Increase Exits from Foster Care to Permanence through Adoption

Research

Research has shown that increases in adoption subsidies can result in more children who are adopted from foster care. [i] Providing adoptive families with adequate resources to care for children who have been abused and neglected also enhances the likelihood that the adoption will be successful. Given the substantial increase in adoption from foster care over the past decade, some policymakers might be tempted to cut adoption subsidies as a way to deal with budget shortfalls. Yet these cuts have longer term costs down the line: costs in public benefits to support youth in long term foster care, the cost of bad outcomes for youth who age out of care, and public and private costs associated with lower earnings and unproductive lives.

In addition, new federal legislation, the Fostering Connections and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008, ensures that all children adopted from foster care will be eligible to receive federal adoption subsidies by the year 2018. The “de-link provision” of the federal legislation is a major step toward efforts to increase adoptions from foster care.

The Minnesota Permanency Demonstration Project is being evaluated through a federal waiver project using both control and experimental group and comparison group design. Interim findings halfway into the project (2.5 years) suggest that children in families offered the single benefit have higher rates of permanency and spend less time in foster care than those who are offered subsidy levels under the traditional programs offered by the state. [ii]

The Fostering Connections legislation enacted in 2008 helped to correct a longstanding problem with the federal Title IV-E adoption assistance program. Once linked to an outdated income standard that required children to come from very poor families to be eligible for Adoption Assistance, the program has now been “de-linked” and all children adopted from foster care can receive this support.

The legislation phases in universal federal eligibility over the course of eight years. It makes children ages 16 and over eligible in 2010 and reduces the age limit by two years every year thereafter. By 2018, all children adopted from foster care will be eligible for federal adoption assistance with a state match.

The legislation also includes a Maintenance of Effort (MOE) requirement so that state funds previously used for state adoption assistance programs do not get lost in the child welfare budget. Policymakers can ensure that these MOE funds are targeted to unmet needs or under-funded programs in the child welfare system.