Fixing a Broken System


The goal of Listening to Parents is to eliminate the unnecessary barriers that prevent qualified, loving parents from adopting children in foster care.

Each year, a quarter of a million prospective parents will approach child welfare agencies to learn about adopting a child from foster care. Too many will find these agencies to be unresponsive, bureaucratic, and unwelcoming. Many will give up in frustration. Waiting children will wonder why “no one wants me”. The parents who want to adopt will wonder, “Why is it so hard to adopt?” There is no irony more tragic in America.

Fact: There are far more people wanting to adopt children from foster care than there are children in need of families:

  • Joint research by Harvard University and the Urban Institute documented that in any given year, 240,000 Americans will call for information about adopting a child from foster care. Only a tiny fraction of these prospective parents, less than 4%, will actually adopt a child from foster care.
  • According to the most recent National Survey of Family Growth, 600,000 American women were actively trying to adopt a child. The overwhelming number were interested in adopting a child that fit the profile of those in foster care. For every black child in foster care there are 12 prospective parents actively trying to adopt who would be willing to adopt a black child. For every child between 6 and 12 years of age, there are 8 prospective parents. For every child 13 years and older, there are 6 prospective parents.

Despite the documented fact that there are far more parents wanting to adopt than children available, each year, 25,000 children age out of foster care leaving foster care at 18 with no family, no resources and, all too often, no future.

Why is it so hard to adopt a child from foster care?


Nobody consciously discourages good prospective parents from adopting. There are, however, strong disincentives throughout child welfare that cause public agencies to act in ways that discourage would-be adoptive parents. Some of these disincentives:

Limited Resources- Faced with limited resources, many public child welfare agencies place greater emphasis on screening out “bad” parents than recruiting “good” ones.

Financial Incentive- Public agencies, and the individuals that work in them, have very little financial incentive to create adoptions. Contrast this with agencies that promote private adoptions, whether of foreign-born children or domestic infants. Like it or not, organizations that depend on adoptive parents for their livelihood are more responsive than organizations that do not.

Culture- The primary purpose of public child welfare agencies is to protect children from abuse. The vast majority of adults that any caseworker comes in contact with are parents accused or suspected of child abuse. The skills needed to protect children and get parents to receive help are vastly different than the skills required to recruit and support loving, prospective parents.

Interstate barriers- The United States does not have a child welfare system. Rather, each state has its own system. Under this system, each state is only interested in the well being of its children. In this system, it makes more sense for a state to keep an in-state family waiting indefinitely than to match them immediately with a waiting child in another state.

Individual caseworkers have great disincentives to make adoptive placements. In order for a child in foster care to be adopted, he or she must be in a relatively stable situation. Any caseworker, no matter how diligent, with a large caseload will, by necessity, respond to the child in crisis before the relatively stable child who would benefit in the long term by having a permanent family.