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News Release

HHS AWARDS $14.9 MILLION IN BONUSES TO STATES FOR INCREASING THE NUMBER OF ADOPTIONS OF FOSTER CHILDREN

HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today announced approximately $14.9 million in bonuses paid to 25 states and Puerto Rico for increasing the number of children adopted from state-supervised foster care in fiscal year 2002. In states that qualify for bonuses, 3,703 more children were adopted in fiscal year 2002 than in the previous year.

"Every time a waiting child finds a loving, permanent home, it helps not only the child, but the family and the nation," Secretary Thompson said. "These bonuses reflect the successful efforts in the states to promote adoptions from their foster-care systems. We will continue to encourage states to go the extra mile when it comes to finding the right home for each child in need."

HHS' Administration on Children and Families (ACF) provides a bonus payment to each state that completed more adoptions in 2002 than in each of the five previous years. Each qualifying state receives a bonus of $4,000 per child adopted beyond its next best year's total. States may also receive a bonus of $2,000 for each child with special needs adopted beyond the largest number of special needs children adopted in any of the previous five years.

"It is gratifying to realize that behind the adoption statistics there are real children and real families who have found each other," said Wade F. Horn, Ph.D., assistant secretary for children and families. "States are to be commended for working hard to match waiting foster children with families who will love them forever."

Each year about 51,000 children nationwide are adopted from foster care. The bonuses awarded today are authorized under a provision of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. ACF is the agency within HHS that oversees federal foster care and adoption programs, as well as other programs to promote the economic and social well-being of children and families.

Adoption incentives have been highly successful in encouraging states to increase the annual number of adoptions performed. President Bush's fiscal year 2004 budget includes a proposal to extend the program, including a new focus on successful state efforts to find adoptive families for children age nine and older, who continue to wait in foster care despite overall improvements in adoption performance.

Other efforts to promote adoption include a Web site, http://www.adoptuskids.org, that links children in foster care with potential adoptive families across the country. Launched by President Bush in July 2002, the AdoptUSKids site features photographs and biographies of some 3,700 children in foster care and steers interested families to the appropriate state agency for information about specific children. HHS is working with the Ad Council on a national advertising campaign whose planned launch date is spring 2004, to publicize the site and encourage adoption from foster care. In addition, the President has named movie star Bruce Willis to be the nation's spokesperson on the issue of adoption from foster care.

The list of states and the amount of each bonus follows.

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Note: All HHS press releases, fact sheets and other press materials are available at http://www.hhs.gov/news.

Last Revised: September 12, 2003