Whatever happened to the safety part of the Adoption and Safe Family Act

When President Clinton in 1997 signed the Adoption and Safe Family Act (ASFA) into law, there were three national goals for children in the child welfare system: safety, permanence and well-being. Now eleven years later it's fair to conclude that permanence, without being all that successful, given the number of children in foster care, has received most of the attention.

Although I realize hindsight is always 20/20, it was predictable that in a world where money talks, the permanency aspect would have received most of the attention. After all permanency was the only aspect of ASFA that received financial incentives. Ít also was the only aspect that could be cast into mould of financial incentives. It's not easy to make safety and well-being measurable, so ASFA from the start could have been perceived as top-heavy on the permanency aspect.

With it's financial incentive aspect, ASFA is very much a law that belongs to an era in which we thought everything was measurable and incentives, bonuses, quota would be the solution to every major problem. We not only see it in child placement but in a many aspects of legislature over the last 20 years, For example, the productivity of police forces is measured by the number of tickets pulled, irrespective of crime rates or traffic safety.

The problem with all incentives is that officials will seek the easy route to go after the incentives. When police corpses receive part of the revenues of speeding tickets, they will seek out places where the situation is most compelling to violations of the speed limit. In reality those are the safest places on the road, so instead of enhancing traffic safety, police officers are spending time fining people for benign activities.

The same is true for adoption incentives. Intended as a measure to expedite permanency for children who would otherwise stay within the foster care system indefinitely, the adoption incentives in fact has mainly lead to seek the outplacement of children as young as possible, because of their adaptability.

I believe we are entering a new era, with the old system crumbling down in so many ways. It's not just the stock markets that are falling down like crazy, it is also a generational changing of the guards. If I am to believe the polls, it is most likely the US will elect a new president that belongs to a younger generation than his predecessors. It's remarkable that neither of the candidates belongs to the baby-boom generation, that brought us all these bonuses, quota and incentives. One candidate is older than that generation and would be a tuck back from the era of the 1990's, to the times another elder statesman held the highest office. The other candidate is part of a younger generation, trying to define values relevant to this day and age. And while the walls are tumbling down, it is my hope we will enter a new era, in which adoption incentives will eventually be abolished and child placement gets organized so the child's best interest is really served, including safety and well-being.