The program provides a grant to parents who adopt children under the age of 18. It includes privately arranged adoptions, as well as adoptions made through a public children services agency, including by foster and kinship caregivers. It does not included adoptions made by a stepparent.
The grant program replaces the existing state adoption tax credit and offers three levels of one-time payments:
- $10,000 to anyone, except a stepparent, adopting a youth.
- $15,000 if the parent was a foster caregiver —including kinship caregivers — who cared for the child prior to adoption.
- A $20,000 grant to families that adopt a child with special needs, as determined by a qualified professional.
The state tax credit provided up to $10,000 per child for adoption-related expenses. According to the Ohio Department of Taxation those types of expenses include medical care for the birth mother and child, legal fees and certain living expenses like rent and utilities for the mother up to two months after she gives birth.
Theresa Cooper, permanency administrator for Butler County Children Services, said all of their families will be eligible for the $15,000 grant and it will be a huge a benefit. While the agency won’t be directly involved with retrieving the grants for families, she said they can guide them through the application process.
“It’s a huge benefit to our families, one of the biggest stressors, beyond the obvious of caring for someone else’s child and adopting a child, is the financial burden that goes along with that adoption,” Cooper said adding there also aren’t any restrictions on the money, “that’s going to be a great asset to them.”
The grant can be found online at https://fosterandadopt.jfs.ohio.gov/adoption/grant.
Part of the adoption process is negotiating subsidies with the families — paid for with local dollars — that are paid until the child turns 18 and in some cases 21 if the child is disabled. The total amount paid for adoption subsidies last year was $685,735, the highest amount was $823,106 spent in 2019.
“We work really hard through our subsidy negotiation process to come to an agreement with each family to come up with that subsidy amount,” Cooper said. “Sometimes that’s what the family is hoping for and sometimes they get more or less than what they’re hoping for. Now we’ll have the opportunity, starting with any adoption from Jan. 1, talking with these families not only about our subsidy process but the Ohio Adoption Grant Program.”
Both foster and adoptive families are paid monthly stipends to help care for their children. When a child is adopted the rates can’t go above what was already approved as a foster care rate for a child, and the adoption rates are almost always cheaper than foster care rates. The current foster care rates for the county’s own foster families range from $778 a month for a traditional foster care situation up to $1,915 for a child with exceptional needs.
BCCS has a group of its own foster care families and sometimes must place kids in foster care networks. The networks have much higher rates because their foster parents are trained to handle kids with extreme needs. The average cost for the 16 providers the agency uses ranges from $2,154 to $3,616 a month.
BCCS has worked really hard to reduce the number of children they take into their permanent custody by finding suitable family members to take children in who are not safe at home with their parents. Their numbers prove it, in April 2019 the in-custody count was 156, this year it is 98. Last year 44 children were adopted compared to a five-year high of 87 in 2019.
“It shows how our caseloads have been getting smaller and the number of our children in permanent custody has decreased,” BC Job and Family Services Executive director Julie Gilbert said. “It explains why our adoptions have been lower. The number of children entering kinship has also increased.”
Cooper added however they are always looking for people willing to foster or adopt children who have had to be removed from unsafe conditions.
Scott Britton, assistant director of the Public Children Services Association of Ohio, told the Journal-News while adoption process costs to parents are minimal through foster care, private and international adoptions can be very costly.
“This grant can provide 10, 15 or even $20,000 to a family, that might make a difference to them for example in accepting a sibling group that’s available for adoption versus just some of the siblings,” Britton said. “So it’s exciting to see our governor, our legislature take an interest in the foster care system and try to provide incentives for children who are waiting.”
DeWine created the Children’s Services Transformation Advisory Council as part of the Governor’s Children’s Initiative to improve Ohio’s children’s services system. The council made 37 recommendations that recognize the need to remove barriers to permanency by increasing the pool of prospective adoptive families. All 37 of those recommendations are either fully implemented or in the process of being implemented.
“One of the areas that they found needed some transforming was the area of adoption, that was one of their priorities,” Gilbert said. “There are a variety things, some recommendations regarding adoption but clearly supporting adoptive parents and promoting permanency is something we all are in support of in Ohio.”.
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