The public relations campaign promoted it as a way to help abused and neglected children who languished in foster care for years, often being shuffled among dozens of foster homes, never having a real home and family. In a press release from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services dated November 24, 1999, it refers to “President Clinton’s initiative to double by 2002 the number of children in foster care who are adopted or otherwise permanently placed.”
In the “technical assistance” section of the bill it states that, “the Secretary [of HHS] may, directly or through grants or contracts, provide technical assistance to assist states and local communities to reach their targets for increased numbers of adoptions for children in foster care.” The technical assistance is to support ‘the goal of encouraging more adoptions out of the foster care system; the development of best practice guidelines for expediting the termination of parental rights; the development of special units and expertise in moving children toward adoption as a permanent goal; models to encourage the fast tracking of children who have not attained 1 year of age into pre-adoptive placements; and the development of programs that place children into pre-adoptive placements without waiting for termination of parental rights. (Source: Adoption Bonuses: The Money Behind the Madness )
Initially funds came from uncapped Title IV-D funds that made foster care extremely profitable, and the official belief was that abused children were better off in foster care, and for as long as possible. One of the problems with these funds is that they were highly controlled by the federal government on how the states could spend the monies.
John Van Doorn ran for San Diego Supervisor in 2010. Wanting to reform Child Protective Services, he said:
The single greatest threat to the people of San Diego County is our county’s (as well as the state’s) abuse of Title IV-D programs (Child Protective Services, Child Support Services, foster care and adoptions, VAWA, etc.).
Mandated by federal government, these programs are intended to provide a social safety net for our children and the elderly and a deterrent to domestic violence but instead, they have become a means by which our local governments extract great profits. In exchange for providing these services, the federal government reimburses local governments for the cost of providing these services—at times, greatly in excess of the cost of that service. As such, our local governments find themselves sorely tempted to provide a service where one is not necessarily warranted (since reimbursements grow as the amount of services rendered grows), and unfortunately all too often where the provision of unneeded services ends up being destructive in the lives of those “served.”
For instance, in the case of foster care, the present reimbursement to state and local government for each child taken into foster care is approximately $6000/month. Yet the foster care provider (the foster parent) receives only somewhere around $600/month. Allowing about the same for administrative costs, each child in foster care is worth about $5000/month; that’s pure profit on the bottom line! (Source: On Child Protective Services, Part 4: Follow the Money)
This act allowed child protective service agencies the power to terminate parental rights of children in foster care. It was meant to keep children from lingering in the foster care system for years on end, and allowed the children to find forever families. It had a warm, fuzzy, feel good feeling to it. What it has actually created: Child Trafficking. It has given Child Protective Services cash incentives, known as bonus money, for each child they successfully adopt out. This has provided the incentive for social workers to NOT work with the families that they are supposed to serve, but to rather work against them in order to gain their children. Instead of placing these children with fit family members as they are required to do, they find any excuse to deny family members kinship placement, using excuses such as a speeding ticket. BUT since they will receive large sums for adopting the children to strangers, they have OVERLOOKED FELONY CONVICTIONS of adoptive parents in order to quickly get their money. Families are being harmed, but most of all it is the children who are paying the ultimate price. They are denied their heritage and thrown into an artificial family, where they are often abused and neglected far worse than they ever were by their biological families. PLEASE contact your state reps and senators and tell them you are against federal cash incentives being made to social service agencies in order to adopt out children.
Departmental income has become more important to CPS and their offices than actually finding abused children and protecting them. Each and every time they remove a child from the home, they get paid from the Federal Government.
- Public Law 93-247 known as the Mondale Act of 1974.
- Public Law 96-272 known as the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980
- Social Security Title IV-E funds.
Take the time to listen to the FACTS of how DCF works… They have a ‘God complex’ and it needs to STOP!
