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For
immediate release Helping
Lost Children Find the Way Home By
Congressman Joseph R. Pitts Imagine
spending your childhood years bouncing around from foster home to foster
home, never truly latching on to a family or having a permanent place to
call “home.” Sadly, this
is a reality for far too many children in the United States. Today,
542,000 children are living in foster care arrangements in the United
States. And 126,000 are
eligible for adoption, meaning a judge has determined that returning these
children to their homes is not in the best interest or safety of the
child, and the parental rights have been terminated.
A
recent U.S. Census Bureau report reveals how important it is that we find
these children permanent homes. The
report found that adopted children are more likely than biological
children to live with two married parents who are better educated, and in
households with higher incomes. Adopted
children lived in households with a median income of $56,000 per year in
1999 compared to a median income of $48,00 per year for biological
children. Seventy-eight percent of adopted children live with two married
parents, versus 74 percent of biological children.
Statistics
show that children who live in two-parent homes are half as likely to be
abused or to use illegal drugs than children in single-parent families.
Also, single-parent families are five times as likely to be poor as
married-couple families. In 1999, 6.3 percent of married-couple families
with children were living in poverty, compared to 31.8 percent of
single-parent families with children. For these reasons and
others, we have been working hard in Congress to help find good homes for
these children. The Adoption and Safe Families Act,
created in 1997, took careful steps to promote comprehensive child welfare
reform to ensure that children's safety is paramount in child welfare
decisions. The bill worked to
provide a greater sense of urgency in helping every child find a safe,
permanent home. In addition,
the legislation created the Adoption Incentives program, which rewards
States for their efforts to move children out of foster care and into
stable homes. The program
gave extra incentives for the adoption of children with special needs. The
Adoption Incentives program has had outstanding results.
Since 1997, all States, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico
have qualified for incentive payments for their work in promoting adoption
of foster children. Between
1997 and 2002, adoptions increased by 64 percent, and adoptions of
children with special needs increased by 63 percent. Due to the extreme
success of this program, I joined with my Congressional colleagues in an
overwhelming vote to reauthorize and strengthen the
Adoption
Incentives program through the passage of the Adoption Protection
Act of 2003. This bill will
continue funding
for
the Adoption Incentives program through 2008.
This
bill also makes key improvements to the program, which will make it more
likely that States that
do a better job will receive incentive
payments for their efforts to place children in loving, adoptive families. Perhaps one of the most
important areas of the bill is the increased incentive for the adoption of
older children. Although we have
made great strides
in the overall challenge of getting more children adopted, youngsters age
nine and up are the most at-risk group for living out their childhood
years in foster care. This
age group represents nearly half of the children awaiting adoption, so
this bill takes great steps to
encourage the placement of older
children in quality adoptive
homes. All
children should have the chance to grow up in a loving, safe family, but
sadly this is not always a reality. The
fact that November is
National Adoption Month amplifies
the need for a continued focus on the importance of adoption.
I
am proud of the steps we have taken as a Congress to help move even more
children out of foster care and into permanent homes.
I will continue these efforts to increase adoptions among all
children, including older children, who desperately need a
loving and caring environment in
which to grow up. #
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