First bill to tighten adoption now law

For the first time, Arkansas law will require people who adopt foster children to notify the state when the children are no longer living with them.

That was one provision of House Bill 1648 by Rep. Greg Leding, D-Fayetteville, which Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed into law Thursday. It was the first of two bills passed by the Arkansas Legislature to restrict "re-homing" of adopted children. The governor is to sign the other, HB1676 by Rep. David Meeks, on Monday, his office confirmed Friday.

The two-part package of bills was filed after the Arkansas Times disclosed that two foster children adopted by a state lawmaker had been given to another family to raise in October 2013. The older of the two girls, then 5, was sexually assaulted by the father in the second family early in 2014. The children were moved to a third home by March of 2014. Investigators discovered the sexual assault soon after.

There was no restriction on "re-homing" adopted children in Arkansas law. Leding's bill was filed the day after the Times story ran. Meeks filed his a day later.

Leding and Meeks worked together before, on human-trafficking legislation in the 2013 legislative session, and cooperated again in their re-homing bills. "This was not a partisan issue, and we wanted to make sure that nobody made it one," Leding said in an interview Friday. The adoptive father involved, Rep. Justin Harris of West Fork, is a Republican.

A simple measure banning re-homing was not enough, lawmakers agreed. For instance, struggling adoptive families needed assistance. Leding and Meeks said they decided to put different provisions addressing the matter in separate bills to avoid having a single long, confusing piece of legislation. "We wanted something that was easy to digest and understand," Meeks said in a telephone interview. Leding agreed, saying that the same approach had worked with human-trafficking bills and that the Legislature this year had limited time left in the session to deal with re-homing.

The governor's office was heavily involved in fleshing out both bills, Meeks and Leding said. Lawmakers were already aware that issues concerning the adoption of state foster children needed to be addressed even before the re-homing problem became public, Meeks said. Attention to re-homing will not end after these bills are law, he said.

"I'm a foster parent, and I know we have a lot of great workers doing a lot of great things, but we still have issues we need to address," Meeks said.

The matter also prompted Hutchinson to call for an independent review of the state's child-welfare system and the state Department of Human Services as a whole. Hutchinson named Paul Vincent, a child social services policy analyst, and former head of social services for Alabama, to conduct the review of the department. The review will take about eight weeks, Vincent said last month.

Hutchinson has reviewed the Harris case, he said last week. A former U.S. attorney, Hutchinson said nothing he's seen indicates that Harris used any undue influence to obtain the adoption of the girls, an allegation raised by the sisters' former foster parents.

HB1648 requires that DHS enact rules and practices to assist parents who request help after an adoption. Harris has said he requested such assistance, did not receive it and was threatened with an abandonment lawsuit if he did not keep the two sisters he adopted. The Human Services Department is not permitted to comment on the particulars of the case.

Leding's bill also requires a state home study before an adopted child can go to a new home.

Meeks' bill makes the re-homing of an adopted child younger than 18 a felony punishable by up to five years in prison unless the provisions of state law, including the newest requirements, are met. The bill spells out exceptions, such as placing a child with a family member. It also makes it a crime to pursue an adoption for the purposes of selling the child to someone else.

Both bills require court approval in cases in which the adoptive parents seek to legally place a child in a nonrelative's home.

HB1648 spells out the processes by which adoptive parents can receive state subsidies and requires parents to sign an affidavit saying they will not re-home the children. Parents will have to get the subsidy renewed, and the contract extended, every year. Falsifying an affidavit is a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail.

Eric Cameron Francis, 39, is serving a 40-year sentence for sexual assault in the case. He is a former teacher at Growing God's Kingdom, a preschool in West Fork owned by the Harris family. After the details of the assault case came to light, Harris stepped down from his post as vice chairman of the House Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative and Military Affairs Committee. He also is leaving the legislative Joint Performance Review Committee. Both committees have oversight over DHS.

Metro on 04/04/2015

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