NY Bill Stops Payments to Adoptive Families Who Have Broken Adoptions

So New York Adoptive Families are still receiving money for broken adoptions?

“Lawrence Booker had been living apart from his adoptive family for about two years when he learned they might still be receiving money for his care — money that could have gone a long way toward helping him instead.

The situation Booker faced — a disrupted or broken adoption — is common enough that one New York children’s legal advocacy organization found that, at one point, roughly 20% of its voluntary placement foster care clientele had experienced it.

The State Senate was considering a bill that would permit child welfare agencies to halt payments to adoptive parents who stop caring for their children, and in some cases transfer those payments to adoptees like Booker.

“The phrase I hear all the time from youth is, ‘I feel like a paycheck,’ ” said Jean Strashnick, senior attorney for Covenant House New York, a nonprofit that provides housing for homeless youth, including many former foster youth.

“The point of subsidies was a good thing, and most parents use it for the benefit of the child,” Strashnick said. “We’re really looking at the minority of cases with bad actors, either intentionally adopting children for the subsidy, or sometimes parents who don’t have the resources they need to care for children with diverse needs.”

Despite the narrow scope of the bill, Richard Heyl de Ortiz, the executive director of the Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition of New York, warns it doesn’t account for the realities of family tensions during adolescence.

“I think that the teenage years can be particularly difficult for children who have been adopted,” Heyl de Ortiz said.

“This bill, for example, could penalize parents who have a commitment to their children while their child may have run away from home temporarily, may have chosen to live with a friend or potentially couch surf. Even though that family is still maintaining a connection.”

In many cases of broken adoptions, advocates maintain that adoptive parents were still receiving funds for the children’s care, and the money at stake isn’t negligible. In New York City, subsidies are typically $700 to $1,900 per month, depending on the child’s needs.

In an email, Julie Farber, the deputy commissioner for family permanency services at New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, or ACS, said the agency “currently provides adoption subsidies for more than 17,500 youth.”

Farber went on to say ACS had stopped subsidy payments for 500 kids since 2012 because an adoptive parent had stopped providing support for the child.

“While we would expect that there is some amount of under-reporting of such situations, the vast majority of adoptive parents are loving parents who care for and provide for their adopted children as any parent would,” Farber said.

Profiting from a System Meant to “Facilitate Love”

Booker, now 21, was adopted at around age 7.

From a young age, he said, relations with his adoptive family in New York were tense. They prioritized obedience, and he was, by his own description, “rebellious.”

When reached by phone, his adoptive mother declined to answer any questions regarding Booker’s characterizations of events.

In his last year of high school, Booker moved out, living for a time with a friend and then, at age 18, with a family he’d met through a summer church camp.

But he struggled financially. The monthly commute to his job cost $450, accounting for at least one of his paychecks each month.

A co-worker pointed out that, given his age, he might still be entitled to financial support through the adoption subsidy: federal and state funds given to parents who adopt from the foster care system. Those funds usually flow until the child turns 21.

Booker said he later found out that his adoptive family was receiving as much as $900 per month for his care, long after he’d left their home.

“I was under the assumption that (the subsidy) was there to make foster kids get adopted,” he said. “It’s really sad to see people use the system that is meant to create families and facilitate love for making a profit. Because that’s essentially what it was.”

He contacted the ACS to say that none of the funds were making their way to him. A social worker told Booker that the agency had no real way of assessing what type or amount of support adoptive parents must give to continue qualifying for the subsidy.

When Booker asked his adoptive mother about it, he said she agreed to give him $375 per month, a fraction of her total payment that fell short of covering even his train fare.

Legislating an Adoption Subsidy Clawback

What happened with the subsidy that was intended for Booker’s care is the subject of legislation that requires child welfare agencies to confirm that adoptive parents are still supporting their adopted children and that the adoptions have not been disrupted.

The measure would also more clearly define what “support” means when it comes to adoptive parents providing for their children. Under the bill, adoptive parents alleged to have stopped supporting their children will be investigated, then the subsidy can be simply stopped, transferred to a new guardian or in some cases routed directly to adoptees who are 18 or older.

Dawn Post, co-borough director of the Children’s Law Center’s Brooklyn office, began working on these issues after noticing that some adopted children were returning to family court in need of services and support.

In most cases — around 75% of the time, she said — it was due to the death or infirmity of an adoptive parent. But the other 25% were adopted children who said their adoptions had failed because of abuse or neglect.

In some cases, Post said, the law center calculated there were adoptive parents who likely received a total of $80,000 to $120,000 after the adoption had broken, as parents might continue receiving $2,000 monthly subsidies for years on end.

In a current case of one sibling group, Post said, the law center tallied the post-adoption subsidy total as more than $200,000. In another case, she said, four children were returned to foster care after their adoptive father murdered their adoptive mother. He continued to accrue subsidy payments in jail.

Lacking support, children from broken adoptions often struggle substantially. Some may become homeless, living in shelters or on the streets.

Next Steps

The bill is on hold until the Legislature returns in 2018. The coalition of groups pushing it plans to use that time to drum up more support.

In September of 2016, Lawrence Booker said, he filed a petition through the New York State family courts to dispute the years when his adoptive family was receiving subsidies. They were ordered to pay him $1,237 per month, to cover his educational and basic needs.

He’d won, but by then he was five months away from his 21st birthday, when subsidies stop.”

Foster families keep getting child welfare payments despite broken adoptions

[NY Daily News 11/20/17 by Kathyrn Joyce]

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