Report to Congress on Adoption and Other Permanency Outcomes for Children in
Foster Care: Focus on Older Children
4. Summary
Overall, this evidence indicates the need for concern as well as a reason for hope. The Federal Child and Family Services Reviews have shown that very few States are currently achieving Federal permanency outcomes, but these reviews also are generating valuable knowledge about the specific challenges that must be addressed in State child welfare systems.
States are being held accountable for implementing promising strategies identified in their Program Improvement Plans. While data show that many children in foster care are still without permanency plans and are remaining in care too long, they also show that increasing numbers of children are achieving permanent outcomes (including adoption) when they exit foster care, and growing proportions of these children are older youth. State agencies and local programs need help to improve these outcomes. Some recent examples of information, guidance, financial support, and incentives for enhancing permanency outcomes include:
- In 2003, the Adoption Promotion Act added a new type of bonus to the Adoption Incentive Payments Program for adoptions of children ages 9 or older.
- In 2004, the Children's Bureau Discretionary Grant Program priorities included permanency for older children as a special emphasis.
- In 2004, HHS added an award category for adoptions of older children for the Adoption Excellence Awards.
- In 2004, the Collaboration to AdoptUsKids launched its national multimedia adoptive family recruitment campaign. The Collaboration also is studying the factors that contribute to successful special needs adoptions, primarily adoptions of older children, and barriers to adoption from foster care.
- In 2004, the California Permanency for Youth Project published Model Programs for Youth Permanency to share lessons learned from successful programs across the country.
- In 2005, the Child Welfare League of America published Toolbox #3: Facilitating Permanency for Youth, written by the Director of the Children's Bureau's National Resource Center for Family-Centered Practice and Permanency Planning, to provide guidance for State agencies and local programs in implementing promising strategies to achieve permanency for adolescents.
To assist States in their efforts to implement innovative and promising practices, the President has proposed a child welfare program option that would provide flexibility in Federal title IV-E foster care funding to States for child welfare services. This option would assist States in developing a continuum of services that promote children's safety, permanency, and well-being. States would have the choice of receiving a fixed allocation of IV-E foster care funds as a flexible grant for a 5-year period or remaining within the current entitlement structure. For States choosing the option, current restrictions on uses of funds would be removed to include services such as subsidized guardianship and other permanency efforts, foster care payments, training, family preservation, and administrative activities. Enactment of this proposal, or a similarly flexible funding structure, will go a long way toward supporting States' efforts to improve permanency outcomes for children in foster care.
Although many challenges to achieving permanency remain, there are many promising strategies being employed across the country to address them. To continue the progress underway, it is imperative that Federal and State governments and foundations continue their support of demonstration programs and initiatives that promote permanency, especially permanency for older children in foster care. At the same time, it is important to synthesize and share the results and lessons learned from these projects so all States can benefit from the knowledge being generated. Some of the most promising strategies from these programs are:
- Child-specific and targeted adoptive family recruitment efforts, such as website photolistings, recruitment campaigns that reach the types of families most likely to adopt the types of children available and in which the children's issues are clearly conveyed, and engaging older youth to identify important people in their lives as prospective permanent families.
- Adequate pre-placement services for children in foster care and for prospective permanent families to prepare them for permanency, including counseling about their expectations for permanent families and information about permanency supports.
- Adequate post-placement services for families and their children to stabilize and support the placements, including financial and medical assistance, counseling and other clinical services, and support groups.
- Concurrent permanency planning and an array of permanency options, including subsidized guardianship.
- Involvement of older youth in their own permanency planning, including as members of family decision-making teams.
- Training for staff about effective permanency strategies for children, especially strategies for adolescents.
- Workforce recruitment and retention strategies that attract and maintain enough high-quality staff to perform the demanding work.
- Court reforms that reduce delays and educate court staff about the permanency needs of children and adolescents in foster care.
- Financial reforms that provide States more flexibility in the use of Federal funds to implement systems that meet the unique needs of each child and family.
The field is building a collection of promising and evidence-based practices; the next steps are to share this knowledge and provide the necessary supports for replication, evaluation, and sustainability that will keep the field moving in the right direction. All children in foster care, including adolescents, need safe, permanent, loving families. These strategies will help achieve that goal.
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