Improving adoption

By The Daily Progress

Published: October 14, 2008

Overshadowed by the financial crisis, the campaign, the war and other news, a quiet domestic victory occurred last week.

President Bush signed a bipartisan bill to improve America’s foster care and adoption network.
The bill makes several notable changes — including:
—Allowing family members who take over care of relatives’ children to obtain financial support as foster parents. Family members previously were not eligible for assistance in most cases.

—Providing more incentives for adopting children who have been in foster care. This should make it easier for older children to be adopted.

—Routing support money directly to tribal governments to make it easier for children to stay within their own communities.

These and other provisions call for more financing, a tricky subject in these times. About $3 billion in new costs are expected over the next 10 years.
But the new provisions are also expected to save money in the long run, according to congressional budget analysts. For example, if more children were adopted, as is the goal of much of the legislation, less money would be spent on foster care overhead.
Providing incentives for adoption is also simply the right thing to do. The foster care program typically contains more than 500,000 children, including about 125,000 waiting to be adopted. More than 25,000 of these children never find a permanent home.
The bill therefore pleases both fiscal conservatives and social liberals, by promising to save money while improving lives.

One downside: More mandates for states in administering these programs.

But largely, and despite the criticism it’s been getting on other issues, Con-gress got this one right.