Vulnerable Children and Families Act of 2017
A BILL
To realign structures and reallocate resources in the Federal Government in keeping with the core belief that families are the best protection for children and the bedrock of any society to bolster United States diplomacy targeted at ensuring that every child can grow up in a permanent, safe, nurturing, and loving family, and to ensure that intercountry adoption to the United States becomes a viable and fully developed option for providing families for children in need, and for other purposes.
Sec. 2 Findings; purposes
Findings— Congress makes the following findings:
The people of the United States recognize and believe that children should grow up in permanent, safe, and nurturing families in order to develop and thrive.
Science shows that children, and particularly infants, living in impersonal, socially deprived institutions may suffer lasting, and in many cases, irreversible damage, including—
reduced brain activity and brain size;
lower intelligence quotients;
serious behavioral and emotional problems; and
disturbed relationships with others.
Governments in other countries seek models that promote the placement of children who are living outside family care in permanent, safe, and nurturing families, rather than in foster care or institutions; but many governments lack the resources or infrastructure to adequately address this need.
Despite the efforts of countless governments and nongovernmental organizations, millions of children remain uncounted and outside of the protection, nurturing care, permanence, safety, and love of a family.
No reliable data currently exists to define and document the number and needs of children in the world currently living without families, but available evidence demonstrates that there are millions of children in this situation needing immediate help.
The Action Plan on Children in Adversity commits the United States Government to achieving a world in which all children grow up within protective family care and free from deprivation, exploitation, and danger. To effectively and efficiently accomplish this goal, it is necessary to realign the United States Government’s current operational system for assisting orphans and vulnerable children and processing intercountry adoptions.
Significant resources are already dedicated to international assistance for orphans and vulnerable children, and a relatively small portion of these resources can be reallocated to achieve more timely, effective, nurturing, and permanent familial solutions for children living without families, resulting in fewer children worldwide living in institutions or on the streets, more families preserved or reunified, and increased domestic and international adoptions.
Purposes— The purposes of this Act are—
to support the core value that families are the bedrock of any society;
to protect the fundamental human right of all children to grow up within the loving care of permanent, safe, and nurturing families;
to address a critical gap in United States foreign policy implementation by authorizing a whole-of-government strategic approach to ensure coordination within and among the relevant Federal agencies for international policy and operational structures so that seeking permanent families for children living without families receives more prominence, focus, and resources (through the reallocation of existing personnel and resources);
to harness the diplomatic and operational power of the United States Government in the international sphere by helping to identify and implement timely, permanent, safe, and nurturing familial solutions for children living without families through effective implementation of the three core and three supporting objectives of the Action Plan on Children in Adversity;
to ensure that intercountry adoption by United States citizens becomes a viable and fully developed option for creating permanent families for children who need them;
to protect against abuses of children; and
to harmonize and strengthen existing intercountry adoption processes under United States law—
by ensuring that the same set of procedures and criteria govern suitability and eligibility determinations for prospective adoptive parents seeking to complete intercountry adoptions, whether or not the child is from a foreign state that is a party to the Hague Adoption Convention; and
by aligning the definitions of eligible children for Convention adoptions and non-Convention adoptions to the maximum extent possible.
Sec. 3 Definitions
In this Act:
Action plan on children in adversity— The term Action Plan on Children in Adversity means the policy document entitled “United States Government Action Plan on Children in Adversity: A Framework for International Assistance: 2012–2017”, released on December 19, 2012.
Ambassador-at-large— The term Ambassador-at-Large means the individual appointed pursuant to section 101(b).
Appropriate, protective, and permanent family care— The term appropriate, protective, and permanent family care means a nurturing, lifelong, commitment to a child by an adult, or adults with parental roles and responsibilities that—
provides physical and emotional support;
provides the child with a sense of belonging; and
generally involves full legal recognition of the child’s status as child of the parents and of the parents’ rights and responsibilities regarding the child.
Central authority— The term central authority has the meaning given the term in section 3 of the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000 (42 U.S.C. 14902).
Children in adversity— The term children in adversity means children and youth—
who are younger than 18 years of age;
who live outside of family care; and
whose safety, well-being, growth, and development are at significant risk due to inadequate care, protection, or access to essential services.
Convention adoption— The term Convention adoption has the meaning given the term in section 3 of the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000 (42 U.S.C. 14902).
Convention country— The term Convention country has the meaning given the term in section 3 of the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000 (42 U.S.C. 14902) and for which the Hague Adoption Convention has entered into force.
Guardianship—
In general— The term guardianship means a permanent legal relationship between an adult and a child, in which the adult is lawfully invested with the power, and charged with the duty, of taking care of the child.
Permanent guardianship— While some forms of guardianship are not truly permanent, the form of guardianship referred to and supported under this Act is permanent guardianship.
Kefala order— A Kefala order issued by a country that follows traditional Islamic law does not qualify as an adoption under United States law, but may be a form of guardianship in some circumstances.
Family-like group homes— Individual parent-child relationships in a small, family-like group home in which caretaking is provided only by one or more unpaid caretakers might, in some circumstances, qualify as a guardianship if legalized in that form.
Paid guardianship— The term guardianship does not include a paid guardianship.
Habitual residence determination— The term habitual residence determination means a factual determination of where a prospective adoptive parent (or parents) resides and where the child resides for purposes of an intercountry adoption case.
Hague adoption convention— The term Hague Adoption Convention means the Convention of Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, concluded at The Hague May 29, 1993.
Institutional care— The term institutional care means care provided in any nonfamily-based group setting, including—
orphanages;
transit or interim care centers;
children’s homes;
children’s villages or cottage complexes; and
boarding schools used primarily for care purposes as an alternative to a children’s home.
Kinship care— The term kinship care—
means the full-time care, nurturing, and protection of children by relatives, members of their tribes or clans, godparents, stepparents, or any adult who has a kinship bond with a child, if such persons have the capacity and commitment to function as true parents for the child on a permanent basis; and
does not include paid kinship foster care.
Non-convention adoption— The term non-Convention adoption means—
an adoption by United States parents of a child from a non-Convention country in accordance with subparagraph (F) of section 101(b)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(b)(1));
an adoption by United States parents of a child under the laws of the child’s country of origin (generally when the parents are living in the child’s country of origin and therefore able legally to complete a domestic adoption); or
in certain circumstances (generally with respect to relative adoptions or adoptions by dual national parents), an adoption by United States parents of a child from a Convention country if that country allows legal and valid adoptions to take place outside the scope of the Convention.
Non-convention country— The term non-Convention country means a country in which the Hague Adoption Convention has not entered into force, regardless of whether or not that country has signed the Convention.
Special Advisor— The term Special Advisor means the Special Advisor for Assistance to Orphans and Vulnerable Children appointed pursuant to section 135(e) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2152f(e)), who is also referred to as the Senior coordinator for the USAID Administrator on Children in Adversity and who leads the Center of Excellence for Children in Adversity.
Unparented children— The term unparented children means children lacking the legally recognized, permanent, safe, and nurturing care of a parental figure or figures, either inside their country of origin, in the country of their habitual residence, or elsewhere.