For many Americans, it is hard to believe how far domestic adoption has come. The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, like many Federal laws on the subject of adoption, saw fit to amend the policies of past. In particular, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act addressed terms of appropriation for adoptive families by changing the language of Title IV (aid and services for needy families and foster care children) and Title XX (social services “block grants”) of the Social Security Act to make public funds more accessible to certain groups.

As for what groups were deemed eligible for Government-issued monies by the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, both children and families as a whole qualified for certain forms of relief. Some drew aid from the proverbial well that was Aid for Families with the Dependent Children (AFDC), while some families received financial breaks.         

Who exactly were children with special needs, though? Prior to the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act, there was no adequate explanation. With its passage, however, the deserving segment of the population was finally given a codified definition. A “child with special needs” is defined by the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 as one who cannot be brought back to a home run by his or her birth parent(s) and one who cannot be placed or cared for without some form of assistance.

Of course, this is a critical notion for adoption law, but for recognition of children with special needs worldwide in general, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act was a big step forward for our nation.         

At the same time, adoptees of all walks of life were impacted by the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980. An important clause in the Act demanded State Social Services departments make “reasonable efforts” to avoid breaking up families through foster care/adoption and return children to their biological parents when possible. In fact, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act levied an 18-month ultimatum on public agencies for them to determine where a child would be placed following foster care.

For what it did for children with special needs, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 is certainly admirable. Nonetheless, it has its limitations. Oftentimes, the reasonable efforts charge of the Act ran contrary to children’s best interests in that it sent them back to families in which potential for abuse was high. This issue would come to be revisited in future legislation such as the ASFA in the 90s, however.

It was not until the 20th century that real authoritative standards were brought to domestic adoption. Of course, public domestic adoptions spiked in the aftermath of the Adoption and Safe Families Act’s (ASFA) passage. For all the apparent good in “rescuing” children from long-term stays in foster care, though, the ASFA has its detractors.

A big point of contention with the Act is that the system it creates that allots money to the states for sweeping children through the adoption process is only rewarding them for breaking up birth families faster, and with poverty often serving as parents’ big wrongdoing. In essence, under the Adoption and Safe Families Act, poor biological parents tend to suffer.

As good as a comprehensive set of standards for domestic adoption may sound to those who are dissatisfied with delays in State-by-State attempts to reform the practice and address its shortcomings, the cure may be worse than the disease if the terms create new problems. Such is the case of the Uniform Adoption Act of 1994 (UAA), originally set in motion as a model adoption law and to date only agreed to in a few districts in the whole United States.

The UAA is particularly notable for the taxonomic approach it brings to adoption, classifying adoption by family types and defining eligible adopters. To boot, it seeks to protect the interests of children by adding safeguards to the home study review process and turning a scrutinizing eye to the legitimacy of placement services both here and abroad.

On the other hand, the Uniform Adoption Act of 1994 contains clauses that are utterly unacceptable to adoption rights activists. For one, the UAA leans heavily toward privacy in adoption when many would consider more openness to be better. Of particular ill repute among opponents of the bill is the stipulation that original adoption records would remain sealed for 99 years after finalization of adoption, which would preclude adoptees from ever seeing some of the most important information to their sense of identity.

In addition, critics have pointed out the legal rigidity shown towards birth parents in the UAA. Mothers are given small windows to decide whether or not to put up their children for adoption, and biological fathers are not even required to be notified prior to consent for adoption. 

The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974 (CAPTA) may be better known in some circles, but the Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Adoption, and Family Services Act of 1992 is notable for confronting both child abuse and adoption, and thus, acting as a predecessor of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. In dealing with said subjects, the 1992 Act gives each their own section.

For child abuse, the Act sets aside over $40 million in Federal monies for the protection of children and prevention of abuse and domestic violence at the community level. At the same time, this legislation is remarkable for considering the effects of culture and race on perceptions of what constitutes child abuse. While this obviously does not mean that the Act condones child abuse, in the interest of family preservation it may afford some clemency to those charged with violations of the law against children.

Certainly, the implications for adoption at the time of the Act’s inception were big in their own right. The Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Adoption, and Family Services Act of 1992 is perhaps more significant for what it symbolizes in American attitudes toward adoption. The Act expressly recognizes the high rates of child retention in State foster care.

The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 serves today as evidence of just how recent important amendments to domestic adoption policy were. One key function of this legislation in its passage was to afford financial benefits to underprivileged populations who heretofore had gone unrepresented in U.S. law. 

Eligible children with disabilities and families struggling to stay above the poverty line were provided for by new provisions of Title IV-B and Title XX of the Social Security Act as well as the public assistance program known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (ADFC), which today has since been replaced with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). 

Meanwhile, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act’s greatest contributions to American adoption policy are the ones that are perhaps the most likely to be taken for granted. The Act, realistically, was one of the first pieces of Federal legislation to formally confront and define the category of “children with special needs” for the purpose of subsidizing their adoption and subsequent care in a permanent home.

Another standout clause of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act has to do with the mandate of adoption authorities to make “reasonable efforts” to keep birth families together. In a sense, this line of thinking is outmoded compared to the child-centered approaches of more recent adoption policies. Nonetheless, even with primary focus on minors, reunification with suitable parents is one of the better possible outcomes for children, especially next to foster care.

Of course, the contributions of Federal legislation to American adoption policy should not be discounted, especially concerning how adoption assistance is handled. At the same time, though, comprehensive legislation on specific aspects of adoption policy has effectually taken a proverbial backseat to State statutes on adoption. In actuality, much is governed by individual State laws on the various intricacies of adoption law, right down to questions answered of who may adopt and who may be adopted. 

In terms of the former, domestic in-state and interstate adoption is most strictly regulated by State laws in terms of age and sexual orientation of applicants. In some jurisdictions, prospective adoptive parents will have to be at least 15 years older than the children they adopt. Moreover, LGBT applicants will find it difficult to gain court approval for an adoption to proceed.

As for adoptee populations, while all states permit the adoption of waiting children, some states will even go as far as to let people adopt adults, especially those with special needs who lack the ability to live independently. It should be noted that, oftentimes, State adoption policies will not be so clear-cut. 

With nearly every State in the union owning statutes allowing for children to be surrendered to certain municipal establishments so that they may be passed along to a hospital and eventually to a permanent home or temporary assignment, infant abandonment and subsequent adoption is well provided for by safe haven laws. These laws respond to a number of potential questions that onlookers might have regarding the legality of this practice, which changes depending on the State of jurisdictional residence.

Some states specify that those who forfeit responsibility to care for a child must be custodial parents of the child, but to the benefit of these parents, usually confidentiality and freedom from criminal prosecution come part and parcel with safe havens’ decision to accept an infant. Plus, the child must be an infant in all states with safe haven procedures built into their constitutions, and for a majority of states, may be only a few days or weeks old.

As noted, though, State safe haven laws may designate any number of institutions to be safe havens for the purpose of waiving parental rights to an infant child, including police and fire stations, ambulance corps buildings, and churches. Ultimately, the care of the child is not finalized, for they still must be handed over to a hospital with trained staff specifically designed to administer emergency medical services at all times.

Even after the decision is made by a birth mother to surrender her child, individual states will sometimes allow for mothers to decide to renege on their decision to give up their babies, and still other states may be required by law to make sure that a child has not been reported missing or is not wanted by a biological father 

Compared to the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) of 1974, the Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Adoption, and Family Services Act of 1992 is perhaps lesser known. While it is true that the Act does address adoption in America, that is not the whole thrust of this piece of legislation.

As it relates to child abuse, and thus, how it specifically proposes to amend the CAPTA, the Act brings economic force to protection of children’s rights, earmarking some $45 million for this cause and outlining procedures for states to become eligible to acquire these funds. As for the use of these Government grants, the Act stresses the need for community-based programs to take an active role in trying to prevent child abuse and neglect.         

Though child abuse and adoption are given their own sections in this bill, many would argue domestic child abuse is fundamentally linked to U.S. adoption policy, as a substantial percentage of children put into foster care are removed from the custody of their birth homes because of the unsafe environment created for them there. As noted, the Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Adoption, and Family Services Act does mention adoption in America by name. 

In amending the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Adoption Reform Act of 1978, the Act symbolizes a changed mindset of the times with regard to U.S. adoption to give more weight to the needs of the child and getting children into permanent homes as expeditiously as possible. Furthermore, the Act authorizes the creation of a National Resource Center for Special Needs Adoption.          

Even so, the Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Adoption, and Family Services Act of 1992 does recognize the fact there are sometimes mitigating circumstances when it comes to termination of parental rights, such as the role of culture in raising children, especially in first-time allegations brought against parents.

While the bill does not explicitly reference any cultures or minorities in particular on the subject of child abuse, this language may still be seen as an oblique reference to perceived differences in child rearing along ethnic lines.

In terms of the Act’s legacy in the history of U.S. adoption policy, it made some small but important contributions to how we approached adoption in America. 

The Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000 (IAA) is not just coincidentally related to provisions of international adoption law. By name, it references the Hague Adoption Convention.

As such, the provisions within the IAA are sort of an announcement of what preparations needed to be made to assure the United States was/is fully compliant with the terms of the Convention, and the language of its purpose largely echoes that of the articles of the Convention itself. Thus, the IAA calls for protection of adopted children from abduction and trafficking, insurance of consent between adoption laws of different member countries, and recognition of completed adoptions between jurisdictions.

As the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption specifies that all who are party to it designate a central authority for adoption, so did the Intercountry Adoption Act. According to this creation of adoption law, the Department of State via the Secretary of State is to handle accreditation and approval procedures for adoption agencies and to monitor agencies and even rescind their accreditation for failure to meet Hague standards. 

The Attorney General, meanwhile, was also was given duties by the Act, namely to forward applications of prospective adoptive parents to the Department to State and to review cases for evidence of fraud. Another function of the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000 that is of critical importance is how it addresses America’s conformity with the adoption laws of other countries.