| HHS Launches Internet Adoption Service | |
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Replacing its former FACES program, the National Adoption Center calls AdoptUSKids at http://www.adoptuskids.org, "the national Internet site that features photolistings of thousands of US children waiting to be adopted."
Featuring photographs and biographies of children in the foster care system across the country who are available for adoption, AdoptUSKids will help link potential foster families with adoptable children they might not have been aware of otherwise.
"This site is an example of using technology for a very compassionate purpose -- linking families with waiting children," said HHS Secretary Thompson. This administration is committed to helping our nation's children in the foster care system be adopted into loving, caring homes. This new Web site is one important way we are achieving that goal."
The AdoptUSKids Web site provides a data base of approved adoptive families, raises public awareness, recruits families for waiting children, provides information and referral services to prospective adopters and approved families and provides training and technical assistance to states and adoption exchanges.
Created as a public-private partnership, AdoptUSKids is partially funded through HHS' Administration for Children and Families (ACF). ACF is responsible for some 60 programs which provide services and assistance to needy children and families, administers the new state-federal welfare program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, administers the national child support enforcement system, and the Head Start program, provides funds to assist low-income families in paying for child care, and supports state programs to provide for foster care and adoption assistance.
Since the passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act in 1997, HHS has worked to make adoption easier and faster for those wishing to adopt. The act was designed both to remove barriers to adoption and to provide incentives to the states for increasing the number of children adopted each year. The result has been a 79 percent increase from fiscal year 1997 to fiscal year 2000 in the number of adoptions of children from the foster care system.
"We are proud to launch the Adopt US Kids site," said Wade F. Horn, Ph.D., HHS assistant secretary for children and families. " Not only does it show what can be done when the government collaborates with its partners, but even more importantly, it also offers hope that many more foster kids will get loving, permanent homes."
