Press release from Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute: "EXPANDING RESOURCES FOR WAITING CHILDREN II"
Wed, 2008-09-24 15:44 - Kerry
NEW YORK, Sept. 25, 2008 - The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute released a major new report today that offers recommendations to increase the pool of prospective adoptive parents for children in foster care by changing state laws and agency practices so they become more welcoming of gay and lesbian applicants.
"There has long been a consensus in our country, at its best manifested in legislation and practice, that we need to do all we can for vulnerable children," said Adam Pertman, Executive Director of the Adoption Institute. "But today - even though tens of thousands of children need homes and the research clearly shows that gays and lesbians make fine parents - there are efforts in states like Arkansas to impose restrictions on qualified applicants simply because of their sexual orientation."
"Every minute we retain the status quo, rather than expanding the pool of qualified prospective parents, undermines the prospects of boys and girls who need permanent, loving families," Pertman added. "It's way past time for the needs of these `waiting' children to finally make it onto the national stage."
The Adoption Institute's 50-page report, "Expanding Resources for Waiting Children II: Eliminating Legal and Practice Barriers to Gay and Lesbian Adoption from Foster Care," provides specific, research-based findings and recommendations relating to state laws and adoption agency policies. The recommendations include:
- State policies should explicitly recognize foster parenting by gays and lesbians, and laws that inhibit or prohibit adoption by non-heterosexual individuals and couples (such as in Florida and Utah) should be rescinded; applicants should be judged on their qualifications, not their sexual orientation.
- State laws should serve children's best interests by permitting joint and second-parent adoptions, and all states should give "full faith and credit" to adoptions legally completed in other states, without regard to the marital status or sexual orientation of the adoptive parents.
- Agencies should assess their policies and practices to ensure that they are welcoming - in recruitment, training and post-placement services - for all qualified family resources who want to provide homes for children in foster care, including gay/lesbian individuals and couples.
This report builds on the Institute's 2006 Policy & Practice Perspective, Expanding Resources for Waiting Children: Is Adoption by Gays and Lesbians Part of the Answer? Among the findings in the new report are:
- Research shows gays/lesbians are effective parents and are an important resource for waiting children. Major medical and child-advocacy groups overwhelmingly support these adoptions.
- Excluding gays and lesbians from fostering carries significant economic consequences. A conservative estimate of a national ban puts the total costs to states at $87 million to $130 million.
For more information about this report, or to schedule an interview, please contact Adam Pertman at 617-332-8944 or apertman@adoptioninstitute.org. The Institute is an independent, nonpartisan nonprofit organization. Its mission is to improve the lives of millions of people by working for better laws, policies and practices. To learn more about our work, please visit our award-winning website, www.adoptioninstitute.org.
To access the full report, go to: http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/research/2008_09_expand_resources.php
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Interesting choice in words...
I would like to think child safety and freedom from child trafficking, harmful placement, and abusive/negligent money-motivated practices are in the best interest of a child, but it seems the good folks at the adoption institute still want to capture the attention of those adults who think it's a human right to have a child.
"For the sake of suffering children", lets increase adoption numbers... yes, indeed, let's make sure the US remains an adoption-friendly society because only through adoption will children be saved from sexual predators and other forms of child abuse. <note the dripping sarcasm>
It's TIME!
It's really TIME; not: "It's way past time for the needs of these `waiting' children to finally make it onto the national stage."
Time for what? People to get their heads out of their selfish arses and see where they can help the waiting children IN their
NOW situations!
Why do people always have to GET something more than what they give? A few bucks, and in the name of doing a good deed they expect a perfect child who will mend their broken marriage or make them famous, like Madonna.
Sexual perverts, in my opinion ONLY, are some of the ones out there beating the bushes TO adopt; to con some agency into believing they just LOVE children! And waiting children are the very ones being sent to poorly investigated PAP's! And, to adopt a waiting child, there are FEWER requirements!
And yes, while I'm at it: Clay Aiken has been FRONT AND CENTER in children's lives for many years, and THAT, along with his coming out of the closet AND having a woman surrogate a baby for him, makes me see HUGE red flags! ALSO his constant mantra that he is a "born again Christian;" and my skeptical views of a lot of professed born-again-Christians is just one more thing to make me step back and truly look at people in a different light. Adoption agencies had better take another look before
putting their stamp of approval on people; with all the PROOF there is out there that adoption has taken a turn for the worse.
"I can be changed by what happens to me, I refuse to be reduced by it." M.A.
One Step Up From Bottom
Teddy
Is there truly a problem or just mismanagement of the situation?
I don't want to get into the debate whether gay or lesbian couples are suitable to raise children. On the one hand I don't see an intrinsic inability based on someones sexual preference. The variance in ability to raise children is probably much larger within either the group of hetero sexual couples or the group of homosexual couples, than the variance between the two groups. On the other hand I don't think gay and lesbian rights should be an argument in child placement decisions.
What I do want to focus on is, the underlying assumption and promoted solution by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. The assumption is there are too many children in the foster care system and while they don't use the word "languish" this time around, it is impicitly there by means of the phrase "undermines the prospects of boys and girls who need permanent, loving families".
The big question here is of course: are there actually too many children in foster care in the US, and if so, is it really dramatic?
I made a quick comparison between the number of children in foster care in the US and the Netherlands and don't see much of a difference. Accoring to AFCARS, ca. 510,000 children were in foster care in the US in 2006. In that same year around 20,000 children were in Dutch foster care. I couldn't find the numbers of children under 18 in both countries, but did find the percentage of people under 15 for both countries (20.1% v 17.6%). So its fair to assume the population in the US has more children per capita by a factor of 1.14.
If we now divide the number of children in foster care by the total population of each country and multiply the Dutch figures with the correction factor of 1.14, we see that the USA has 0.18% of the total population is in foster care compared to 0,14% in the Netherlands.
So while there is a difference between the relative population in foster care between the US and the Netherlands, it is not a dramatic difference, yet the perception of the problem is dramatically different. In the US it is perceived as a crisis that needs radical approaches to bring down the numbers, while in the Netherlands it is perceived as a given that needs to be addressed appropriately.
How come two countries respond so differently to relatively comparable situations?
I guess, much has to do with quality of the American foster care system and the influence of private child placement organizations on the political discourse around the topic.
As with many public services, the US foster care system is viewed with much more skepticism than is the case in the Netherlands and most other European countries. While sentiments of a greedy, do-nothing government live on both sides of the pond, those sentiments play a much larger role in the US decision making over public funding than in Europe. As a result many public services are under-funded and perform poorly. It is very much a self-fulfilling prophecy: give the government too little money to do a proper job, to later conclude the government is doing a lousy job and all money spent has been a waste.
At the same time the private sector has been promoting adoption from foster care ever since the late 1970's, when the number of babies available started to dwindle. Agencies very much wanted to stay in business even when the "problem" they addressed had actually been solved. Adoption agencies should have simply gone out of business, but instead started to diversify. Some went abroad to explore the market of inter-country adoptions, others started looking at the lucrative market of adoption from foster care. What was nothing more than a business ploy, was transformed into a charitable motive and large corporations, such as Wall*Mart, Target,, Wendy's and Freddie Mac saw it as an opportunity to show a social face to society.
Neither of the above motives have anything to do with the interest of children and belong purely in the realm of politics and business opportunities.
I believe the US needs a proper foster care system, some children may not belong in the system at all and should be taken back to their families, other's need better care than they get and in general, something should be done about the high turnover rate of case workers and the work load involved. A little more government spending could make the system worth the investment instead of a waste of money. Maintaining current policies is penny wise but pound foolish.
Me neither, Niels....
Niels said: "I don't want to get into the debate whether gay or lesbian couples are suitable to raise children."
I have a problem with false pretenses and people with hidden agendas...
"I can be changed by what happens to me, I refuse to be reduced by it."
M.A. One Step Up From Bottom
Teddy
sin in single-parenting
I suppose the only time it's a sin to be a single-parent is if you are a pregnant, female and live in a religious God-fearing community. Thank God we have Maternity Homes to take care of that ("little"?) social problem!
Is US and EU foster care the same?
Interesting analysis Niels!
I just would like to add the following: do both parts of the world define foster homes in the same way. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think it includes in the US also foster homes, which we in Europe would qualify as family type homes. In Europe foster care always means family care.
within the same order
I'd really have to look up the difference in the definition of foster care in Europe and the US. If you are correct that the US figures include child placement arrangements not included in the European figures, it only strengthens the point I made. It would mean that the relative number of children in foster care in the Netherlands (according to the American definition) is even higher than I stated.
Irrespective the actual definition of foster care, the quick comparison shows that the problem is in the same order, unlike for example the prison population in the US compared to European countries, where there is a 1000% difference, or the teen pregnancy rate which shows a 800% difference.
It could easily be when everything is factored in, the US still has 50% more foster children relative to the Netherlands, but that's within the margin of variance you would find within Europe as well. The differences would be dramatic if the US had 300% more foster children than the Netherlands, which is certainly not the case.
As far as I can tell the big difference between Europe and the US remains the perception of the problem and the quality of the approach of the issue.