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Adoption and Financial Assistance Tools for Navigating the Bureaucracy
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Rita Laws, Tim O'Hanlon
ISBN: 0-89789-668-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-89789-668-9
288 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 7/30/1999
List Price: $76.95 (UK Sterling Price: £53.95)
Availability: Print on demand
Media Type: Hardcover
Also Available: Ebook
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Description: 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.
Table of Contents:
  • Foreword
    Adoption and the Bureaucracy
    Adoption ABCs (Advocacy, Bureaucracy, and Children)
    The Connection between Adoption Assistance and Foster Care Rates
    Special Service Subsidies: Important Extras
    Welcome to the Bureaucracy: What Adoptive Families Should Know
    Adoption Assistance: Progress and Obstacles for Adoptive Families
    Tools for Advocacy
    Why Adoption Support Groups Are So Useful
    The Crucial Adoption Assistance Contract
    Adoptive Families as Community Assets: Individual Capacity Inventories
    Fair Hearings and the Rights of Adoptive Families
    Applying for Adoption Assistance and Retroactive Payments after a Final Decree of Adoption
    Setbacks and Victories: One Family's Story
    Adoptive Families and State Legislatures: A Perfect Partnership
    Lawsuits and the Liability of Adoption Agencies
    Appendices and Documents
    Information Resources
About the Author: 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 Ph.D. 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.
LCC Class: 362
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