Children need families, and families who raise children with special needs sometimes require support to help their children heal and thrive. Adoption assistance is a key component of this post-adoption support. Unfortunately, as adoptions from foster care increase and state budget coffers decrease, far too many states consider cutting adoption assistance programs as one step in their efforts to balance the budget. Such cuts are short-sighted and can leave vulnerable children in foster care or without needed support.
Families Rising has compiled an adoption assistance advocacy toolkit to help adoptive and foster parents, adoption professionals, and others respond to efforts to cut adoption assistance programs and seek improvements in adoption assistance policies and practices.