Imagine you’re a CIP director.

You’ve heard anecdotally from lawyers that “many children are languishing in foster care” after the court terminated parental rights (TPR) because adoption finalization hearings are not being scheduled timely. Enough attorneys have mentioned it that you decide to investigate. First, you send out a court, agency, and adoption attorney survey to see whether the perception is pervasive or only the experience of a handful of attorneys. The results show the perception is widespread. Next, you contact your court case management system data expert and ask her to pull adoption data on the primary adoption timeliness measures (see Module 1). You ask the agency to provide adoption data related to the court orders from the time parental rights are terminated to the time the child is adopted.

You receive the following data (Don’t worry, we’ll show you this data again. You don’t have to memorize it):

The median number of months from removal to adoption discharge in the jurisdiction is 35.4 months. 17% of children adopted from foster care in the past year were adopted within 24 months from removal. 79% of children adopted from foster care in the past year were adopted within 48 months of removal.

The court schedules cases for post-TPR reviews every 12 months, and the Family Court Calendar Clerk schedules adoption finalization hearings upon request of the petitioner after all required forms have been completed and filed.