Adoption Process Overview
National statistics indicate that about 50% of children who enter foster care are reunified with their parents, and approximately 25% of children who exit foster care each year are adopted. In FY 2018, 126,422 children were waiting to be adopted, meaning that they were legally-free for adoption but had not yet had a final order of adoption entered to create a new permanent, legal family. More than half of those children were “legal orphans,” having had their relationship with both parents terminated during the year and still awaiting an adoptive resource.
The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 established a hierarchy of permanency goals and creates a preference for adoption when reunification is not possible. Adoption offers legal security and relational permanence for a child in the form of new legal parent-child relationships. Children who are adopted from foster care may also be eligible for adoption assistance benefits, and adoptive parents may qualify for state and federal tax credits.
To facilitate an adoption, a judge must make the final decision to terminate the parental rights of the birth parents (or accept their voluntary surrender of parental rights or consent to adoption) and preside over the adoption finalization hearing.
Adoption is, for the most part, controlled by state law, and laws vary considerably from state to state. Some common jurisdictional differences in state adoption laws include:
- Requirements for who may become an adoptive parent (e.g., age, marital status, residency)
- Procedural requirements such as a pre-placement home study
- Requirement for a child’s consent to his or her own adoption
- The availability of open adoption and/or the possibility of reinstatement of parental rights
In addition, dozens of federal laws affect how the court fulfills its oversight role in ways that can impact time to adoption for children in foster care. The primary focus areas for the courts are timely decision-making and meaningful engagement of the child and family.
Characteristics of the child, of the family of origin and prospective adoptive family, and of the child welfare system have all been shown to be associated with increased risk of delay in adoption. Older children, children with physical and psychological disabilities, male children, and African American children have all been shown to wait longer for adoptive placements. Children who have been sexually abused, those who have experienced multiple placements, and those whose parents rights have been involuntarily terminated rather than voluntarily relinquished are also at higher risk for longer timelines to adoption.
Child welfare agencies and courts can understand adoption timeliness by looking at a few primary measures, including:
- Time from the child’s removal to the filing of a termination of parental rights petition
- Length of time from the selection of a permanency goal of adoption to the filing of the termination of parental rights petition
