I 
113TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 3323 
To realign structures and reallocate resources in the Federal Government, 
in keeping with the core American belief that families are the best 
protection for children and the bedrock of any society, to bolster United 
States diplomacy and assistance targeted at ensuring that every child 
can grow up in a permanent, safe, nurturing, and loving family, and 
to strengthen intercountry adoption to the United States and around 
the world and ensure that it becomes a viable and fully developed option 
for providing families for children in need, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
OCTOBER 23, 2013 
Ms. GRANGER (for herself, Mrs. BACHMANN, Mrs. BLACK, Mr. DIAZ-BALART, 
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona, Mr. OLSON, Mr. SENSENBRENNER, Ms. BASS, 
Ms. BONAMICI, Ms. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON of Texas, Mr. BRALEY of 
Iowa, Mrs. BROOKS of Indiana, Mr. COOPER, Mr. DOGGETT, Mr. ISRAEL, 
Ms. JACKSON LEE, Mr. LANGEVIN, Mr. MURPHY of Florida, Mr. SIRES, 
and Mr. TAKANO) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
Committee on Foreign Affairs, and in addition to the Committee on the 
Judiciary, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in 
each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdic-
tion of the committee concerned 
A BILL 
To realign structures and reallocate resources in the Federal 
Government, in keeping with the core American belief 
that families are the best protection for children and 
the bedrock of any society, to bolster United States diplo-
macy and assistance targeted at ensuring that every child 
can grow up in a permanent, safe, nurturing, and loving 
family, and to strengthen intercountry adoption to the 
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United States and around the world and ensure that 
it becomes a viable and fully developed option for pro-
viding families for children in need, and for other pur-
poses. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE; TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
(a) SHORT TITLE.—This Act may be cited as the 
‘‘Children in Families First Act of 2013’’. 
(b) TABLE OF CONTENTS.—The table of contents for 
this Act is as follows: 
Sec. 1. Short title; table of contents. 
Sec. 2. Findings; purposes. 
Sec. 3. Definitions. 
TITLE I—REALIGNMENT OF CERTAIN INTERNATIONAL CHILD 
WELFARE RESPONSIBILITIES AND FUNCTIONS 
Sec. 101. Establishment of Bureau of Vulnerable Children and Family Security 
in the Department of State. 
Sec. 102. Responsibilities of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for ac-
creditation of adoption service providers. 
Sec. 103. Transfer of functions and savings provisions. 
Sec. 104. Responsibilities of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for 
adoption-related case processing. 
TITLE II—ANNUAL REPORTING 
Sec. 201. Annual report on children living without families. 
Sec. 202. Country reports regarding severe forms of trafficking. 
TITLE III—PROMOTION OF A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH FOR 
CHILDREN IN ADVERSITY 
Sec. 301. Establishment of a USAID Center for Excellence for Children in Ad-
versity. 
TITLE IV—FUNDING AND EFFECTIVE DATES 
Sec. 401. Funding. 
Sec. 402. Effective dates. 
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SEC. 2. FINDINGS; PURPOSES. 
(a) FINDINGS.—Congress makes the following find-
ings: 
(1) The people of the United States recognize 
and believe that children must grow up in perma-
nent, safe, and nurturing families in order to develop 
and thrive. 
(2) Science now proves conclusively that chil-
dren suffer immediate, lasting, and in many cases ir-
reversible damage from time spent living in institu-
tions or outside of families, including reduced brain 
activity, reduced IQ, smaller brain size, and inability 
to form emotional bonds with others. 
(3) Governments in other countries seek models 
that promote the placement of children who are liv-
ing outside family care in permanent, safe, and nur-
turing families, rather than in foster care or institu-
tions, but many governments lack the resources or 
infrastructure to adequately address this need. 
(4) Despite the good efforts of countless gov-
ernments and nongovernmental organizations, mil-
lions of children remain uncounted and outside of 
the protection, nurturing care, permanence, safety, 
and love of a family. Without the care of a family, 
these children are forced to live on the streets, in in-
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stitutions, in paid foster care, in child-headed house-
holds, in group homes, or as household servants. 
(5) No reliable data currently exists to define 
and document the number and needs of children in 
the world currently living without families, but avail-
able evidence demonstrates that there are millions of 
children in this situation needing immediate help. 
(6) The December 2012 Action Plan for Chil-
dren in Adversity commits the United States Gov-
ernment to achieving a world in which all children 
grow up within protective family care and free from 
deprivation, exploitation, and danger. To effectively 
and efficiently accomplish this goal, it is necessary 
to realign the United States Government’s current 
operational system for assisting orphans and vulner-
able children, and processing intercountry adoptions. 
(7) All options for providing appropriate, pro-
tective, and permanent family care to children living 
without families must be considered concurrently 
and permanent solutions must be put in place as 
quickly as possible. Solutions include family preser-
vation and reunification, kinship care, guardianship, 
domestic and intercountry adoption, and other cul-
turally acceptable forms of care that will result in 
appropriate, protective, and permanent family care. 
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Preference should be given to options that optimize 
child best interests, which generally means options 
which provide children with fully protected legal sta-
tus and parents with full legal status as parents, in-
cluding full parental rights and responsibilities. The 
principle of subsidiarity, which gives preference to 
in-country solutions, should be implemented within 
the context of a concurrent planning strategy, ex-
ploring in- and out-of-country options simulta-
neously. If an in-country placement serving the 
child’s best interest and providing appropriate, pro-
tective, and permanent care is not quickly available, 
and such an international home is available, the 
child should be placed in that international home 
without delay. 
(8) Significant resources are already dedicated 
to international assistance for orphans and vulner-
able children, and a relatively small portion of these 
resources can be reallocated to achieve more timely, 
effective, nurturing, and permanent familial solu-
tions for children living without families, resulting in 
fewer children worldwide living in institutions or on 
the streets, more families preserved or reunified, and 
increased domestic and international adoptions. 
(b) PURPOSES.—The purposes of this Act are— 
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(1) to support the core American value that 
families are the bedrock of any society; 
(2) to protect the fundamental human right of 
all children to grow up within the loving care of per-
manent, safe, and nurturing families; 
(3) to address a critical gap in United States 
foreign policy implementation by adjusting the Fed-
eral Government’s international policy and oper-
ational structures so that seeking permanent fami-
lies for children living without families receives more 
prominence, focus, and resources (through the re-
allocation of existing personnel and resources); 
(4) to harness the diplomatic and operational 
power of the United States Government in the inter-
national sphere by helping to identify and implement 
timely, permanent, safe, and nurturing familial solu-
tions for children living without families, including 
refugee or stateless children; 
(5) to ensure that intercountry adoption by 
United States citizens becomes a viable and fully de-
veloped option for creating permanent families for 
children who need them; 
(6) to protect against abuses of children, birth 
families, and adoptive parents involved in inter-
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country adoptions, and to ensure that such adop-
tions are in the individual child’s best interests; and 
(7) to harmonize and strengthen existing inter-
country adoption processes under United States 
law— 
(A) by ensuring that the same set of proce-
dures and criteria govern suitability and eligi-
bility determinations for prospective adoptive 
parents seeking to complete intercountry adop-
tions, whether or not the child is from a foreign 
state that is a party to the Hague Adoption 
Convention; and 
(B) by aligning the definitions of eligible 
child for Convention adoptions and non-Conven-
tion adoptions to the maximum extent possible. 
SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS. 
In this Act: 
(1) ACTION PLAN FOR CHILDREN IN ADVER-
SITY.—The term ‘‘Action Plan for Children in Ad-
versity’’ means the policy document entitled ‘‘United 
States Government Action Plan on Children in Ad-
versity: A Framework for International Assistance: 
2012–2017’’, released on December 19, 2012. 
(2) APPROPRIATE, PROTECTIVE, AND
PERMA-
NENT FAMILY CARE.—The term ‘‘appropriate, pro-
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tective, and permanent family care’’ means a nur-
turing, lifelong, commitment to a child by an adult, 
or adults with parental roles and responsibilities 
that— 
(A) provides physical and emotional sup-
port; 
(B) provides the child with a sense of be-
longing; and 
(C) generally involves full legal recognition 
of the child’s status as child of the parents and 
of the parents’ rights and responsibilities re-
garding the child. 
(3) CENTRAL AUTHORITY.—The term ‘‘central 
authority’’ has the meaning given the term in sec-
tion 3 of the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000 (42 
U.S.C. 14902). 
(4) CHILDREN IN ADVERSITY.—The term ‘‘chil-
dren in adversity’’ means children living inside or 
outside of family care who are deprived, excluded, 
vulnerable, or at risk for violence, abuse, exploi-
tation, or neglect. 
(5) CONVENTION ADOPTION.—The term ‘‘Con-
vention adoption’’ has the meaning given the term in 
section 3 of the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000 
(42 U.S.C. 14902). 
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(6) CONVENTION COUNTRY.—The term ‘‘Con-
vention country’’ has the meaning given the term in 
section 3 of the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000 
(42 U.S.C. 14902) and for which the Hague Adop-
tion Convention has entered into force. 
(7) GUARDIANSHIP.—The term ‘‘guardianship’’ 
means a permanent legal relationship between an 
adult and a child, whereby the adult is lawfully in-
vested with the power, and charged with the duty, 
of taking care of the child. While some forms of 
guardianship are not truly permanent, the form of 
guardianship referred to and supported under this 
Act is permanent guardianship. A Kefala order 
issued by a country that follows traditional Islamic 
law does not qualify as an adoption under United 
States law, but may be a form of guardianship in 
some circumstances. 
(8) HABITUAL RESIDENCE DETERMINATION.— 
The term ‘‘habitual residence determination’’ means 
a factual determination of where a prospective adop-
tive parent (or parents) resides and where the child 
resides for purposes of an intercountry adoption 
case. 
(9) HAGUE ADOPTION CONVENTION.—The term 
‘‘Hague Adoption Convention’’ means the Conven-
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tion of Protection of Children and Cooperation in 
Respect of Intercountry Adoption, concluded at The 
Hague May 29, 1993. 
(10) KINSHIP CARE.—The term ‘‘kinship care’’ 
means the full time care, nurturing, and protection 
of children by relatives, members of their tribes or 
clans, godparents, stepparents, or any adult who has 
a kinship bond with a child, so long as those persons 
have the capacity and commitment to function as 
true parents for the child on a permanent basis. It 
does not include paid kinship foster care. 
(11) NON-CONVENTION ADOPTION.—The term 
‘‘non-Convention adoption’’ means— 
(A) an adoption by United States parents 
of a child from a non-Convention country in ac-
cordance with subparagraph (F) of section 
101(b)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality 
Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(b)(1)); 
(B) an adoption by United States parents 
of a child under the laws of the child’s country 
of origin (generally when the parents are living 
in the child’s country of origin and therefore 
able legally to complete a domestic adoption); or 
(C) in certain circumstances (generally 
with respect to relative adoptions or adoptions 
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