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Wisconsin Legislature advances needed adoption reforms

By David Ward

Adoption has long been a viable solution for birth parents who are unable to care for their children, for their children who deserve permanent loving homes and for adoptive parents who are unable to conceive their own children. Unfortunately, some of the regulations we have created to establish these unions also have been a detriment to their fruition.The number of adoptions completed in Wisconsin has been on a steady decline each year. The cause ranges from bureaucratic red tape to social trends that have made it more acceptable for teens to keep their babies.

The Legislature began to confront this issue by appointing a Legislative Council Special Committee on Adoption Laws. Made up of both state legislators and public members, the committee's primary directive was to promote the placement of children needing adoption with parents who want to open their hearts and their homes. (Note: Please see a related article elsewhere in this issue.)

The committee advanced three separate proposals that clarify and streamline our current laws and create new incentives for adoption.

AB 600 - Changes to general adoption laws

The first proposal, Assembly Bill 600, contains the committee's recommendations for changes to Wisconsin's general adoption laws. Highlights of the bill include:

• Provides needed clarification regarding which expenses of the birth parents and child can be paid by the adoptive parents;
  
  
• Prohibits advertising by adoption agencies not licensed in Wisconsin;
  
  
• Clarifies who may be adopted in situations involving a child whose parents are deceased, stepparent adoption, and readoption of a child who was adopted in another state or nation;
  
  
• Reduces the time to petition for a rehearing on a contested involuntary termination of parental rights (based on new evidence) to 30 days after the order is entered or until the adoption is final, whichever is later;
  
  
• Promotes the option of adoption by requiring school-age parent programs to provide instruction on adoption and adoption services.

AB 601 - Adoption assistance

Assembly Bill 601 contains changes to the adoption assistance statutes that the committee believes are vital in providing meaningful incentives to adopt children with special needs or who are at high risk of developing special needs. Highlights of the bill include:

• Provides for a deferred adoption assistance agreement for a child who is at high risk of developing moderate or intensive difficulty-of-care problems after adoption. This improves current law by acknowledging that at-high-risk children often are special needs children and eligible for adoption assistance benefits;
  
  
• Allows for an increase in monthly maintenance payment amounts if an adopted child's problems become worse. This proposed change should help eliminate the tendency to initially set payments at a higher level than is needed, in anticipation that the child may develop greater problems in the future.

AB 602 - Long-term kinship care

Finally, the committee recommended creating a long-term kinship care program to address the needs of children who are placed with relatives for extended periods of time. Assembly Bill 602:

• Provides that only a relative who has been appointed as a child's guardian (under 48.977 (2) of the Wisconsin Statutes) may receive long-term kinship care payments;
  
  
• Requires an investigation of the home of the relative who will provide long-term kinship care;
  
  
• Requires a criminal background check. However, an individualized consideration of the long-term kinship care relative's conviction record, and the conviction record of an adult resident of the home also is required;
  
  
• Requires an annual review of a case under the long-term kinship care program;
• Allows a person to petition for a Department of Health & Family Services (DHFS) administrative review and fair hearing under certain circumstances where long-term kinship care payments are discontinued or denied.

I am very proud of the work that the Special Committee on Adoption Laws accomplished. It is our hope that this work will result in bringing more Wisconsin children needing loving stable homes together with parents who are waiting to bring them into their families. The more efficiently we can do this the better off these children and, in the long run, our society will be.

For more information, please contact Rep. David Ward at (608) 266-3790 or obtain a copy of Joint Legislative Council Report No. 4 to the 1997 Legislature by calling the Legislative Council at (608) 266-1304. N

Wisconsin Lawyer