Foster Care

About 8,000 children, or about 1.5 percent of foster children, are legally available for adoption at any given time and are waiting for an adoptive home but have no prospects because they are older, need to be placed with siblings, or have other special considerations. Because they are difficult to find permanent placements for, they may be candidates for placement across state and county jurisdictions. Although some steps in the adoption process are beyond public welfare agencies' legal authority to change, they have directed their efforts toward recruiting adoptive families, using traditional methods in new ways. For example, the state agencies enter into contracts with agencies in other states to conduct recruitment activities in geographic areas outside their jurisdiction, and use Internet Web sites to publicize children and recruit families. Nonprofit groups working to improve interjurisdictional adoption processes have targeted their efforts at the nationwide recruitment of adoptive homes for hard-to-place foster children who are waiting and at issues related to improving the use of home studies and the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC), a uniformly enacted statute that provides the legal framework for placing children in adoptive homes across state lines. The Department of Health and Human Services could help improve aspects of the adoption process that are beyond the agencies' legal authority, such as better coordinating its guidelines for state legislation on the termination of parental rights and assistance to the states on ICPC issues.

GAO noted that: (1) at any given time about 1.5 percent of foster children--about 8,000--are legally available for adoption and waiting for an adoptive home but have no prospects for adoption; (2) this number is small because, of those foster children who are adopted, about 78 percent are adopted by their foster parents or relatives; (3) virtually all of the remaining foster children who are waiting for adoptive homes are among the most difficult to place due to their older age, need to be placed with siblings, or other special considerations; (4) because these children are hard to place, they are likely to be candidates for adoptive placement across jurisdictions; (5) public child welfare agencies have directed their efforts toward the initial step in the interjurisdictional adoption process--recruitment of prospective adoptive families--and have done less to improve the other steps in the adoption process because they are largely beyond their legal authority to change; (6) for example, these agencies are using traditional recruiting methods in new ways, as was the case in two of the three states GAO visited; (7) these states enter into contracts with other states to conduct recruitment activities in geographic areas outside the public child welfare agency's jurisdiction; (8) the agencies also use Internet web sites, which can be accessed from anywhere in the nation, to reach beyond their borders to recruit prospective adoptive families and publicize waiting children; (9) nonprofit organizations that are working to improve interjurisdictional adoption processes have targeted their efforts at those steps in the adoption process that correspond to their professional interests; (10) such interests include nationwide recruitment of adoptive homes for hard-to-place waiting foster children as well as issues related to improvements in the use of homestudies and the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC) process; (11) the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) leadership could facilitate improvements in the interjurisdictional adoption process, much of which is outside the legal authority of individual public child welfare agencies; and (12) HHS has developed plans to address problems in the interjurisdictional adoption process and implemented some actions.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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