Hearings this week will examine ideas for cutting the cost of Iowa’s adoption-subsidy program. Department of Human Services spokesman Roger Munns says the program helped place a record number of special-needs children into adoptive homes the last three years.These are kids in foster homes who can’t go “home” to a biological home where they weren’t safe, and they have behavioral or other problems that make them hard to place, factors that once would have left them languishing with no hope for adoption. Instead, Munns says the agency’s succeeded in placing more than a thousand of those children in permanent homes just in the last year. He explains many were first introduced as foster children, and the adoption-subsidy payment is similar to what foster-care parents receive from the state. The basic subsidy will remain, and he says it makes sense to help parents adopt, so kids have the permanency of “a forever home.” Costs of raising children today are rising, but he says that’s no reason the agency can’t look for areas to manage better in hopes of running the program more economically. Another area the Department of Human Services will look at is a subsidy for childcare, where the agency’s found it’s higher than other reimbursements. Altogether if all the department’s proposals are adopted, they’ll save less than a million dollars a year, but he reminds us of the old saying about “a million dollars here,” and says in the long run it’s a significant savings. A minority child is automatically considered a special-needs child and eligible for the subsidy because historically, it’s been harder to place them than others. That’s changed, and since young minority children more easily find adoptive homes, Munns says the subsidy may be ended for children of color who are under two years old. The agency holds hearings on cost-cutting proposals September 10 in Ames, Cedar Rapids, Council Bluffs, Davenport, Dubuque and Sioux City, the 11th in Waterloo, and Friday the 12th in Des Moines. See the agency’s website for details at www.dhs.state.ia.us
