Statement by The Pew Charitable Trusts' Kids Are Waiting Campaign on Passage of Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act

September 24, 2008

By passing the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, Congress demonstrated its commitment to improving the nation’s foster care system, so that more children will be able to leave care quickly and safely to join permanent families.  This groundbreaking legislation marks the most significant Congressional reform of foster care in more than a decade.

This landmark bill implements many of the policy recommendations articulated four years ago by the national, nonpartisan Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care.   Comprised of leading child welfare experts, judges, social workers, foster and adoptive parents, a former foster youth and others, the Pew Commission studied the foster care system and recommended reforms that would reduce the number of children languishing in care without families.  Four of the Pew Commission’s key recommendations are reflected in the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act.

Among the Pew Commission’s recommendations included in the act are two provisions to support the adoption of children from foster care, especially those with special needs and older youth.  Additionally, the Act authorizes federal resources to allow more children to leave foster care for safe, permanent homes with family members who become their legal guardians.  For the first time, tribal governments will be able to receive foster care funds directly from the federal government, thus ensuring that more American Indian and Alaskan Native children can remain in their own communities.

Another important provision of the bill allows states to continue providing support up to the age of 21 for young people in foster care who are pursuing education, training, or work.  Furthermore, the bill improves oversight of the educational progress and health care needs of children in foster care.

The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act is the result of outstanding Congressional leadership and determined efforts to improve the lives of the more than half a million children currently in our nation’s foster care system. Senators Max Baucus, Charles Grassley and Jay Rockefeller, and Representatives Jim McDermott and Jerry Weller in particular have worked tirelessly to advance this legislation.

The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Kids Are Waiting campaign commends these leaders for their dedication and bipartisan efforts, and we offer them our congratulations and appreciation.  We also extend thanks and recognition to the broad coalition of national, state and local child welfare, judicial, advocacy and other organizations whose support has been essential to ensuring passage of this vitally important bill.

ABOUT THE KIDS ARE WAITING CAMPAIGN: Kids Are Waiting: Fix Foster Care Now is a national, nonpartisan campaign dedicated to promoting foster care reform. Led by The Pew Charitable Trusts, an ever-growing number of local, state and national partners are working together so that our most vulnerable children don't spend their childhoods waiting in foster care for the families they deserve.  For more information visit: www.kidsarewaiting.org