The Florida Senate Committee on Children, Families and Elder Affairs, chaired by Senator Eleanor Sobel (D-Hollywood), today passed Senate Bill 320, Adoption and Foster Care by Senator Don Gaetz (R-Niceville). The legislation, part of the “Work Plan 2015†joint agenda announced last week by Senate President Andy Gardiner (R-Orlando) and House Speaker Steve Crisafulli (R-Merritt Island), seeks to promote adoption of children in foster care and support adoptive families throughout the state.
“Over the last several years we passed legislation to help children in foster care have a greater sense of normalcy and permanence in their lives, whether that means getting a driver’s license, being able to participate in after-school activities, spending the night at a friend’s house, or even just getting a haircut,†said President Gardiner. “Senator Gaetz’s legislation represents the next steps towards helping children in foster care who are eligible for adoption find the loving, forever families they deserve.â€
Senate Bill 320 creates a program to award incentive payments to community-based care (CBC) lead agencies and their subcontractors for achieving specified adoption performance standards. The legislation re-creates a program to provide an additional adoption benefit for qualifying employees of state agencies who adopt a child from the foster care system and requires the Governor to select and recognize one or more individuals, families, or entities that have made significant contributions to the adoption of children from foster care.
Adoption Incentive Program
CBC lead agencies are responsible for providing pre and post-adoption services, and maintenance adoption subsidies for children adopted from the foster care system. While the Department of Children and Families (DCF) monitors performance measures and captures certain data related to adoption, the CBCs and their subcontractors do not currently receive state incentive payments for meeting the performance measures in their contract or other accountability reports.
The adoption incentive program would award incentive payments to CBCs and their sub-contractors for meeting specific adoption performance standards. The legislation requires the DCF to complete a baseline assessment of CBC lead agency performance regarding these measures. Among other criteria, the assessment must identify: the number of families attempting to adopt from foster care; the number of families who have completed the adoption process; the number of children eligible for adoption; the number of children whose adoption has been finalized; the amount of time eligible children wait to be adopted; and, the time is takes to complete each phase of the adoption process.
Once the baseline has been established for the adoption measures, the DCF will establish measurable outcome targets, define the methods for measuring these targets, determine the level of performance required to earn an incentive payment, and the amount of payment that can be earned for each target.
Adoption Benefit
In 2000, the Legislature created a program to provide a cash benefit to any employee of the state or of a water management district who adopted a child, including private adoptions. Employees adopting a child with special needs were eligible to receive a monetary benefit in the amount of $10,000 per child. Employees adopting a child other than a child with special-needs were eligible to receive a monetary benefit in the amount of $5,000 per child. The law was amended in 2001 to restrict the program to state employees who adopted a child from the foster care system and was expanded in 2007 to include county school district employees, community college and university employees, and instructional personnel employed by the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind, in the list of employees eligible to receive the benefit. The program was funded for ten years before being repealed in 2010 due to declining state revenues.
Senate Bill 320 reestablishes the adoption benefit program for state employees who adopt children from the foster care system. The benefit program proposed in the bill is the same as the program that was repealed in 2010, providing the same amount of monetary benefit.
For more information on SB 320 and the Work Plan 2015 Joint Agenda, please visit www.FLSenate.gov.
