The parents can challenge the agency to explain how the child's care needs could have diminished so dramatically as to warrant a much smaller adoption assistance payment. A large gap between the child's appropriate foster care rate and the adoption assistance rate appears to conflict with the federal requirement to consider the child's needs and family circumstances. The bigger the discrepancy the less likely that the adoption assistance rate, as proposed by the agency, reflects the child's needs, particularly in situations where the parents will have to sacrifice to incorporate the child into their family. See the McAllister Hearing Decison , Ohio, April, 2000. Amending Adoption Assistance Agreements Parents may request an amendment to an adoption assistance agreement at any time and have the same hearing rights as those pertaining to the negotiation of the initial agreement.
Adoptive parents can request a fair hearing if the State rejects such requests.
It affirms that the rate of support for a child in a foster family home is a changing standard. According to P.A. 01-01 . . . . a State may negotiate an adoption assistance agreement that automatically allows for adjustments to the adoption assistance payment when there is an increase in the foster care board rate. Alternatively, a State may renegotiate an adoption assistance agreement if the adoptive parents request an increase in payment due to a change in their circumstance and a higher foster care rate would have been paid on behalf of the child if the child had still been in foster care. Adoption Assistance Payments Foster care payment rates are set by individual states or counties. According to federal policy, adoption assistance payments are to be negotiated, but in reality they also tend to be derived from payment schedules established by individual states.