Promoting Adoption and Legal Guardianship for Children in Foster Care Act

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3205) to reauthorize and restructure the adoption incentives grant program, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on the subject of the bill under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise today to urge support for H.R. 3205, the Promoting Adoption and Legal Guardianship for Children in Foster Care Act.

Obviously, I look old enough to be a grandfather, and I am a proud grandfather of six. Two of my grandchildren are adopted grandchildren. I was a foster grandfather. My daughter and her husband were foster parents for a while, and they ended up finding two children that they really wanted to include as part of their family.

These two children today are 9 and 10, and soon to be 10 and 11 here in the next few months. They were 3 months old when they came into the house as foster kids and now are adopted and a part of not only my daughter and her husband's family, but a part of the entire family. The Reichert household has been blessed with their presence, and they have a hope for a successful future with a loving family. This is what this bill is all about, to encourage parents across this country to adopt foster children.

I also had the opportunity, as the sheriff in King County and as a detective in King County, to watch from a very close view of what foster homes looked like. As I walked into those homes as a police officer and as a detective, I questioned how some of these places could even be foster homes. There were foster kids running away from home and ending up on the street and not having a place to call their own, not having a place where they could go to have Thanksgiving, to have Christmas, bouncing from one foster home to the next, not knowing who to call Mom or Dad. We have got to fix that. We need to encourage parents across this country to adopt our foster children, to give them that opportunity.

The other good thing about this bill is it is bipartisan. In fact, I can't think of a more important or more bipartisan topic than promoting adoption for our children. That is why we are here today. This is an area where both parties have worked together to improve outcomes for children, and it has been working.

In the 10 years from 1987 through 1997, the number of children in foster care rose dramatically, climbing from 300,000 to 537,000. That surge in foster care caseloads is one of the reasons Congress, led by current Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, passed the Adoption and Safe Families Act in 1997. That law was designed to ensure more foster children were quickly adopted when they couldn't return and live safely with their parents.

The Adoption Incentives program, created as a part of that law, was one key measure to encourage more adoptions of children from foster care. In short, it rewards States if they increase the number of children living in foster care for adoptive homes. It worked. Since the passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act, foster care caseloads have fallen dramatically. After peaking at 567,000 in 1999, foster care caseloads have fallen almost 30 percent. At the same time, adoptions from foster care increased in the late nineties and remained much higher than before the 1997 law's passage.

Today, we are here to support H.R. 3205, the Promoting Adoption and Legal Guardianship for Children in Foster Care, which will build upon the successes of the Adoption Incentives program. This legislation extends that program and improves the way we reward States that help more children leave foster care for loving, adoptive homes.

First, it improves the formulas behind these awards to make sure that even as foster care caseloads continue to come down, States continue to get awards for moving children into adoptive homes.

Second, it continues to promote the type of adoptions that have proven hardest to achieve by adding a special award for the adoption of teenage children. We should never give up on trying to find lifelong homes for these children, and this legislation steps up the incentives for States to do just that.

Third, we add a new award for guardianship, which is an important development in the child welfare world that is allowing thousands of children to leave foster care and live safely with relatives. This bill also requires States to focus funds on post-adoption services, which help children and families after adoptions have been finalized.

Finally, the bill would extend for 3 years the Family Connection Grant program that is focused on helping children in foster care reconnect with family members. Because funding for that program needs to be offset, we included a commonsense pay-for, which builds on a current procedure for recovering overpayments of unemployment insurance benefits. Under current law, States may offset Federal income tax refunds to collect these overpayments, and two-thirds of States do that today. This legislation would require all States to use this procedure, which will increase overpayment recovery and results in this legislation reducing the deficit by $24 million over the next 10 years.

As chairman of the Ways and Means Human Resources Subcommittee with jurisdiction over this program, I am pleased to report that the process behind developing this bill has been totally bipartisan and open. First, we held a subcommittee hearing in February featuring nonpartisan experts on adoption and child welfare. We then worked together with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to develop draft legislation, which was made publicly available in early August. We then worked together to incorporate that public feedback, improving in many ways the legislation that Chairman Camp and I and Ranking Members Levin and Doggett introduced on September 27.

I want to thank the subcommittee's ranking member, Mr. Doggett, who joins me on the floor this evening, as well as Chairman Camp and Ranking Member Levin, for their support of this legislation and for their help throughout this development. This will move us a step forward and closer to ensuring that more children living in the United States live in permanent, loving homes, and receive the support they deserve.

I invite all Members to join us in supporting this important bipartisan legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Camp), the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Young), a distinguished member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I will insert in the Record letters of support for this legislation from Christian Heritage, Center for Family Finding and Youth Connectedness, Seneca Family of Agencies, The Donaldson Adoption Institute, Hillside Family of Agencies, and Voice for Adoption.

I want to echo the words of Mr. Doggett. I hope the Senate does act on this.

There are three things that I would like to just highlight as we wrap up this evening's discussion on foster care, three things that this bill does: one, it cuts the deficit; two, amazingly, in this time of partisanship, this is a true bipartisan moment that we all ought to stop, pause, and take recognition of.

This is about children. It cuts the deficit, and this is one that we can all come together and support. Why? Because it is for our kids. It is for the kids across America who need a home.

I mentioned two of my grandchildren who are foster children, were foster children, are now adopted, but they were even more special. They were drug-addicted babies, crack cocaine, heroin, and meth, and these kids today have a home.

As a grandparent, standing on the sidelines of a soccer game watching Emma and Briar play soccer, knowing where they came from, the moms lived on the streets, drug-addicted moms, these kids have hope. They have a future. When the game is over, they run to the sidelines and they yell, ``Papa.'' It is the greatest feeling in the world.

We owe that kind of life to every foster child.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Christian Heritage,

September 30, 2013.

Chairman Dave Camp,

House of Representatives,

Washington DC.

Dear Chairman Camp: I am writing in support of the

Fostering Connections Grants that support Family Finding

research and the Adoptions Incentives program.

Kevin Campbell, founder of Family Finding; the State of

Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services; and

Christian Heritage, a nonprofit, faith-based organization,

have been working together in a collaborative effort to find

permanency for children who have been languishing in

Nebraska's foster care system.

The principles of Family Finding are: 1. Every child has a

family and they CAN be found, 2. Loneliness can be

devastating, even dangerous, and is experienced by most

children, 3. A meaningful connection to family helps a child

develop a sense of belonging. and 4. The single factor most

closely associated with positive outcomes for children is

meaningful, lifelong connections to family.

Mr. Campbell began working with the Nebraska Department of

Health and Human Services and Christian Heritage in April of

this year. We have already learned the following: 1. Families

for Nebraska's children in foster care are larger than we had

initially believed. 2. More family members are willing to

offer relationships of support than previously believed. 3.

More fathers are willing to come forward and offer support to

their children than originally anticipated, and 4. Family

members have been willing to make offers of legal permanency

EVEN for youth with the most complex needs.

How effective are the Family Finding services in Nebraska?

To date, 100 percent of the children whose cases have

completed Phase Three (of six phases) now have a Lifetime

Network of Unconditional Support consisting of five or more

family members, and 82 percent of the children who have

completed Phase Three have at least one person identified who

is willing to provide permanency. This program is

tremendously successful and we urge your support of continued

funding for the Fostering Connections grants

Respectfully yours,

Gregg Nicklas,

Co-CEO.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the managers of this bill, the gentleman from Washington and the gentleman from Texas, my colleague from, we would say on the floor, the great State of Texas.

This is a very important measure that I have had an opportunity to engage in. A couple of years back--I would say more years than I would like to remember--former Congressman Mike Andrews and myself were cochairs of the Foster Grandparents Program in Houston, and it drew me to the importance of both foster care and adoption.

I have also spent some time with Senator Mary Landrieu, who, as many know, is a very strong advocate of the idea of adoption and legal guardianship for children in foster care.

One of the new phenomenons that we are seeing more and more is the phenomenon of aging out for foster care children; and so I rise today to support H.R. 3205 and compliment the cochairs of the Foster Care Caucus, of which I am a member, Congresswoman Bass and cochair Marino, and really ask my colleagues to support this important initiative. I am very proud to cosponsor this legislation; and as a cochair and founder of the Congressional Childrens Caucus, now almost 20 years, I would like to say I strongly support it.

The more times that we can say something positive about children in a bipartisan way on the floor of the House, the more of a national statement and commitment is seen by those who are in the various venues in our States and county government and city government who work every day to protect our children. Foster care serves our children and families in a temporary placement by providing suitable, permanent living. Most children are placed in foster care temporarily due to parental abuse and neglect.

In Harris County, my county in Texas, 2,388 children were taken into protective custody in 2011. The average number of children in foster care each month in Harris County is 5,300. 2,440 children in Child Protective Service custody were placed in permanent living in Harris County in 2011.

This is the right direction to go. As of September 30, 2012, 1,740 children in the Houston region are still waiting to be adopted; and, on average, children stay in the system for almost 3 years before either being reunited with their families or adopted.

What a wonderful statement to know that there are families or adults that love you. Many times, those adoptions are amongst family members. Many times, the grandparents take the children. Let's thank them, because that was the program I was involved in, to give R and R, rest, to the grandparents who foster care for many, many children.

Frequent moves, different schools, our children need loving care. They need stability. Many times these foster parents provide that kind of stability. Many foster children have been separated not only from their parents, but from their siblings, and this can be very detrimental socially, emotionally, and psychologically.

So this legislation, which reauthorizes and restructures the Adoption Incentives Grant Program, will help enhance, cultivate, and advance the foster care system by making it a program that is beneficial.

Mr. Speaker, I was not able to come to the floor for H.R. 2083. I also, as a cochair of the Congressional Childrens Caucus, focusing on the abuse of children, want to salute and support the Protecting Students from Sexual and Violent Predators Act and ask this floor to support both of these initiatives, because when we speak for children, we speak for America.

I hope that we will also see, soon, antibullying and prevention legislation on the floor, Mr. Speaker, to make that public statement.

I thank the gentleman for his yielding, and I want to salute Little Audrey's in Houston for the work they have done for the children in Houston, Texas. Thank you, Alma, very much for the work you have done.

Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Congressional Adoption and Foster Care Caucuses and as Chair of the Congressional Childrens Caucus, I rise in strong support of H.R. 3205, the ``Promoting Adoption and Legal Guardianship for Children in Foster Care Act.''

I am proud to be a co-sponsor of this bill because it promotes adoption, protects children and provides grant funding for the foster care system.

Foster care serves our children and families as a temporary placement until a suitable permanent living arrangement is made that best fits the child.

Most children are placed in foster care temporarily due to parental abuse or neglect. In Harris County, 2,388 children were taken into protective custody in 2011. The average number of children in foster care each month in Harris County is 5,300.

In addition, 2,440 children in Children's Protective Service (CPS) custody were placed in a permanent living arrangement in Harris County in 2011. With court approval, 28.3 percent of the children were returned to their own families, 26.5 percent were placed with relatives, and 34.4 percent were placed in adoptive homes.

As of September 31, 2012, 1,740 children in the Houston Region are still waiting to be adopted (1,503 in Harris County).

On average, children stay in the system for almost three years before either being reunited with their families or adopted. Children have on average three different foster care placements.

Frequent moves in and out of the homes of strangers can be profoundly unsettling and quite difficult for children, and it is not uncommon to hear of children who have been in 20 or 30 different homes during their time in foster care.

Many foster children have been separated not only from their parents, but from their siblings, which can be very detrimental to a child socially, emotionally and psychologically.

Many children in foster care unfortunately have to undergo multiple placement changes several times while in foster care due to a wide range of factors such as licensing standards violations, court rulings, behavioral

issues, or changes in the foster home or facility.

In my home city of Houston, CPS does a remarkable job increase in providing placement options that will better match the needs of each individual child that goes through the foster care system.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3205 reauthorizes and restructures the adoption incentives grant program. These grant funds will help enhance, cultivate, and advance the foster care system by making it a program that is beneficial while effectively serving children. These resources will give children in foster care the opportunity to flourish in whatever living placement they are given.

Adoption is more than just a legal process, it is an emotional, social and psychological process in which children who have been removed from their biological parents become full and permanent legal members of another family. Adoption has many facets and touches people in different ways.

This bill promotes adoption and will help ensure that people who are willing and able to serve will have the necessary information and means to become legal guardians of foster children in need of placement.

Mr. Speaker, children are our hope for a better tomorrow, but it is up to us to promote adoption so that children may have legal guardians who will properly care for them and help them know the joy and security that comes with being a member of a loving family.

For these reasons, I strongly support H.R. 3205. I urge my colleagues to join me in support of this important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Thank you, Chairman Reichert and Chairman Camp.

Mr. Speaker, abused and neglected children in the foster care system are among the most vulnerable children in our communities. These children have the same needs, desires, and dreams as all young people. They need a safe and loving home. They want and deserve the opportunity to learn, to grow, and to fully experience life. A successful adoption provides foster children with these necessities and gives them the opportunity to achieve their full God-given potential.

Investing in the success of our foster children is not only good for them; but in so many communities, it is the difference between those young people becoming a community asset and a community liability. It is about reducing future unemployment, homelessness, teen pregnancy, and incarceration.

This bill contributes to our continuing efforts to address these issues and to provide permanent homes for abused and neglected children. I am pleased that Mr. Levin and I could work with Chairman Camp and Chairman Reichert to develop this bipartisan legislation to not only extend some important programs, but to make a number of positive changes. Mr. Reichert has outlined some of these. I would add attention to a provision that I authored to help ensure that children don't lose assistance simply because their guardian dies.

As a longtime member of the Congressional Coalition of Adoption and a member of the Foster Youth Caucus, I am pleased that we could take these steps in the right direction on a bipartisan basis to help these young people. The legislation both continues and improves the incentives now provided to the States when they increase the rate at which foster children, who cannot return home, find an adoptive family. These new incentives will now be even more focused on the promotion of adoption of older foster children, who are sometimes a bit more difficult to place and who have found difficulty in securing a permanent home.

Additionally, for the first time, the bill will reward States for helping youth leave foster care to live with a permanent legal guardian. Recognizing the importance of maintaining the link between family and children in foster care, the legislation also extends a relatively new, but expiring, program known as the Family Connection

Grants. These grants go out on a competitive basis to local organizations and State agencies to support various approaches for improving connections between foster families and their children, including linking grandparents to supports and services when they become the primary caregivers for children who would otherwise be in foster care.

Another provision that I care about greatly is strengthening of the requirement that adoption funding be spent on promoting adoption rather than being diverted to other purposes. Most notably, this legislation requires States to fully reinvest the funds into post-adoption services and other child welfare activities when these amounts were made available by an increase in Federal funding for adoption support.

In total, this legislation will continue the progress we have made over the last 15 years in moving foster children into permanent homes. In my home State of Texas, San Antonio has been viewed as a particular model of success for adoption. Each month, Bexar County hosts an adoption day event that allows families to complete their adoptions in a single day. These are proceedings that have allowed children to have shorter stays in foster care and to move more quickly into stable homes. Judges in Bexar County understand that they are responsible for getting children who experience abuse and neglect into a safe foster environment and are responsible for placing that child with a permanent family if it does not become safe for the child to return home.

These improvements in the local adoption system have been encouraged and utilized by important local child advocates like District Judge Peter Sakai and CASA San Antonio. They have allowed for faster and more efficient placement of foster youth into permanent families.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this bipartisan effort, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, surely no Member of the House has expressed more interest in this subject than the founder of the Foster Youth Caucus, our colleague from California (Ms. Bass), to whom I yield 3 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

(Ms. JACKSON LEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, hopefully the Senate will respond to our strong show of bipartisan support by moving this legislation this year.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the chairman of the Human Resources Subcommittee for yielding and for his leadership on this very important issue.

I rise in support of this legislation, which is designed to encourage the adoption of more children from foster care.

I spent much of my career promoting adoption of children by loving parents because every child deserves a loving and safe home. As an attorney in private practice, I worked with parents and children in the foster care system. Those sorts of experiences provided much of the background for changes in landmark adoption legislation I and my colleagues on the Ways and Means Committee crafted in 1997 called the Adoption and Safe Families Act. That legislation streamlined the adoption process to help more children in foster care quickly move into permanent adoptive homes. It also for the first time offered incentives to States to safely increase the number of children adopted from foster care.

It worked. In the decade following that legislation, the number of U.S. children adopted from foster care increased by 71 percent. In the years since, adoptions have continued to remain higher even as the foster care caseload started to decline.

Overall, almost 300 children have been adopted as a result of the increases in adoptions since 1997. One study even estimated that the Federal Government saved $1 billion over 8 years by ensuring children were adopted instead of remaining in foster care.

That is the successful incentive program this legislation extends and updates. We add a new award for States that increase adoptions of older children, who are the hardest to adopt and have the worst outcomes if they ``emancipate'' from foster care without a family to call their own. We also add a new award for increases in guardianship, when family members step up to care for their nieces and nephews, grandsons and granddaughters. And this bill ensures States maintain their commitment to post-adoption and related services so that children may truly have a family forever.

I note that this legislation is fully paid for by a simple and real reform requiring States to reduce Federal income tax refunds when someone wrongly gets an overpayment for unemployment benefits. Those savings not only cover the cost of this legislation, but reduce the deficit by $24 million over the next 10 years. That is a win-win for children, for families, and for taxpayers alike.

The bottom line is this: children in foster care deserve a place to call home, not just for a few months or years, but for good. We have already seen great progress in increasing adoptions since the Adoption Incentives program was created in 1997, and it is our hope that we can continue this progress with this bill.

I thank my colleagues who joined me in introducing this legislation: Mr. Levin of Michigan, Mr. Reichert of Washington State, and Mr. Doggett of Texas. They are all leaders on this issue in the committee and this House, and I value their help in developing and advancing this legislation.

I would also like to recognize the public comment we received in crafting this bill. A draft bill was posted on the Ways and Means Committee Web site in August, and the public was given a month to provide their thoughts on how to ensure more children are adopted. The bill we are considering today incorporates many of those suggestions, and we are grateful for the public's comments and their participation in this process.

I encourage all of my colleagues to join us in supporting this bill in the House, and I hope the Senate will act as soon as they can so we can continue to move even more children from foster care into permanent, loving homes.

Thank you, Ranking Member Doggett.

I rise today in support of the Promoting Adoption and Legal Guardianship for Children in Foster Care Act.

First, I would like to commend Chairman Camp and Chairman Reichert and Ranking Members Levin and Doggett for their great work on this legislation and their ongoing commitment to our Nation's foster youth. As the cochair of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth and the Congressional Caucus on Adoption, I sincerely appreciate your leadership and partnership on this issue.

Since 1997, when the Adoption Incentives legislation became law, we have seen a significant reduction of the number of kids in foster care and, more importantly, an increased number of kids in forever families; yet there are still over 400,000 children in our Nation's child welfare system, many awaiting the stability and love of a permanent family.

Unfortunately, studies show that foster youth, especially those who ``age out,'' are much more likely to experience poverty, unemployment, homelessness, incarceration, and compromised health after they leave foster care. Each year, nearly 30,000 teenagers age out of foster care without a permanent family. We know that this is unfair and unacceptable. We must strengthen policies that help to find forever families for our Nation's foster children, especially our older youth.

I would like to focus my remarks on one of the noteworthy aspects of the bill--the enhanced support for legal guardianship. By making this investment, we will ultimately help more kids find permanent families, often with relatives.

Today's foster care system looks much different than the child welfare system of previous decades. While children continue to be placed in foster homes with strangers or in group homes, more than half are placed with a relative caregiver, a grandmother, aunt, uncle, or older sibling. In fact, in my district in Los Angeles, relative caregivers are the largest foster care providers. Research shows that foster placement with relatives is good for children. They often allow children to stay in their schools, receive continued support from their community and culture, and feel connected to families that continue to love them.

Despite the importance of relative caregivers, they face unique obstacles. Becoming a caregiver changes lives in every way--physically, emotionally, and financially. Stable middle class families or seniors who live on their life savings are often pushed to the brink of poverty because they have accepted the unexpected financial burden of caring for a child. As a Nation, we should take the extra steps needed to support family members that heroically step up to care for children in times of need.

Additionally, I strongly support the Family Connection Grants reauthorized in this bill. These grants help to strengthen families, support kinship care, and prevent youth from entering or reentering foster care.

Before my time in elected office, I was honored to advocate for kinship and guardianship resources alongside relative caregivers at the Community Coalition's Kinship in Action program. Today, I am greatly encouraged that the bill before us encourages permanent families of all kinds, supporting both adoption and guardianship throughout the Nation.

I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this bipartisan legislation.