All Aboard the Crazy Train. Adventures in the Negotiation of Adoption Assistance.
Title IV-E Adoption Assistance is Not a "Defined Benefit" Program
When adoptive parents attempt to negotiate adoption assistance for their children, they regularly confront county agencies that treat adoption assistance as a “defined” or “fixed” benefit program that funds a limited list of services that are directly related to treating the child’s special needs. This approach practically guarantees that many of the parents’ concerns about successfully integrating the child into a healthy permanent family will be ignored or rejected.
The journey on the Crazy Train through “Negotiationland” to an Adoption Assistance Agreement has many unscheduled stops, as well as scheduled ones. Before discussing some of the most common unscheduled stops, it might be helpful to look at agency perceptions of the adoption assistance program.
Let’s start with a multiple choice question.
You are a prospective adoptive parent in the process of negotiating an adoption assistance agreement with an Ohio county agency. At some point,, the agency representative, in proposing an amount of adoption assistance that is half your child’s foster care payment says the following:
When you adopt a child, you are legally responsible for that child. Foster care maintenance covers ordinary expenses for a child in the custody of a public agency. When you adopt a child, you are legally responsible for that child’s daily care just like any other parents. The purpose of adoption assistance is to provide support for a child’s special needs. As the child’s parents, you are responsible for the child’s ordinary needs and should not expect the same level of support you received as foster parents.
Which of the following responses to the agency representative is the most accurate?
“Wow! When we petitioned to adopt Walter, we never realized we would be responsible for his care. Maybe we should just be his foster parents, so he could receive more support.”
“Come to think of it, providing a permanent family for a traumatized child whose initial home was too chaotic or dangerous to return to is really just the same as raising a biological child.”
“Gosh, I now realize that advocating for higher levels of adoption assistance is really a sure fire ‘get rich’ quick’ scheme.
The statement is misleading because it implies that adoption assistance is a “defined” or “fixed” benefit program, instead of a supplemental monthly payment that helps adoptive parents from a range of economic situations to sustain permanent families for special needs children from the foster care system.
Answer: D. Aren’t you surprised?!?
O.K O’Hanlon, Where did you come up with that?
Here goes. In Ohio’s county administered child welfare system, there are no statewide foster care or adoption assistance payment schedules. that means each child’s adoption assistance agreement is based, or should be, on the child’s individual needs and the adoptive parents’ particular circumstances. Section 8.2D.4, Question 1 of the federal Child Welfare Policy Manual, stipulates, “the amount of the adoption assistance payment is
determined through the discussion and negotiation process between the adoptive parents and a representative of the title IV-E agency based upon the needs of the child and the circumstances of the family. The payment that is agreed upon should combine with the parents' resources to cover the ordinary and special needs of the child projected over an extended period of time and should cover anticipated needs, e.g., child care. Anticipation and discussion of these needs are part of the negotiation of the amount of the adoption assistance payment.
Question 3 in the same section of the federal manual, emphasizes the inclusion of the adoptive parent’s (family’s) circumstances as part of the negotiation of an agreement for a monthly adoption assistance payment. Question 3 states, “during the negotiation of an adoption assistance agreement,
it is important to keep in mind that the circumstances of the adopting parents and the needs of the child must be considered together. The overall ability of a singular family to incorporate an individual child into the household is the objective. Families with the same incomes or in similar circumstances will not necessarily agree on identical types or amounts of assistance. The uniqueness of each child/family situation may result in different amounts of payment.
Note: State OAC rule 5101:2-49-05 says essentially the same thing, just not as clearly.
Yeah, there you go again O’Hanlon with all the quotes. How should this policy stuff affect the approach to negotiating adoption assistance? Is this just an authentic example of traditional “Irish blarney?”
Federal adoption assistance law is concerned with supporting the incorporation of foster children into permanent families through adoption. Title IV-E Adoption Assistance is not designed as a “defined benefit” program, covering a list of acceptable costs. Rather, it is a supplemental payment to be added to the parents’ own resources to help them to take on the challenges involved in providing a healthy adoptive family for a special needs child, including:
Providing an adopted child with food, shelter, clothing, housing and all of the normal needs of a permanent family.
Confronting the developmental, behavioral, educational and medical problems that come with the child’s troubled history.
Making significant adjustments in their daily lives. These adjustments fall under the category “family circumstances.” Family circumstances refers to any sacrifices and adjustments the parents must make to provide for a child’s ordinary and specialized needs in the course of integrating the child into a particular family.
Here are two examples of family circumstances that illustrate the conflict between agency’s “defined benefit” perception of adoption assistance and the
Family Circumstances, Example 1: Leaving a Job. A parent leaves a job to provide more intensive care and to ensure her child participates in all of the programs, therapies and activities designed to help her cope more effectively with the problems and challenges she brings to the adoptive family. Suppose adoption assistance was a defined benefit program, limited to funding only services related to special needs not covered by Medicaid. The agency might not be able to take the parent’s decision to leave a job into consideration, even though that decision has an obvious impact on the family’s resources.
Federal funding for adoption assistance may not exceed the child’s foster care payment rate, so it will not replace earnings from a job. But as a monthly supplement, the adoption assistance is designed to give parents the discretion to make major adjustments for the sake of their adopted child’s successful integration into the family.
Family Circumstances, Example 2: The Need for Child Care. The Title IV-E Adoption Assistance program was enacted to increase the pool of suitable and committed adults who were able to provide permanent families for children in the foster care system. Desirable parents include single adults as well as couples. Single adoptive parents often need specialized child care because they have to work. Once again, if adoption assistance were a “defined” benefit program limited to funding a specific list of services, child care might be excluded, even when desperately needed. But as a supplement designed to support the successful incorporation of a child into a stable family, child care is a legitimate subject of an adoption assistance negotiation.
Summary
The essential question in negotiations is not for what expenses and services does your child qualify? Rather, it should be pre-occupied with the goal of the successfully integrating the child into a permanent family. Here are some typical questions that should be discussed by the agency representative and the adoptive parents.
Besides the child’s ordinary, daily needs, what are your major concerns about effectively dealing with the problems that hinder your child’s healthy development?
What adjustments have you made, and what effect have those adjustments had on your family resources and capacity to provide for all your child’s care needs. (family circumstances)
What supplemental adoption assistance payment, when added to your family resources, would be sufficient to provide for all your child’s care needs.