A Bill to Establish an Adoption Process Improvement Pilot Program

Floor Speech

By Mr. ROBERTS: -- (Senate - November 16, 2007)

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By Mrs. CLINTON (for herself and Mr. ROCKEFELLER):

S. 2395. A bill to establish an adoption process improvement pilot program; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I am here today to introduce legislation in honor of National Adoption Day that will address the needs of children waiting to be adopted from our Nation's foster care system. These are children who are unable to return home to their natural parents and are in need of permanent, loving, adoptive homes. In recent years, Congress has acted to implement supports for this population by creating programs that allow states to pursue creative and innovative methods for increasing foster care adoptions. However, today, tens of thousands of children are still waiting for families. There is still more work to be done.

According to current federal estimates, there are 114,000 children in foster care with the goal of adoption. Of these, only 13 percent are living in a pre-adoptive home. Moreover, each year in the public child welfare system, more children are made eligible for adoption than find permanent adoptive homes. For example, in fiscal year 2005--the most recent year for which statistics are available--states finalized 15,000 more terminations of parental rights than adoptions. Taken together, these statistics describe a tremendous pool of children lingering in foster care, waiting for a ``forever family.'' We know the longer children languish in foster care, the more they are at risk for developing a range of psychological, behavioral, and educational problems. Therefore, permanence for these children is essential.

Child welfare professionals across the country lament a lack of adoptive families for children in foster care. However, an untapped resource exists. A recent study conducted by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in collaboration with Harvard University and the Urban Institute notes that, in a given year, 240,000 people will call for information about adopting a child from foster care, but only a fraction will see the process through to adoption. This research states that prospective parents are often alienated from the adoption process at an early stage; these individuals experience unpleasant initial contacts and report difficulty in navigating the adoption process. Out of frustration, they abandon their pursuit of bringing a foster child permanently into their home. Therefore, I am pleased to introduce the Adoption Improvement Act of 2007. This legislation establishes funding for a demonstration project aimed at reducing the attrition of prospective parents from the adoption process. Participating states will implement a rigorous program that strengthens the first contact prospective adopters have when they make that critical, initial inquiry into adopting a child. The bill calls on programs to include a specialized adoption hotline; hire employees who are trained to respond to callers' requests sensitively and efficiently; and incorporate the input of parents who have already adopted children from foster care. In addition, programs will provide explicit information to parents about how to make their way through the various adoption procedures; describe the rewards and challenges of the adoption process; and establish a buddy system that partners prospective parents with those who have already adopted foster children successfully. Finally, all agencies in the demonstration project will participate in a thorough program evaluation.

This month is National Adoption Month, and tomorrow, November 17, 2007, is National Adoption Day--a day to celebrate the families that have already been joined through adoption, and to call attention to the thousands of children still waiting for permanent homes. I am delighted to join Senators LANDRIEU and COLEMAN in their forthcoming resolution acknowledging the importance of National Adoption Month and National Adoption Day. I encourage my colleagues in Congress to take the messages of this resolution and my bill with them, beyond just this November, into the future.

The national data compel us to take action. Too many children in our Nation's foster care system are in desperate need of stable, loving homes, and there are thousands of potential parents out there yearning to provide them. I would like to thank my colleague Senator ROCKEFELLER for joining me in this important effort. Please join me in bringing these groups together so that children in foster care can find the families they deserve.

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