Reply #33: my perspective differs from most people's

[NorthernSpy]

Why not accept that it is, in fact, a choice, that some prefer to make?

Because I advocate recognizing the kid's right not to be abandoned by the parent. If children aren't property, then why are they transferrable at the parent's discretion in the first place?

I'm going to be blunt about this: we tolerate parental abandonment of children because doing so "frees up" -- that is, allows into commerce -- a relatively small number of healthy white infants and toddlers. Such children can then be transferred to affluent white couples who would like to become parents, but who are incapable of reproducing naturally. It is those affluent whites whose interests are really, if tacitly, considered paramount in this issue.

One consequence of failing to recognize the rights of the child is that a larger number of older, disabled, and/or nonwhite children can be abandoned to the state by their parents with impunity. Another consequence is that an incentive is created for the state to take kids away from impoverished parents, even if no abuse has occurred.



http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_16639.sht...

The follwing is a recent press release (reproduced in full -- no copyright issue):

Adoptions Stall, More Legal Orphans Created by Failed Federal Law, National Child Advocacy Group Says"

The number of foster-child adoptions has stalled, even as the number of "legal orphans" continues to grow as a result of a failed federal law, a national child advocacy organization said Wednesday.

Worst of all, according to the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, there still are more children in foster care now than when the so-called "Adoption and Safe Families Act" was passed, and those children continue to languish in foster care for as long as they did before ASFA became law.

"ASFA was built on a foundation of false premises," said NCCPR Executive Director Richard Wexler. "As a result, it has backfired, actually worsening the nation's foster care crisis." Data from the Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families show that only 49,000 foster children were adopted in federal fiscal year 2003 - slightly less than the totals for 2002, 2001, and 2000.

"It appears that ACF was fully aware of these dismal results at least as early as October," Wexler said. "But they were not made public until after the annual National Adoption Day events in November, so no one would notice the bad news, and the public could be fooled into thinking ASFA was working." The figure was not made public until November 23, three days after the "Adoption Day" events, and 11 days after NCCPR filed a Freedom of Information request for the data.

Meanwhile, because ASFA requires child welfare agencies to petition for termination of parental rights for every foster child in care for a specified time (with certain exceptions) even when no adoptive parents are available, terminations of parental rights have far outrun actual adoptions.

"Since ASFA became law, there have been 117,000 more terminations than actual adoptions. As a result, as some of us predicted in 1997, ASFA is creating a generation of legal orphans, with no ties of any kind to birth parents, and little hope of adoption either," Wexler said.

Even worse, Wexler said, the number of children trapped in foster care remains higher now than when ASFA was passed. "When ASFA became law, there were 520,000 children trapped in foster care on any given day. In the following years, that figure actually increased, peaking at 567,000 in 1999. Even now, the most recent data available show that on any given day 523,000 children are trapped in foster care. And they are trapped for an average of 33 months - just as long as they languished in care before ASFA."

The figures are similar for so-called "waiting children" - children for whom parental rights have been terminated or for whom adoption is the "goal" in the case plan. "That number also rose after ASFA became law, and there still are more such children now than when ASFA passed," Wexler said.

ASFA backfired because the assumptions of its proponents were wrong, Wexler said. "ASFA was based on the myth of the `Vast Family Preservation Conspiracy,'" Wexler said. "Congress was told that children were languishing in foster care because agencies supposedly were making repeated desperate efforts to help their birth parents."

"Congress also was told that huge numbers of childless adults were desperate to adopt foster children and would rush to do so, just as soon as the supposed efforts to keep families together were stopped."

"Thus, ASFA, it was said, with its promotion of adoption at all costs, its assault on family preservation, and its payment of cash bounties to states for increasing adoptions, would empty out foster care."

"But there was no Vast Family Preservation Conspiracy," Wexler said. "On the contrary, the family preservation movement is dedicated to keeping children out of foster care whenever it is safe to do so, and, when children must be placed, finding them safe, permanent homes as soon as possible."

"The real reason children languish in foster care is not because agencies do everything for birth parents. It's because they do almost nothing for birth parents. Contrary to the common stereotype, most parents who lose their children to foster care are neither brutally abusive nor hopelessly addicted. Far more common are cases in which a family's poverty has been confused with child `neglect.'"

"The birth parents get no help, and the children are filed away in foster care and forgotten as overwhelmed caseworkers rush on to the next case."

As a result, ASFA made the real causes of the foster-care crisis worse, Wexler said. "It reinforced a take-the-child-and-run mentality in the nation's child welfare agencies. The number of children taken from their parents increased each year, peaking at over 300,000 in 2002, further overwhelming the system."

"Meanwhile," Wexler said, "the supposed army of childless, middle-class couples desperate to adopt foster children didn't show up."

"All those children coming in the front door outweighed the small increases in adoptions in ASFA's early years. And that small increase could have been accomplished through other means, without all the damage caused by ASFA."

"ASFA encourages states to do a lot of bad things, but often it doesn't require states to do them," Wexler said. "There is flexibility if states choose to use it. The only states and localities actually succeeding at child welfare are those which make that choice and embrace safe, proven programs to keep families together. These model systems not only are taking away far fewer children, they also are improving child safety."

"More states should follow their example, and Congress to face up to its mistake, learn from these systems and undo the damage caused by ASFA."