Introduction President Clinton's Adoption 2002 initiative and the passage ofthe Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 mark the culmination of two decades of reform in the child welfare field that began with passage of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980. Together they seek to ensure that foster children are either returned to their birth families or placed with adoptive families or in other permanent arrangements. The details of the child welfare problem are stark. Of the 450,000 children in foster care in the public child welfare system in 1994, some 100,000 were awaiting adoption. Each year fewer than 20,000 of these children are adopted, and many wait three to five or more years for an adoptive home.
Adoption rates vary enormously among the states.
Michigan, with some 15,000 children in foster care, finalizes over 2,000 adoptions per year. California, with over 100,000 children in foster care, places only 4,000 for adoption annually. Since the definition is determined by each state, those included in this group may vary from state to state. However, most children in foster care awaiting adoptive placement are considered informally as having special needs as a result of the events leading to placement, their length of time in foster care, multiple placements, and other difficult factors. Adoption is one of several ways of providing permanent families for children in foster care who cannot return to their own homes in safety.