This petition is an urgent call for New York Governor Kathy Hochul to sign the Adoption Subsidy Reform Bill (A3580-A/S08745) into law.

While the vast majority of children who are adopted from foster care find supportive, stable, and permanent homes with their adoptive families, some must leave their adoptive homes before they reach adulthood. This most commonly happens when the adoptive parent becomes too ill to care for the child, the child has special needs that the adoptive parent is unable to manage, or there are conflicts in the home due to the youth’s sexual orientation or gender identity.  In these cases, the child may be sent to live with another adult, returned to foster care, or, in the most extreme cases, forced out of the home into homelessness.

Even when children are no longer living with their adoptive parents, and their adoptive parents are not providing any support for them, their adoptive parents continue to receive a monthly subsidy for their care. According to the NYC Comptroller, in 2021, at least $3.5 million was improperly paid in New York City alone to adoptive parents who were providing no support for their children.

This must stop!

Adoptive parents who are providing no support for their children should not be allowed to collect a check that is supposed to be used to care for those children. Instead, the money should be paid to the people who take custody of the children in order to help them meet the children’s needs. The subsidy should be suspended for children who return to foster care. And, it should be paid directly to responsible youth between the ages of 18 and 21 who are on their own – as it is for youth whose adoptive parents have passed away.

This legislation is needed to ensure that the people who care for children adopted out of foster care receive the support they need, that older youth who have been adopted do not become homeless, and that the State is not defrauded out of millions of dollars each year.

Sign today and demand that Governor Hochul put children first!