The Adoption Incentive Bonus

A Carrot Among the
Sticks
The Adoption
Incentive Bonus
Cornerstone Consulting Group, Inc.
2001Acknowledgements

In 1997, Congress enacted the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), the most
extensive federal child welfare legislation since the Adoption Assistance and Child
Welfare Act of 1980.Among other things, the legislation places renewed emphasis
on child safety by requiring states to make more timely determinations about permanent arrangements for children in state custody. In addition to shortening the
timeline for permanency hearings from 18 months to 12 months, the act sets deadlines for the initiation of hearings terminating parental rights. The overriding message of ASFA is that foster care is not the best place for children to grow up and
states must make more determined efforts to find permanent homes for children who
cannot be returned to their biological families.
One of the most novel provisions in ASFA is the Adoption Incentive Bonus. This
provision encourages states to find adoptive homes for children who are legally free
for adoption by granting a financial incentive for each foster child the state places in adoption above a baseline number.Congress authorized a bonus payment of $4,000
for each foster child and an additional $2,000 for each special needs adoption above
the baseline. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) calculated
the baseline by averaging each state’s number of finalized adoptions of children from
foster care for 1995, 1996, and 1997.
The financial incentives for adoption that are part of ASFA were first recommended
in President Clinton’s Adoption 2002 report, published in 1996. Adoption 2002 outlined an agenda to help overcome barriers to permanency for children in foster care,
including goals to speed up the pace to permanency through adoption.It was anticipated that the bonuses would help states achieve the Clinton Administration’s goal to double the number of adoptions nationwide by 2002. In fact, states are well on their way toward this goal, having increased the number of finalized adoptions by 64 percent–from 28,000 in 1996 to 46,000 in 1999.
The use of financial incentives to meet certain policy objectives was an innovation of the Clinton Administration. In addition to the adoption bonuses, the administration authorized financial bonuses to states to reduce the number of out-of-wedlock births and to move people from welfare to work. In each case, DHHS created a baseline standard and measured states’ success according to factors unique to each social policy issue. Unlike the adoption bonuses, which were distributed to every state that increased adoptions, welfare and out-of-wedlock birth incentives were only given to a handful of states.
1 When first authorized, the adoption bonus provision received mixed reviews in the
child welfare field. Some criticized it as being akin to a “bounty” for children, and some were concerned that state agencies would make inappropriate decisions for
families in order to receive the bonus.
Read more at:http://familyrights.us/bin/white_papers-articles/carrot_among_sticks.pdf