Musings of the Lame: Life as a Birthmother: What's Wrong With the Adoption Tax Credit?

Please scroll down to the bottom of the page where it easy to let your law makers know that we will support a bill that HELPS FOSTER CHILDREN find permanency through adoption. These bills (Senate companion bill (S.3616 ) to H.R. 4373) actually will encourage domestic infant and international adoption and once again leave deserving foster kids out in the cold! Please speak up NOW!

Let us remember that the adoption industry is over a 5.8 billion dollar annual industry. Historically, as the adoption tax credit went up, so does the adoption fees. In other words, the US government subsidizes the adoption industry this way through the Adoption Tax Credit.
In addition, by giving added incentives for adoptive parents to spend more money on adoption, they will look towards international or domestic adoptions more. This will actually HURT the children that MIGHT benefit most from being adopted, the children living in foster care. Of course, foster adoptions often are the lowest cost and with other subsidies, often practically free. So don't go telling me that  we "need the Adoption Tax Credits to help all the unwanted children". It hurts them.

Musings of the Lame: Life as a Birthmother: What's Wrong With the Adoption Tax Credit?

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Dear Mr. President, Here’s What I’d Like to see in your National Adoption Awareness Month Proclamation « Land of Gazillion Adoptees

 

Each November brings about National Adoption Awareness Month.  This month was originally a State-based initiative that was founded to encourage the adoption of children (who are legally cleared for adoption) in the U.S. foster care system.  It has become a Nationally recognized month, and unfortunately, it’s commonly accepted meaning has changed.  Rather than sticking with the month’s original intentions, various adoption groups, agencies, and adoption facilitators alike have used the awareness of adoption this month brings to advertise all types of adoption.  The misinformation that is spread as a result of aggressive marketing is only part of the problem: the actual purpose of the month is negated because attention is diverted away from the needs of those children in foster care.

Dear Mr. President, Here’s What I’d Like to see in your National Adoption Awareness Month Proclamation « Land of Gazillion Adoptees

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It Really Is This Simple

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As thousands of parents are deported, US citizen kids face fallout

"Behind the statistics are the stories: a crying baby taken from her mother's arms and handed to social workers as the mother is handcuffed and taken away, her parental rights terminated by a U.S. judge; teenage children watching as parents are dragged from the family home; immigrant parents disappearing into a maze-like detention system where they are routinely locked up hundreds of miles from their homes, separated from their families for months and denied contact with the welfare agencies deciding their children's' fate."

Read More:  As thousands of parents are deported, US citizen kids face fallout; some placed for adoption

Have we really done so well at taking care of the children that we already have in the foster care system, that we should be creating more so-called “orphans” by ripping apart intact families?

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Foster Parenting Adventures: What is wrong with the System part gazillion

 

My predictions for the future include the possibilities/probabilities of further placement disruptions, continued sexual acting out, increased aggression, school expulsions, teen pregnancies, depression, sociopathy, possibility of future residential treatment or jail.  Because this is how and why it happens.  I just gave you the recipe.

Foster Parenting Adventures: What is wrong with the System part gazillion

I want to scream! Yep, the system is broken.  Again I say, there are not enough good foster homes, how long are we going to keep doing the same thing and expect different results? 

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Noah baby • Severely beaten child was under county watch

 

Yet another case of a foster child being abused by his caregiver

Noah baby • Severely beaten child was under county watch

My comment:

“Sometimes I think the problem that no one wants to face is that there NOT enough quality people who can and will become foster parents. Instead of accepting and licensing people who “will do” are supposedly “good enough” we need to take fewer children into the system. In cases like poverty driven neglect, or the type of generational “ignorance” I see every day we need to do a better job of supporting and educating parents. When children need to be removed for safety, maybe it is time we start looking at small professionally staffed care homes instead of continuing with a system that doesn’t work OR protect children. I know nobody wants to go back to the days of large orphanages, but what we are doing now is further damaging already hurt kids. Putting kids behind closed doors with strangers with little over site is putting them in harm’s way. The elephant in the room is that foster homes don’t serve kids well AT ALL!”

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I Am Here

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