I am a Board Member of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institutes, and It Is a Very, Very Worthwile
I am a board member of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institutes, and it is a very, very worthwhile -- (House of Representatives - September 19, 2006)
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Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for yielding.
First, I want to commend him and Mr. Camp for their outstanding leadership and the passion with which they display relative to this issue and their personal involvement.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize the significance of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. ASFA provided sweeping changes in Federal child welfare law designed to ensure children's safety and to quicken permanent placements in the event that a child could not return home.
By enacting the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, Congress recognized the need to align Federal incentives with the desired goal of providing abused and neglected children safe, permanent homes. This law has helped move States to promote adoption and has helped moved children into permanent homes.
In praising ASFA, I want to take a moment to highlight the need to develop similar policies to promote permanency more broadly. ASFA has done much to promote adoption, but policymakers should extend ASFA's successes to other areas of permanency to address the needs of hundreds of thousands of children for whom adoption is not appropriate.
Using ASFA as a model, the bipartisan Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care recommended that Federal policies create subsidized guardianship programs and State incentives to promote permanency more broadly, be it via reunification, adoption or guardianship.
Also, we must use our understanding of the implementation of ASFA to make it better. I am particularly concerned about the over 29,000 children who have entered our child welfare system due to parental incarceration, most often from nonviolent acts. The parameters set forth by ASFA do not align well with those of the criminal justice system, leading to a permanent separation of many children from their parents and family.
I encourage my colleagues to consult the wonderful policy brief by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law on the topic. ``Rebuilding Families, Reclaiming Lives,'' draws attention to hurdles created by the lack of consistency in Federal policies with regard to children of incarcerated parents. It also offers policy recommendations to promote stability and well-being for the children.
Mr. Speaker, I also take this second to commend the One Church, One Family, One Child program in Illinois, who are indeed going to be here for the Angels in Adoption gala. They have developed a unique program of recruiting families to become foster parents to children coming out of correctional institutions. I commend them for that outstanding work and note Reverend Parks, Reverend Nelson and Ms. Hunt who have developed a fantastic program with the other members of their board.
Again, I commend the gentlemen for their outstanding work on this issue.
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