Adoption Facts

Facts and tips on adopting a child.

How does the adoption system work?

• Under state and federal laws, before exploring adoption possibilities, state child welfare agencies are required to try to reunite children with their parents when a child's safety can be assured. States are required to make a determination regarding reunification or adoption within one year.

• Between 50 and 70% of all children initially placed in foster care eventually are returned to their parents.

• When reunification is not possible, state and federal laws require efforts to find a permanent home for a child, preferably through adoption. All state laws require that, before an adoption can take place, the legal rights of the biological parents be severed through a state court proceeding.

Who are the children who need adoptive homes?

• One group consists of children, primarily infants, whose parents voluntarily relinquish them for adoption; little is known about these children or the nature of their adoptive placements because their parents generally deal with private adoption agencies or make private placements with adoptive families.

• A second group of children are those who have been placed in foster care based on court determination that they were abused or neglected, and for whom reunification efforts have been unsuccessful.

• In December 1990, there were approximately 69,000 foster children in the country for whom state agencies had determined that adoption was the appropriate goal. Approximately 20,000 of these children were legally free to be adopted (their parents' legal rights to ever regain custody had been terminated) and were waiting to be adopted.

• Forty-four percent of the children awaiting adoption were white, 43% African American, 7% Hispanic. Only four percent of these children were under age 1; 36% were between the ages of 1 and 5; 43% were 6-12 years of age; and 17% were over the age of 12. The median age was 7.4 years.

• Two out of three waiting children have special needs: medical, developmental, behavioral or psychological.

How long do children wait for adoption?

• Of the children awaiting adoption at the end of 1990, approximately 46% had already waited two years.

• It takes substantially longer to find homes for minority children. Older children and sibling groups irrespective of race also have longer waits.

• Many children are never adopted, even though their biological parents' parental rights have been terminated.

Why does it take so long and why do so many children go unadopted?

• Finding adoptive homes for older children and those with emotional or physical problems requires aggressive action by agencies, and most of the children waiting for adoption fall into these categories.

• In 1990, 43% of the children waiting for adoption were 6 to 12 years old; only 4% were infants. Two out of three children--a doubling since1982--had some special need: they were disabled, older, had siblings, or were minority.

• Lengthy processes to terminate parental rights, lack of financial resources for adoption, excessive caseloads and difficulty in recruiting foster and adoptive families contribute to the slow adoption of many of these children.

• There is some evidence that the adoption of minority children is being slowed because some foster care and adoption agencies are unwilling or reluctant to place these children with non-minority families. Some state agencies have followed explicit or implicit policies that make race or ethnicity the primary consideration in placement thus reducing the pool of available families.

What is the Clinton Administration doing to increase adoptions?

• The Administration is ensuring that states make full and effective use of the Adoption Assistance program, which provides critical economic support to families who adopt special needs children, since they may have large medical and other expenses. Under the Clinton Administration, the number of children for whom adoption subsidies are provided has increased by about 30%.

• Grants have been provided to public and private agencies to develop successful models for recruiting families, provision of post-legal adoption services, support for parent groups, and the development of training curricula.

• The Administration has conducted national and regional leadership conferences to build the capacity of public and private agencies to facilitate the adoption of minority and special needs children.

• The Administration provides support for the National Adoption Exchange, the Adoption Clearinghouse, the National Resource Center for Special Needs Adoption, and the Interstate Compact on Adoption and Medical Assistance.

• The Administration is committed to fully enforcing the Multiethnic Placement Act and Section 1808(c) of the Small Business Job Protection Act, whose non-discrimination and recruitment provisions should increase the number of children who are adopted. •The Clinton Administration has expressed strong concerns about "welfare reform" proposals that would jeopardize these programs and eliminate the guarantee of federal funds to help support adoptions.