Dispatch from the Front

Artificially High Fostet Care Payment Rates

Inflated Foster Care Payment Rates?

In the last work group meeting on “Stabilizing and Strengthening” the negotiation of adoption assistance in Ohio, a number of people referred to the shortage of foster families. Consequently, they said, children with relatively moderate special needs were being placed in foster homes with foster parents qualified to care for children with more extensive care needs. In such situations, foster parents were receiving specialized foster care payment rates.

I was not much aware of such a phenomenon or how many children and families are affected. Asleep at the wheel again, O’Hanlon? Cognitive decline? Could be. In any case, this bit of news prompts the need for further clarification regarding the relationship between foster care payment rates and the negotiation of adoption assistance.

The Connection Between Foster Care and Adoption Assistance Payments

I have discussed this matter many times, primarily for two reasons.

1. To affirm that the foster care payment a child receives, or would receive if she were placed in a foster home today, functions as the maximum amount of adoption assistance a child may receive. Why? Because federal financial participation is available for payments up to, but not beyond the child’s family foster payment rate.

   Note: For IV-E purposes, the child’s family foster care payment rate may include the foster board rate, plus additional clothing, along with personal and other allowances, calculated on a monthly basis. It does not include administrative costs.

2. To discuss the often severe loss in monthly support when foster care payments are replaced by adoption assistance.

I have been acting on the assumption that foster care payment rates are a reflection of a child’s level of care and the responsibility of the foster caregivers. If that is the case, adoption assistance payment rates that are half of foster care payment rates or less would seem insufficient at the very least.

Allowing for the existence of artificially high foster care payment rates in some cases, let me review some main points of the drivel I throw at you, almost every week.

1. The basic intent of this newsletter/blog is to inform adoptive parents and would-be parents about how to navigate the adoption assistance program in hopes that they will become more effective advocates for their special needs children.

2. I do not recommend that parents settle only for the child’s foster care payment rate.

3. Rather, the entire purpose of the negotiation process is to arrive at an agreement for a monthly supplemental payment that, when combined with the parents’ resources, will enable them to effectively incorporate a special needs child into a permanent adoptive family.

4. After considering the child’s care needs and the family circumstances that affect the parents’ capacity to address those needs, it is up to them to decide what the adoption assistance payment should be. Whether that amount is equal to the child’s foster care payment rate, close to it or considerably less, it is up to the parents. I trust that the parents are the best judges of their children’s and family’s needs. Agency representatives may disagree, of course. What matters most is a good faith focus on supporting a permanent family for the child.

5. Agencies often embark on “negotiations” with the erroneous claim that they must start at zero. Since agencies have no costs until an adoption assistance payment goes over $350 a month, this is clearly a negotiation tactic. It enables an agency to give the appearance of negotiation, by raising the proposed adoption assistance payment in increments of $50 a month. That tactic enables the agency to propose 7 increases before it incurs any cost.

   Given the current level of mistrust, I think it prudent for the parents to start with a payment figure that is sufficiently more than the adoption assistance payment they are ultimately willing to accept. If mutual trust and good faith negotiation can be restored, this tactic would no longer be necessary.

6. Parents are bonded, with the child they are committed to adopt, and so are particularly sensitive to the analogy that negotiating adoption assistance for a child they love, is similar to buying a car. Such feelings are certainly understandable.

   On the other hand, parents really have little choice. Their children cannot speak for themselves. Actually, when you think about it, there is something quite admirable about a parent’s willingness to go through an often lengthy and unpleasant experience for the sake of a vulnerable, child with a traumatic past and a hopeful, but uncertain future.