Ohio Has No Organization That Represents Adoptive Families on Adoption Assistance Policies and Practices

Ohio has a number of non-profit organizations involved in child welfare advocacy, such as the Ohio Children’s Defense Fund (OCDF), the Ohio Family Care Association (OFCA), the Adoption Network-Cleveland and the Public Children’s Services Agency of Ohio (PCSAO). These and other agencies support various aspects of adoption. The Adoption Network, for example, played a leading role in opening adoption records for the benefit of adult adoptees in search of their roots.

As far as I know, however, there are no non-profits in Ohio that advocate or lobby for improvements in the title IV-E Adoption Assistance program on behalf of adoptive children and their parents. To put it another way, there are no Ohio agencies who engage in such activism as a major focus of their attention. That means there is no recognized outside agency at the table representing adoptive families on the issue of adoption assistance before the Ohio General Assembly or the Ohio Department of Children and Youth. Ohio’s adoptive parents are generally too busy raising and advocating for their own children to devote the time needed to establish and maintain an advocacy organization.

The PCSAO represents county child welfare agencies. An adoption decree ends the county agency’s custodial responsibility for a child in its care. Accordingly, the PCSAO devotes most of its efforts to the agencies’ responsibilities for foster care and child protection. After finalization, an agency’s only legal responsibility is a financial one in the form of an adoption assistance payment. Conflict over the amount of monthly adoption assistance inevitably involves the county agency’s share of the cost. As a representative of county interests, the PCSAO is hardly in a position to support higher adoption assistance payment rates, unless it involves an increase in the state’s share.

In a state with a county administered child welfare system like Ohio’s, the PCSAO has exerted a significant amount of influence over those aspects of state policy where there is discretion, that is where policy is not determined by federal law. On the other hand, the absence of organized representation has left adoptive families without a regular voice on vital adoption assistance issues. Federal law, augmented by the Child Welfare Policy Manual, provides sufficient guidance for a statewide procedure for negotiating adoption assistance. Yet, inconsistency and lack of compliance are still prevalent.

For decades, prospective adoptive parents have endured threats from agencies to place their child with another family if they continue to disagree over the amount of adoption assistance. Although parents can now contact the Ohio Family Ombudsman, which will generally halt the threat, a regulation condemning this egregious practice has never been enacted. The lack of an organized voice has undoubtedly contributed to failure to enact necessary reforms in Ohio’s Adoption Assistance program.