Multimedia Reporting (Kuhr-Musser)

Federal legislators created a 1997 adoption law to stop a trend of re-uniting children with biological families too quickly, but a study published last month by a former University of Kansas researcher says the law hasn't done all it was supposed to. David Linhardt tells us why some scientists are questioning the Adoption and Safe Families Act.

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Kristen Humphrey’s foster brother, David, was emotionally and sexually abused for years by his biological family. Humphrey’s family had worked with many foster children like David and they wanted to adopt him. But well-meaning government intervention took David from the Humphrey’s home and reunited him with his abusive family.

Humphrey knew she wanted to explore why the government made such seemingly foolish social welfare decisions. Humphrey, who received a doctorate in special education from the University of Kansas, published a study last month critically analyzing parts of Congress’s Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997.

Legislators created the law to curtail a 1980s trend of reuniting foster children with their biological families too quickly, which often forced children back into dangerous situations.

Humphrey does not see ASFA as a true reform of the foster care system’s problems.

“It’s good and it’s fair when there’s a clean-cut case where you know a family isn’t going to change dramatically in a short time,” Humphrey said. “Cases are rarely that clear cut, though.”

Thomas McDonald, associate dean of KU's School of Social Welfare, wrote in the Children and Youth Services Review last year that it was important to balance safety and permanence when reuniting children with their biological families.

“A policy and practice emphasis on reunification may lead to repeated abuse and neglect and subsequent reentry into foster care,” McDonald wrote. “This is not to say that longer stays in foster care are the answer to the problem of reentry into care. In fact, longer stays in care are associated with lower probabilities of reunification.”

Humphrey said ASFA undid some of the damage of the “family preservation” movement in the 1980s, which tried to reunite children with their families at all costs. The law gave clearer guidance about when social workers would not have to make reasonable efforts to place a child back with its biological family.

ASFA benefits and roadblocks

“It’s excellent for those extreme cases where everyone knows that the situation is one that cannot be remedied,” Humphrey said. “We just have to be sure that with ASFA we don't swing the pendulum too far the other way and forget that many families can be maintained . . . given the right resources.”

Humphrey saw more children being forced into either an adoptive home or their biological family’s home because of ASFA—a better alternative to being in limbo in non-permanent foster care centers. Either way, Humphrey said, Kansas' Social Rehabilitation Service (SRS) needs a healthy way to help children maintain relationships or, when that's not possible, to help them to find new and healthy attachments.

McDonald wrote that great flexibility was needed when planning permanent placement for foster children.

“[We need] better supportive service and treatment options for parents and more adequate aftercare services to ensure long-term stability,” McDonald wrote.

Sample section of foster children surveyed

Humphrey said that ASFA was unfair to families in her studies with radically different cultures, or those in deep poverty. She mentioned one family which believed it was inappropriate for a mother to work outside the home—the children weren’t abused or neglected, but their mother simply lacked marketable job skills. The mother’s daughter ended up in foster care and never returned to her biological family.

Humphrey said David’s case was a prime factor in her decision to study social welfare and special education in particular. She believed David had a great situation with the Humphrey family—why did the SRS take him back to a violent, destructive home?

“It was like taking a plant from a sunny window and putting it in a closet and pouring bleach all over it every day,” Humphrey said.

SRS finally allowed David to stay permanently in the Humphrey’s home after his eighth birthday. But the damage done to David by his biological family had taken its toll.

David became an intensely aggressive boy, and by age 11 he towered over Humphrey and her mother. He broke windows and refused to be controlled. He went on to spend several years in group placement homes before Humphrey became his legal guardian.

Though David’s childhood often was hellish, it tied him to Humphrey’s heart and pushed her to question laws like ASFA. Her study appears in the February 2006 edition of Children and Youth Services Review.