Foster Care's Adoption Obsession

On March 16, Jennifer Hart, who adopted six children out of the foster care system – including fifteen-year old Devonte Hart – drove off a cliff, killing herself, her partner and her children.  While we may never now precisely why she drove off that cliff, evidence suggests that she was drunk while it happened.  The tragic ending to this family culminated many years in which the children suffered severe abuse in the home.  On one occasion, the Harts forced the children to lie in bed for hours because they ate extra slices of pizza.  On another, the children got in trouble for laughing at the dinner table and for singing “Happy Birthday” to a sibling.  At least once, the children went to a neighbor’s home begging for food.  When suspicions were raised, their adoptive parents pulled them from school, kept them at home, and moved between states.  While child welfare agencies in multiple states investigated the family many times, at no point did any agency intervene to protect the children. 

This tragic story could be written off as an isolated incident that should be mourned.  But the story also reflects the dangers of our foster care system’s obsession with adoption once a decision is made that a child cannot go home.  Every year, approximately 50,000 children in foster care – like Devonte – are adopted.  When a child cannot return home, the Adoption and Safe Families Act – a federal law signed by President Clinton in 1997 – forces states to sprint towards finalizing an adoption, regardless of whether any other arrangements, such as a permanent guardianship with a relative or foster parent, may make more sense.  Under the law, only after a state child welfare agency definitively rules out the possibility of an adoption can other options even be considered. 

The federal government enforces this strict requirement in two ways.  First, it can deprive states of millions of dollars in federal child welfare funding if a state refuses to follow the law. Second, it can awards performance bonuses for state child welfare agencies based on the number of adoptions they finalize, and how quickly they do so.  In addition to these enforcement mechanisms, the federal government also doles out millions of dollars in monthly subsidy payments to adoptive parents, like Jennifer Hart, who care for children in foster care.  Talk to child welfare professionals and they will describe the immense pressures they face to get children in foster care adopted.  Consistent with this sprint towards adoption, every year, state courts proudly and publicly celebrate Adoption Day to honor those families adopting kids in foster care and to encourage others to do so.      

Certainly, adoption is a good outcome for some children in foster care.  Yet, we know very little to conclude that adoptions make sense for all children in foster care who cannot go home, some of whom may want a continuing relationship with their birth parents even when they cannot go home, or others who might need continued support to address serious emotional or behavioral needs. 

Nor do we have data that supports the sprint to adoption.  For example, we don’t know the number of times child welfare agencies investigate families who adopted children out of foster care for suspected abuse or neglect.  Or how frequently children who re-enter foster care are taken away from adoptive parents.  While this data is well within the grasp of child welfare agencies, the federal government doesn’t require states to report it.  So we don't have these answers.  

Additionally no study – either nationally or on a local level – has ever been able to identify the number of adoptions that fall apart, or the number of adoptive parents, unable to manage their children’s behaviors, who place children in informal arrangements in other homes.  The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute found that “[c]omprehensive information on dissolution rates is not readily available.”  Similarly, the federal government conceded that “[a]ccurate data on dissolutions are more difficult to obtain because, at the time of legal adoption, a child’s records may be closed, first and last names and Social Security numbers may be changed, and other identifying information may be modified.”  In other words, while a family is rightfully given privacy rights after an adoption occurs, those same rights prevent our foster care system from knowing whether these arrangements actually work.

Rather than search for this information, our foster care system has taken a different approach.  It sprints towards finalizing an adoption, and when it occurs, the system presumes success, hoists its trophy, and takes its victory lap.            

      

Advocates who represent families in the child welfare system can share countless stories of adopted children who later re-entered foster care.  Take for example, my former client, Jane, who was adopted out of the Texas foster care system by a Michigan family.  Just months after her adoption, her adoptive father claimed that his adoption agency lied about Jane’s mental health issues, decided he couldn’t control her poor behavior, and placed her in an informal arrangement with an unlicensed family, who promised that they could take care of her.  Instead, Jane, along with the other children in the home, were physically and sexually torture.  Years later, the child welfare system intervened, and placed her in foster care until she eventually exited state care when she became an adult.  Soon thereafter, Jane had her own child, and became a young, struggling mother with few resources.  But Jane’s story will never be captured by federal data.  Like the Hart children, the foster care system won’t learn from her experience.  Rather, it will stick with its prevailing narrative that equates the adoption of a child as an unmitigated success.

The federal government should use the Hart tragedy to reexamine the immense pressure it places on states to get children in foster care adopted quickly.  First, it should fund comprehensive studies to ascertain both the number of adoptions that disrupt and whether adoptive parents are actually meeting the emotional and physical needs of children in foster care.  Second, it should require state child welfare agencies to report how many child protective services investigations involve adoptive parents each year, and the results of those investigations.  And finally, until it can conclusively determine that adoption is the holy grail for all kids in foster care, federal law should no longer prioritize adoptions as the preferred outcome for kids in foster care, and should give states financial incentives to pursue other options for children to find permanent homes, including subsidized custody or permanent guardianships with relatives and foster parents.  In other words, it should no longer give states a financial bounty to pursue adoptions, nor should it force child welfare agencies to rule out adoptions before they can pursue other options.

Would taking these measures have saved the Hart children?  Probably not.  But perhaps in the future, rather than sprint to achieve a result we don’t know will work for children, our foster care system will exercise restraint, and craft a solution that actually serves each unique child in its care.