Adoption and Financial Assistance: Tools for Navigating the Bureaucracy

(Hardback)

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Parents, child advocates, and family attorneys need to understand how to put the federal adoption assistance law to work for their children and clients in order to create adoptions, keep them intact and healthy, and encourage future special needs adoptive placements as well. This guide through the state adoption bureaucracies shows how to navigate the adoption assistance process, negotiate an adoption assistance contract, and plan effective administrative hearings and adoption subsidy appeals. Essentially four books in one, this book includes and explains the federal IV-E adoption assistance law and many of the important clarifications that have been issued by the federal government over the last two decades; takes the reader inside the culture of the state adoption bureaucracies to show how they operate, and why they sometimes seem to be working against adoptive families instead of with them; illustrates how to negotiate and periodically renegotiate the crucial adoption assistance contract, and how to file and prepare for an administrative hearing and an appeal should the decision go against a family; and provides easy-to-understand examples in numerous sidebars that illustrate important points every adoptive family should understand. Families who have or will adopt children with special needs may be able to save tens of thousands of dollars using the information provided here.

Reviews

Adoption and Financial Assistance is a must-read for anyone planning to adopt a child or who has adopted a child (whether or not they believe their child is a special needs child). For adoptive parents and child advocates, it truly is a . . . Tool for Navigating the Bureacucracy. It is a usable guide for adoptive parents going through the maze of adoption assistance and is written in understandable language. . . . This book offers empowerment to adoptive parents through concise information and is an essential self-education tool for both adoptive parents and child advocates. * Augusta Child Advocates, Incorporated *
This exceptionally practical and readable tool carefully explains federal IV-E adoption assistance law and offers grassroots advice for the would-be or need-be child advocates . . . . Adoption and Financial Assistance is an essential tool for both parents domestically adopting children who have or who develop special needs as well as for the workers charged with assisting these families and children. * Adoption Quarterly *
In four well-defined and carefully written parts, this book serves as a guide for prospective parents who are considering adopting special needs children. This book is an excellent reference for professionals who are responsible for adoptions or for anyone interested in adoption policy. [The authors] have made the process user friendly. * Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare *
Every parent who has adopted a special needs child, is considering adopting a special needs child or who has adopted a child who had developed special needs (such as reactive attachment disorder diagnosis) needs to read this book. . . . For all adoptive parents and professionals who are working wuth adoptive families this is an invaluable resource. * Augusta Attachment Network Newsletter *

Author Bio

Rita Laws is the co-author of Adopting and Advocating for the Special Needs Child (Bergin & Garvey, 1997) and has written hundreds of articles on adopting and parenting./e She has her PhD in psychology and is a NACAC State Representative. She and her nine sons and two daughters by birth and adoption live in Oklahoma. Tim O'Hanlon is a former adoption assistance policy specialist and is the author of Accessing Federal Adoption Subsidies After Legalization (1995). Dr. O'Hanlon maintains an adoption advocacy Web site called the Adoption Policy Resource Center.