"If I Don't Get Adopted in Three Years . . . "

There is a new bill being introduced in Washington State which would allow for children to petition the court and ask to be reunified with their birth parents if they have not been adopted after three years. The bill in it's entirety can be read here.

The spirit of the bill is this situation, and I quote from the bill, "There may be cases in which a child will no longer be at risk of abuse or neglect by a former parent and it is in the best interests of a child who is legally free to be reunited with his or her parent." While this scenario happen ocassionally, and it would certainly be better for the child to have some adults in their lives instead of aging out of the parents have changed substantially and are able to have a healthy relationship, but I'm wondering if that might be the exception rather than the rule.

The implications I see, as a person who attempts to match children on a daily basis, is that this law, if understood by the children, could keep them from healing and moving on. Many older children are cautious about being adopted and they know how to manipulate the system. If their behavior is horrible, nobody will adopt them. What if there was that hope for them: If I just hold out three years then I can ask to live with my parents again. And, unfortunately, it is my belief that if the bill passes, the majority of these requests would have to be denied in order to preserve the best interest of the child.

So, I see a scenario like this one (not a true story, but certainly could be): Katie is very attached to her birth mother even though she has emotionally abused her for years and was sexually abused by many of her mothers boyfriends. Her mother was consisently attracted to men who were abusive to her and to her children. Katie is removed at the age of twelve. She's bright and she heard about a new law that says that in three years she can go live with her mom again if she hasn't been adopted."

Do you think this child is going to be helpful to her social worker in trying to find a new family? Will she understand that the request for ruinification is not a guarantee? Will she use her behaviors to make herself "unadoptable" on purpose?

I am sure that there are those who would say, "There aren't homes that will adopt teenagers anyway" but there are a few and I have seen several "success stories" in placing kids over 14.

I see pros and cons to this legislation. However, it appears to me that the benefit it might provide in a few situations might not be enough to compensate for the many children it would keep from being adopted. I'm interested in others opinions.

Levels of Care: An Unsolvable Conundrum?

In nearly every state, foster care payments are determined by how difficult the child is to parent. Incident Reports are filed and there are reviews periodically to make sure that the behaviors still exist that were initially reported. Keeping a child at a "therapuetic level" is a good thing for the foster parents (they make more money) and the therapuetic agencies (if the child is no longer therapuetic, their services are unnecessary).

Even the most integritous of indviduals is going to have a hard time proving that the child is improving to the point that they need to be paid less money. And then there is the other extreme. I placed a 17 year old who told me that his foster parents sat down every night and filled out incident reports about him and the other foster children in their home. "They had me at a Level Four for a while and there's no way I was ever more than a Level Two," he reported.

I suppose that the other extreme could also occur, though I would guess that it happens less often. If a basic care foster parent falls in love with a child and does not want that child moved into another home (to receive therapuetic foster care services) couldn't that foster parent downplay the child's issues and paint an inaccurate picture?

The conundrum comes into play when the child is legally free for adoption and the foster parents, for whatever reason, cannot adopt the child. At this point it is time for the social worker to recruit a family for a child. The level of care is one of the first things that the parents hear about the child and eventually the prospective adoptive parents in many states will be reading through the many incident reports. Can prospective parents be convinced to adopt a child who has over 1,000 pages of incident reports in their file and a therapuetic level of care?

I post this because this is one of the issues around which my brain cannot wrap. I don't think we can honestly say that all foster parents and therapuetic agencies are going to accurately report improvements that will reduce their salary. I am sure that there are many out there who do, but unfortunately, they may be the exception rather than the rule.

Am I missing something obvious here? Is there a solution that I'm simply not seeing?

Please comment either here or at the Adoption Think Tank site.

Adopted at 23

A couple adopts their former foster child when she is 23. This is the kind of commitment that we need to start training all foster parents to have when they agree to take teenagers.

Right now, foster care for teenagers is seen as a temporary thing. Caseworkers often tell foster parents, "Just try it and see if it works. If it doesn't, we'll move him/her." Kids get moved in foster care all the time for the dumbest things -- often because of their attitudes. Last time I checked, every teenager, no matter how "normal" or perfect, had a bad attitude.

Kids are aging out of foster care with nobody committed to them every day. What we need to do is recruit foster families who are willing to make a lifetime commitment to the kids, whether or not they are legally free and whether or not the kids want to be adopted.

Many kids don't see a need for adoption until they are in their mid to late twenties. Many of them, as the story I sited shows, go back and get adopted much later than their committed parents would have preferred. But the bottom line is that the commitment on the part of the parents began the day the foster child moved in.

When I was a college administrator, there were modular trailer units put on campus as temporary housing that ended up housing students for way more years that they were intended. They were no fun to live in and eventually they were finally replaced by permanent housing.

These "mods" as we called them remind me of foster care. Foster homes were never intended to be a long term solution, but that is what they have become. And they won't be a good long term solution until we can change the thinking of foster parents until they can make a permanent lifetime commitment to teenagers where they will love them, regardless of what happens.

And maybe stories will have a happy ending like this one.