HD67 - Direct Adoption Placement and Unauthorized Placement Activity

  • Published: 1989
  • Author: General Assembly. Joint Subcommittee
  • Enabling Authority: House Joint Resolution 86 (Regular Session, 1988)

Executive Summary:
AUTHORITY FOR THE STUDY

House Joint Resolution No. 86, agreed to by the 1988 General Assembly, authorizes a joint subcommittee to study the practice and regulation of direct placement of children by their parents or legal guardians for adoption and to develop such recommendations as are necessary to protect all children so placed. The joint subcommittee is composed of members of the House Committee on Health, Welfare and Institutions and the Senate Committee on Rehabilitation and Social Services. The joint subcommittee is directed to complete its work and present its findings and recommendations to the 1989 Session of the General Assembly (Attachment 1).

BACKGROUND

The study was proposed by the Department of Social Services and endorsed by the Secretary of Human Resources in the course of the Secretary's study of licensing and regulation of children's programs during the summer and fall of 1987. The Department suggested that legislative guidance is needed to provide adequate protection of children separated permanently from their birth parents through direct adoption placement.

Current law in Virginia authorizes the direct placement of children by their parents for adoption if the birth parents and adoptive parents receive no assistance in effecting a placement from anyone other than an authorized child-placing agency. However, the Department of Social Services informed the study group that a significant number of adoption placements are arranged each year under the guise of direct placements by persons within and outside the Commonwealth who are not authorized to do so. Many of these placements reportedly are made by persons who know them to be illegal; many involve advertising for placements. Because such placements do not comply with the law, they may not be known to authorities who can ensure that the placements are appropriate for the children. Authorities may not be aware of these placements until the petition for adoption is filed. Once such a placement is known to authorities, the child may have formed an attachment to the family, and a reviewing court is reluctant to remove a child without a finding of abuse or neglect. Other children so placed may remain in uncertain legal status because their prospective adoptive parents do not follow the statutory process required to formalize the adoption. Some persons making unauthorized placements have been advised of their illegality yet they reportedly continue to arrange these placements in the belief that no action will be taken against them.

Assistance offered by a relative of a birth mother is also technically unauthorized placement activity pursuant to the statute. However, it is not clear as to whether the law was intended to proscribe this assistance.

Unauthorized placement activity in interstate placements is more likely to be discovered prior to placement, when inappropriate placements can be prevented before attachments between child and adoptive parent are formed. The Department of Social Services, through its Office on Interstate Placement, must approve all requests for adoptive placements into and out of Virginia. When unauthorized placement activity is discovered, placements are denied.

While the number of non-agency placements has decreased since the 1981-82 fiscal year, when there were 2241 such placements in Virginia, there were 1794 non-agency placements in FY 86-87. For the past six years, there have consistently been more non-agency placements than agency placements. The latter numbered about 700-800 from FY 81-82 to FY 85-86 and about 1100 in FY 86-87. In calendar year 1986, there were an estimated 100 placements by unauthorized persons, and about eighty-one such placements in calendar year 1987. (Attachment 2) The estimated number of unauthorized placements is based on reports of local departments of social services, which are required to investigate adoptive placements. There may be more unauthorized placements, but they are not discovered and reported because the adoption is completed in another state, the court determines that a placement is direct when it is actually arranged through unauthorized placement activity, or the prospective adoptive parents fail to complete the legal adoption process and, therefore, the placement is never investigated.