Transracial adoptions

An AP article this morning’s relates several leading child welfare groups urging an “overhaul of federal laws dealing with transracial adoption, and arguing that black children in foster care are ill-served by the so-called ‘color-blind’ approached meant to encourage their adoption by white families.”

At issue is the 1994 Multi-Ethnic Placement Act and revisions made to it in 1996. A report by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, earlier this month, focused on domestic transracial adoption and assessed its use as a policy & practice approach in meeting the needs of African American children in foster care who cannot be reunited with their parents or placed with next of kin., according to the group. “While the passage of MEPA served a positive purpose in addressing discriminatory practices,” the report found, “more than a decade of experience illustrates that many of the assumptions underlying the development of this law and its subsequent amendment were not accurate and, consequently, the hoped-for outcomes have not been realized.” (Executive Summary)(Full Report)

Among the recommendations described in the report were:
· Reinforce in all adoption-related laws, policies and practices that a child's best interests must be paramount in placement decisions.
· Amend IEP to allow consideration of race/ethnicity in permanency planning and in the preparation of families adopting transracially.
· Enforce the MEPA requirement to recruit families who represent the racial and ethnic backgrounds of children in foster care and provide sufficient resources, including funding, to support such recruitment.
· Address existing barriers to fully engaging minority families in fostering and adopting by developing alliances with faith communities, minority placement agencies, and other minority recruitment programs.
· Provide support for adoption by relatives and, when that is not the best option for a particular child, provide federal funding for subsidized guardianship.
· To help families address their transracially adopted children's needs, provide post-adoption support services from time of placement through children's adolescence.
The Donaldson Institute report isn’t the first to reflect negativity on the matter. In September 1998 the GAO reported that “Implementation of the Multiethnic Placement Act Poses Difficult Challenges.” That report observed “while agency officials & caseworkers understand that this legislation prohibits them from delaying or denying placements on the basis of race, not all believe that eliminating race will result in placements that are in the best interests of children, which is a basic criterion for placement decisions.”

More recently, a Social Science Research Network paper by David Herring of the University of Pittsburgh, states “To date, commentators who have examined MEPA have focused their attention on identifying and weighing the benefits & harms of transracial adoption for minority children and communities. As a consequence, they have not addressed the impact of MEPA on foster care placement decisions in any detail…. This article uses behavioral biology research on kinship cues & social psychology to formulate a hypothesis that has implications for MEPA prohibitions on the routine consideration of race in making foster care placement decisions, namely that children placed with non-kin, same-race foster parents are likely to be safer & healthier than children placed with non-kin, different-race foster parents.”