Building A Family

Statewide Adoption Network (SWAN)

Children of all ages are waiting for a family to call their own.  Why not consider adoption as a way to build or enrich your family?  We are looking for parents who may be able to provide a permanent home to children.

• Not only infants and toddlers, but children of all ages, including teenagers.
• Children who may have a physical or mental handicap.
• Children of all races, especially minority children
• Siblings
• Children who may develop a handicapping condition

Everyday, there are children waiting for an adoptive home.  These children may be in a foster home, group home, or institutions and may have been waiting for years for permanency.

The challenge is there, waiting for you.  With the support of professional staff at FCCYS and other community resources, the task is not impossible.
 

Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 Public Law 105-89 On November 19, 1997 President Clinton signed into law the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, to help thousands of children waiting in foster care to move more quickly into safe and permanent homes. Provides unprecedented financial incentives to states to increase adoptions, Places the safety of children as the paramount concern in placement decisions, and Requires a State plan to use cross-jurisdictional resources to effect timely adoptive or permanent placements for waiting children. Outlines the conditions under which a State should terminate parents rights and initiate selection of a qualified adoptive family for certain children in foster care or under State responsibility. Denies Federal assistance eligibility where a State has impeded the placement of a child for adoption outside of the jurisdiction with responsibility for handling the case. Based on President Clinton's remarks at the signing ceremony: The Adoption and Safe Families Act fundamentally alters our nation's approach to foster care and adoption. And fundamentally, it will improve the well-being of hundreds of thousands of our most vulnerable children. The new legislation makes it clear that children's health and safety are the paramount concerns of our public child welfare system. It makes it clear that good foster care provides important safe havens for our children, but it is by definition a temporary, not a permanent, setting. The new law will help us to speed children out of foster care into permanent families by setting meaningful time limits for child welfare decisions, by clarifying which family situations call for reasonable reunification efforts and which simply do not. It will provide states with financial incentives to increase the number of children adopted each year. It will ensure that adopted children with special needs never lose their health coverage. It will reauthorize federal funding for timely services to alleviate crisis before they become serious, that aid the reunification of families that help to meet post-adoption needs.

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