Articles of category "Adoption and Safe Families Act"

When government tries to solve problems they frequently cause new problems that were not foreseen; this is known as the Law of Unintended Consequences. In 1980 Congress tried to help keep families together by passing the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act. It did keep some families together, but it also greatly lengthened the amount of time that children ended up spending in foster care with an increasing number staying in the foster programs until the grew up out of them. In 1997 Congress decided to fix the problems they had created seventeen years before.