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Home > Current Initiatives & Issues > A Report to Congress on Interjurisdictional Adoption of Children in Foster Care > U.S. DHHS Strategies to Support Interjurisdictional Adoption Placements of Children

The overview of barriers and strategies provides evidence of State child welfare agencies' commitment to enhancing outcomes for children in foster care who find permanency with families living in other jurisdictions. While States apply their considerable expertise to these efforts, the Federal government, through the Children's Bureau in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, continues to provide leadership and support toward the shared goal of improving outcomes for children involved in interjurisdictional placements.

The Children's Bureau has responsibility for administering Federal child welfare and adoption-related programs, funding, and research. While the Children's Bureau conducts many activities to support and monitor State child welfare agencies, the most relevant to interjurisdictional placements are Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSRs), which monitor States' progress toward achieving Federal outcomes of safety, permanency, and well-being; a Training and Technical Assistance (T&TA) Network, which assists States in meeting CFSR outcomes and other Federal requirements; and discretionary grants, which fund the implementation and evaluation of promising practices.

The 1994 amendments to the Social Security Act mandated development of regulations to review States' child and family services. In response, ACF developed and implemented CFSRs, a results-oriented, comprehensive monitoring system designed to assist States in improving outcomes for the children and families they serve. The CFSR process assesses States in two areas:

• Outcomes for children and families in the areas of safety, permanency, and wellbeing. There are seven outcomes. Each is measured using a number of indicators. Six national standards have been developed related to these outcomes that set benchmarks for States to achieve.
• Systemic factors that directly affect States' abilities to deliver services that can achieve the designated outcomes.

The process and outcomes of interjurisdictional placements are components of achieving permanency for all children and are relevant to some outcomes, indicators, and systemic factors measured in the CFSRs. Results from the first round of 52 reviews, conducted between 2001 and 2004, revealed that:

• No State was found to be in substantial conformity with Permanency Outcome 1, "Children have permanency and stability in their living situations." Only 12 States received a rating of "strength" for the indicator related to reunification, guardianship, and placement of children with relatives, and only six States received a rating of "strength" for the indicator related to adoption.
• Forty-three States were in substantial conformity with the systemic factor "foster and adoptive parent licensing, recruitment, and retention." While 47 States received a rating of "strength" for the indicator related to using cross-jurisdictional resources to find placements, 15 States also were noted as being hesitant to rely on interstate placements because ICPC is a slow process (U.S. DHHS, 2004).
• Only 15 States met the national standard for achieving timely adoptions, which specifies that 32 percent of children adopted should exit foster care within 24 months of entry. Analyses of AFCARS data from FY 2001 revealed that adoptions of children across State lines were less than half as likely as adoptions of children within the same State to meet this standard (11 percent and 25 percent respectively) (Maza, 2003).

A chart containing more information about the findings of the CFSRs is included as Appendix II.

The second round of CFSRs will begin in 2006 and will include revisions to the process and measures used based on input from a workgroup composed of Federal and State staff, data experts, and researchers. Thresholds for meeting the outcomes of safety, permanency, and wellbeing in the case review will be raised from 90 to 95 percent, and measures will include a methodology that will better reflect the complexities of the child welfare program than the single data point system used in the first round of reviews.

The CFSRs already are contributing to improvements in practice. States must submit a Program Improvement Plan (PIP) for every outcome, national standard, and systemic factor with which they did not achieve substantial conformity. Progress on PIPs must be reported quarterly and is tracked by ACF. PIPs are guiding efforts to improve practice in many areas, including interjurisdictional placements, to enhance the safety, permanency, and well-being of children served by child welfare agencies.

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The Children's Bureau funds and coordinates a T&TA Network that provides State child welfare agencies and tribes with information and support to achieve outcomes measured in the CFSRs. Eleven national resource centers are funded on selected topics to provide specialized T&TA. In 2004, the Children's Bureau awarded new cooperative agreements to 7 of the 11 national resource centers to provide enhanced coordination of T&TA services and strengthen their focus on increasing States' capacity for systemic improvements aimed at meeting the CFSR requirements.

Prior to awarding the new agreements, Children's Bureau staff conducted a thorough review and assessment of T&TA provided to States; this resulted in some significant changes to ensure the most appropriate T&TA is offered to achieve positive outcomes for children and families. The enhanced system features a Federal Coordinating Committee to provide leadership and guidance to the T&TA Network; subcommittees to gather information and make recommendations; identification of clear T&TA priorities; a clearer process for identifying and resolving problems; a focus on building strategies; and a single point of collaboration to coordinate, facilitate, and evaluate T&TA services.

To guide the T&TA Network's support to States regarding interjurisdictional placements, the Children's Bureau commissioned the survey mentioned in the previous section which gathered information about effective strategies and potentially effective supports that would enhance outcomes for children placed across jurisdictional lines. Significant findings from the survey (e.g., the strategies and supports listed in Appendix I) have been shared with four national resource centers so that they can begin identifying T&TA services to support the States' efforts. It is recognized that multiple efforts will be required to address concerns about interjurisdictional placement. Eighty-five of the possible 151 strategies and supports evaluated in the survey were identified as either: (1) widely used by States and effective, (2) highly effective, or (3) of greatest interest to the States. The Children's Bureau has begun work with its TA providers to integrate a large portion of these into the TA available to States and tribes. Ten days of T&TA per year from each of seven national resource centers and AdoptUsKids are made available without cost to States, territories, and tribes to assist in improving services to children and families. It is hoped that multiple national and State partners will join in the interjurisdictional placement reform effort as a wide variety of initiatives will be required to build effective solutions to expeditious placement of children in a permanent home.

In addition, findings from this survey provided structure for regional roundtable meetings across the country in 2005 at which States and T&TA providers explored expansion of the effective strategies and implementation of the supports. (See Regional Roundtables in the following section.) State child welfare staff were able to use information from the survey, combined with other best practices identified by Adoption Opportunities grants on interjurisdictional placement, to develop action plans for their States with specific steps to pursue for improving outcomes for children and families involved in interjurisdictional placements. The Children's Bureau T&TA Network will continue to follow these efforts and will facilitate peerto- peer TA through which States that have used and have evidence of effective strategies assist other States in implementing them.

The Collaboration to AdoptUsKids

The Collaboration to AdoptUsKids, a member of the Children's Bureau's T&TA Network, began in 2002 to provide extensive T&TA and numerous other services to recruit foster and adoptive families and connect them with children waiting for adoption throughout the United States. The Collaboration recently was appointed by the Children's Bureau to be the lead organization in the T&TA Network for the reform of interjurisdictional placement issues.

Through a 5-year cooperative agreement with the Adoption Exchange Association and other partners, the Children's Bureau funds the Collaboration to provide a variety of related programs, services, and activities, creating a comprehensive approach to improve outcomes for children in adoptive and foster care placements. The national adoption photo listing website, www.adoptuskids.org, is one of the most visible Collaboration activities and is a means for matching children in foster care who are waiting for adoption with families seeking to adopt, no matter where each lives. As of July 2, 2006 more than 15,400 children had been registered on the photo listing, more than 11,000 prospective adoptive families had been registered, and nearly 6,500 children featured on the website had been placed with prospective adoptive families.

Another major component of AdoptUsKids is the national ad campaign, created in collaboration with the Ad Council, to recruit adoptive families for children in foster care across the United States. This multimedia recruitment campaign includes 10 English and 9 Spanish television, radio, print, and Internet public service announcements. In 2005, the campaign won four gold ADDYs, prestigious advertising awards, including best public service television campaign (Ad Council, 2005). In 2006, this campaign was expanded to include new public service announcements were created to promote the adoption of older children and teens in foster care. This marked the first federally funded adoption effort that focused specifically on finding homes for teens in foster care.

Numerous T&TA services are offered to support the national recruitment campaign. Comprehensive information on the elements required to implement an effective foster and adoptive recruitment program was provided to all State administrators well in advance of the beginning of the ad campaign. Ten days of free T&TA per year from AdoptUsKids are made available to States, territories, and tribes to address foster and adoptive family recruitment and retention issues. TA for building the capacity to respond to inquiries generated by the national recruitment campaign also is provided. To date, T&TA support has been provided to more than 2,000 child welfare program managers and stakeholders in 35 States and tribes (The Collaboration to AdoptUsKids, 2005). To highlight the importance of effective use of interjurisdictional adoptive placement, the August 2005 AdoptUsKids Summit provided State foster care and adoption managers an entire track of workshops on interjurisdictional placement.

Complementing the T&TA services are a series of Answering the Call materials developed by the Collaboration to support the recruitment of families. These materials focus on issues such as working with faith communities and using photo listings to recruit families for children waiting for adoption. Six manuals have been published, and at least three are in development, including one focusing on adoption for military families, which will address interjurisdictional placement issues for this population.

Other significant components of the AdoptUsKids initiative include:

• Recruitment response teams. Fifty-four recruitment response teams (RRTs) located in 50 States, the District of Columbia, New York City, and two Indian tribes have been established, trained, and are responding to calls generated by the national ad campaign and other outreach of the Collaboration. RRTs also provide a mechanism for communication and information sharing among States and local communities and the national project.
• Regional roundtables. The Collaboration to AdoptUsKids hosts annual meetings in each of the 10 Federal regions to provide group TA on high-priority issues related to the Collaboration's work. The 2005 roundtable discussions focused on interjurisdictional placements of children, inviting State adoption and foster care managers, tribal representatives, community partners, and Federal staff to collaborate on action steps in each region to improve practices related to interjurisdictional placements. Previous roundtables have addressed working with faith communities and the recruitment and retention of foster and adoptive families (The Collaboration to AdoptUsKids, 2005).
• Research. The Children's Bureau commissioned two studies as part of the AdoptUsKids initiative. The first involves interviewing pre-adoptive and adoptive families of children in foster care and reviewing literature to identify barriers for families in the adoption process. The second involves collecting data from adoptive families to assess factors that influence long-term success in these families.

Other work of the Collaboration includes mini-grants to local parent support groups, leadership training for parent leaders, annual summits inviting State child welfare managers and other stakeholders to discuss best practices in adoptive family recruitment, and evaluation of the initiative's impact. The Collaboration receives guidance from a workgroup composed of national foster care and adoption experts.

The National Resource Center on Family-Centered Practice and Permanency Planning

The National Resource Center on Family-Centered Practice and Permanency Planning (http://www.nrcfcppp.org) offers T&TA and information services to infuse family-centered practices throughout child welfare agencies' work with children and families. Another responsibility is to guide child welfare programs in the expeditious and effective achievement of permanent family placement for children in foster care. The center has assisted States in many areas including strengthening concurrent permanency planning efforts; engaging relatives in permanency planning; recruiting and retaining kinship, foster, and adoptive families; and providing post-permanency services. These issues are relevant for all children in foster care, including those placed in other jurisdictions.

National Child Welfare Resource Center on Adoption

The National Child Welfare Resource Center on Adoption (http://www.nrcadoption.org) offers numerous supportive services to help States and tribes improve the effectiveness and quality of adoption and postadoption services for children and families. The Resource Center has developed training curricula and provided leadership development services to assist States in improving adoption outcomes. One important effort was the Resource Center's co-sponsorship of the Interjurisdictional Leadership Summit in 2000, which was sponsored in collaboration with the Family Builders Adoption Network, and helped to formulate an agenda for a nationwide system to enhance interjurisdictional placements (Freundlich, 2001). The Resource Center was a key partner in the 2005 regional roundtables convened by the Collaboration to AdoptUsKids to strategize solutions to the problems faced in interjurisdictional placements.

National Adoption Information Clearinghouse

The National Adoption Information Clearinghouse (http://www.childwelfare.gov) offers many information resources for professionals and families related to adoption, including interjurisdictional adoptions. The Clearinghouse website provides access to databases containing current information about laws and legal issues concerning adoption, State policies regarding adoption assistance, contact information for State and private adoption agencies, and other adoption-related information.

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As needs are identified through the CFSRs, T&TA, communication with States, and research, the Children's Bureau uses discretionary grant funds to pilot, replicate, and evaluate promising practices. Each year, the Children's Bureau announces the availability of funds for discretionary research and demonstration grant programs and designates specific priority areas within each program. These grants allow State, tribal, local, and private agencies to test innovative programs designed to improve outcomes for children and families served by child welfare systems.

In FY 1999, under the Adoption Opportunities grant program, U.S. DHHS funded discretionary grants designed to increase the number of adoptive placements by effectively overcoming barriers and reducing delays in interjurisdictional placements. Focused on the development of collaborative efforts to address the barriers, five grantees were awarded funds for an extended planning process. The following year, U.S. DHHS awarded implementation grants to the five grantees (U.S. DHHS, 2005b).

One strategy implemented by the grantees involved liaisons who assisted adoption workers with interjurisdictional placements, including the recruitment of potential adoptive families, the completion of home studies, and researching community resource support. Another strategy used facilitators to work with caseworkers and families to preserve existing placements. Training and enhanced communication mechanisms also were implemented to educate staff and expedite the placement of children across State lines. Overall, the grant projects identified four opportunities to enhance outcomes for children involved in interjurisdictional placements:

• Assistance to caseworkers involved in completing interjurisdictional placement tasks;
• The use of technology to support communication and information sharing among jurisdictions;
• The enhanced understanding of the roles and responsibilities of each person involved in the process of interjurisdictional placements of children; and
• The inclusion of stakeholders in planning and implementing interjurisdictional placement strategies (U.S. DHHS, 2005b).

In FY 2004, the Children's Bureau awarded a discretionary grant to pilot test a uniform foster care and adoption dual assessment home study called the Structured Analysis Family Evaluation (SAFE). Already implemented in five jurisdictions, this grant supports expansion of the SAFE curriculum to at least 11 more States and counties, some of which are providing additional matching funds. The methodology and content of SAFE are intended to increase efficiency in completing home studies, improve the ability to match a child's needs with a family's strengths and capacity, and eliminate cross-jurisdictional barriers. If the results of this pilot test are good, SAFE may serve as a national model.

The Children's Bureau continues to fund discretionary research and demonstration projects to test, replicate, and evaluate promising practices to enhance safety, permanency, and well-being outcomes. Lessons learned from these projects are reviewed and shared to expand knowledge within all States.

 

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