Policy has long played a pivotal role in shaping child welfare practice in the United States. Beginning with the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA) and the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (Public Law 96-272) and continuing through the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) and, most recently, the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008, federal law has had a significant role in shaping child welfare practice, in general, and in setting the contours of permanency planning for children and youth in foster care, in particular. At the state level, policy, as articulated by law and driven by class action lawsuits, has shaped permanency planning and practice. There has been only limited research examining the effect of federal child welfare legislation on outcomes for children, youth, and families, and even less attention has been given to the effect of state level policy.
In this chapter, I examine aspects of federal child welfare policy as set forth in Titles IV-B and IV-E of the Social Security Act, with a particular focus on new policy directions set by ASFA. I consider the small body of research that has informed an understanding of the impact of these federal policies on permanence for older children and youth, and I propose directions for future research. I also briefly consider other developments at the federal policy level that relate to child welfare programming and practices that promote permanency for older children and youth. Finally, I examine aspects of state-level policy that affect permanence for older children and youth.
The federal policy framework for child welfare is primarily set forth in Titles IV-B and IV-E of the Social Security Act (U.S.C. 42, secs. 620-679b). Title IV-B provides federal funding for a range of child welfare services without regard to family income. Subpart 1 of Title IV-B provides funding to states for a broad array of child welfare services that may include services designed to promote permanence for older children and youth, though each state has discretion to select the specific services provided. Subpart 2 was added to Title IV-B in 1993 with the enactment of legislation that created and dedicated federal funds to the Family Preservation and Family Support program. This new program, viewed as “renew[ing] the emphasis of the 1980 Congress on preventive services” (Gordon, 1999:646), was subsequently amended by ASFA and renamed the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program (PSSF). Two additional service areas were added to the two original program areas: time-limited reunification services and adoption promotion and support services (U.S. House of Representatives, 2005).
Title IV-E, also recently amended by ASFA and by the Fostering Connections to Success Act,1 provides states with open-ended federal matching dollars for the placement and support of some children in foster care, with eligibility criteria that continue to pose challenges. Federal support, for example, is available to cover placement costs for only those children whose families would have been eligible for the now-defunct Aid to Families with Dependent Children program as it existed in 1996 and who meet other eligibility requirements. The income eligibility criteria have not been adjusted for inflation since 1996, resulting in increasingly fewer children qualifying for federal foster care assistance (Kids Are Waiting, 2007). In addition, although the foster care provisions of Title IV-E provide financial supports for out-of-home placements of eligible children, including older children and youth, support is not provided for services designed to promote their well-being or ensure that they exit care to permanent families.
Title IV-E also funds adoption assistance for eligible children with “special needs” who are adopted from foster care. The adoption assistance provisions of Title IV-E provide funding to support the adoptions of children who are determined to have particular challenges that may make adoption more challenging to achieve. Each state defines the conditions that constitute special needs, and they commonly consider older children and youth in foster care as eligible for adoption assistance (U.S. House of Representatives, 2005). Federal funds to support the adoption of children from foster care are otherwise quite limited, requiring that states use state and local dollars primarily to recruit, train and provide services for adoptive families. Research suggests that many families, including children's foster families, have reservations about adopting because of uncertainties regarding ongoing financial and service supports (e.g., Child Welfare League of America, 1991; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2002) State policies regarding adoption subsidies for children who are not eligible for federal adoption assistance and the limited availability of postadoption services appear to influence families’ willingness to consider adopting children and youth in foster care (Gibbs et al., 2002). When combined with state policies regarding eligibility to adopt (such as policies that restrict eligibility based on age or sexual orientation), these policies can significantly affect the pool of adoptive families available for older children and youth in foster care.
Under Subparts 1 and 2 of Title IV-B, federal funding is provided for services that can promote the achievement of permanence for older children and youth through reunification with their parents, permanent placement with relatives, or adoption. Little is known, however, about states’ use of funds under Title IV-B, and, consequently, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of these service-dollar investments on permanency outcomes for children and youth. Although states provide Title IV-B plans to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), minimal reporting requirements make reliable data difficult to obtain on states’ use of these dollars (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2006).
With regard to Subpart 1, there are some data regarding the general categories of services that states provide, but little is known about the specific services provided or who is served with these dollars. A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) (2006) report found that states primarily use these dollars to operate child welfare programs and serve families whose children are in foster care. The GAO found that the majority of these funds were spent on staff salaries, with the remaining funds fairly evenly split among administration and management, child protective services, and foster care maintenance payments (which accounted for about 11 percent of Subpart 1 funds) (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2006).
Federal guidelines require that states devote “significant portions” of their Title IV-B, Subpart 2 (PSSF) expenditures to each of the four categories of services that can be provided under that subpart (family support services, family preservation services, time-limited reunification services, and adoption promotion and support services) and that they provide a “strong rationale” for spending less than 20 percent of their allotments on each category (U.S. House of Representatives, 2005). The GAO study (2006) examined states’ uses of Subpart 2 funds and found that states spent over 70 percent of these dollars on services to families, with nearly 50 percent used for family support and family preservation services. The remaining Subpart 2 funds were fairly evenly split among family preservation services (nearly 12 percent), adoption support services (over 11 percent), and family reunification services (about 9 percent).
These data suggest that the federal 20 percent rule for expenditures in each category is not being widely implemented. Although federal dollars are available for family reunification and adoption support under Subpart 2, it appears that these services receive support to a lesser degree than the longer-standing family preservation and family support programs. As the GAO (2006) notes, however, there are state-to-state differences in this regard.
The relatively low level of support for family reunification services is of concern, given studies showing that even when states are committed to ensuring that reasonable efforts are made to reunify children and families when children enter care, they often cite the lack of resources to do so. Studies conducted before the enactment of Subpart 2 made clear that most families were not receiving intensive family preservation services designed to prevent the entry of their children into foster care or to reunify families (Barth and Berry, 1994; Courtney, 1994; Fein and Maluccio, 1992). Mark Courtney (1994), for example, found in a sample of children entering foster care between 1988 and 1991 that close to three-quarters (70 percent) received only emergency response services, one-fifth received no services, and only 10 percent received extensive services. These concerns have persisted, despite federal policy that promotes the provision of reunification services (Hutchinson and Sudia, 2002). In particular, studies have highlighted the limited availability of two types of services that frequently are essential to children's safe reunification with their families: mental health and substance abuse treatment services for parents (O'Flynn, 1999; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999). These findings have important implications for the achievement of permanence through reunification for two groups of children and youth: children who enter foster care at older ages and children who enter care at younger ages but who do not reunify and remain in foster care for extended periods of time.
Because the knowledge base about the use of Title IV-B funds primarily addresses how dollars are generally used and there is little information on who is served with these funds and with what effect, it is not possible to reach conclusions about the role of Title IV-B in supporting and promoting the achievement of permanence for older children and youth. The few studies that have been conducted have focused primarily on family preservation and family support programs and found mixed results (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1997; U.S. House of Representatives, 2005; Washington State Institute for Public Policy, 2006). A better understanding of the impact of Title IV-B in relation to permanence could inform policies regarding the use of funds in both subparts and strengthen future legislative action to enhance the programs funded under this title. Research, for example, is needed to address, among others, the following questions: Are families (birth parents, extended family, adoptive parents) of older children and youth and older children and youth themselves among the primary audiences for the services provided under Title IV-B Subparts 1 and 2? Assuming that data indicate that older children and youth are being served through Subpart 1 and 2 services, what services do they receive? Do these services make permanence more likely for this group of children? Do they speed reunification or permanent placement with relatives? Do they support the timely adoptions for older children and youth who cannot return to their birth families?2
An assessment of Title IV-E's role in supporting the achievement of permanence for older children and youth necessarily rests on an evaluation of the impact of ASFA. Congress passed ASFA with two key goals in mind: to elevate child safety over preventing the placement of children in foster care and over family reunification and to shorten children's stays in care (Barth et al., 2005). The median stay in foster care had grown from fifteen months in 1987 to more than two years in 1996 (U.S. House of Representatives, 2005). Many in Congress viewed the child welfare system as having a “reunification-at-all-costs mentality”; adoption was embraced with “fervent bipartisan support” as the principal way to reduce children's long stays in care (Gordon, 1999:646). Within that context, it is not surprising that ASFA, as enacted, addressed safety less than permanency.
Several key provisions of ASFA are relevant in an examination of federal policy responses to the needs of older children and youth in foster care for permanence: (1) limitations in ASFA on the “reasonable efforts” to reunify families requirement, with the resulting use of a “reunification bypass” under certain circumstances; (2) the requirement for permanency hearings within twelve months of the child entering care (in contrast to eighteen months in Public Law 96-272); (3) encouragement of concurrent planning; (4) the requirement that a petition to terminate parental rights be filed once a child has been in care for fifteen of the most recent twenty-two months, unless a specific exception applies;3 and (5) financial incentives to states for increasing the number of adoptions. In the following discussion, I focus on the implications of these provisions with regard to permanence for older children and youth. I also consider provisions of the Foster Care Independence Act of 1999 in relation to the permanency focus of ASFA.
For the first time in federal law, ASFA limited the application of the “reasonable efforts” provision of Public Law 96-272. ASFA permits a court to determine that “reasonable efforts” to reunify children with their parents are not required if certain circumstances exist: the parent has committed certain acts4 or the parent's rights previously were terminated to a sibling of the child. ASFA further allows states to develop a set of “aggravated circumstances,” which extend beyond the grounds specified in federal law, that can serve as the basis for determining that reasonable efforts do not need to be made to reunify parents and their children in foster care. These provisions have become known as “the reunification bypass” (D'Andrade and Berrick, 2006).
The effect of the reunification bypass—particularly in connection with the “aggravated circumstances” that states have developed as the basis for denying reunification services—is an area on which the knowledge base is only beginning to develop. In 1999, the U.S. General Accounting Office examined the use of the reunification bypass during the early stages of ASFA implementation and concluded that it was not being used to any great extent. Only one study has assessed the use of the reunification bypass in greater depth. Amy D'Andrade et al. (2006) examined its use in six California counties with families whose children were ten or younger upon entry into foster care. They found that although a fairly large number of parents were “eligible” for a reunification bypass under California law (which includes fifteen conditions that are considered “aggravated circumstances”), it was pursued in only a few cases. Of concern, however, was the variability among counties in the use of reunification bypass. The researchers found this variability to be “disconcerting as families’ experiences should not be determined principally by geography” (2006:92).
Through their work regarding the implementation of the reunification bypass in California, D'Andrade and Berrick (2006) identified several concerns about the soundness of policies designed to limit reasonable efforts to reunify. First, there is limited research in this area: because the current understanding of families’ prospects for reunification is not well developed, it is difficult to know whether all families who fall into statutory categories of “aggravated circumstances” would or would not benefit from reunification services or whether the grounds that are being used necessarily identify the most dangerous parents. Second, many statutes are vague. Some of the grounds for reunification bypass that appear in state laws are not clear and, in some cases, are potentially so broad in scope that there are likely to be wide variations in how the reunification bypass is implemented within a state. Finally, ASFA does not limit the number of aggravated circumstances that states can use to deny reunification services to parents, opening the possibility of ever-expanding criteria to justify the denial of these services (D'Andrade and Berrick, 2006). These issues raise a number of legal and ethical issues about the implementation of the reunification bypass, and they emphasize the importance of ongoing evaluation of this approach, particularly in states that have broadly expanded the bypass grounds.
In contrast to the limited attention that has focused on ASFA's reunification provisions, efforts to assess the impact of ASFA's adoption provisions began shortly after its enactment. The U.S. General Accounting Office (1999) examined the ASFA provision mandating that a petition to terminate parental rights (TPR) be filed when a child had been in foster care for fifteen of the most recent twenty-two months. The researchers concluded, two years after ASFA, that the provision was being used appropriately. Stephanie Gendell (2001), observing trend data for the four-year period after ASFA, noted the rise in the number of cases involving termination of parental rights after states implemented ASFA. She raised questions regarding whether children whose parents’ rights were being terminated were being adopted, were becoming legal orphans, or were being placed too quickly with adoptive families, thereby risking disruption. She concluded that it was “too early to know the statistical and long-term effects of ASFA” but suggested that it was unclear that the adoption goals of ASFA were being achieved (Gendell, 2001:36).
To date, there have not been rigorous and large-scale evaluations of ASFA (Barth et al., 2005). Data that could be used to assess the impact of ASFA have been limited as a result of two structural features of AFCARS (the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System): the limited number of variables per case and the fact that AFCARS does not allow the longitudinal tracking of cohorts of children over time. Because AFCARS does not lend itself to an examination of changes in child welfare practice, it has been necessary, as noted by Richard Barth et al. (2005), to draw on the findings of local nonexperimental studies and national cross sectional and longitudinal data in order to better understand the law's impact. Even with these sources of information, however, as these researchers note, “the effects of ASFA cannot be fully assessed until enough time has passed that cohorts of children who entered the system after the law's passage have achieved permanency. We are poised at the margins of that time frame” (2005:392).
A few studies have shed light on the effect of ASFA in general and the adoption provisions of ASFA in particular. The Local Agency Survey (LAS) of the National Study of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW) administered from 1999 to 2000 provided child welfare administrators’ perceptions of ASFA in its early stages of implementation (Mitchell et al., 2005). With respect to the early effects of ASFA in relation to adoption, the LAS found:
• A large majority (93 percent) of child welfare agencies reported that ASFA had shortened time frames for permanency decision-making to less than 12 months.
• More than half of the agencies stated that ASFA had resulted in an increased emphasis on adoption for older children.
• Almost three-quarters of the agencies (74 percent) reported an increased emphasis on adoption for children living with relatives.
• More than one-quarter (28 percent) reported that there had been an increase in the number of families who were precluded from receiving reunification services.
The LAS also found that the impact of federal policy changes was more evident in state-administered child welfare systems, which appeared to have moved more quickly to implement child welfare policy reforms as set forth in ASFA. In particular, state-administered child welfare systems had experienced more success in achieving adoptions than county-administered systems (Mitchell et al., 2005). Differences also were noted between urban and nonurban counties: nonurban counties were more likely to have implemented concurrent planning and to have focused on adoption, particularly of children in kinship care (Mitchell et al., 2005).
The LAS finding that more than one-half of the agencies reported a greater emphasis on adoption of older children and youth is of note. Some have concluded that this emphasis represents a positive direction for this population of children (Charles and Nelson, 2000), but others have expressed concerns about adoption mandates for older children and youth. In their analysis of child welfare data since the enactment of ASFA, Barth et al. (2005) identified several trends that appear to support concerns about the effect of ASFA's adoption provisions on older children and youth. Trend data indicate that since the enactment of ASFA, there has been, simultaneously, a decrease in the number of children reunified with their parents and an increase in the number of adoptions. The number of children who are waiting for adoptive families has not significantly declined even as the number of adoptions has increased. Although there have been meaningful increases in the adoption of young children, the outcomes for older children and youth are not as clear. Trend data also indicate that the number of unadopted older children whose parents’ rights have been terminated has been growing substantially (Barth et al., 2005).
These trends in connection with adoption outcomes (or, more precisely, non-outcomes) for older children and youth offer empirical support for concerns that were expressed shortly after the enactment of ASFA and which have continued. Robert Gordon, for example, pointed to the age-insensitivity of ASFA and commented, “If ASFA moves too slowly with regard to young children [taking issue with the fifteen-month time frame for seeking termination of parental rights], it threatens to move too often for older ones” (1999:668). Practitioners and policy observers have continued to call attention to the possibility that ASFA would create a large and growing group of “legal orphans” as parental rights were terminated for older children (Guggenheim, 1995; Wexler, 2002). Barth and colleagues (2005) indicate that these concerns are not unfounded: they found that, when compared with other types of termination of parental rights actions, the termination of parental rights for older children when an adoption resource has not been identified is least likely to lead to adoption.
In addition to the provisions that have pressed a growing number of cases toward termination of parental rights, ASFA created financial incentives to reward states for increasing the number of adoptions of children in foster care above baseline numbers. The “first outcome-oriented incentive program in child welfare based solely on the reporting of administrative data” (Maza, 2000:455), the incentive program rewards adoption outcomes but not the achievement of other forms of permanence, specifically reunification and the permanent placement of children with relatives.
The Fostering Connections Act authorizes the adoption incentive program through FY 2013. It doubles the incentive amounts states may earn for each increase in the number of older children adopted from foster care (from $4,000 to $8,000) and for children with special needs, under age 9, who are adopted from foster care (from $2,000 to $4,000). The incentive award for any increase in the total number of children adopted from foster care remains at $4,000. The Act also changes the program so that states (even those with declining overall foster care caseloads) continue to have a fiscal incentive to increase adoptions. These changes include fixing each state's baseline adoption numbers at the numbers achieved in FY 2007. Specifically, AFCARS data had shown:
• Between FY 1998 and FY 2003, the proportion of children ages nine and older in foster care who were waiting to be adopted increased from 39 percent to 49 percent; however, the proportion of children ages nine and older who were adopted remained at one-third.
• Between FY 1998 and FY 2003, the average age of children waiting to be adopted increased from 7.8 to 8.7 years.
• During that same time period, 37 percent of children over the age of nine whose parents’ rights had been terminated did not have a plan for adoption but, instead, had a plan for emancipation or long-term foster care.
• Close to 8 percent of all children were emancipated from foster care and did not achieve permanency (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2005b).
The program anticipates that incentive payments will increase the number of adoptions of older children and youth as the original incentive program did for adoptions of children in foster care in general. The resulting absolute numbers of adoptions of children in this age category and the level of adoption incentives that states receive will indicate the general effect of the program. Because there is no independent evaluation of the adoption incentive program (U.S. Office of Management and Budget, 2005), however, it will be difficult to assess the specific factors associated with increased numbers of older child adoptions, if that does indeed occur.
A number of questions need to be addressed through research to better understand whether and how ASFA provisions have helped achieve permanence for older children and youth. These issues include a fuller understanding of the influence of the reunification bypass: Is the bypass used primarily with families of very young children, or is it being used with families of older children and youth? If it is used with older children and youth, what is the impact—both in terms of expediting permanence and in terms of the psychosocial ramifications for older children and youth?
Research also is needed to deepen the understanding of the effect of ASFA's adoption emphasis for older children and youth. Is the focus on termination of parental rights as appropriate for this group of children as it is for young children? Are different practice approaches called for when considering terminating the rights of parents of older children and youth? Are there effective strategies to increase the prospects of adoption after termination of parental rights? What is the role of adoption incentives in promoting adoption for older children and youth?
Since 1986, Title IV-E has provided states with federal funding to provide independent living services to youth between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one in foster care (Title IV-E Independent Living Initiative, Public Law 99-272). In 1999, the Foster Care Independence Act (Public Law 106-169) provided states with greater flexibility and funding to carry out programs to assist youth in making the transition from foster care to adulthood. It is of note that these laws, which are specifically designed to support youth as they move toward adulthood, do not reference family permanency for youth. The recent proposed rule regarding outcomes measures to assess states’ performance in operating their independent living programs does not mention “permanency” in any form (Chafee National Youth in Transition Database, 2006). With regard to personal connections, it solely references “family support and marriage education” (which focuses on educating youth to maintain their own healthy families through parenting education and child care skills) and “mentoring,” which it defines as “programs or services in which the youth regularly meets with a screened trained adult on a one-on-one basis” (Chafee National Youth in Transition Database, 2006:40357). The lack of family permanency language in these laws and the absence of expected outcomes on family connections raise important research, policy, and practice issues about the integration of permanency and preparation for adulthood for older children and youth in care.
Additional issues within the context of federal child welfare policy warrant at least a brief mention in connection with permanence for older children and youth: federal child welfare policy in relation to race-based inequities, the Child and Family Service Reviews, and the Title IV-E waiver demonstration program.
Since the enactment of ASFA, there has been growing attention to the disproportionate representation of children of color in foster care (Derezotes and Hill, 2006; National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators, 2006). Concerns have grown that older children and youth of color are particularly disadvantaged in terms of permanent family outcomes (Roberts, 2002). Data indicate that African American and Latino children are less likely to be reunified with their parents and that African American, Latino, and older children not only spend more time in care until the termination of parental rights but also wait longer after parental rights are terminated to be placed with adoptive families (Noonan and Burke, 2005). Nonetheless, the LAS survey found that only 14 percent of the child welfare agencies stated that they had any concerns about the disproportionate representation of children of color in foster care, only 15 percent reported providing training on addressing disproportionality, and only 2 percent reported using performance measures to reduce “racial imbalance in placement” (Mitchell et al., 2005).
Federal child welfare policy does not explicitly address either the disproportionate representation of children of color in foster care or the disparate outcomes that are achieved in relation to permanence for children of color in general and African American children in particular. Whereas the Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention Act addresses Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) and directs states to assess DMC and take action to address it when it exists, neither ASFA nor any other federal child welfare statute addresses race- and culture-based inequities for children and youth of color in the child welfare system.
Federal child welfare law speaks to race in two statutes: the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA) and the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act of 1994 as amended by the Interethnic Placement Act Amendments of 1996 (MEPA-IEPA). The approaches taken in these two federal statutes are distinct: ICWA promotes children's connections with their cultural and tribal communities and requires that Native American children be placed with Native foster and adoptive families, absent a clear showing that such a placement is not in the child's best interest. MEPA-IEPA, which applies to the placement of all non-Native children, prohibits race from being used as a factor in foster care or adoptive family placement decision-making, absent a specific showing that considering race would be in a particular child's best interest.
Given the disparate approaches of the two federal laws, it is unfortunate that an assessment of practice as it has developed in compliance with ICWA and MEPA-IEPA has not been conducted. An assessment is needed of the outcomes achieved when race and culture are given great weight (the ICWA approach) and when they are given virtually no weight (the MEPA-IEP approach) in foster care and adoption decision-making. Such an assessment is particularly important in relation to permanence for older children and youth, for whom it may be expected that racial and cultural identity are particularly salient issues.
The federal Child and Family Service Reviews (CFSRs) assess the performance of states in connection with three outcomes: safety, permanence, and child and family well-being. Two permanency outcomes have been defined: (1) children have permanency and stability in their living situations, and (2) the continuity of family relationships and connections is preserved for children (U.S. House of Representatives, 2005). The CFSRs provide a snapshot of each state's foster care population based on a review of a small number of cases, generally from thirty to fifty cases. Because many states generally have had only one CFSR, trend data are not available. The CFSR reports, however, provide some qualitative information about ASFA-established processes (Barth et al., 2005).
With regard to older children and youth, the CFSR process has focused more on preparation of youth for independent living than on permanence. In the Child and Family Service Review final reports for a number of states, it was noted that long-term foster care was often being inappropriately used as the plan for older children and youth, either when other options for permanency had not been explored or when neither adoption nor guardianship was being sought for these youth. In states’ corresponding Program Improvement Plans, however, activities often focused on strengthening independent living services, on general efforts to provide training on the “special needs” of older children and youth, or on an expansion of placement resources (National Resource Center for Youth Development, 2004). It appears that specific attention to achieving permanency for older children and youth is needed, particularly in Program Improvement Plans. Research can play a viable role in informing the content of these plans and in the evaluation of specific strategies that plans might contain to promote the achievement of permanence for older children and youth.
An important aspect of federal child welfare policy since 1994 has been the Title IV-E waiver demonstration projects. ASFA expanded the waiver program by authorizing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to approve a larger number of waiver demonstration projects (U.S. House of Representatives, 2005). Title IV-E waiver demonstration projects, implemented by twenty-five states since 1997 (Lehman et al., 2005), have permitted states and counties to experiment with and evaluate a range of strategies that flexibly use federal Title IV-E foster care dollars. The funding constraints of Title IV-B and IV-E have consistently been identified by child welfare administrators as “a major source of the lack of available services” (Geen and Tumlin, 1999:5) and a key barrier to tailoring services to the community and to individual child and family needs (Costin et al., 1996).
Several evaluations of Title IV-E demonstration waiver projects have documented benefits for children and families, including greater permanence. In an evaluation of Oregon's Title IV-E waiver project, it was found that flexible funding increased the likelihood of children remaining in their homes, returning home, and establishing permanent placements with relatives within one year of the target maltreatment incident (Lehman et al., 2005). In 2005, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released findings and evaluations of the seven state waiver demonstration programs that implemented federally supported guardianship programs. The initial findings reflected that nonrelative guardianship was an effective and viable option for child welfare systems to consider (Congressional Research Service, 2006).
The authority of Department of Health and Human Services to grant Title IV-E demonstration projects expired on March 31, 2006, and was not renewed by Congress (Congressional Research Service, 2006). With the ending of these efforts, there likely will be fewer opportunities to test innovative programs and approaches at the state and county levels. It will be important to consider the implications of this development in relation to creating and evaluating innovative systemic approaches to achieving permanence for older children and youth.
In addition to federal policy, policy at the state level plays a significant role in shaping practice designed to achieve and sustain permanence for older children and youth. State policy has a significant role in decisions regarding the removal of children from their birth parents, the circumstances under which “reasonable efforts” can be bypassed (as discussed earlier), and the extent to which ongoing, healthy connections between youth and their birth parents, following termination of parental rights, will be supported. State policy has largely directed the availability of financial and service supports for relatives who assume permanent responsibility for children in foster care. Finally, state law directs much of adoption practice, particularly in terms of who may adopt and the process for adopting children from foster care.
State-level child welfare policy often is also shaped by class action litigation resulting in consent decrees or court orders. In at least thirty-five jurisdictions, class action litigation has brought child welfare systems under the supervision of courts (Child Welfare League of America, 2005). Court orders, consent decrees, and receiverships in these states and counties significantly direct the scope and nature of child welfare programming and practice, often emphasizing permanency outcomes, particularly adoption. Opinions widely diverge as to the results achieved through this strategy (Child Protection Report, 2002; Mezey, 2000), with little empirically based knowledge about the effect of litigation on substantive outcomes for children and families.
The successful achievement of permanence for older children and youth is affected by both federal and state child welfare policy. Federal policy is largely set forth in Titles IV-B and IV-E of the Social Security Act, particularly through the new policy directions set by ASFA and the Fostering Connections to Success Act. A relatively small body of research has informed the understanding of the effect of these federal policies, specifically with regard to permanence for older children and youth. Other developments at the federal policy level also affect child welfare programming and practices that promote permanence for older children and youth. At the state level, law and class action litigation shape permanency practice. A broader body of research is needed to assess the effect of current federal and state policies on permanency outcomes for older children and youth and to support the development of new policy. Effective policy should be evidence-based, with a focus on child well-being, of which permanence is a critical component, and should be guided by a development perspective (Wulcyzn, et al., 2005). Through a developmental perspective that recognizes that children entering adolescence and adolescents have unique needs, policy can more effectively support the achievement of permanence for older and children and youth.
1. The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoption Act of 2008 (H.R. 6893) made significant changes in federal child welfare policy, including: new supports and requirements to ensure permanent placements with relatives; increasing resources so that child welfare agencies can more effectively recruit adoptive families for children in foster care who cannot be safely reunified with their birth parents; creating Family Connections Grants to support kinship navigator programs, family group decision-making, intensive family finding efforts, and residential family substance abuse treatment programs; continuing federal support for older youth in foster care; extending federal training to more staff; and allowing Indian tribes direct access to federal foster care and adoption assistance funds.
2. In the arena of family support, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently has devoted federal funds under the Adoption Opportunities Grant program to programs designed to support healthy marriages. Some twenty-six grants have been made to programs designed to disseminate information about the benefits of healthy marriage to children and families and share ideas on marriage strengthening (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2006a). In 2006, grants focused on demonstration projects in postadoption services and marriage education to implement and evaluate programs that help adoptive parents build healthy marriages (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2006b) and similar programs to improve child well-being by removing barriers to form and sustain healthy marriages and strengthen families in Native American communities (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2006c).
3. The exceptions are that the child lives with a relative, services needed by the family have not been provided or offered, or termination of parental rights would not be in the child's best interest.
4. The circumstances are the murder of another child of the parent, voluntary manslaughter of another child of the parent, aiding or abetting in committing such murder or manslaughter, or felony assault resulting in serous bodily injury to the child or another child of the parent.
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