Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Key Bill Passes House!

NACAC was delighted to see that the Fostering Connections to Success Act (H.R. 6307) passed the House yesterday. (See previous post for more information on the bill.)

Now it's on to the Senate! We will be working for passage of the Improved Adoption Incentives and Relative Guardianship Support Act (S. 3038), which would:

* Reauthorize and expand the adoption incentive program
* Make all foster children with special needs eligible for federal adoption assistance (de-linking from old AFDC income standards)
* Create a federal subsidized guardianship program to support relatives who become guardians so that their kin can permanently leave foster care

Then we hope that, in conference, the final bill will also include de-linking of federal adoption assistance and the tribal direct funding included in H.R. 6307.

We encourage you to ask your Senators to sign on to S. 3038 as co-sponsors today. To reach your Senators, go to http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We took my grand-niece into foster care with the intent to adopt her. We were ADVISED to go through foster care first, since we could take custody and get support more easily that way. Even so, it took a year to even meet the child and 2-1/2 years for the adoption (final next Wednesday) to actually happen. We're RELATIVES, yet. Maybe state bureacracies feel they're being thorough; with (6) foster care social workers between the beginning and the end of the process, we feel they're impeding the process anywhere they can.