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Home > Foster Parent Adoption: A Bulletin for Professionals > Trends in Foster Parent Adoption
Foster Parent Adoption
1. Trends in Foster Parent Adoption Foster parents are the most important source of adoptive families for children in the child welfare system. Statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from 1998 on show that foster parents consistently adopt close to 60 percent or more of the children who are adopted from foster care (U.S. HHS, n.d.). Foster parents were not always preferred candidates for adoptive parenthood. Earlier in child welfare practice, distinctions were made between foster parents, who were seen as temporary caregivers, and adoptive parents, who were specially matched with a particular child for permanent placement. The practice of discouraging adoption by foster parents continued through the mid 1970s, when two in three States either prohibited or warned against the practice (Festinger, 1974). By the early 1980s the tide had turned, influenced by a combination of foster parent activism and permanency planning projects that demonstrated the benefits of foster parent adoption. The result was the passage of the Federal Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (P.L. 96-272), which supported foster parent adoption by making subsidies available for children adopted from foster care (Proch, 1981). In current practice, foster parents are recognized as valuable resources for waiting children. Many States now require that foster parents be considered as an adoption resource and receive preference under certain circumstances when a child becomes free for adoption. Foster parent adoption is also the basis for two well-recognized practices in adoption. In "legal risk placements," children whose situations indicate that parental rights will likely be terminated are placed with foster parents who are willing to adopt if the child becomes free. In concurrent planning, a practice supported by the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997, the permanency goal of reunification is supplemented by an alternative goal (often, adoption) to ensure that if reunification is not possible, the child has a clearly identified permanency option that can quickly be put in place. Initial placements are made with foster parents who would consider adoption should reunification become impossible, thus minimizing the number of placements for children. For this model to work, these foster parents must be able to support both the reunification plan, as well as the plan for adoption.
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