Ask the Scholar
Document scope · 1 page
Scholar
Ask about this object, its catalog metadata, its source description, or the page inventory.
For page-specific OCR and visual context, open one of the page chats.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
55031084
label
Adoption [Folder 3]
core
doc
dtoType
document
citationUrl
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
55031084
sourceUrl
contentType
document
title
Adoption [Folder 3]
citationUrl
collections
Records of the First Lady's Office (Clinton Administration)
Melanne Verveer's Subject Files
imageCount
1
hasImages
yes
source
import
hasTranscription
no
Source extras
naId
55031084
levelOfDescription
fileUnit
otherTitles
2068127-20130534S-049-005-2022
recordType
description
ocrSource
nara-archive
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
document
mediaId
2619932b691f3d36
ocrText
ADOPTION
ADOPTION
PHOTOCOPY
PRESERVATION
file adoption
Margaret M. Suntum
09/24/99 11:04:47 AM
Record Type:
Record
To:
See the distribution list at the bottom of this message
CC:
Subject: remarks of the President and Mrs. Clinton at adoption event
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
September 24, 1999
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AND THE FIRST LADY
AT ADOPTION EVENT
Presidential Hall
10:00 A.M. EDT
MRS. CLINTON: Thank you, and please be seated. And welcome to the
White House for a celebration and a wonderful announcement for so many children and
families around our country.
I'm delighted that we've been joined by members of Congress, including
Senator Carl Levin and Representative Dave Camp and Representative Nancy Johnson and
Representative Tom DeLay and Representative Ben Cardin and Representative Maxine Waters.
This is an issue that has been at the real heart of our efforts in the last several
years to do what we could to give every child a chance to have a permanent loving home.
And there are many people who have played a role in bringing us to this day. I want to
acknowledge Olivia Golden and Pat Montoya, from HHS. I want to acknowledge the Brown,
the Manis, the Keane and the Vasquez family. Carol Williams, the former Children's Bureau
director and a champion of adoption; the many adoption advocates who are here.
And there's one very special champion of foster children who I would like to
introduce to you. She is an eight-year-old girl who heard about how many foster children
could not afford to use anything but garbage bags for luggage when they were told they had to
move. So she decided to collect suitcases for them, and so far she has collected 1,000. And
I'd like to ask MacKenzi Snyder to stand, please. (Applause.)
This summer I saw a photograph that reminded me why the work we're doing
to promote adoption in our country is so vitally important. It was a picture of a young woman
in a green silk evening gown, with high heels and a lace shawl, and you could see the
anticipation and excitement in her eyes. That was a picture of 17-year-old Deanna Collins. It
was taken by her parents, her adoptive parents, on the night of her high school prom.
Looking at that picture, it was difficult for me to believe that the smiling,
confident young woman was the same girl I had welcomed to the White House just four years
ago. Back then, she was 13, and she'd already spent eight years in foster care. With her
shoulders slumped forward, and her eyes downcast, she told the audience gathered in the East
Room for National Adoption Month about her dreams of living in a place she could call home,
with a room of her own and a family she could love.
Not long after that visit, Deanna's dream came true. And it's been my privilege
to watch this young woman's life transformed by her adoption. With the love of her parents
and the confidence that comes from knowing that, indeed, she always will have a place to call
home, no matter what else happens to her in life, she is thriving. She's a senior in high
school, now, and plans to go to college and major in social work.
Every time I need inspiration for our fight to strengthen and increase adoption
in America, I think of Deanna. I think of so many of the other children whom I've know. I
think of the adult adoptees, who are telling us their stories, including Washington D.C.'s own
Mayor, Tony Williams, who told us at another Adoption Month commemoration last year
how, at the age of three, he was about to be declared unadoptable, and institutionalized by the
state, when Virginia Williams opened her arms and welcomed him into her family.
Mrs. Williams is here today, and all of us are grateful for the love you gave that
young three-year-old boy, and the second chance you gave to him. And I'd like to ask Mrs.
Williams to please stand. (Applause.)
But we can't gather today and celebrate Dianna or Mayor Williams without
thinking of the thousands of foster children in America who are still waiting for the same
chance, either to go back safely to their own families where they will be given the love and the
attention and the discipline that every child needs, or be given the chance in a new family.
For more than 25 years, as an advocate and an attorney, I have tried to work
with so many others to address the challenges of foster care and adoption. I've represented
perspective parents in court. I've represented foster children. I've worked on behalf of
changes in legislation. I've listened to the frustrations that social workers and judges and
police officers and parents and others feel about the red tape that so often keeps them from
sharing their lives with children who badly need their love.
I've met foster children who have spent childhoods feeling alone and unloved,
moving from home to home. Children such as the teenage boy the President and I met in the
Oval Office two years ago. When we asked him where he lived, he looked down and he said,
"All over Fairfax County."
In many ways, giving more of our children the chance to know the love and
support of a family is a personal crusade for us. I know that many of you have been at the
meetings and the roundtables and the celebrations of National Adoption Month that we've held
here at the White House. And I've been very pleased and grateful to work with so many
advocates like Wendy's founder, or Dave Thomas, who as an adopted child himself has
dedicated much of his time and personal resources to promoting adoption.
With each meeting I became, along with all of you, more and more convinced
that it was past time to reform our foster care system, to identify and eliminate the obstacles to
change the placement procedures so that we could expedite the movement of children either
home or into new homes.
We've made a lot of progress. We've helped adoptive parents carve out the
time they need to care for their new children. The first bill the President signed into law was
the Family and Medical Leave Act, which allows new parents -- including adoptive parents --
to take time off and care for their children without fear of losing their jobs or health insurance.
We've put an end to racial discrimination in adoption. The President signed
and strengthened the Multiethnic Placement Act, prohibiting adoption agencies from keeping
children of one race from the safe and loving arms of parents of another. We have made
adoptions more affordable, putting in place tax credits for new adoptive families. And we're
taking steps to use the Internet to help match waiting children with loving homes.
And most importantly, we've crafted legislation to dramatically reduce the
amount of time a child spends in foster care. We've said that no child would have to wait
longer than 12 months -- down from 18 months -- before the court considered his or her
permanent placement. For the first time, we have offered states financial incentives to move
more children out of foster care and into permanent homes. And we have given states the
flexibility to try new strategies to accomplish that goal.
And we set an ambitious national goal of doubling the number of children
adopted annually, from 28,000 to 56,000, by the year 2002. And though there were some
moments when it looked like it wouldn't pass, we fought hard to make the Adoption and Safe
Families Act the law of the land in 1997. In a few minutes, the President will offer new
evidence of our continued success.
But we still have more to do. Two weeks after the President signed the
Adoption and Safe Families Act, I went to California to meet with a group of young people,
who were aging or had already aged out of foster care. They told me about their struggles --
about being forced out of foster homes on their 18th birthdays; about living in homeless
shelters, seeking sleep in emergency rooms while trying to finish school; about getting sick
and having no one to turn to for medical care or comfort. These young people are our
responsibility. We cannot ignore the potential of any one of these children.
One of the young women I met that day in California is now a student at the
Yale Law School. And that's why I was pleased to announce a new proposal in the
President's balanced budget, to help former foster children make the transition to
independence. And I'm very happy that the House, under the bipartisan leadership of
Representative Nancy Johnson and Representative Ben Cardin, both of whom are with us
today, has passed the bill that will allow former foster children to remain on Medicaid until
age 21 and will -- (applause) -- and will give them the extra help they need to finish high
school, find work and a place to live.
Now I would call on the Senate to take action on the companion bill that is
sponsored by Senators Chafee and Rockefeller. There is no reason we cannot pass this bill
this year for the good of all of our children. And I hope every one of us here will do
everything we can to make sure that the Senate does that, and then we can have, I think,
another celebration to sign a bill that will make such a difference in the lives of older children
in foster care.
The progress we celebrate today is due to the work of countless people, and
many of you are here, and others are working on the front lines around our country and others
are caring for children who are newly adopted in their homes.
I remember very well that a few years ago on Mothers Day, we had a
roundtable for mothers and their adopted children. And at the end of the discussion, I went
around the room asking the children if they had anything else to say, because some of them
had not yet spoken up, and I didn't want them to leave and not have been heard. The final
boy to speak looked up at the woman sitting next to him and said quietly, "I just want to thank
my mother."
With that simple statement, and that adoring look, he summarized what all of us
had been trying to say all afternoon. So, to all of those of you who have been the mothers and
fathers that have helped move our children into homes, and into a sense of love and security,
we say thank you -- for opening your homes and your hearts.
And now it's my privilege to introduce someone who has done just that -- who
with her husband, Steven, and her son Sean, have just finalized the adoptions of Sarah and
Brian. Please join me in welcoming Dawn Keane. (Applause.)
*****
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. When we have events here in this
room, with people who have come to share their experiences, very often I feel like a fifth
wheel. I think everything that needs to be said has already been said. (Laughter.) But I want
to begin by thanking Dawn Keane for her wonderful statement; her husband, Steve; and Sean,
Brian and Sarah. They're beautiful children. They did a good job at the microphone, didn't
they? (Laughter.) I want to thank Olivia Golden and Pat Montoya for their work at HHS on
this important issue.
I'd like to thank this remarkable bipartisan delegation from the House of
Representatives here -- Dave Camp and Nancy Johnson and Ben Cardin and Maxine Waters,
Sandy Levin and Congressman DeLay. This may be the only issue all six of these people
agree on. (Laughter.) And -- Tom's nodding his head up and down. (Laughter.)
I'll tell you a funny story -- this is a true story. The other day I was reading a
profile of Tom DeLay in the newspaper. And I got about halfway through, and he was giving
me the devil for something; you know, he's very good at that. (Laughter.) And he started
grinding on my golf game and saying that I didn't count my scores and all this, and I was
getting really angry. (Laughter.) And then I get to the next part of the story, and it talks all
about his experience and his commitment to adoption and to foster children, and the personal
experience that he and his wife had. And my heart just melted. And all of a sudden, I didn't
care what he said about my golf game. (Laughter.)
And I say that to make this point: The Keane family -- the Manis, the Brown,
the Vasquez families who are behind me today - they represent what we all know is basic and
fundamental about our families and our country - more important than anything else we can
think of. And they open their homes and their hearts to children, and they open our hearts to
them -- and to each other as we work for more stories like those we celebrate today.
I'd also like to say a special hello to the Badeau family. Some of you may
remember this. Two years ago, almost, Sue and Hector Badeau joined us at the White House
when I signed the Adoption and Safe Families Act. They brought 18 of the 22 children they
have adopted. Now, you need to know that, as if they didn't have enough to deal with, this
summer they also welcomed into their home a family of eight Kosovar refugees. So if you
ever need proof that there's no limit to human goodness, you can look at Sue and Hector
Badeau.
I'd like for them to stand. Where are they? There you go. They've got some
of their kids here. Stand up. (Applause.) Thank you. God bless you. Thank you.
(Applause.)
I would also like to say just a very brief word to Hillary. You heard her tell the
story of her involvement in this, but when we were in law school together, before we were
married, she was talking to me about how messed up the foster care and adoption laws were in
the country, how many ridiculous barriers there were. And not long after we moved to Little
Rock and I became Attorney General of our state, she took a case for a young couple who had
had a child from foster care for three years that they desperately wanted to adopt -- this is over
20 years ago. And together they changed the law in our state so that foster parents could be
considered for adoption, something that used to be verbotten in most states in the country.
So I've watched her work on these issues now for almost 30 years, and I am
very grateful that one of the many blessings of our time in the White House has been the
chance to make a difference on these adoption and foster care issues, and I thank her for
making it possible. (Applause.)
Finally, let me say, again, I want to say a special word of thanks to the
members of Congress in both parties who have come to this event today. We have had a
raging, often stimulating, occasionally maddening, debate on what should be the role of
government over the last five years in this town. But we have all agreed that government has
a role to try to protect children, but to facilitate the most rapid, reasonable, orderly process for
both foster care and for transition to adoption.
Hillary said that the House had adopted this provision to let kids coming out of
foster care keep their Medicaid until they're 21. I'll just give you one more example of how
these issues unify us. Within a 36-hour period, about six months ago, my cousin, who runs
the public housing unit in the little town where I was born in Arkansas -- which has 8,000 or
10,000 people -- came up to a HUD conference. And she spent the night with me and were
having breakfast, drinking coffee, and she says, you know, you've got to do something about
these foster kids. They keep going out of the -- they come out of the foster homes and they've
got no money and they need to do some things. And then the next day, literally within 36
hours, I'm talking to these people from New York City who tell me it's maybe the biggest
social problem they have now, with all these kids coming out of foster care.
So this is an issue that spans the experience of America, the whole sweep of it.
And I'm very grateful -- I'm grateful that we have this consensus and I'm grateful that they've
acted on it. I urge the Senate to follow suit.
Now, you've already heard about the things that we're doing to try to double
the number of children we help move into permanent homes. We have new evidence that
these efforts are bearing fruit. The Department of Health and Human Services has just given
me a report that tracks our progress in meeting our adoption goals. It shows that the number
of adoptions from the foster care system increased from 28,000 in 1996, to 36,000 in 1998.
That is the first significant increase in adoptions since the National Foster Care Program was
created almost 20 years ago.
Now, that's an amazing thing. That's more than -- it's about a 30-percent
increase. That's a very impressive increase in two years. And we are well on our way to
meeting our goal of 56,000 in 2002, doubling the number. For all of you that had anything to
do with that, I say thank you. You should be very proud of yourselves.
Now, if you look at this HHS report -- and I urge those of you who are
interested in it to actually get it and scan it, at least -- you will see how much this bipartisan
cooperation I talked about and the work that's being done by people in the trenches to clear
away the barriers is making a difference -- a stunning example of what we can do when we put
our children first. You will see that we have acted on each and every one of the 11
recommendations set forth in the original Adoption 2002 report. Breaking down barriers to
adoptions, ensuring accountability, rewarding innovation, supporting adoptive families
themselves.
One of the key recommendations we adopted into law in 1997 was to give
states, for the first time, financial incentives to help children move from foster to adoptive
homes. Under the new bonus system, states are entitled to up to $4,000 or $6,000, depending
on whether the child has special needs, for each adoption above their previous average.
Today, I have the honor of presenting the first round of these awards, worth
$20 million, to 35 of our 50 states. The good news is that these states did this, using creative
new approaches and exceeding their own high goals. Illinois, for example -- listen to this --
the state of Illinois increased its options by 112 percent -- 112 -- yes, you can clap for Illinois.
That's good. (Applause.)
Now, the bad news, if you can call it that, is that even though we believed this
would work, we didn't think it would work this well this quickly -- (laughter) -- and we didn't
put enough money in to give all the states all the money to which they're entitled. So I hope
we can rectify that, because I think we all think that we want to give the states the incentives
to figure out how best to do this.
But the fact is, I think all of us are very proud of what these states have done
for some of their most vulnerable citizens. And I look forward to working with the Congress
to make up this shortfall and get the other 15 states above their goals as well.
Today, I am also awarding $5.5 million in adoption opportunity grants to
outstanding public and private organizations in 16 of our states to help fund research and new
ways of increasing inter-state adoptions, and adoptions of minority children. Together these
efforts will help to accelerate the remarkable progress we've seen.
Now, again let me say, I think the big goal we ought to have for this legislative
session is to get the Senate to follow the lead of the House, and schedule a vote on the
Chafee-Rockefeller bill to ensure that the foster children are not cast out in the cold when their
time in foster care ends. I hope -- I know if we can get it up and get it on the calendar, it will
pass with the same overwhelming bipartisan support that we've seen in the House. So I urge
all of you to do what you can to make sure that that is a big priority for the Senate, and I will
do my part.
Together, we can help our foster children -- all of them -- first grow up in good
homes, and, if they turn 18 as foster children, to make a good transition from transit to
independence -- with health care, education, counseling and housing.
Now, ultimately, let me say the credit in all this does not really belong to all of
the political leaders, even though they've worked very hard, all of us have together. It does
not belong to all the public servants, even though there is a real new attitude, I think, in the
organizations, the social services organizations, to try to do the right thing and move this
along.
But none of this will work if there aren't good people in every community like
the Keanes, the Manises, the Browns, the Vasquezes, the Badeaus, who are willing to give a
child unconditional love and a good upbringing. They are the proof of the unlimited goodness
of the human heart. All the rest of us are trying to do is to unleash it. And we need to keep
right on doing that.
Thank you and God bless you all. (Applause.)
END
10:30 A.M. EDT
Message Sent To: