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I. Introduction
Since the mid 1980s, several Federal legislative initiatives have been instituted in order to increase opportunities for permanency for children in the public child welfare system. The number of adoptions of children from foster care has increased steadily in the years since the passage of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (AACWA), also known as the "Family Reunification Act." This legislation was passed in order to help facilitate the permanent placement of children, either through reunification with the birth family or, in cases where this was not possible, placement in an adoptive home. The Act established the principles of permanency planning for children in foster care by requiring the development of comprehensive case plans. In addition, AACWA placed limits on the amount of funding that States could receive for foster care services, thereby encouraging the establishment of services provided to children in their home rather than in foster care. AACWA also provided Federal funding to States to subsidize adoptions of special needs children. Yet, despite these measures, the legislation had little effect on slowing the entry of children into the foster care system.
In response to concerns regarding the growing number of children in foster care, Congress enacted the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) Public Law (P.L.) 105-89, in 1997. Hoping to facilitate quicker placement of children into permanent homes, Congress included more stringent timelines for parents with children in foster care by requiring States to pursue termination of parental rights (TPR) if a child has been in foster care for 15 out of the most recent 22 months. While the legislation stipulated that reasonable efforts should be made to reunify families when possible, the legislation encouraged States to plan concurrently for adoption while working toward the goal of family reunification, so that an adoptive placement could be made more quickly, should the State need to seek termination of parental rights. Other adoption-related provisions included the stipulation that States must implement policies and procedures for cross-jurisdictional placements and the establishment of a Federally funded adoption incentive program.
The Adoption Incentive Program provided incentives to States to increase the number of adoptions. Under the 2003 amendments to the program, incentive funds are awarded to States if they exceed the overall baselines for either foster child adoption, older child adoption, or special needs adoption. States receive $4,000 for each adoption over the established baseline with an additional $2,000 for each adoption that is finalized with a Title IV-E Adoption Assistance agreement (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2006b). In 2005, 21 States qualified for incentive funds through the adoption incentive program, totaling over $11,568,000 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2006a).
In the years since ASFA was enacted, the number of adoptions has risen from approximately 31,000 in 1997 to over 51,000 in 2005 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2005. In 2002, a record number of foster children were adopted—approximately 53,000 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2006d). Currently, over three-fourths of all adoptions from the U.S. public child welfare system meet the criteria for "special needs adoptions" (U.S. General Accounting Office, 2002). The term "special needs adoptions" generally refers to adoption of children who are older, belong to a sibling group, or have physical, mental, or emotional problems. In addition, the term often refers to adoptions of children of color (Reilly & Platz, 2003).
Children adopted from the foster care system in 2005 were an average age of 6.7 years old at the time of adoption. An overwhelming majority of children were adopted by their foster parents (60 percent) or relatives (25 percent). Of the children adopted in 2005, 43 percent were Caucasian, 30 percent were African American, 18 percent were Hispanic, five percent were two or more races/ethnicities, two percent were an "unknown" race/ethnicity, one percent were Native American, and one percent were Asian (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2006c).
Despite the dramatic increase in the number of children adopted from foster care, thousands of children are still awaiting adoption. According to the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting System (AFCARS), the data reporting system for children in foster care, of the 514,000 children in foster care in the in U.S. in 2005, 115,000 children (22 percent) were waiting to be adopted. Of these waiting children, only 66,000 (57 percent) have had their parental rights terminated. Over half of the children waiting to be adopted are children of color. Children waiting to be adopted were an average of five years old when removed from their birthparents and by September 2005 were an average age of 8.6 years old (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2007).
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A. Background of Research
Several Federal initiatives in recent years have called for research in order to better understand the process of adopting and increase the success of adoptions from foster care. Ongoing concerns regarding the need to find adoptive homes for waiting children in the U.S. led to a legislative requirement to provide a report to Congress on the "Dynamics of Successful Adoption." Found in Section 204 of the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act of 2003 (P. L. 108-36), the research requirement was described as follows:
The Secretary shall conduct research (directly or by grant to, or contract with, public or private nonprofit research agencies or organizations) about adoption outcomes and the factors affecting those outcomes. The Secretary shall submit a report containing the results of such research to the appropriate committees of the Congress not later than the date that is 36 months after the date of the enactment of the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act of 2003.
Similarly, Section 330G(c) of the Public Health Service Act required the following research studies:
With respect to the adoption of children with special needs, the Secretary shall make grants to carry out studies to identify (A) the barriers to completion of the adoption process; and (B) those components that lead to favorable long-term outcomes for families that adopt children with special needs.
Although a report to Congress is not required, findings from this research are provided as an informational resource.
In 2002, the Adoption Exchange Association was awarded a five-year contract from the U.S. Children's Bureau to establish The Collaboration to AdoptUsKids in order to design and implement a national adoptive family recruitment and retention strategy aimed to increase the number of adoptions from foster care. As part of The Collaboration and in order to comply with the preceding legislative requirements, the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work was awarded a contract to conduct the two Congressionally mandated studies.
In keeping with the Congressional requirements, over the past four years, two research studies have been conducted to assess barriers and success factors in special needs adoptions. Families and staff were recruited for participation in both the Barriers study (Study 1) and the Success Factors study (Study 2) primarily through direct contact with public and private adoption-agency staff and members of The Collaboration to AdoptUsKids (The Adoption Exchange Association, The Child Welfare League of America, The Northwest Adoption Exchange, The Adoption Exchange Education Center, and Holt International Children's Services). Specific criteria for the types of families needed was given to The Collaboration to AdoptUsKids workgroup members in an effort to help in the recruitment of families for inclusion in both the Barriers study and the Success Factors study. Special attention was placed on including families in the Barriers study who: were first time adopters; were early in the application process; were not trying to adopt a foster child who was in their home; and who did not have a child placed in their home for adoption.
In the Barriers study, a nationwide purposive sample of 300 families seeking to adopt children with special needs from the public child welfare system was selected from public and private agencies in 44 States and the District of Columbia. The families were followed from initial inquiry through finalization of their child's adoption. Interview and survey data were collected and analyzed in order to assess reasons why families chose to follow through with an adoption or discontinue the process. Three hundred eighty-two private and public agency staff from 29 States and the District of Columbia were surveyed to assess their opinions regarding barriers and to elicit suggestions for addressing barriers.
In the Success Factors study, a four-year prospective examination was conducted of a nationwide sample of 161 families from 34 States and the District of Columbia who had adopted children with special needs. Special attention was placed on including families who had adopted older children (particularly between the ages of 12-16 years), sibling groups, and children who had been in the foster care system for several years, in order to glean information on how these families and children were adjusting and what factors contributed to positive outcomes. Adoptive parents were interviewed by research staff and periodically administered surveys, including the Parenting Stress Inventory (Abidin, 1995) and a marital satisfaction scale. The following report presents the findings from both of these studies.
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B. Protection of Human Subjects
Prior to the initiation of family recruitment, the Principal Investigator and project staff developed the protocol for the research studies and family and staff data collection instruments. The protocol and instruments were submitted for approval to The University of Texas at Austin Institutional Review Board (UT-IRB). The IRB committee granted approval before data collection began. Continuing Review applications were submitted every year for re-approval of both studies. In addition, several of the participating public agencies reviewed and approved the UT-IRB process and/or required a separate application and approval from their agency before participation.
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