Adoption Assistance Payments From a Few Northwest Ohio Counties, as of October 2022

Fourth in a Series

We continue our tour of Adoption Assistance payments made up of non-scientific samples of individual Ohio Counties in the month of October, 2022. This time we look at five Northwest Ohio Counties.

County Lucas Wood Sandusky Erie Ottawa

Population 428,117 134,276 58,281 75,184 40,046

Pop. Rank 6 22 44 33 62

AA Children 1,295 69 60 69 35

Max Payment $1,500 $1,837 $1,369 $1,045 $1,500

$0 Payments 38 2 0 4 0

Mean $422 $458 $426 $504 $750

Median $400 $400 $400 $500 $736

Note: Please contact me for information from counties that may not appear in this newsletter’s posts. Remember, once again, that these figures do not reflect the increase funding for Title IV-E Adoption Assistance payments, which began in January, 2023. See “Breaking News,” Jan. 5, 2023.

In previous posts, such as “All Aboard the Negotiation Crazy Train” and “Unscheduled Stop on the Negotiationland Crazy Train,” we have discussed certain common practices and attitudes that adopting parents encounter in dealing with county agencies across the state. Over the decades, I also have witnessed that, when adopting parents are adequately informed, they become more effective in negotiating vitally needed adoption assistance for their special needs children.

At the same time, this tour of county adoption assistance payments reminds us that Ohio not only has no statewide payment schedules for adoption assistance and foster care, but provides no statewide training policies and procedures for negotiating adoption assistance. This chronic state of affairs places an enormous burden on individual adoptive parents to make the case for adequate adoption assistance payments. How burdensome the parents’ negotiation journey (ride on the Crazy Train) eventually becomes, depends on the county agency they must engage.

I have always been awed by the commitment of adoptive parents to advocate for their special needs children. But, should we continue place the responsibility on parents to instruct themselves on the policies and procedures for negotiating adoption assistance that are long established in federal and state law?