SB 1040 (Author:Hill)
Page 7 of 7
SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE
Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, Chair
2015-2016 Regular Session
Bill No: SB 1040 (Author:Hill)
Version: March 28, 2016
Hearing Date:
Fiscal: Yes
Urgency: No
Consultant: NR
SUBJECT
Adoptions: rehoming
DESCRIPTION
This bill would define “rehoming” as an action taken to facilitate a transaction by an adoptive parent to avoid permanent parental responsibility by placing the minor in the physical custody of another person and without court approval.
This bill would prohibit the rehoming of an adopted child and would require the Department of Social Services to adopt regulations to ensure that postadoptive services are provided to adoptive parents who seek the assistance of the Department.
BACKGROUND
Over the past few years, headlines highlighting dramatic failures in international adoptions have captivated the public. In 2010, Torry Hansen outraged the adoption community when she sent her seven year old adopted son on a plane back to Russia with a note claiming that the child was mentally unstable and had violent and severe psychopathic issues/behaviors. (See <http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/ 2012/07/ woman-who-sent-adopted-son-back-to-russia-alone-must-pay-child-support>[as of April 6, 2016].) In September 2013, Thomson Reuters uncovered a large underground market where hundreds of adopted parents look to find permanent homes for their unwanted adopted children without the involvement of adoption agencies, child welfare officials, lawyers, or the courts. These parents advertise on Internet forums their unwanted children and the ability to transfer guardianship of children through a simple power of attorney document. “Reuters analyzed over 5,000 posts on Yahoo’s ‘Adopting From Disruption’ forum and discovered that, on average, a child was advertised for “rehoming” once a week. Most children ranged from ages six to fourteen and most had been adopted internationally from countries such as Russia, China, Ethiopia, and Ukraine.” (Nobile, Adoptions Gone Awry: Enhancing Adoption Outcomes Through Post-Adoption Services and Federal and State Laws Imposing Criminal Sanctions for Private Internet Rehoming, (2015) 53 Fam. Ct. Rev. 474.) However, rehoming youth adopted domestically through the foster system happens frequently as well.
[V]ery little attention has been paid to the many children who are a product of the foster care system and who return to family court through its revolving doors after achieving so-called "permanency" through adoption.
In the field of child welfare, changes in policy goals and objectives to achieve permanency for children in foster care have, in practice, resulted in an increase in adoptions. Although there are no federal standards for data collection to track broken adoptions, attorneys for children who regularly practice in family court frequently see cases in which children who were previously adopted return to family court or to the foster care system as subjects in subsequent cases, whether in abuse or neglect, custody or guardianship, voluntary placements, “persons in need of supervision” (PINS), or delinquency cases. (Post and Zimmerman, The Revolving Doors of Family Court: Confronting Broken Adoptions, (2012) 40 Cap. U.L. Rev. 437.)
Children adopted through the dependency system and private international organizations have frequently suffered abuse, neglect, and/or abandonment and are therefore at a disproportionately higher risk of having developmental delays and behavior problems than children of the general population. Thus, despite a general lack of data collection on the topic, it is not surprising that these adopted youth are the most vulnerable to the practice of rehoming, which may be triggered by behavioral and emotional issues of the child, prior placement history, sexual abuse history, attachments of sibling groups, attachment to the birth parent, prenatal drug and alcohol exposure, and the lack of services and resources to properly address these issues. (Donaldson What's Working for Children: A Policy Study of Adoption Stability and Termination, Adoption Inst., 12-16 (Nov. 2004).)
Seeking to curb the practice or rehoming and also provide services to families struggling with the special needs of adopted children, this bill would define and prohibit the rehoming of an adopted minor, and require the Department of Social Services to adopt regulations to ensure that parents can be connected with postadoptive support services.
CHANGES TO EXISTING LAW
Existing law makes it a misdemeanor for a person or organization to advertise adoption services in any periodical or newspaper, by radio, or by other public medium, if the person or organization does not hold a valid license to place children for adoption. (Fam. Code Sec. 8609.)
This bill would define “rehoming” as an action taken to facilitate a transaction by an adoptive parent, an individual, or an entity having custody of an adopted minor that is done without court approval, and to avoid permanent parental responsibility by placing the minor in the physical custody of another person or entity.
This bill would provide an exception for adopted minors placed with relatives and nonrelative extended family members, as specified, and temporary placements due to a vacation, school-sponsored activity, or the incarceration, military service, medical treatment, or incapacity of a parent or guardian.
This bill would prohibit an adoptive parent, an individual, or an entity having custody of an adopted minor from rehoming the minor.
This bill would require the Department of Social Services to adopt regulations to ensure that postadoptive services are provided to adoptive parents who seek the assistance of the Department.
COMMENT
1. Stated need for the bill
According to the author:
Rehoming is an unregulated child custody transfer in which parents seek new homes for their children without the safeguards and oversight of the courts or the child welfare system. Rehoming has allowed abusers and others who escape scrutiny to easily obtain children.
The process of rehoming is cheaper and less time consuming than formal adoptions. The transfers are often completed with nothing more than a notarized power of attorney. The Internet makes it easy for adoptive parents to find complete strangers willing to take in unwanted children. In some cases rehomed children are taken in to care of adults with history of neglect, abuse or sexual exploitation. Currently, there are no laws in place to protect children from being rehomed in most states. According to the United States Government Accountability Office, only 7 states have enacted laws to safeguard children who may be subject to rehoming.
2. Challenges facing families with adopted children
With the publication of the Reuters findings (see Background), much attention has been focused on the rehoming of internationally adopted children. Not as popular with the media, but arguably just as common, is the rehoming of children who have been adopted out of the foster system. Attorneys who specialize in adoption point out that families experiencing a disrupted adoption or seeking to rehome a special needs child are often desperate and suffering from extreme guilt over the fact that they have failed to provide the environment or attention that the child needs. Frequently, the minor’s emotional and behavioral issues stem from “attachment” issues. Attachment is the social and emotional relationship children develop early on with significant people in their lives (initially with their mother), and the quality of the attachment ultimately affects the child’s ability to develop subsequent healthy relationships.
Healthy attachments are clinically associated with healthy interpersonal relationships, while poor attachments are “associated with a host of emotional and behavioral problems” starting in childhood and lasting later in life. Children who begin their lives with unhealthy attachments are at risk for serious problems in the future. Abuse, neglect, or other forms of maltreatment can also compromise the ability of a child to securely attach to the child’s parent or primary caregiver. To compound that, when a child experiences loss or separation from the child’s primary attachment figure, such as placement in foster care, the child’s ability to bond and attach is further impacted. The attachment issues are intensified by the myriad of problems that children may have owing to their maltreatment, including: health, physical growth, motor delays, compromised physiological systems, cognitive and socio-emotional disturbances, and psychopathology. (Post and Zimmerman, pp. 492-3.)
Adoption attorneys argue that often rehoming provides a better home for a troubled child because the needs of a child are better known and the parents and counsel are able to find appropriate homes with families that have the experience or a better environment for the child’s specific needs. For example, internationally adopted children frequently suffer from reactive attachment disorder, which is a rare but serious condition that arises from a failure to form normal attachments to primary caregivers in early childhood. Mainstream treatment for reactive attachment disorder focuses on increasing the responsiveness and sensitivity of the caregiver, or if that is not possible, placing the child with a different caregiver. Often, families with no other children or with the financial ability to dedicate significant time and resources to the troubled child are a “better fit” because of the time and dedication it may take to develop bonds later in life.
Staff notes that there is an important distinction between the arguably rare stories reported in the media where parents transfer responsibility of a minor with seemingly little thought to the child’s safety, and the experiences as reported by professionals practicing in the adoption field, who serve families that are seeking to find a home for a child that is more appropriate than the one they, themselves, could provide. Accordingly, the author offers the following amendments that would allow parents to find new, permanent homes for children, as long as the parties are represented by counsel and initiate a lawful guardianship or adoption proceeding within a specified period of time. These amendments would ensure that a court has oversight of the process and ensures the best interest of the minor.
Author’s amendments:
1) Page 2, strike lines 27-28
2) Page 3, strike lines 1–9 and insert the following:
9220. (a) For purposes of this chapter, “rehome” or “rehoming” means an action taken to provide a new, permanent home for a previously adopted minor with a person or persons other than the adoptive parents, except as provided in subdivision (c).
(b)A parent, an individual, or an entity having custody of a minor may only rehome that minor if the following requirements are met:
(1) the parent, individual, or an entity having custody of a minor, and the prospective parent(s) or guardian both obtain independent counsel within 60 days of placing the minor in the physical custody of the prospective parent or guardian;
(2) the parent, individual, or an entity having custody of a minor shall initiate a lawful guardianship or adoption proceeding within 90 days of placing the minor in the physical custody of the prospective parent, consistent with the requirements of Probate Code Section 2100 et seq., Family Code Section 8700 or 8800 et seq, or as otherwise provided in the Family Code.
3) Page 3, strike lines 14 and 5.
3. Need for postadoptive resources for families
This bill would require the Department of Social Services to adopt regulations to ensure that postadoptive services are provided to adoptive parents who seek the assistance of the Department. Connecting families with appropriate services is of critical importance when dealing with special needs children.
States require much pre-adoption education and training for foster parents, but there is no real equivalent for prospective parents seeking an international adoption. Further compounding the problem, the mental health needs of internationally adopted children and children adopted out of the foster system are arguably unique. Studies show a high usage of postadoption counseling, but that families are generally dissatisfied with the therapy because the mental health professionals lacked knowledge of unique adoption-related issues. A recent law review article noted that the majority of therapists are not trained in the emotional, psychological, and behavior issues of an adopted child and the intricacies of an adoptive family. That same article quoted an adoptive parent detailing the struggle she experienced in finding adequate support:
Most of the adoption professionals in our area are not trained to recognize infant attachment challenges and trauma. We went to our first of many adoption counselors/therapists within three weeks of coming home and although our daughter was showing signs of Reactive Attachment Disorder, the therapist totally missed those signs. It took us three years to finally find help and we found it in a neighboring state so we had to travel 800 miles bi-weekly to get our daughter (and family) the help she needed. (Nobile, 53 Fam. Ct. Rev. 474 (2015).)
From a public policy perspective, increasing the accessibility and effectiveness of postadoption services to adoptive families, will arguably help many families find the help they need before reaching a point of crisis where the parents feel that the only option is rehoming. However, noting the potential lack of appropriate resources discussed above, the Department of Social Services may not have enough information or accessible community resources to satisfy this bill’s requirement of connecting families with supportive services.
Accordingly, this bill should instead require the Department to establish a working group for the purpose of considering the unique needs of adoptive families that find themselves at risk of, or considering, the rehoming of a child. Recommendations made by the group could then be used by the Legislature and Department to create regulations that would better connect families with meaningful postadoption support. Accordingly, the author offers the following amendments which will govern the establishment, focus, and reporting requirements of the aforementioned working group.
Author’s amendments:
Sec. 9221 is added to the Family Code, to read:
(a) The Legislature acknowledges that adoptive families often face special challenges. This is particularly true in the case of international adoptions, adoptions of special needs children, and adoptions of dependent children who often have experienced abuse, neglect, and multiple placements. The Legislature finds and declares that it is the public policy of the State of California to assist adoptive families and adopted children, and intends this legislation to ensure that these families receive the support needed to maintain the family unit, and when necessary, find new, permanent homes for youth.
(b)(1) In order to address and prevent the circumstances in which a parent, individual, or entity having custody of a minor seeks to rehome a minor, the State Department of Social Services shall, in consultation with child advocacy organizations, attorneys specializing in adoption and guardianships, Judicial Council, foster caregiver organizations, and individuals with expertise in the area of positive youth development, establish a working group to review the challenges facing families with adopted and special needs children, to identify resources within the community that will assist families with these challenges, and to make recommendations to the Legislature as to the services that may be helpful to these families.