child care - Digital Library Collections

CHILDREN AND FAMILIES IN CRISIS
in foster care. Some prOVISIOns are intended to
accelerate decisions about children's permanent
care and expedite proceedings to terminate parental
rights (a necessary precursor to adoption). The
legislation also gives states fiscal incentives to
move children into adoptive families. For example,
states that increase the number of adoptions of
foster children (in a given year over a base year)
will be rewarded fmancially, with higher payments
for certain children. The standard payment will be
$4,000 per child, but states will receive $6,000 per
child for adoptions of children with special needs
(children with physical, mental, or emotional problems,
children who are adopted together with their
siblings, and children who, because of age, race, or
ethnicity, could not be adopted without
assistance).
A number of these reforms build on changes
already under way in states. During 1997 the General
Accounting Office, the American Bar Association's
Center on Children and the Law, and the
New England Association of Child Welfare Commissioners
and Directors all highlighted positive
state activities. These include efforts to expedite
permanency hearings, streamline termination of
parental rights proceedings, increase adoptions, develop
new service strategies to promote the stable
reunification of families, and train staff to plan for
reunification while concurrently developing an alternative
permanency plan for each child. State
courts meanwhile are moving children more
promptly through the judicial system, often with
the help of the State Court Improvement Program
reauthorized by Congress as part of the Adoption
and Safe Families Act.
Expediting permanency decisions. New York
City's past experience in placing children in adoptive
homes illustrates the bureaucratic barriers to
adoption. Dr. Trudy Festinger of the Shirley M.
Ehrenkranz School of Social Work at New York
University reviewed the records of children in outof-home
care who were adopted in 1995, most with
state financial support. The children's median age
at adoption was 7.3 years old, although their median
age at the time they were placed with their
adoptive family was 2. In 85 percent of the cases,
the parental rights of at least one parent had to be
terminated fust in court, a process that is too frequently
dragged out. Even after parental rights
were terminated, delays continued. Although New
York law permits the filing of an adoption petition
Figure 5.2
years, and about onein
foster ca re in these
six states returned ta
sixth were eventually
adopted, another one-
sixth remained in some
form of public care for
at least six years.
What Becomes of Children In Foster Care? A Look at Six States·
Although most children
their families within two
~ 100
8
Cl
.§ 2 75
c:
" c:
~
::!1 50
:2 u
'0g,
25
Discharge status of children on December 31, 1994,
by year of entry into foster care
.E c:
"~
&. 0
1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993
Earlyentranls .....1-------------------..
_ Discharged 10 family _ Other e,it" • Adapled - SliII in ca,e
1994
Recent entran"
·Californio, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New York, and Texas.
o. Includes children who reach the age of majority while still in core, runaways, children who attain
independence, those moved to juvenile detention or other public facilities, and some for whom the
discharge destination is unknown or unspecified.
Source: Fred H. Wulczyn, Allen W. Harden, and Robert M. George, Foster Core Dynamics
1983-1994, An Update from the Multistote Foster Core Data Archive (Chopin Hall Center for
Children ot the University of Chicogo, 1997).
CHI L D R EN'S D E FEN S E FUN D 67