1. Washington State Indian Child Welfare Act (SB 5656)
2. Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (Pub. L. No. 104–193)
3. Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 (Pub. L. No. 103–382)
4. Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (Pub. L. No. 105–89)
5. Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (Pub. L. No. 95–608)
6. Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (Pub. L. No. 96–272)
7. Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974 (Pub. L. No. 93–247)
8. Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 (Pub. L. No. 110–351)
9. Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act of 2011 (Pub. L. No. 112–34)
WASHINGTON STATE INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ACT (SB 5656)
The Washington State Indian Child Welfare Act was passed in April 2011. It is designed to codify as state law the provisions of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, which ensures (1) that every effort will be taken to place Indian children in homes with their extended families or their respective tribes in order to maintain the rights and preserve the unique values and culture of Native American children who are unable to reside with their biological parents, and (2)that, if the children are unable to reside with their tribe, then the state will make every effort to place the children in foster homes that will respect and foster the children’s cultural, social, and spiritual needs for their specific development. The state act also clarifies key terms within the federal act. The Washington act was a reaction to what was deemed a disproportionate number of removals of Indian children from their families and tribes by state courts and welfare agencies. This led to unnecessary levels of cultural disorientation and child vulnerability, an accusation that has become less common since the passage of the act.
The Washington State Indian Child Welfare Act is essentially an attempt to keep displaced Indian children within their own families or extended families. For example, it dictates that when a child is domiciled within an Indian reservation or has been made a ward of a tribal court, the state court must transfer the child’s case to the tribal court. If an Indian child is not domiciled within an Indian reservation and there is no objection from either parent or cause for alternate action, the act obligates the state court to transfer the child’s case to the appropriate tribal court upon the motion of either of the child’s parents, the child’s Indian custodian, the child’s tribe, or the child, if he or she is at least twelve years of age. If the state court does not transfer the child’s case to an appropriate tribal court, it must do everything in its power to reunite the family. If the state court should deem an out-of-home placement is necessary, it must give preference to the child’s extended family and then to other tribal and Indian homes.
Other provisions in the act cover the right of the Indian child, the child’s tribe, or the child’s Indian custodian to intervene in child custody proceedings; court-appointed counsel for the parent or Indian custodian; and notification of the Indian tribe when emergency removal has been evidenced and occurs. In cases of involuntary foster care placement, a qualified expert witness will be called upon to confirm and support the determination that the continued residence of the Indian child with his or her parents or tribe will cause serious emotional or physical harm to the child. The act provides a list of placement preferences, including a setting that most approximates a family situation, that is in close proximity to the Indian child’s home, and in which the Indian child’s special needs can be met. Preference is given to members of the child’s extended family, Indian foster homes, foster homes approved by the child’s tribe, and non-Indian families that are either approved by the child’s tribe or committed to promoting family and tribe visitation, maintaining the child’s relationship with the tribe, and participating in cultural events pertaining to the child’s heritage. The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, Children’s Administration is to consult with Indian tribes to establish standards and procedures for its review of cases subject to the act, as well as methods for monitoring its compliance with the federal and state acts. These standards, procedures, and methods are to be integrated into the child welfare contracting and contract monitoring process.
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND WORK OPPORTUNITY RECONCILIATION ACT OF 1996 (PUB. L. NO. 104–193)
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) was drafted and introduced in Congress in response to the rising opposition to and criticism of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. AFDC was widely recognized as being ineffective and causing cyclical patterns of poverty, with a high percentage of cases involving welfare fraud. Congress had identified dependency, out-of-wedlock birth, and intergenerational poverty as the main contributors to a welfare system in need of reform. The welfare reforms in PRWORA became law when President Bill Clinton signed the act on August 22, 1996. At the time President Clinton stated that PRWORA “is the best chance we have fir a long time to complete the work of ending welfare as we know it” (Kilborn & Verhovek 1996, 1). The act was also a fulfillment of the Republican Contract with America, a document released by the Republican Party outlining a series of issues that Republican congressional representatives would resolve should they become the House majority.
The PRWORA took effect on July 1, 1997. Title I replaced the AFDC program and the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training program with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grants to states. The grants were available to those states that passed a basic set of requirements evidencing the ability to design their own systems, and these states were required to use 80 percent of their funding with activities related to TANF. As part of PRWORA’s effort to end welfare as an entitlement program, it declared the following persons ineligible to receive TANF funding: those who had received a cumulative lifetime total of five years of assistance, those who had been convicted of drug-related felonies, those who don’t cooperate with child support enforcement requirements, and unmarried teen parents, who are required to stay in school and live in an adult-supervised household. TANF also includes a series of work requirements for those receiving aid, including participation in community service two months after the person begins receiving welfare benefits and participation in employment after two years of receiving these benefits.
The act is also a reaction to an opinion prevalent at the time that America’s welfare system constituted a pull factor for potential immigrants that had detrimental domestic effects. As a result, the act reduces funding for all immigrant welfare programs and withholds professional and occupational licenses from illegal immigrants. It has instituted measures to discourage births out of wedlock and encourage two-parent families, including reducing aid for unmarried parents under age eighteen. A key aim of the act is to enhance efforts to collect child support and preclude attempts by noncustodial parents to avoid making child support payments. The act has also improved existing procedures for ensuring that custodial parents received child support.
The House Ways and Means Committee declared that the act does not intend to abolish “the function of welfare as a safety net for families experiencing temporary financial problems,” but rather it aims to “reduce the length of welfare spells by attacking dependency” (Debate Politics, 11). Over six years, PRWORA cut $55 billion from funding for low-income programs, including basic programs for low-income children and families, the elderly, immigrants, and those with disabilities. Its passage was followed by a period of decline in both welfare and poverty rates in the late 1990s that has been said to be an effect of PRWORA.
MULTIETHNIC PLACEMENT ACT OF 1994 (PUB. L. NO. 103–382)
Congress observed that, with nearly 500,000 children in foster care in the United States and tens of thousands of them waiting an average of two years and eight months for adoption, something needed to be done to broaden and expedite the process of both recruiting foster parents and processing adoptions. A key obstacle to the effectiveness of the foster care and adoption systems identified by Congress was racial, ethnic, and national origin constraints placed on the process of selecting foster and adoptive families and pairing them with children in need of care. Children of color—who made up over 60 percent of those in foster care nationwide in 1994—were waiting twice as long for permanent homes as were other foster children because of the tendency to match the racial and ethnic backgrounds of the child and foster parents. In the Multiethnic Placement Act (MEPA) Congress proposed to remove all such constraints from U.S. foster care and adoption systems in the hope that such action would speed up the process, thus reducing the length of time children needed to wait for foster and adoptive placement. It leveraged this policy by denying federal assistance to any agency or entity that denies parents or children the opportunity to become adoptive or foster parents or find placement in a foster or adoptive home, respectively. Congress’s suggested alternative to racial and ethnic discrimination in child placement is that foster and adoptive families be identified and recruited based on the needs of each specific child.
MEPA was enacted October 20, 1994. The first major provision of this act prevents state agencies from delaying, denying, or otherwise discriminating when making a foster care or adoption placement decision on the basis of the parent’s or child’s race, color, or national origin. This rule applies to state agencies and other entities that receive federal funding and are involved in foster care or adoption placements. These agencies are also prohibited from selecting foster parents solely on the basis of race, color, or national origin. The act, however, does allow for consideration of the cultural, ethnic, or racial background of a child in relation to the capacity of potential adoptive or foster parents to meet the needs of a child with that background when making a placement decision. These factors are considered only if required, in particular cases, to serve the best interest of the child in need of placement. Lastly, MEPA requires state agencies to develop plans to recruit adoptive and foster parents who can carry out the act—specifically, families that reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of the children in need of placement. By doing so, there will be families that can care for the children of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. The act intends to provide stable homes for children according to their individual needs and to allow for more parents of color to become adoptive or foster parents in order to meet those needs. Some problems in implementation have included (1) harmonizing the act with caseworkers’ and practitioners’ beliefs about the role of racial and ethnic background in the placement of children in adoptive or foster care and (2) developing an effective federal compliance monitoring system.
ADOPTION AND SAFE FAMILIES ACT OF 1997 (PUB. L. NO. 105–89)
The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) was signed by President Clinton in order to promote the adoption of more children in foster care, while increasing the focus on the health and safety of the child. For example, it reauthorized the Family Preservation and Support Services Program and renamed it the Safe and Stable Families Program. The act’s first goals are to ensure safety for abused and neglected children and to accelerate the adoption process for children. Means to meet these goals include adding the clause “safety of the child” to every step of the case plan and requiring more criminal background checks of the potential foster parents. The state will then ensure removal of children from dangerous homes and their placement in safe ones. The act also requires states to initiate court proceedings to free a child for adoption if the child has been in foster care placement for at least fifteen of the most recent twenty-two months. This way the state will be responsible for expediting efforts to find permanent homes for children.
Much of this act was a response to the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, which influenced many decisions to preserve families and keep children with their biological parents. ASFA demonstrates the shift in thinking to the health and safety of the child rather than keeping parents and children together, regardless of prior abuse or neglect. With this shift, the state has to focus on removal of children from unsafe homes or abusive parents. The act ensures either that the children’s homes will stabilize sooner or that the adoption of the children will not be delayed. One lead sponsor of the act, Republican Senator John H. Chafee, said, “We will not continue the current system of always putting the needs and rights of the biological parents first. … It’s time we recognize that some families simply cannot and should not be kept together” (Seelye 1997, 1). In greeting the final measure, President Clinton said that the act “makes clear that children’s health and safety are the paramount concerns” (Access America Government Services 1998, 1).
INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ACT OF 1978 (PUB. L. NO. 95–608)
The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) aims to protect the rights of Indian tribes, promote the health of their children, and restrict the unfair treatment of the tribes by giving more voice to the tribal governments concerning the removal of children from Indian homes. Many Indian children were being removed from their homes, which, with or without justification, were deemed unsafe for them, and then adopted into new homes—without adequate consideration of the cultural differences or the relationships among the child, family, and tribe. Some studies showed that around one in four Indian children was being placed into a non-Indian home—which potentially harms the child, as well the culture and health of the tribe. ICWA establishes minimum federal standards for the removal of Indian children from their families and requires that Indian children be placed in foster or adoptive homes that reflect Indian culture.
The intent of the act is to give due respect to the Indian tribes and prevent the breakup of Indian families and culture. Removing children from their family culture and from their tribal culture risks damaging both the child (personally) and the tribe (culturally). The act also is actively aimed at improving the relationship between the tribal and state governments, creating exclusive tribal jurisdiction over all Indian child custody proceedings at request of American Indian tribes and requiring courts to give full faith and credit to tribal court decrees. The act further is intended to provide proper notice, communication, and respect across the cultural barriers in order to do what is best for the children in need, while not dismissing or disregarding those cultural barriers.
ADOPTION ASSISTANCE AND CHILD WELFARE ACT OF 1980 (PUB. L. NO. 96–272)
The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act aims to reunite children and parents or to have children adopted if family reunification is not in their best interests. There is special reference to children identified as “special needs”—those who cannot be returned to their parents’ care and cannot be placed in care without assistance. President Jimmy Carter, who signed the act in June 1980, said that there were 500,000 children in foster care at the time and that half of them had been away from their families for over two years, though their foster care placements were meant to be temporary. This major federal legislation is one of the first child welfare acts that recognizes the need for permanency planning and discourages long-term placement of children in foster care.
The act requires the state to make “reasonable efforts” and plan for reunification and preventative programs to expedite family reunification because of the lack of accountability by those who are responsible for either reuniting children with their parents or finding them other permanent placements when family reunification is no longer the permanency goal. If the biological parents are unable to be reunited with their child, then the state is required to place the child close to his or her home. The act also ensures a written case plan for the child, as well as court reviews regarding the status of the child every six months to determine what is in the child’s best interest. Specific permanency plans have to be made for the eighteen-month dispositional review; permanency goals include family reunification, adoption, and continued foster care placement. The act also included provisions to help states provide funds for adoption expenses for children identified as “special needs.” In many cases children who had been abused and neglected in their own homes were removed from the care of their biological parents and placed in out-of-home care. The act also refines the foster care system so that children will not have multiple foster care placements but rather alternative permanent placements when family reunification is no longer a viable permanency goal. However, the act does stipulate that reasonable efforts must be made to reunify a child with his or her biological parents.
CHILD ABUSE PREVENTION AND TREATMENT ACT OF 1974 (PUB. L. NO. 93–247)
The creation and passage of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) took over a decade, resulting from growing concern over child abuse, which had received increasing coverage in the media and which was the subject of more research into scope of the problem, especially after lawyers, judges, hospitals, social workers, and others began discussing increasing reports of abuse. It was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on January 31, 1974, and has been amended several times since its enactment.
CAPTA provides federal funding to support the prevention of child abuse through research and demonstration projects on the causes, prevention, identification, assessment, and treatment of child abuse and neglect; the development and implementation of evidence-based training programs; and technical assistance to grantees and communities through national resource centers and the Child Welfare Information Gateway. These funds are provided to state and local agencies and organizations, as well as university- and hospital-affiliated programs. The act also established the Office on Child Abuse and Neglect and mandated the National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information.
CAPTA sets forth a minimum definition of child abuse and neglect. The act defines child abuse and neglect as “at a minimum, any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker, which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation, or an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm” (Goldman, Salius, Wolcott, & Kennedy 2003, 1).
FOSTERING CONNECTIONS TO SUCCESS AND INCREASING ADOPTIONS ACT OF 2008 (PUB. L. NO. 110–351)
On October 7, 2008, President George W. Bush signed into law the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act. This act improves health care and education for children in foster care and promotes their long-term stability by encouraging relative guardianship and adoption. Additionally, in reaction to the charge that children in foster care are forced out of care at age eighteen with connections and resources inadequate to ensure their success as adults, the act extends federal support for children in foster care to age twenty-one. It also authorizes grants to state, local, and tribal child welfare agencies for use in helping children at risk of needing foster care reconnect with their families. States can claim federal reimbursement of costs incurred while training guardians, agency personnel, neglect court agents, attorneys, and court-appointed special advocates. In addition, the act extends Title IV-E funding opportunities for foster care, adoption assistance, and kinship guardianship assistance to Native American tribes that apply. The act requires fingerprint-based criminal records checks of all relative guardians and of other adults living in the guardian’s home, and it doubles the incentives for special needs and older child adoptions. The crux of the act is its institution of guardianship assistance payments for relatives of children in foster care who decide to assume legal guardianship for those children.
CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES IMPROVEMENT AND INNOVATION ACT OF 2011 (PUB. L. NO. 112–34)
On September 30, 2011, President Barack Obama signed the Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act. Title I of this act extends through fiscal year 2016 the authorization of appropriations for the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Child Welfare Services Program, initially put in place by the Child and Family Services part of the Social Security Act. The act also requires that each state include in any attempt to coordinate health care services for children in foster care an outline of how it proposes to monitor psychotropic medications and emotional trauma in maltreated children, as well as a description of the measures taken to reduce the time children under the age of five are without a permanent home. The act requires that such explanations also address how states will identify and treat the developmental needs of children using services provided by the Child and Family Services Program. Title I requires that caseworkers complete 90 percent of the number of visits they would have completed if they had visited each child in foster care at a rate of once monthly.
Title I also extends the Safe and Stable Families Program through fiscal year 2016 and requires that states provide peer-to-peer parent and caregiver mentoring and support group services. It requires that state reports—including tables on planned and actual spending, among other things—be compiled by the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and published online for public viewing. Title I extends specified reservations of funding for monthly caseworker visits through fiscal year 2016 and requires that a portion of those funds be used to improve the quality of such visits and the analysis resulting from them.
Title II of the act renews through fiscal year 2014 the authority of the secretary of DHHS to authorize states to conduct child welfare program demonstration projects likely to promote the objectives of the act and specifies conditions under which states may be eligible to conduct new demonstration projects. It also authorizes states to establish programs that address domestic violence and other preconditions for the placement of children in foster care.
REFERENCES
Goldman, J., Salius, M. K., Wolcott, D, & Kennedy, K. Y. (2003). A coordinated response to child abuse and neglect: The foundation for practice (p. 1). Washington, DC: U. S. Children’s Bureau, Office on Child Abuse and Neglect.
Kilborn, P. T., & Verhovek, S. H. (1996, August 2). Clinton’s welfare shift ends tortuous journey. The New York Times, p. 1.
Seelye, K. Q. (1997, November 9). Clinton to approve sweeping shift in adoption. The New York Times, p. 1.