The Impact of Payment Rates on Michigan Child Welfare Adoptions

[摘要] This paper will present a socioeconomic analysis of child welfare adoptions inthe United States. The evolution of attitudes and policies concerning theseadoptions have been intricately tied to the plethora of social changes that haveoccurred in the United States, particularly since the 1960’s. Much of what weknow focuses on the demographics of children within the child welfare system:their age, race, and length of stay. However, there are barriers within the childwelfare system itself that may explain why it takes so many months or years forsome children to be adopted. One of these barriers is the financial arrangementthat pays agencies while a child is in foster care. This arrangement has beensaid to provide a reverse incentive, since an agency continues to receivepayment for each day a child is in care. Accordingly, the financial incentiveshave favored keeping a child in foster care rather than finding an adoptive familyfor him or her.In Michigan, the financial incentives to private agencies have been changedto provide larger payments for the quickest adoptions. This paper examines childwelfare adoptions in Michigan both prior and subsequent to the 1992 paymentchange. The focus of the study will be to determine whether or not significantchanges in Michigan child welfare adoptions have occurred since 1992, bycomparing placements by private agencies to those done directly by the State,and by comparison to trends in Michigan’s total foster care population. If thisanalysis shows that adoptions by private agencies increased significantly after 992, it may strengthen the argument that the barriers to adoption have more todo with its financial arrangements than to demographic factors.Section II reviews the history of adoption, and focuses on how it has changedin response to the evolution of American society, particularly since the 1960s.Section III will examine the child welfare system in the United States, as it relatesto policies and practices at various levels of government and private agencies,and how the amount of payment to private agencies may impact the number ofadoptions. This section will also present a summary of the research on how achild’s age and race may impact his or her chances for adoption. Section IVexplains the change in Michigan’s payment arrangements for adoptions, andlooks at the numbers and characteristics of child welfare adoptions before andafter the payment change. Section V will provide a summary of this study’sfindings, and will offer suggestions for further research on this subject.

[发布机构] University of Michigan

[效力级别] Michigan

[关键词] welfare adoption;Michigan;incentives;adoption;College of Arts and Sciences: Public Administration