I. INTRODUCTION
With the enactment of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (P.L. 96-272), the mantra of child welfare professionals became permanency. The primary way—indeed, in many jurisdictions the only way—of achieving the required permanency when family reunification was not a possibility was through termination of parental rights and adoption. This remedy, however, proved problematic. It soon became apparent that every case within the child welfare system could not be shoehorned into this one-dimensional means for providing a permanent home for children whose parents were unable to care for them. While both Federal and State law provide various grounds for the termination of parental rights in child maltreatment cases, experience has led us to expand the set of tools by which we may achieve permanency for children.
This section will examine the various alternatives to termination of parental rights and adoption available to courts and child welfare professionals in their struggle to provide stable and appropriate homes for children and youth until they are able to provide for themselves.
The author of this article is unknown. We do not verify its accuracy and provide to you only as resource and not specific legal advice.
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