The number of adopted children with serious emotional or medical problems has apparently increased. The push to find permanent families for foster children ignited by the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 will, if anything, accelerate this trend. Adoption assistance payment rates have not kept pace with the level of foster care support provided for a child with severe special needs. Foster parents often face a cruel dilemma when they decide to adopt the child to whom they have become so closely attached. They desperately want to become the child's legal parents, but in doing may been confronted with an offer of adoption assistance that is several hundred dollars per month less than the special care rates they were receiving as foster caregivers.
Many foster parents are persons of modest means.
By simply accepting a drastically reduced level of support, they may be placing their child's treatment needs at risk. It follows that adoption assistance agreements involve negotiation between the parents and the agency. Quoting directly from PIQ 90-02, the new policy issues explains that The circumstances of the adopting parents must be considered together with the needs of the child when negotiating the adoption assistance agreement. This means considering the overall ability of the family to incorporate an individual child into their household. Families with the same incomes or in similar circumstances will not necessarily agree on identical types or amounts of assistance.