ABSTRACT
Special-needs adoption is a cornerstone of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act. Under the provisions of the Act, families are to be provided with every reasonable effort for preservation for up to 2 years and, failing that, are to become eligible to exit foster care via adoption. The nations’s success in freeing children for adoption and finding adoptive homes for children in foster care is certainly equivocal. The data indicating the increase in special-needs adoption are not especially telling. The National Committee for Adoption’s (1989) 1982 and 1986 surveys suggest a slight decrease in the number of special-needs adoptions—from 14,005 in 1982 to 13,568 in 1986 (a 3% decline). The Voluntary Cooperative Information System (VCIS) reports that between 17,000 and 19,000 children were adopted from foster care in 1986 (with a larger number still awaiting an adoptive placement). Other evidence of a substantial increase in special-needs adoption is the steep increase in the federal cost of participation in the Adoption Assistance Program (AAP) that grew from less than $400,000 in FY 1981 to an estimated $144,000,000 in 1991 (U.S. Committee on Finance, 1990). Between 1987 and 1990, the average number of children receiving adoption assistance has nearly doubled from 69,799 to 132,040. California data indicate that 3,424 special-needs children were adopted in 1991–1992 as compared to 1,438 between 1980 and 1981 (a 138% increase).
