Bounties for Breaking up Families?
Tag(s): CPS • foster care • international • parental rights • uk • violations
Citizens across the United Kingdom are up in arms after learning that the British government has been providing “perverse economic incentives” to social service agencies that remove children from their parents in order to meet adoption quotas.
GOVERNMENT BREAK-UPS
According to British news sources, 30 English councils shared a payout of £18 million this year for meeting Government targets to increase adoptions. This latest news comes amidst new data which shows that although social services removed more than 2.5 times as many infants from their homes (citing safety risks), the number of murders in which the victim was less than a year old has actually increased, not decreased.
According to a senior lecturer in social work at London Metropolitan University, “Performance targets and the tick-box culture are undermining professional judgment.”
PERVERSE INCENTIVES
Similar “incentives” exist in U.S. law. According to the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, federal rules provide “bounties to states of up to $8,000 or more per child for every adoption they finalize over a baseline number,” creating “an incentive to place a child with little concern about whether the placement will really last.”
As a result, “states and private agencies now have financial incentives to keep children in foster care and financial incentives to place them for adoption - but no financial incentives to keep them in their own homes or return them there.”
SAFEGUARDING THE FAMILY
Today, more than ever, the vital relationship between child and parent is under constant attack. In addition to government agencies vying for funding, political and legal forces - both in America and beyond our shores - are challenging the premise that parents are best-suited to provide what their children need. In Britain, and around the world, their campaign is already beginning to succeed.
We need your help to safeguard the precious child-parent relationship. Join with us by encouraging your friends to get involved in the battle to protect parental rights.
SOURCES
Straw rethinks councils’ cash for adoption targets
Adoption increase fails to stop baby deaths
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, “Financial Incentives”
