating at least one explicit goal for a permanent living arrangement upon each child's exit from care. In almost all cases, child welfare staff first must make reasonable efforts to reunify children with their birth families by working with the children and families to resolve the issues that contributed to the children's removal from their homes. If efforts toward reunification are unsuccessful, caseworkers seek other permanent living arrangements, such as living with another relative, guardianship, or adoption. To expedite the permanency planning process, caseworkers often engage in concurrent planning, which involves simultaneously identifying and working toward more than one permanency goal (e.g., reunification and placement with relative). If reunification is determined not to be in the child's best interests, concurrent planning helps to shorten the child's stay in foster care because progress already has been made toward another permanent living arrangement (e.g., relatives may have been identified and assessed for their suitability and willingness to provide a permanent home, or the child may have been placed with a foster family who is willing to adopt).
Although the children in care at the end of FY 2004 had been in foster care an average of 2½ years (30.1 months), this represents a decrease from the average of 32.3 months children had been in care at the end of FY 2000. Many factors contribute to the length of children's stays in foster care. Challenges faced by birth families, including those that contributed to the abuse and/or neglect such as substance abuse, mental health problems, poverty, and poor parenting skills, may be difficult to overcome in efforts to reunify families with their children. Challenges faced by child welfare agencies and courts also can contribute to delays in achieving placement in permanent families. These challenges include difficulties in conducting thorough and timely assessments of children's and families' needs, difficulties in providing appropriate services in a timely manner, and delays in court hearings. In addition, children in foster care may face significant challenges as a result of the abuse and/or neglect they have experienced, such as physical and mental health problems, developmental disabilities, educational difficulties, and psychological and behavioral problems (Freundlich & Wright, 2003).
Most children return home to their birth parents as services can frequently assist families in addressing the issues which caused the children to be placed in temporary foster care. However, many others find permanency, such as adoption, with other families. Of the 283,000 children who exited foster care in FY 2004, 54 percent were reunified with their parents or primary caretakers, 12 percent went to live with other relatives, 4 percent went to live with guardians, and 18 percent were adopted. An additional 8 percent of youth in foster care were emancipated to adulthood, many without a legal, permanent family. The children exiting foster care in FY 2004 had been in foster care an average of 21.7 months before exiting to their permanent family placements or to independence as adults. This represents a small decrease from the average of 22.9 months for children exiting care in FY 2000. The services required to move a child to a particular type of permanent family can affect the length of time that children are in foster care. For example, children who exited foster care in FY 2004 who were reunified with parents or placed with relatives had been in care an average of 11 months. However, children who exited foster care to finalized adoptions during the same year had been in care an average of 40 months.
A key strategy in permanency planning involves finding, engaging, and supporting relatives to become permanent families for children in foster care. This is consistent with both family-centered practice and the philosophy of family preservation that underlie the child welfare system's work (Roberson, Lorkovich, Groza, Fujimura, Jankowski, & Brindo, 2003). Placing children with their relatives can help reduce the children's pain of separation by preserving connections with family and offering a sense of security and "belongingness" (Testa, 2000). Caseworkers first must identify and find children's relatives, who often may live in other jurisdictions. Relatives then must be assessed to determine their ability to provide a safe, nurturing home for the children and must be engaged in planning for permanency if the children are unable to return to their birth parents. While adoption is the most legally stable outcome, guardianship and custody transfers also may be considered to achieve permanency for children with their relatives.
Because adoption is the preferred outcome for children who cannot return to their birth families, it is helpful to understand the population of children waiting for adoption. Such children have a permanency goal of adoption and/or have parents whose legal rights have been terminated. At the end of FY 2004, 118,000 children in foster care were waiting to be adopted. The average age was 8.7 years, and there were slightly more boys than girls (53 and 47 percent respectively). Thirty-eight percent of the children were White, Non-Hispanic; 38 percent were Black, Non-Hispanic; 14 percent were Hispanic; and 9 percent were other races or ethnicities. At the end of FY 2004, they had been in foster care an average of more than 3½ years (44 months). Many of these children were living with families who intended to adopt them, including relative and non-relative foster families, which provided an important level of consistency in these children's lives.
A required step in the process toward achieving adoption is the legal termination of birth parents' rights. Terminating parental rights often can be a lengthy process in which a child welfare agency must demonstrate to the court that reasonable efforts were made to reunite children with their parents, that these efforts were unsuccessful, and that reunification is not in the children's best interests. The parents of 68,000 children in foster care at the end of FY 2004 had had their legal rights terminated, thereby legally freeing the children to be adopted.
Most children adopted from foster care are adopted by their foster parents (59 percent in FY 2004). In the same year, another 24 percent were adopted by relatives, and 16 percent were adopted by non-relatives who were not their foster parents. When relative and non-relative foster families are either unwilling or unsuitable to adopt the children, appropriate adoptive families must be sought and approved to meet the children's needs. These cases frequently present the biggest challenges to caseworkers because the children often are school-aged, have physical or mental conditions, are part of a sibling group, or are children of color (Christian & Ekman, 2000), which may make it more difficult to find a family willing to adopt them. When efforts to recruit prospective adoptive families are required, caseworkers may renew attempts to identify and engage relatives, consider "fictive" kin (unrelated adults who have been important in the children's lives), or conduct targeted or child-specific recruitment to seek unrelated families interested in adopting a child.
Another major step required to achieve permanency for children in foster care who will not return to their birth families involves approving families to be a permanent placement, hopefully an adoptive placement. To be approved, prospective families, whether adoptive, relative, or guardian, must complete a home study to determine their suitability to permanently care for a child from foster care. Home studies generally include training for the prospective family, in-depth interviews with family members, home visits, reviews of parents' health and income statements, criminal background checks, reviews of autobiographical statements written by family members, and reference checks (National Adoption Information Clearinghouse, 2004b). While home studies may take a significant amount of time, they are necessary to ensure that prospective permanent families, including relative and non-relative adoptive families, can meet the needs of specific children.
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Some children leaving foster care find permanent families in jurisdictions other than the one in which they live. Almost 7,700 children exiting foster care in FY 2004 were placed with relatives or prospective adoptive parents in other States. It is assumed many more were placed with families in other jurisdictions within their State of residence. Interjurisdictional placements may be either an intrastate placement involving two jurisdictions within the same State or an interstate placement involving two different States. However, in this report, the phrase "interjurisdictional placements" refers to interstate placements unless otherwise noted.
Interjurisdictional placements may be used to accomplish any permanency goal (e.g., adoption, placement with relative, reunification). Thirty-one percent (5,405) of all children in interstate placements at the end of FY 2004 (September 30, 2004) had a goal of adoption, and 44 percent (7,768) had a goal of reunification, placement with another relative, or guardianship.2 Interstate placements for adoption included children in foster care in one State who moved to another State to be adopted by a relative or previously unknown family and foster families intending to adopt the children in their care who moved to another State. While it is not known how many interstate adoptive placements involved relatives, AFCARS3 does reveal that 24 percent of all children adopted from foster care in FY 2004 were adopted by relatives.
When children are waiting to be adopted, and their foster families do not wish to adopt them, caseworkers must recruit prospective adoptive families to meet the children's needs. Caseworkers often first seek families in their own jurisdictions to help maintain children's meaningful connections to their community. Seeking and finding families in other jurisdictions may not be pursued diligently unless efforts within the children's home jurisdictions have proven unsuccessful. However, for some of these children, prospective adoptive families (including relatives, fictive kin, and people previously unknown to the child) living in other jurisdictions may offer the best opportunity for a stable, loving home.
Children who are adopted from foster care often have spent many months, even years, in foster care as each task in the permanency planning process is completed. These tasks may include reasonable efforts to reunify the children with their birth families, efforts to locate and assess relatives as potential permanent placements, termination of birth parents' rights, finding prospective adoptive families who express interest in adopting particular children (including relatives' children), and completing home studies with the families to assess their suitability to meet the children's needs. In addition to these steps, the procedures involved in interjurisdictional placements for adoption can be complex and time-consuming, which can result in longer stays in foster care.
Children adopted in FY 2004 by a family who lived in another State had been in foster care an average of one year longer than children adopted by a family within their State of residence (50 months compared to 38 months). This raises concerns because lengthy stays in foster care, and the multiple placements that often result (e.g., moving among foster families or group homes), can have a negative impact on a children's mental health and well-being and their ability to make smooth transitions to an adoptive families (Arnold-Williams & Oppenheim, 2004; Christian & Ekman, 2000; Freundlich & Wright, 2003). In addition, children who were adopted by families in other States were one year older at the time of the adoption than children who were adopted by families within their State of residence (7.5 years compared to 6.6 years), although the age at which they entered foster care was about the same (3.5 years old). This is of concern because several studies have shown that the rate of adoption disruptions and dissolutions4 increases with the age of the child at the time of adoption (Barth, Berry, Goodfield, & Carson, 1987; Barth, Berry, Yoshikami, Goodfield, & Carson, 1988; Festinger, 1986; Festinger, 2005; Goerge, Howard, & Yu, 1996; Groze, 1986).
Child welfare experts have long understood the importance of safe, secure, nurturing families to children's positive growth and development. While most children in foster care will return to their birth families, thousands of other children will find permanent homes with other families. These families may include relatives who adopt them, become their guardians, or accept custody of them. These also may include foster families they know and families they do not know who adopt them. Adoption can provide children with not only a legal permanent family, but also a "stable, secure relationship that gives children a psychological sense of belonging" that lasts well into adulthood (Christian & Ekman, 2000, p. 8). Many of these children may find permanent families with relatives or others who adopt them in States other than the one in which they live. However, the infrastructure and processes for interjurisdictional adoptions and relative placements currently do not support timely achievement of this goal. Federal, State, and local action must be taken to remove barriers that delay placements of children in foster care into appropriate permanent homes, regardless of where those homes are located.
Notes
1Unless otherwise noted, the data in this section are from the U.S. DHHS Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS), including published AFCARS reports online at http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/stats_research/index.htm#afcars (2005a) and special data analyses conducted for this report (U.S. DHHS, 2005c). Fiscal year 2004 data are preliminary. back
2Other interstate placements were used to achieve emancipation or involved children being transferred to another agency or who had run away. back
3AFCARS is the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, U.S. DHHS' official data collection and reporting system for foster care and adoption statistics. back
4Adoptions disrupt when children placed with pre-adoptive families leave before the adoptions are legally finalized. Adoptions dissolve when children leave their adoptive families after adoptions are legally finalized. back
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