This is an archive page.  The links are no longer being updated.


REMARKS BY:	DONNA E. SHALALA, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
PLACE:		White House Foster Care Event
DATE:		January 29, 1998

A Helping Hand For Children In Foster Care

Mrs. Clinton, Mrs. Gore, Ms. Harrach, advocates and other distinguished guests.

It's a pleasure to welcome all of you to the East Room of the White House.

There's an old proverb that says a hero is someone "who knows how to hang on one minute longer." By that definition, some of our nation's biggest heroes are right in this room. Children in foster care - and adoptive families - know all about hanging on. Not just for minutes. But for months and often for years.

Now, however, thanks to the President, Mrs. Clinton, the Vice-President and Mrs. Gore, the time for hanging on is growing shorter and easier. Under the President's leadership we have joined hands to really help these children and families - some of who may believe that the word "forgotten" was invented just for them.

It wasn't.

This Administration has made improving foster care and speeding adoption one of its highest priorities. In 1996, as part of his Adoption 2002 strategy, the President redrew our national blueprint for adoption. He called for less bureaucracy, fewer racial and ethnic barriers to adoption, more support for families, and most important - a doubling of adoptions by the year 2002.

To turn this blueprint into reality, Congress passed and the President signed, the Adoption and Safe Families Act. The Act shortened the time frame for placement decisions, guaranteed health insurance coverage for all special needs children in subsidized adoptions, offered financial incentives to states to increase adoptions, and funded services to help keep families together. The early results are very encouraging. Adoptions were up almost 20 percent between 1995 and 1997 - with more than half of that increase coming in 1997. So we're heading in the right direction, and we expect this increase to continue.

But this Administration's record of accomplishment doesn't stop here. The President signed, and later strengthened, the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act to make sure that love and stability - not race and culture - are the basis for adoption.

We're making adoption more affordable by offering a 5,000 dollar tax credit to families adopting children, and a 6,000 dollar tax credit for families adopting children with special needs. Since 1993, the number of children with special needs who have been adopted with federal assistance has increased by more than 60 percent.

This Administration also recognizes that some of the best ideas for increasing adoptions come from our state and local partners. So we have already granted waivers to 18 states giving them more flexibility in how they meet the needs of children and families.

We've even brought adoption and foster care into cyberspace. Last November we began work on a plan that will expand the use of the Internet to share information about children who are legally free for adoption.

We're proud of all these accomplishments. Proud - but not satisfied, because there is still a lot of work to be done. And that's why we're here. To make sure we keep working together for children and families.

The people in this room - and across this nation - who are fighting to give every child a loving home are themselves a large extended family. But even this extended family needs a leader. And she's sitting right here.

I've worked with the First Lady for two decades as she's crusaded for a better life for children. Part of that crusade has been championing adoption. No one has worked harder; spoken longer; thought more creatively; or been more of a wellspring of hope for children than the First Lady. Like her hero Eleanor Roosevelt, she has changed America forever and for the better.

Mrs. Clinton . . .