Dan Burton: “last year I was very pleased to have played a part in making sure that the adoption credit was passed. This credit…”

“last year I was very pleased to have played a part in making sure that the adoption credit was passed. This credit helped make adoption more affordable for numerous parents who could not afford adoption costs. However, it is evident that costs are not the only problem of adopting. In fact, it is the very system that was created to help children either be reunited with their families or be adopted that has turned out to be the problem. In the last decade child welfare has grown into an enormous bureaucratic system that is biased toward preserving the family at any cost. Consequently, foster care has become a way of life for thousands of children while agencies continue to try and, quote, fix the problem. Mr. Chairman, I would like to commend my dear colleagues, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Camp] and the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Mrs. Kennelly] for all their hard work on the Adoption Promotion Act of 1997. For years, foster care has been a black hole for thousands of America's children. The current system has failed to help the very children it was intended to help. Today it is estimated that over 500,000 children are in foster care while 50 to 80,000 are legally free to be adopted. The average child is in foster care for 3 years, while 1 in 10 children remain in State care for longer than 7 rac{1}{2} ext{ years}. The time is right to make some fundamental changes to the child welfare system because too many children are simply wasting away.”