Trends in U.S. Foster Care Adoption Legislation

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Introduction

According to the most recent data available, 114,000 children in the United States foster care system were waiting to be adopted in 2005. These children have come into the foster care system due to abuse or neglect, and the public child welfare agencies have determined that adoption is their best option for achieving permanency. During that same year, however, only 51,000 children were adopted from foster care (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2006). Children waiting to be adopted are older (8.6 versus 6.7 years) than their adopted counterparts and have been in care for three and a half years, on average.

A clear gap exists between the number of children waiting to be adopted and the number actually adopted from foster care each year. This gap is caused by a number of factors, including states' struggles to recruit families to adopt children from foster care and a complex and lengthy adoption process. In 2004, the National Adoption Day Coalition research report identified the primary barriers and promising approaches states report in moving foster children into adoptive homes, as noted in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Child and Family Services Reviews. Last year, the National Adoption Day Coalition commissioned the Urban Institute to conduct a study to look more closely at how states find adoptive homes for children in foster care, a key barrier reported in 2004. This report described interest in adoption, actions taken to adopt, and the state of adoption recruitment in the United States.

In each of the two previous years, our research has focused on how policy and practice work together to move children from foster care to adoption. This year, the research focuses on a different tool for adoption reform, state legislatures. This report provides a first look at legislation specifically related to the adoption of children from foster care, that is, foster care adoption, introduced in the 50 state legislatures and the District of Columbia between 2002 and 2006. Using various legislative databases and state legislative web sites, research staff identified and coded all bills related explicitly to foster care adoption. For more information on methodology, see appendix B. In addition to identifying trends in foster care adoption legislation, this analysis also takes an in-depth look at eight bills, to understand the legislative process surrounding adoption. Finally, this report examines services that support families after they adopt children from foster care, called post-adoption services and supports.

This report comes at a critical time. The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), passed in 1997, greatly increased efforts to move children from foster care to permanent homes in a timely manner. In response to ASFA, state legislatures have had to respond to comply with this bill. While adoption has always been a matter of state rather than federal law, we anticipated that state legislatures would be responding to ASFA as they often do to federal legislation, by introducing and passing related legislation. However, this analysis indicates that state legislatures are active in the area of foster care adoption and that much of this legislation is introduced not in direct response to federal legislation, but perhaps rather as part of efforts to address barriers to adoption in the states.

Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF). (File Size: 5 MB)

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

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