The High Cost of Florida’s Adoption Ban
May 23, 2006: The National Council for Lesbian Rights has created a great document that clearly states the economic and social ramifications of Florida’s ban on LGBT adoption.
You can read the whole report here. This is from the conclusion:
Despite the massive cost, infrastructure, and best efforts of DCF staff, community-based care contractors and foster parents, the State of Florida has failed to provide thousands of foster children with permanent adoptive homes.
Florida’s adoption ban exacerbates this problem. Each time a child is denied the opportunity to be adopted out of foster care because of the ban, that child is denied the security and permanency that only adoption can provide. In addition, the State of Florida commits to spend tens of thousands of dollars to maintain that child unnecessarily in a foster care system that is virtually guaranteed to lessen the child’s life prospects. In sum, from both a fiscal and child welfare perspective, Florida’s adoption ban comes at a high price.
Congratulations to the conservative Florida politicians whose actions hurt children and cost taxpayers money! You all must be very proud of yourselves.
May 29th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. As a human being, I find this extremely sad. To me, the inference of this law is that it would be better for a child to sit and rot in foster care than it is to allow people who want these children to give them the life that every child deserves. It just goes to show that some people are willing to support almost any injustice as long as it means they don’t have to deal with their homophobia.