Promoting Adoption and Legal Guardianship for Children in Foster Care Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. DOGGETT. 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.

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