Policy Analysis Essay: Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (AACWA) was created to improve adoption and foster care systems through federal funding and regulation (Congress.gov, 2016). At a time when the foster care system was in dire need of regulation, the law aimed to enable states to better serve families and children (Carter, 1980). This paper explores the policy’s details, background, funding, and function. The impacts of the law and recommendations for its future are also discussed. Policy Background and Description Policy Description & Presenting Problem The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, also known as Public Law (P.L.) 96-272, was signed into …show more content…
Consensus grew that children with safe and permanent families had better emotional and physical health outcomes (Herman, 2012). After 1974, through the implementation of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, new laws mandated the reporting of child abuse, and the number of children who needed foster care began to rise dramatically (Murray & Gesiriech, 2004). Many children were unnecessarily removed from their families, and children stayed in foster care for very long periods of time (Murray & Gesiriech, 2004). At the time, 500,000 children were in foster care, half of whom were separated from their families for over two years, and one fifth of whom stayed in foster care for more than six years (Carter, 1980). Policy makers were concerned that the foster care system was not doing enough to ensure children were either reunified with their birth parents or placed into permanent adoptive homes (Murray & Gesiriech, …show more content…
First, there were no obligations for states to comply with this policy. The states that did not comply simply did not receive the federal funding (Castner, 1989). This meant that children in some states were worse off than children in other states. Challenges also came with providing financial assistance to families who fostered and adopted children with special needs. Initially, these payments were based on the income of the child’s birth parents, regardless of the income of the fostering or adoptive parents (Avery, 1998). This was not addressed until the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 was enacted (North American Council on Adoptable Children, n.d.). Another challenge of this policy was the inadvertent effects it had on multiethnic children. With a vague description of what is considered an unfit home for a child to live in and of what is considered a reasonable effort to reunite families, African American children in particular are in foster care at a higher rate and for longer durations than children of other races (Lash, 2013). It was not until 1994 that the Multiethnic Placement Act made it illegal for anyone to delay or deny the placement of children due to their race or ethnicity (McGowan,