About the senator mentioned:
Senator Landrieu has become a nationally recognized advocate for domestic and international adoption. As the Senate Democratic Co-Chair of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption, she believes Congress has the power to assist state and local efforts to improve foster care and promote adoption. She was a co-sponsor of the Safe and Stable Families Act, which removes barriers to children finding permanent homes and puts in place systems that connect children with loving families in a timely manner.
Senator Landrieu’s ultimate goal is to ensure every child has the opportunity to be part of a stable and loving family. She believes all children deserve a loving and nurturing family to call their own. To that end, she has worked to increase the adoption tax credit, reform the foster care system and create laws helpful to families who are committed to international adoption.
Throughout all of my years of public service, I have been led by the vision that every child deserves a family to call their own. There is no such thing as an unwanted child, just unfound families. In a perfect world, all children would be wanted, loved, and nurtured by the family to which they were born. Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world. Sometimes, because of war, famine, addiction, imprisonment, or abandonment, governments around the world should work to connect a child or sibling group with a responsible, caring relative. But when even this is not possible, it is our responsibility to connect these children with a new loving family in their own country, or as a last resort, somewhere in the world.
Everyday, politicians talk of how important the family is, and yet, programs that provide for the protection and support of children and their families are often the last and least funded. Through legislation and my work as a founding co-chair and Board President of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption, I have strived to promote responsible policies for the long-term care and support of America’s children and families.
The simple fact is this: governments do many things well, but raising children is not one of them. As children cannot raise themselves, it then becomes our responsibility to find homes for the huge numbers of abandoned and orphaned children who are waiting for a permanent, safe and loving home. Today, there are over 580,00 children in our foster care system, and roughly 126,000 of those children are waiting to be adopted. Gabriela Mistral once wrote, “Many things we need can wait, the child cannot. To him we cannot say tomorrow. His name is today.” We cannot keep these children waiting in foster care. It is time to take action.
Learn More about Sen. Landrieu’s Legislative Efforts for Adoption and Foster Care
In an effort to improve the lives of children and families in Louisiana, the United States, and around the world, there are numerous pieces of legislation that I am currently working on:
Fostering Futures Act of 2005
Under current law there are several funding streams targeted at serving the needs of children in foster care and their families including: Title IVE, Title IVB, Promoting Safe and Stable Families, Adoption Assistance and Independent Living. Each of these streams comes with different requirements, serves different populations and has varied purposes. Some of this funding is discretionary, which means that the amount of money available to states is dependent on annual appropriations and some are entitlements, meaning that the states are entitled by law to receive these funds. As a result, federal foster care financing has become inflexible, burdensome and counterproductive to the goals of the child welfare system as defined in the Adoption and Safe Families Act.
I am working to pass legislation that would:
Move the system away from the fragmented one it is today to a more cohesive one based on promoting permanency for children.
Provide subsidies and programs that would follow the child, meaning they would be available to support the needs of the children and their family before removal, during removal and post placement, whether through reunification, adoption or guardianship.
De-link Federal support for financing from TANF. Support should be available to all children, regardless of their eligibility for AFDC or other welfare programs
Tie federal financing of foster care to a carefully designed set of outcome measures that would not result in unintended consequences.
Foster Care Mentoring Act
The Foster Care Mentoring Act is aimed at connecting these young people to a caring adult through mentoring. For young people living in foster care, mentoring can become a lifeline to academic success and better life skills.
The Foster Care Mentoring Act of 2005 would provide $15 million in grants to states to develop or expand statewide academic mentoring program for children in foster care. In addition, the legislation authorizes $4 million to fund a national coordination and media campaign aimed at the need to get involved in the life of a waiting child. Finally, under the legislation, eligible students who have completed at least one year of graduate or post-graduate work, will be recruited to serve as mentors to children living in foster care. Participating college and graduate students would be eligible to have their student loans discharged up to $2,000 for every 200 hours they serve as mentors to children living in foster care.
Contact:
724 Hart Senate Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
