Children's Bureau Express

Adoption 2002 Nominated for Innovations in Government Award

The national Adoption 2002 initiative has been nominated by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) for an Innovations in American Government award. The competition is jointly sponsored by the Ford Foundation, the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and the Council for Excellence in Government.

Adoption 2002 is the Department of Health and Human Services' response to President Clinton's initiative to double by 2002 the number of children in foster care who are adopted or otherwise permanently placed. Many of the recommendations of the Adoption 2002 report prepared by HHS were included in the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. The recommendations included financial incentives for States to increase adoptions, put the safety of children first in placement decisions, and set shorter time frames for permanent placement decisions. In late 1999, HHS awarded the first-ever adoption bonuses to States for increases in adoption of children from the public foster care system. Adoption 2002 is administered by the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families within ACF.

ACF also nominated five other programs for the award. The programs are:

Welfare Reform Peer Technical Assistance Network
Partnership for Self-Sufficiency
Office of Community Services Liaison Project
Early Head Start
Agency-wide Automated Comprehensive Unified Grant Processing System/Subtitled Grant Administration, Tracking and Evaluation system (GATES).

Learn more about ACF offices and programs at http://www.acf.hhs.gov/.

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