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Now that the race is narrowing down and it looks like we have some front runner candidates for the Republicans and the Democrats, let’s take a look at their positions on adoption.
Disclaimer: I am not endorsing any candidate, nor am I saying you should vote for someone based on their position on adoption.
Hillary Clinton has the most extensive list of a plan for adoption and foster care on her website. Among her suggested programs are:
1) Reward agencies who reduce the amount of time that kids spend in foster care and preserve families. This has the potential to be a really good thing or a really bad thing. If it frees kids for adoption sooner, rather than languishing in foster care, that’s wonderful. If it sends kids back to homes before parents are ready it will be horrible.
3) Keep adoptions intact. To prevent adoptions from disruption or dissolution, the proposal is to make adoption assistance equal to foster care payments and make mental health services available through federal funding.
4) Subsidized guardianship for kids who can not be reunified with their parents but can not be placed for adoption.
Mitt Romney has an extensive position on adoption and foster care.
His proposal is to:
1) Make the adoption tax credit permanent
2) Require all clinics receiving federal funding to offer adoption as an option to anyone seeking help.
3) Reform the foster care financing system – That’s a tall order for anyone. One of his proposals is to give states a little bit more freedom with the federal money and allow them to move kids into permanent homes more quickly, rather than getting “incentives” for keeping them in foster care longer. The one that really got my attention was the prospect of a joint program with private agencies and public agencies to promote foster care and adoption. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
John McCain is an adoptive father himself. He and his wife adopted a little girl from Bangladesh in 1993.
The John McCain website has the following blurb:
In the past, he cosponsored legislation to prohibit discrimination against families with adopted children, to provide adoption education, and to permit tax deductions for qualified adoption expenses, as well as to remove barriers to interracial and inter-ethnic adoptions.
I presume the adoption expenses refer to the Adoption Tax Credit that was passed. His website does not list specific ways that he will work with foster care or adoption, simply that he wants the option of adoption to be offered to women in a crisis pregnancy.
Barack Obama does not specifically list plans for adoption or foster care, but in his issues on family, he has a proposal to help at risk families, especially new mothers, with counseling on child health care, substance abuse and other at risk behavior that could potentially have a child wind up in the foster care system.
He also wants to re-introduce the Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act to get absent fathers involved in their children’s lives again.
I had great difficulty finding anything on Mike Huckabee’s views on foster care and adoption except that he is very openly is opposed to “gay adoption.”
Hopefully this will help you understand the positions of these candidates and where they stand in regards to our kids.
Informative and necessary post, Kelly. Great job!