Adoption Incentives Bill Clears House

On October 22, the House approved, 402-0, the Promoting Adoption and Legal Guardianship for Children in Foster Care Act (H.R. 3205).

Created in 1997 as part of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (P.L. 105-89), the program was designed to give states financial incentives to increase the permanent placement of children out of foster care. According to the House Ways and Means Committee summary, the bill, sponsored by Chair Dave Camp (R-MI), would reauthorize the Adoption Incentives Program through FY2016. The measure would “revise awards over that three-year period to focus on adoption rates, instead of the raw number of adoptions (ensuring states have an incentive to improve adoption placements even as foster care caseloads continue to decline nationwide).” The legislation would focus additional resources on placing older children in permanent homes.

States would receive awards as follows:

• For each additional child adopted beyond the number that would have been adopted if the state rate had not increased, states would receive $2,000;
• For each additional pre-adolescent (age 9-13) child adopted beyond the number that would have been adopted if the state rate had not increased, the state would receive $4,000;
• States would receive $8,000 for each additional older child (age 14+) adopted beyond the number that would have been adopted if the state rate had not increased; and
• States would receive $1,000 for each additional foster child placed with a legal guardian beyond the number that would have been placed with a legal guardian if the state rate had not been increased.

The bill would authorize $15 million annually for the Family Connections Grant program that would help children reconnect with family members. The measure also would clarify that children can be cared for by another legal guardian if a relative guardian becomes incapacitated or dies.

States would be required to report on the savings they achieved following enactment of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-351). That law removed income eligibility requirements for federal adoption assistance payments, thus allowing states to decrease their spending on such payments. The law required states to reinvest such savings into child welfare programs.