Category Archives: CAPP

RIP CHIFF. Hello CAPP? (Part 2)

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CHIFF focused heavily on international adoption, and not so much on family preservation and empowerment. CAPP focuses heavily on improving outcomes for vulnerable children and families around the globe. Adoption, both domestic and international, will always be part of child welfare policy. As a community concerned with children, can those of us involved with adoption find common ground that both strengthens families and includes ethical, transparent adoptions? This post looks at one angle of the legislative conversations. There’s so much to say.

The information in RIP CHIFF. Hello CAPP? (Part 1) is not exhaustive regarding all that is happening with the implementation of the Children in Adversity report (APCA). So many agencies and acronyms. Public and private partnerships. Lofty goals with complex implementation. Millions of dollars. An enormous undertaking. I cannot disagree with the goals: vulnerable children and families deserve support and resources all around the globe.

CHIFF and CAPP Proponents: Overlap?

International adoption was a huge part of the failed Children in Families First (CHIFF) bill. It seems to be a tiny part of CAPP, the Children in Adversity Policy Partnership. What overlap is there between the proponents of the two?

The Joint Council on International Children’s Services is at the forefront of CAPP, as it was of CHIFF. JCICS, however, has been moving steadily away in the last 10 years or so from focusing on adoption agency services, and moving steadily toward a much broader mission of international child welfare. It still has adoption agencies as members, but fewer than was once the case (far fewer than when I worked at JCICS, from 1995-2000, certainly).

One of the biggest proponents of CHIFF, Both Ends Burning, does not seem to be involved with the CAPP. Peter Leppanen, BEB’s Strategic Advisor, is listed as a member of CAPP in a July 2014 Child Policy University Consortium document. His affiliation with BEB is not noted there. Many adoption agencies (and CHIFF supporters) are also listed as members of CAPP. The membership list may well have changed in subsequent months, and current CAPP information does not include BEB, as far as I can tell.

How much should we read into the fact that one of CHIFF’s biggest proponents is not involved significantly with CAPP? BEB has always been first and foremost an international adoption advocacy group. In November, they hosted a Global Symposium on permanency options for children. Looking from the outside, my impression is that BEB is intent on following its international adoption goals, and not committed, as least explicitly, to partnership with the Children in Adversity crowd. I hope, as BEB forges on, they will include the significant, genuine involvement of adult adoptees and first/birth parents.

The National Council for Adoption does not figure in CAPP either. NCFA supported CHIFF: “Chuck Johnson President and CEO of the National Council For Adoption said: “Children all over the world are languishing outside of family care…CHIFF re-aligns existing resources and re-prioritize how the U.S. Government serves this population of vulnerable children. NCFA enthusiastically supports CHIFF.” NCFA’s endorsement of CHIFF, as well as that of JCICS, Both Ends Burning, Christian Alliance For Orphans (CAFO), and others, is here.

In its January 2105 listing of legislative priorities, NCFA does not mention the CAPP, though they refer to CHIFF. This is not surprising: their primary focus is on US and international adoption issues.

CAFO posted its own support for CHIFF here. Jedd Medefind of CAFO has also endorsed the goals of the Children in Adversity report per this USAID press release.

Intercountry adoption is a much smaller part of CAPP than it was in CHIFF. There is minimal mention of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption in the APCA. Clearly CAPP has a broader goal. And a cast of thousands, if not millions. It is an astonishing configuration of government, public, and private organizations. It makes my head spin.

I have no doubts that CAPP, the Global Alliance, and the attendant organizations, policies, and proposals have their fair share of challenging problems: the role of US AID, the failure of the US to approve the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the abilities of countries receiving assistance to have a role in that assistance, and so on.

Still, given the laudable goals of CAPP to improve early childhood outcomes, to preserve families, and to protect children from exploitation, will the need for international adoption be diminished?  Given the huge decline in the number of children being internationally adopted, for whatever combination of reasons, perhaps an approach that looks to achieve those laudable goals is timely.

Implications

So who doesn’t benefit from CAPP? Many of the same people who didn’t benefit from CHIFF.

CAPP does not, as far as I can tell and I would be happy to be incorrect about this, prioritize funding for pre- or post-adopt resources for internationally adopted children, nor for the birth/first parents of internationally adopted children. NCFA includes Post-Adoption Services on its list of legislative priorities. I have to wonder, as international adoption declines and agencies close, who will be responsible for providing post-adoption services to adoptees and their families, here and around the world. JCICS member agencies placed many of those international children, and they are rapidly changing their focus away from adoption services. Will NCFA step up?

Further, like CHIFF, CAPP does not address retroactive citizenship for all international adoptees. To its credit, NCFA does list “Citizenship Equality Intercountry Adoption” as one of its legislative priorities.

The issue of re-homing here in the US is not a part of CAPP, and nor was it part of CHIFF.

Retroactive citizenship and re-homing are admittedly complicated issues. They require a lot of collaboration and consensus to move at the federal level. The citizenship issue means tangling with immigration foes in Congress. On re-homing, some states have begun to look into and pass legislation on re-homing, but many international adoption advocates would like to see a uniform federal law.

Collaboration and consensus will be needed to move legislation and policies around improvement of pre- and post-adoption matters such as improvement of home studies, increased funding for adoption competent therapists/social workers, and better access to effective post-adoption resources. Providing pre- and post-adoption support to first/birth parents is especially complicated, because those parents are geographically and linguistically far removed; most cannot pay for services. None of this means we should advocate any less for them.

CAPP, it seems to me, is moving ahead with the support of far-reaching US government agencies, big name foundations, child welfare experts, and a variety of advocates. CAPP will probably have little impact on specific adoption policies in the US; certainly it appears not to have CHIFF’s intense focus.

I hope that CAPP will do or has done what CHIFF did not: Include the experiences and insights of those vulnerable children who have grown up, including adoptees and orphans. Include at the table the voices and realities, if not the actual presence, of first/birth parents who lost their children unfairly to adoption, due to poverty, corruption, fraud, social stigma, or other reasons, and prevent such tragedies from happening again.

So many important issues are hanging in the balance for internationally adopted children, and for those who are now international adult adoptees, and their families. Perhaps it will be those adult adoptees who will lead the way. Recent high level media news articles such as the New York Times “Why a Generation of Adoptees Is Returning to South Korea” and the Washington Post’s “Please Don’t Tell Me I Am Lucky” give anyone connected with adoption plenty to consider.

Will future advancements and policy decisions regarding adoption be the result of genuine collaboration and consensus, acknowledging the spectrum of experiences among adoptees, birth/first parents, and adoptive parents, and moving ahead to effectively help vulnerable children and families? I hope so. Let’s keep talking–and listening.

RIP CHIFF. Hello CAPP? (Part 1)

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CHIFF is gone. What does CAPP portend?

The Children in Families First (CHIFF) legislation died a slow death surrounded with silence.  You can read the Post-Mortem here. It is possible, but unlikely, that CHIFF could be re-introduced in the 114th session of Congress, which recently convened.

What have the former proponents of CHIFF been working on, since the CHIFF legislative campaign failed?

Many (though not all) CHIFF proponents have been participating in the strategies outlined in the US Government Action Plan on Children in Adversity (APCA), a report released in December 2012. Several of the CHIFF proponents are now part of the Children in Adversity Policy Partnership (CAPP), an offshoot of APCA. APCA is, according to June 2014 information, “a demonstration of the U.S. Government’s commitment to greater coordinated, comprehensive and effective assistance to prevent and respond to the needs of especially vulnerable children. More than 30 offices across the U.S. Government continue to support programs and policies relevant to the APCA objectives globally.”

The main website for Children In Adversity is here.

IMG_7416 The three principal objectives that everyone involved with APCA supports are these: Build Strong Beginnings (focused on children under five years old); Put Family Care First (to prevent unnecessary family-child separation and promote permanent family care); and Protect Children (from violence, exploitation, abuse, and neglect.)

Each of the objectives requires significant implementation, which likely also will involve signficant funding and legislation.

The CAPP Steering Committee includes former CHIFF proponents Joint Council on International Children’s Services (JCICS), Kidsave, and the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute. Other Steering Committee members are Arms Around the Child, Child Fund International, World Vision, and Save the Children. The co-chairs of the Steering Committee are Tom DiFilipo of JCICS and Greg Mann of Save the Children. Information from JCICS about CAPP is available here, including a link to a survey which allows you to become involved with CAPP.

Government agencies working to implement APCA, along with CAPP, include (but are not limited to) US Agency for International Development (US AID), Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the National Institute of Health (NIH), the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the US Department of Agriculture, the US Department of State, the Peace Corps, and more.

There is also a Global Alliance for Children involved with APCA as well, a public-private partnership: “In response to the global and national conditions of children in extreme adversity, a group of foundation, bilateral, multilateral, NGO and private sector partners founded the Global Alliance for Children: Ensuring the Future. Through a donor advised fund, joint programs and coordinated funding, the Alliance seeks to achieve three core objectives in six countries over the course of five years.”

The three core objectives are the “principle objectives” outlined above. Three of the countries have been named so far for assistance: Cambodia, Rwanda, and Uganda.

The members of the Global Alliance include US AID, World Childhood Foundation, Childhood, Maestral International, Save the Children, Lumos, GHR Foundation, US Department of Labor, World Bank Early Child development, and USB Optimum Foundation.

One of CHIFF’s goals had been to establish a USAID Center for Excellence for Children in Adversity (USAID CECA), so this is one overlap between CHIFF and CAPP, in that the center has indeed been established, and apparently funded as well. More information is available here.

This is not by any means an exhaustive explanation about the players and policies  involved in the implementation of the Action Plan for Children in Adversity and CAPP. I urge you to take a look at the links and learn more. Huge expenditures of money and time have been and will be spent on this enormous project. If vulnerable children and families are genuinely and substantially helped, that should be applauded.

So, what does that mean for international adoption? Please see Part 2, available tomorrow.