Adoption

In March of 2016, Latonia Rolbiecki’s grandson was born at Fairview Hospital in Wyoming, Minnesota, his body riddled with the effects of his mother’s drug and alcohol abuse. The child was immediately placed into a foster home by the Chisago County Health and Human Services Department. 

A federal judge in New York granted temporary reprieve last week to a Christian adoption agency, ruling that the organization could continue arranging adoptions while litigation proceeds over its faith-based refusal to place children with same-sex adoptive parents. 

Twenty-five years ago, I testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means to bring attention to the need for a new paradigm in foster care. The system needed to put a child’s need to love and be loved, to trust and to form attachments, as the paramount concern of a system that was established for children who were removed from their biological family due to abuse and neglect. 

The number of youth in foster care began to decline in earnest last year, according to federal child welfare data released this week, which also found that reunifications have declined and the number of children adopted from foster care continues to reach record levels.

Two significant developments occurred this week that have the potential to shape the limits of how far faith-based, publicly funded child welfare agencies can go in selectively choosing what foster or adoptive parents they are willing to work with.

Statistics show that the longer kids are in foster care, the harder it is to place them permanently in a loving home.

By the time Brittany Jencik, 49, got the call confirming that she had tested positive for COVID-19, the sickness had already spread to her 63-year-old husband, Barry and their children – all 18 of those living at home.