(Pittsburgh, PA, July 28, 2000) The tragic consequences of a broken child welfare system are finally getting more attention nationally, and there is reason for optimism in cities like Pittsburgh where public-private partnerships relieve the pressure on foster care programs.
According to the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse, 72 percent of children awaiting adoption have been stranded in the foster care system for at least two years. Approximately 117,000 children are waiting for adoption.
Having passed the Adoption and Safe Families Act in the last session of Congress, a bipartisan group of lawmakers intends to further focus on the bureaucratic maze that surrounds the adoption process. Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu, Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Mike DeWine of Ohio are introducing adoption legislation that provides incentives to states to place children in adoptive homes more quickly.
"We're hoping to demonstrate the difficulty children have finding their way to a permanent family," Landrieu told the Associated Press. "We have made it much more difficult than it should be."
Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh, a four-year partnership between the family courts and private lawyers working on a pro-bono basis has accelerated hundreds of adoption cases.
In 1996, Max Baer, then the Administrative Judge of the Family Division of the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, asked Reed Smith Shaw & McClay LLP to help rescue hundreds of children stranded in foster status. These children had been removed from their natural parents by Allegheny County Children, Youth and Family Services (CYF) because of neglect or abuse. They had been placed in the care of foster parents who oftentimes wanted to adopt them. The parental rights to several hundred of these children were ready to be terminated without contest.
The problem was that the proceedings in these uncontested terminations and adoptions were delayed by, among other things, a shortage of attorneys available to represent CYF. Reed Smith agreed to try to help relieve the backlog by providing the assistance of its attorneys free-of-charge and by providing office space and technological support to four Commonwealth-employed attorneys of the Adoption Legal Services Project, as it is known in Allegheny County.
Since then, more than 130 of Reed Smith's attorneys, law clerks and paralegals have handled uncontested termination and adoption cases for 550 children, and 470 adoptions have been finalized to date. The project has dramatically increased adoptions for foster children every year since its inception. The attorneys of the Adoption Legal Services Project draft pleadings and correspondence and guide Reed Smith attorneys through the termination and adoption processes, attend meetings with attorneys and adoptive families, and arrange for the presentation of motions and notice for biological parents.
"The project is a remarkably high priority within the firm," said Reed Smith attorney and director of pro bono Ann Cahouet. "Despite the other demands on their time, attorneys at our firm handle as many cases as they can. The project is so popular that our attorneys often volunteer faster than we can prepare the case files. Sometimes, we have attorneys on a waiting list. Our attorneys know that these cases change lives."
The first child to be adopted through ALSP was a two-year-old blind boy named Jacob, who had been born prematurely and abandoned by a crack cocaine-addicted mother. He spent the first four months of his life in intensive care. Upon discharge, Jacob needed an oxygen respirator and a heart monitor. Because he suffered from a condition called esophageal reflux, feeding him took hours. By chance, a retired professor of nursing had contacted CYF to express her interest in becoming a foster parent. This woman immediately loved Jacob and, after she became his foster mother, she nursed him through the critical early months after he left the hospital. Shortly before Jacob's second birthday, Jacob's foster mother adopted him in proceedings that took place in Orphans' Court before Judge Robert A. Kelly.
"That case, like many others, taught us about the powerful brand of love that the foster parents bring to their relationships with these children," said Ann Cahouet. "Many of the foster kids who come through our adoption program live with physical or emotional conditions that present special challenges to the people in their lives. And yet hundreds of adults in our community have decided to make the commitment to these foster children a commitment for life."
A case handled by Reed Smith litigation partner Jim Restivo left a lasting impression on him as well. Shortly before the adoption hearing, however, Jim's case presented an unexpected complication when the adoptive father learned that he was suffering from cancer. The adoptive father and his wife ultimately decided to proceed with the adoption, and it took place as planned. "I can honestly say that my involvement in the case was the most satisfying work I have had as a litigator," Mr. Restivo said. "The system can work, but it needs help."
According to Judge Baer, the ALSP depends on the successful collaboration between the court, the child welfare agency and a private law firm to deliver children from the limbo of foster status. "In today's world," said Baer, "The public dollar just does not go ar enough to care for all of the children in need. We have brought the private bar into what is traditionally a public function to benefit kids who would otherwise be waiting in an endless queue for a permanent home." Adoptive parents in Allegheny County share in Judge Baer's and Reed Smith's enthusiasm for the project.
The success of the Adoption Legal Services Project has been recognized by child welfare professionals outside of Pennsylvania. Judge Baer, ALSP director Lisa Colautti, CYF Director Marc Cherna and Ann Cahouet of Reed Smith were invited to speak about the program at the Mid-Atlantic Region Training Conference of the Child Welfare League of America in Baltimore in 1997. Reed Smith was awarded the Pittsburgh Urban League's "1999 Corporate Award" for its pro bono involvement with the project. The Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare -- through the StateWide Adoption Network (SWAN) which encourages and support special-needs adoptions throughout the state -- plans to replicate the project in other counties in the Commonwealth during the next five years.