NCFA Media : Archived News

Written Statement of National Council For Adoption: Hearing to examine recent failure to protect child safety

Committee on Ways and Means
November 6, 2003

Dear Chairman Herger and members of the Subcommittee:

The National Council For Adoption submits this written statement on the subject of your November 6, 2003 hearing examining the "recent failure to protect child safety" in the highly publicized and horrific case of the Jackson family in New Jersey.

According to the Census Bureau report, Adopted Children and Stepchildren: 2000, in the census year there were 2.1 million adopted children living with their parents in 1.7 million households, 1.6 million of those children under the age of 18. Sadly, there are abusive adoptive families, just as there are abusive biological families. It is statistically predictable that in a population of 1.7 million households there would be some examples of horrendous abuse.

According to reports, the Jackson children in New Jersey were subjected to inexcusable and hideous treatment. One case of the cruelty these children suffered is one too many. If proven guilty, the Jacksons and the officials who oversaw their adoptions should be punished severely. Unfortunately, child abuse and neglect is a tragic fact of life in some families, whether adoptive or biological.

However, the National Council For Adoption cautions against leaping to dramatic new conclusions about adoption, or adoption policy, based on this aberrant case. Adoption is an extraordinarily successful social institution in promoting child welfare. It is indisputable that children adopted out of foster care fare better than those who languish there. Adopted children score higher than foster children on measures of family adjustment, emotional and developmental functioning, and self-esteem. They are more likely to attend college and less likely to abuse drugs. Adoption into their own family gives children security, well-being, and love that foster care cannot.

One of the chief reasons adoption has been so successful in meeting the needs of children is that law and society have respected adoptive parents as the real parents and treated them essentially the same as biological parents. NCFA cautions against policies that impose requirements on adoptive parents that are not expected of biological parents, such as requiring adoptive parents to provide medical information and submit their child to post-adoption medical examinations. Adoptive parents are as attentive to their children’s needs as biological parents. Congress should be very reticent to enact a policy that treats them differently. Treating them differently creates a second-class status for adoptive parenting, which would violate the best interests of the child.

The time to examine adoptive parents’ suitability as parents is prior to adoption. There are policies that Congress can promote to facilitate the recruitment and preparation of suitable adoptive parents: (1) flexible funding that allows states to apply their IV-E dollars to adoptive parent recruitment and preparation programs and to improved training and oversight of case workers; (2) full funding of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program; and (3) promotion of the Children’s Bureau’s efforts to develop a national network of adoption advocacy programs to recruit parents from faith-based communities.

Some in the media have used the Jackson case to call into question the highly successful Adoption Incentives program just reauthorized by Congress in the Adoption Promotion Act of 2003. If ever there was a federal program worthy of reauthorization it is this program, which was instrumental in increasing the number of children adopted out of foster care from 31,000 in 1997, to 51,000 in 2002. Thanks in major part to these incentives, an additional 90,000 children have been adopted out of foster care than would otherwise have been. They are now enjoying the benefits of loving, permanent families. We daresay that these children do not object to the Adoption Incentives program.

The National Council For Adoption (NCFA) is a research, education, and advocacy nonprofit whose mission is to promote the well-being of children, birthparents, and adoptive families, by advocating for the positive option of adoption. Since its founding in 1980, NCFA has been a leader in promoting child welfare and adoption policies that promote adoptions of children out of foster care, present adoption as a positive option for women with unplanned pregnancies, reduce obstacles to transracial adoption, make adoption more affordable through the adoption tax credit, and facilitate intercountry adoptions.

Respectfully submitted,

Thomas C. Atwood
President