Promoting Adoption and Legal Guardianship for Children in Foster Care Act

Floor Speech

Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I wish to take a moment to voice my support for the Promoting Adoption and Legal Guardianship for Children in Foster Care Act. This bipartisan bill makes important advancements in encouraging states to place children in permanent, caring homes. I am especially pleased that the bill extends the Family Connection grants that help link foster children with family members. Nearly 400,000 children make up our nation's foster care population, with more than one in four (approximately 28 percent of these vulnerable children living with a grandparent or other relative. Research clearly shows that kinship foster care families are safer, more stable placements that are more likely to keep children connected with their siblings and communities than non-relative placements. Continuing these grants will advance the safety and well-being of children in care by connecting them with safe and caring relatives. I also strongly support the protections for youth from returning into care or losing assistance in the event that their legal guardian dies or is incapacitated. I actively worked to advance both of these provisions that encourage permanency and strengthen services to support children and families, and I am very happy they are included in this legislation.

In addition, I commend the bill and its authors for recognizing guardianship in addition to adoption as an important permanency option for children in care. Guardianship and kinship caregiving are very significant for Chicago, for Illinois, and for the African American community. My Congressional District has the highest percentage of children living with grandparent caregivers in the nation, followed closely by two other Congressional Districts in Illinois. Given the research showing that African American youth remain in care longer in part because of a hesitancy to choose adoption given the requirement to terminate parental rights, rewarding states for promoting permanency via guardianship is an important step forward to helping children in care find safe, permanent homes. Importantly, a study of the Illinois Subsidized Guardianship Demonstration Waiver demonstrated that the offer of subsidized guardianship increased overall rates of family permanency by six percentage points over and above the level of performance in a randomly-assigned control group that was limited to the option of adoption only. Incentivizing guardianship rather than incentivizing a particular path to permanency allows families to make the permanency choice that best fits the particular needs and circumstances of their family. It is my hope that we can increase the symmetry between guardianship and adoption incentives as this bill advances.

This bill makes a number of other improvements to the law. It calculates permanency incentives based on improvements in the rate of adoptions rather than the number of adoptions, so that states that reduce their caseloads still can demonstrate their success in moving youth to permanent safe homes. The bill also focuses more resources on older youth, enhances reporting requirements related to the use of state dollars, and strengthens benefits and services by establishing a minimum for post-adoption services. In closing, I urge my colleagues to support this important bill that will help the 100,000 children in foster care find permanent homes.

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