Child Welfare History Foster Care to Adoption History

1
Child Welfare HistoryFoster Care to Adoption
History
2
Tensions Throughout Child Welfare History

• These tensions include
• parents rights vs childrens needs
• saving children/youth vs supporting families
• federal vs state vs local responsibility
• public vs voluntary financing and service
  provision

3
Child Welfare History

• developmental vs protective services
• in-home vs foster family vs institutional care
• appropriate boundaries between the child welfare,
  family service, juvenile justice, mental health,
  domestic violence, substance abuse and mental
  retardation systems

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Child Welfare History

• Individualized modes of interventions vs uniform
  standards and treatment, i.e., evidence based
  practices
• Formal specialized professional services vs
  informal, natural helping networks
• social costs vs benefits of providing varying
  levels of care

5
Child Welfare History

• All of these issues appear and reappear in the
  major historical documents on the American child
  welfare system.
• The one theme that never disappears is the search
  for a panacea, a solution to the problems of
  children and youth whose parents are unable to
  provide adequate care.

6
Child Welfare History 17th 18th Centuries

• Early American settlers were preoccupied with
  issues of freedom and survival for themselves and
  their new country.
• The demands of exploring, settling, and
  cultivating vast expanses of land were enormous,
  and because of the small size of the population,
  contributing members of society were at a
  premium.
• The family was the basic economic unit, and all
  members were expected to contribute to the work
  of the household.

7
Child Welfare History

• The concept of childhood, as it is currently
  understood, was unknown except for very young
  children.
• Although there was a high birthrate,
  approximately two-thirds of all children died
  before the age of four. Those who lived past this
  age were expected to start contributing labor as
  soon as possible by helping with household and
  farming chores, caring for younger siblings, and
  so forth.

8
Child Welfare History

• Children moved quickly from infant status to
  serving essential economic functions for their
  families.
• Children were perceived as a scarce and valued
  resource for the nation, but little attention was
  paid to individual differences or needs, and the
  concept of childrens rights was nonexistent.

9
Child Welfare History

• Although there was no child welfare system as
  such in those early days, two groups of children
  were presumed to require attention from the
  public authorities, one viewed as deserving, one
  as not deserving
• orphans
• children of paupers

10
Child Welfare History

• Because of the high maternal mortality rates and
  high adult male death rates caused by the
  vicissitudes of life in the new world, large
  numbers of children were orphaned at a relatively
  young age and required special provisions for
  their care.
• Children of paupers were also assumed to require
  special care because of the high value placed on
  work and self-sufficiency and the concomitant
  fear that these children would acquire the bad
  habits of their parents if they were not taught
  a skill and good working habits at an early age.
• Parents who could not provide adequately for
  their children were deprived of the right to plan
  for their children and were socially condemned.

11
Child Welfare History

• Children and dependent adults were treated alike
  and were generally handled in one of four ways
• 1. Outdoor relief, a public assistance program
  for poor families and children consisting of a
  meager dole paid by the local community to
  maintain families in their own homes
• 2. Farming-out, a system whereby individuals or
  groups of paupers were auctioned off to citizens
  who agreed to maintain the paupers in their homes
  for a contracted fee

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Child Welfare History

• 3. Almshouses or poorhouses established and
  administered by public authorities in large urban
  areas (or the care of destitute children and
  adults
• 4. Indenture, a plan for apprenticing children
  to households where they would be cared for and
  taught a trade, in return for which they owed
  loyalty, obedience, and labor until the costs of
  their rearing had been worked off.

13
Child Welfare History

• In addition to these provisions under the public
  authorities, dependent children were cared for by
  a range of informal provisions arranged through
  relatives, neighbors, or church officials.
• A few private institutions for orphans were also
  established during this early colonial period.
  The first such orphanage in the United States was
  the Ursuline Convent, founded in New Orleans in
  1727 under the auspices of Louis XV of France.
• Prior to 1800 most dependent children were cared
  for in almshouses and/or by indenture until the
  age of eight or nine, and then they were
  indentured until they reached majority.

14
Child Welfare History

• Thus, the social provisions for dependent
  children during the first two centuries of
  American history can be characterized as meager
  arrangements made on a reluctant, begrudging
  basis to guarantee a minimal level of
  subsistence.
• The arrangements were designed to insure that
  children were taught the values of
  industriousness and hard work and received a
  strict religious upbringing. Provisions were made
  at the lowest cost possible for the local
  community, in part because of the widespread
  concern that indolence and depravity not be
  rewarded.

15
Child Welfare History

• Parents who were unable to provide for their
  children were thought to have abrogated their
  parental rights, and children were perceived
  primarily as property that could be disposed of
  according to the will of their ownersparents,
  masters, and/or public authorities who assumed
  the costs of their care.
• The goal was to make provisions for dependent
  children that would best serve the interests of
  the community, not the individual child.

16
Nineteenth Century

• Massive social changes occurred in the United
  States during the nineteenth century, all of
  which influenced the nature of provisions for
  dependent children. The importation of large
  numbers of slaves and the eventual abolition of
  slavery first reduced the number of requests for
  indentured white children and later created
  opposition to a form of care for white children
  that was no longer permitted for blacks.
• The emergence of a bourgeois class of families in
  which the labor of children and wives was not
  required at home permitted upper-income citizens
  to turn their attention to the educational and
  developmental needs of their own children as well
  as the orphaned, poor, and delinquent.

17
Nineteenth Century

• The large-scale economic growth of the country
  after the Civil War helped to expand the tax base
  and to free funds for the development of private
  philanthropies aimed at improving the lives of
  the poor. The massive wave of immigrants from
  countries other than England created a large pool
  of needy children, primarily Catholic and Jewish,
  from diverse cultural backgrounds.
• Finally, the Industrial Revolution changed the
  entire economic and social fabric of the nation.
  New industry required different, more dangerous
  types of labor from parents and youth and created
  a new set of environmental hazards and problems
  for low-income families.

18
Rise of Institutions

• Perhaps the most significant change in the
  pattern of care for dependent children during the
  early nineteenth century was the dramatic
  increase in the number of orphanages, especially
  during the I830s.
• These facilities were established under public,
  voluntary, and sectarian auspices and were
  designed to care for children whose parents were
  unable to provide adequately for them, as well as
  for true orphans.

19
Rise of Institutions

• A major expansion in almshouse care occurred in
  the years succeeding the publication of these
  reports. But what was not foreseen by the early
  advocates of the use of almshouses were the
  physical and social risks to children posed by
  housing them with all classes of dependent
  adults. Although facilities in some of the larger
  cities established separate quarters for
  children, most were mixed almshouses caring for
  young children, derelicts, the insane, the
  sick, the blind, the deaf, the retarded, the
  delinquent, and the poor alike.
• By mid-century, investigations of the living
  conditions of children in poorhouses had started,
  creating strong pressure for the development of
  alternative methods of care.

20
Rise of Institutions

• State after state issued similar reports,
  characterizing almshouses as symbols of human
  wretchedness and political corruption and calling
  for special provisions for the care of young
  children in orphanages under public or private
  auspices.
• But reform came slowly, in part because public
  funds had been invested in the poorhouses and in
  part because there were no readily available
  alternatives for the large number of children
  housed in these facilities.

21
Rise of Institutions

• Black dependent children who were not sold as
  slaves were cared for primarily in the local
  almshouses. They were explicitly excluded from
  most of the private orphanages established prior
  to the Civil War. Consequently, several separate
  facilities for black children were founded during
  this period, the first of which was the
  Philadelphia Association for the Care of Colored
  Children established by the Society of Friends in
  1822.
• To insure the survival of these facilities, their
  founders attempted to separate the orphanages
  from the abolitionist movement, with which they
  were identified. However, the shelter in
  Philadelphia was burned by a white mob in 1838
  and the Colored Orphan Asylum in New York was set
  on fire during the Draft Riot of 1863.

22
The Beginnings of Foster Care

• With the recognition of the condition of children
  cared for in mixed almshouses, the stage was set
  for a number of reform efforts. One such effort
  began in 1853 with the founding of the Childrens
  Aid Society in New York by Charles Loring Brace.
  By the end of the century, Childrens Aid
  Societies had been established in most of the
  other major eastern cities.
• Brace was strongly committed to the idea that the
  best way to save poor children from the evils of
  urban life was to place them in Christian homes
  in the country, where they would receive a solid
  moral training and learn good work habits.

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Orphan Trains

• Between 1854 and 1929 100,000-200,000 children
  were placed in new families via the Orphan Trains.

• http//www.orphantraindepot.com
• Children were taken in small groups of 10 to 40,
  under the supervision of at least one adult, and
  traveled on trains to selected stops along the
  way, where they were taken by families in that
  area.

http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/orphan/teachers.html
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The Beginnings of Foster Care

• Consequently, Loring Brace recruited large
  numbers of free foster homes in the Midwest and
  upper New York State and sent trainloads of
  children to these localities By 1879 the
  Childrens Aid Society in New York City had sent
  40,000 homeless destitute children to homes in
  the country
• A somewhat parallel development was the
  establishment of the Childrens Home Society
  movement. These societies were statewide
  child-placing agencies under Protestant auspices,
  also designed to provide free foster homes for
  dependent children. The first such society was
  established in Illinois in 1883. By 1916 there
  were thirty-six Childrens Home Societies located
  primarily in Midwestern and southern states .

25
The Expansion of Services

• Until the last quarter of the nineteenth century
  state intervention in a childs life occurred,
  for the most part, only when the child threatened
  the social order. Dominant members of society
  feared that dependent children would grow up
  without the moral guidance and education
  necessary to enable them to become productive
  members of society. Children violating the law
  posed not only an immediate threat but also the
  fear that, without intervention, they would grow
  up to be adult criminals.

26
The Expansion of Services

• During the latter part of the last century the
  focus of concern began to change. Voluntary
  organizations founded during this period
  recognized that families had an obligation to
  provide for their childrens basic needs. If they
  did not, it was argued, society had the right and
  obligation to intervene. Thus, the concept of
  minimal social standards for child rearing was
  introduced.

27
The Expansion of Services

• The founding of the New York Society for the
  Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1874
  signaled the beginning of this broader concept of
  societal intervention on the childs behalf.
  Similar societies were quickly established in
  other areas of the country, and by 1900 there
  were more than 250 such agencies the New York
  society was established in the wake of the
  notorious case of little Mary Ellen.

28
The Expansion of Services

• A friendly visitor, named Etta Wheeler from the
  childs neighborhood was horrified by the abusive
  treatment the child had received from her
  caretaker and sought help from several child
  welfare institutions to no avail. Finally she
  turned to Henry Bergh, president of the Society
  for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, who
  promptly brought the case to court, requesting
  that the child be removed from her caretaker
  immediately.

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Photo of Mary Ellen Wilson
30
The Expansion of Services

• Newspaper accounts of the early meetings of the
  society indicate that the founders saw their
  primary function as prosecuting parents, not
  providing direct services to parents or children
  in fact, the society was denied tax-exempt status
  by the State of New York in 1900 because its
  primary purpose was defined as law enforcement,
  not the administration of charity. However, this
  agency as well as the other early child
  protection societies quickly turned their
  interests to all forms of child neglect and
  exploitation, not confining their activities
  merely to the prevention of physical abuse of
  children in their own homes.

31
The Expansion of Services

• The establishment of the Charity Organization
  Society movement, starting in 1877, also
  contributed to the expansion of services to
  children. They were opposed to monetary giving
  and to any public sector involvement in the
  relief of destitution government was not to be
  trusted to provide a dole, which would
  encourage laziness and moral decay.

32
The Expansion of Services

• In order to accomplish this mission, the
  societies enlisted the aid of friendly
  visitorsthe forerunner of the modern social
  workerwhose responsibilities were to seek out
  the poor, investigate their need, and certify
  them as worthy for private help. They were to
  provide a role model, advice, and moral
  instruction to the poor in order that they could
  rid themselves of poverty. These ideas had a
  profound influence on the orientation of the
  early social workers in the family service field.

33
The Expansion of Services

• However, what the friendly visitors discovered
  was that much poverty was the result of societal
  forces far beyond the individuals control. Many
  children were destitute not because their parents
  were lazy or immoral, but because jobs were not
  available, breadwinners were incapacitated by
  industrial accidents, or parents had died. While
  the friendly visitors continued to minister to
  the poor on a case-by-case basis, their
  recognition of the social roots of poverty
  converged with the philosophy underlying the
  establishment of the first settlement houses at
  the end of the nineteenth century.

34
The Expansion of Services

• The settlement house movement was a middle-class
  movement designed to humanize the cities. It
  emphasized total life involvement,
  decentralization, experimental modes of
  intervention, and learning by doing. Their
  programs included developmental services such
  as language classes, day-care centers,
  playgrounds, family life education, and so forth.
  Convinced of the worth of the individuals and
  immigrant groups they served and the importance
  of cultural pluralism in America, they saw the
  causes of many social problems in the environment
  and sought regulations to improve them.

35
20th Century Time Line

• 1909 First White House Conference on Children
• 1912 Creation of US Childrens Bureau
• 1935 - Social Security Act, Title IV, ADC and
  Title V, Child Welfare Services Program
• 1961 Social Security Amendment, AFDC Foster
  Care
• 1962 Social Security Amendment (75-25 match
  for funding social services for current, former,
  and potential welfare recipients)
• 1967 Social Security Amendments
• Title IVB (Child Welfare Services Program,
  originally authorized under Title V)

36
20th Century Time Line

• 1974 Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act,
  P.L. 93-247 (Amended in 1978, 1984, 1988, 1992,
  1996, 2003)
• 1975 Title XX of the Social Security Act
• 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act
• 1980 Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act,
  P.L. 96-272 (Title IVE)
• 1993 - Family Preservation and Support Services
  Program

37
20th to 21st Century Time Line

• 1994 Multiethnic Placement Act
• 1996 - Personal Responsibility and Work
  Opportunities Act , P.L. 104-193
• 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA),
  P.L. 105-89
• 1999 Chaffee Foster Care Independence Act
• 2000 Child Abuse Prevention and Enforcement Act
• 2001 Promoting Safe and Stable Families
  Amendment

38
21st Century Themes

• Safety
• Permanency Goal Setting
• Well-Being
• CFSR Reviews in States
• Foster Parents Adopting Children
• Adoption Incentives
• Adoption Opportunities
• Adoption Openness
• Youth Permanency
• Cultural Competency
• Family Based Services
• Community Based Services

39
Array of Children, Youth and Family Services

• In Home Services
• Out-of-Home Services
• Child Welfare Services

40
In Home Services

• Services designed to ensure that children and
  youth remain safe in their home and prevent them
  from entering the foster care system Services to
  preserve families
• Family Support/Preservation Services counseling,
  parent skills training, substance abuse
  treatment, recreational services, linkages to
  community-based resources

41
Out-of-Home Services

• Driven by ASFA 1997 legislation
• Strong emphasis on safety, permanency, and
  well-being, especially permanency
• Time limited with ASFA 15 of last 22 months in
  placement
• Reunify with family, find other permanent
  arrangement or terminate parental rights and free
  for adoption

42
Trial and Error
Family Foster Care
Orphanages and Boarding schools
Tennessee Preparatory School for Dependent
Children
43
Out-of-Home Services

• Community-based services in familys own
  neighborhood
• Least restrictive placement setting
• Frequent visitation to family
• Intensive work with family, building on strengths
  and resources
• Respect for culture and traditions of the family

44
Out-of-Home Services

• Kinship Foster Care informal and formal
• Family Foster Boarding Homes
• Therapeutic Foster Boarding Homes
• Agency Operated Boarding Homes (SILP)
• Group Homes
• DRC/RTC (campus programs)
• RTF

45
Child Welfare Services

• Abuse and Neglect Investigations
• Independent Living Services Chaffee Act
• Adoption
• Legal Services
• Parent and Childrens Rights
• Child Performer Permits

46
Adoption History Time Line

• Prior to 1851, adoption was an informal process
• 1851, Massachusetts passed the first modern
  adoption law, recognizing adoption as a social
  and legal operation based on child welfare rather
  than adult interests. Historians consider the
  1851 Adoption of Children Act an important
  turning point because it directed judges to
  ensure that adoption decrees were fit and
  proper. How this determination was to be made
  was left entirely to judicial discretion.

47
Adoption History Time Line

• 1868, Massachusetts Board of State Charities
  began paying for children to board in private
  family homes in 1869, an agent was appointed to
  visit children in their homes. This was the
  beginning of placing-out, a movement to care for
  children in families rather than institutions.

48
Adoption History Time Line

• 1872 New York State Charities Aid Association
  was organized. It was one of the first
  organizations in the country to establish a
  specialized child-placement program, in 1898. By
  1922, homes for more than 3300 children had been
  found. The first major outcome study, How Foster
  Children Turn Out (1924), was based on the work
  of this agency.

49
Adoption History Time Line

• 1891, Michigan was the first state to require
  that the the judge shall be satisfied as to
  the good moral character, and the ability to
  support and educate such child, and of the
  suitableness of the home, or the person or
  persons adopting such child.

50
Adoption History Time Line

• 1910-1930, The first specialized adoption
  agencies were founded, including the Spence
  Alumni Society, the Free Synagogue Child Adoption
  Committee, the Alice Chapin Nursery (all in New
  York) and the Cradle in Evanston, Illinois.
• 1912-1921, Baby farming, commercial maternity
  homes, and adoption ad investigations took place
  in Boston, New York, Baltimore, Chicago, and
  other cities.
• 1916, Lewis Terman's revision of the Binet scale
  popularized the intelligence quotient, or I.Q.
  Worries about the feeble-minded mentality of
  children available for adoption, and trends
  toward measuring their mental potential as one
  part of the adoption process, usually with mental
  tests, grew out of the eugenics movement in the
  early part of the century.

51
Adoption History Time Line

• 1917, Minnesota passed first law mandating social
  investigation of all adoptions (including home
  studies) and providing for the confidentiality of
  adoption records.
• 1919, The Russell Sage Foundation published the
  first professional child-placing manual U.S.
  Children's Bureau set minimum standards for
  child-placing Jessie Taft authored an early
  manifesto for therapeutic adoption, Relation of
  Personality Study to Child Placing.
• 1919-1929, The first empirical field studies of
  adoption gathered basic information about how
  many adoptions were taking place, of whom, and by
  whom.

52
Adoption History Time Line

• 1934, The state of Iowa began administering
  mental tests to all children placed for adoption
  in hopes of preventing the unwitting adoption of
  retarded children (called feeble-minded at the
  time). This policy inspired nature-nurture
  studies at the Iowa Child Welfare Station that
  eventually served to challenge hereditarian
  orthodoxies and promote policies of early family
  placement.
• 1935, Social Security Act included provision for
  aid to dependent children, crippled children's
  programs, and child welfare, which eventually led
  to a dramatic expansion of foster care American
  Youth Congress issued The Declaration of the
  Rights of American Youth Justine Wise Polier
  was appointed to head the Domestic Relations
  Court of Manhattan. She became an important early
  critic of matching in adoption.

53
Adoption History Time Line

• 1937-1938, First Child Welfare League of America
  initiative that distinguished minimum standards
  for permanent (adoptive) and temporary (foster)
  placements.
• 1939, Valentine P. Wasson published The Chosen
  Baby, a landmark in the literature on telling
  children about their adopted status.
• 1944, In Prince v. Massachusetts, a case
  involving Jehovah's Witnesses, the U.S. Supreme
  Court upheld the state's power as parens patriae
  to restrict parental control in order to guard
  the general interest in youth's well being.
• 1948, The first recorded transracial adoption of
  an African-American child by white parents took
  place in Minnesota.

54
Adoption History Time Line

• 1949, New York was the first state to pass a law
  against black market adoptions, which proved
  unenforceable in practice.
• 1953, Uniform Adoption Act first proposed. Few
  states ever adopted it Jean Paton founded Orphan
  Voyage, the first adoptee search support network.
• 1953-1954, Child Welfare League of America
  conducted nationwide survey of adoption agency
  practices.
• 1953-1958, The first nationally coordinated
  effort to locate adoptive homes for African
  American children, the National Urban League
  Foster Care and Adoptions Project.

55
Adoption History Time Line

• 1954, Helen Doss published The Family Nobody
  Wanted Jean Paton published The Adopted Break
  Silence, the first book to offer a variety of
  first-person adoption narratives and promote the
  notion that adoptees had a distinctive identity.
• 1955, Child Welfare League of America national
  conference on adoption in Chicago announced that
  the era of special needs adoption had arrived
  Congressional inquiry into interstate and black
  market adoptions. Bertha and Harry Holt adopted
  eight Korean War orphans after a special act of
  Congress allowed them to do so Pearl S. Buck
  accused social workers and religious institutions
  of sustaining the black market and preventing the
  adoption of children in order to preserve their
  jobs Adopt-A-Child founded by the National Urban
  League and fourteen New York agencies to promote
  African-American adoptions.

56
Adoption History Time Line

• 1957, International Conference on Intercountry
  Adoptions issued report on problems of
  international adoptions U.S. adoption agencies
  sponsored legislation to prohibit or control
  proxy adoptions.
• 1958, Child Welfare League of America published
  Standards of Adoption Service (revised in 1968,
  1973, 1978, 1988, 2000) Indian Adoption Project
  began.
• 1959, UN Assembly adopted Declaration of the
  Rights of the Child, endorsed in 1960 by Golden
  Anniversary White House Conference on Children
  and Youth.
• 1961, The Immigration and Nationality Act
  incorporated, for the first time, provisions for
  the international adoption of foreign-born
  children by U.S. citizens.

57
Adoption History Time Line

• 1960, Psychiatrist Marshall Schechter published a
  study claiming that adopted children were 100
  times more likely than their non-adopted
  counterparts to show up in clinical populations.
  This sparked a vigorous debate about whether
  adoptive kinship was itself a risk factor for
  mental disturbance and illness and inspired a new
  round of studies into the psychopathology of
  adoption.
• 1962-1965, Special conference on child abuse, led
  by Katherine Oettinger, chief of the Children's
  Bureau, generated proposals for new laws
  requiring doctors to notify law enforcement and
  most states adopted such legislation.
• 1963, National Institute of Child Health and
  Human Development established as part of the
  National Institutes of Health U.S. Children's
  Bureau moved from Social Security Administration
  to Welfare Administration.

58
Adoption History Time Line

• 1964, H. David Kirk published Shared Fate A
  Theory of Adoption and Mental Health, the first
  book to make adoption a serious issue in the
  sociological literature on family life and mental
  health.
• 1965, The Los Angeles County Bureau of Adoptions
  launched the first organized program of single
  parent adoptions in order to locate homes for
  hard-to-place children with special needs.
• 1966, The National Adoption Resource Exchange,
  later renamed the Adoption Resource Exchange of
  North America (ARENA), was established as an
  outgrowth of the Indian Adoption Project.
• 1969, President Nixon created the Office of Child
  Development in HEW to coordinate and administer
  Head Start and U.S. Children's Bureau functions.

59
Adoption History Time Line

• 1970, Adoptions reached their century-long
  statistical peak at approximately 175,000 per
  year. Almost 80 percent of the total were
  arranged by agencies.
• 1971, Florence Fisher founded the Adoptees
  Liberty Movement Association to abolish the
  existing practice of sealed records and advocate
  for opening of records to any adopted person
  over eighteen who wants, for any reason, to see
  them.
• 1972, National Association of Black Social
  Workers opposed transracial adoptions Stanley v.
  Illinois substantially increased the rights of
  unwed fathers in adoption by requiring informed
  consent and proof of parental unfitness prior to
  termination of parental rights.

60
Adoption History Time Line

• 1973, Roe v. Wade legalized abortion Beyond the
  Best Interests of the Child articulated the
  influential concept of psychological parent,
  which prioritized continuity of nurture and
  speedy and permanent decisions in legal
  proceedings related to child placement and
  adoption.
• 1976, Concerned United Birthparents founded
• 1978, Indian Child Welfare Act passed by
  Congress.
• 1980, Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act
  offered significant funding to states that
  supported subsidy programs for special needs
  adoptions and devoted resources to family
  preservation, reunification, and the prevention
  of abuse, neglect, and child removal.

61
Adoption History Time Line

• 1980, Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act
  offered significant funding to states that
  supported subsidy programs for special needs
  adoptions and devoted resources to family
  preservation, reunification, and the prevention
  of abuse, neglect, and child removal.
• 1989, UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
• 1993, Hague Convention on the Protection of
  Children and Co-operation in respect to
  Intercountry Adoption

62
Adoption History Time Line

• 1994, Multiethnic Placement Act was the first
  federal law to concern itself with race in
  adoption. It prohibited agencies receiving
  federal funds from denying transracial adoptions
  on the sole basis of race, but permitted the use
  of race as one factor, among others, in foster
  and adoptive placements. A 1996 revision to this
  law, the Inter-Ethnic Adoption Amendment, made it
  impermissible to employ race at all.
• 1996, Bastard Nation founded. Its mission
  statement promoted the full human and civil
  rights of adult adopted persons, including
  access to sealed records.
• 1997, Adoption and Safe Families Act stressed
  permanency planning for children and youth.

63
Adoption History Time Line

• 1998, Oregon voters passed Ballot Measure 58,
  allowing adult adopted persons access to original
  birth certificates. This legal blow to
  confidentiality and sealed records was stalled by
  legal challenges to the measure's
  constitutionality, which eventually failed. The
  measure has been in effect in Oregon since June
  2000.
• 2000, The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 allowed
  foreign-born adopted persons to become automatic
  American citizens when they entered the United
  States, eliminating the legal burden of
  naturalization for international adoptions
  Census 2000 included adopted son/daughter as a
  kinship category for the first time in U.S.
  history.
• http//darkwing.uoregon.edu/adoption/