RE: termination of parental rights and responsibilities

[rbarth@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Rick Barth)]

This seems sound, in general, but it depends on the question you are asking.  If
you want to know how many parents had their parental rights and responsibilities
involuntarily terminated (as I thought you question implied) then you cannot get
it from this strategy.  Many parents voluntarily relinquish their rights and
responsibilities because they come to decide that this is the better course of
action.  Thus their rights and responsibilities are terminated (in a broad sense
of that term) but are really given up.  The proportion of adoptions that follow
voluntary relinquishments certainly varies over time and place.  Brian Simmons has
done some surveying on this and a nice analysis of voluntary relinquishments and
this is available from the AIA Resource Center (http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~aiar
c/).  The argument can be persuasively made that some voluntary relinquishments of
rights and responsibilities are "coerced" but there are also many cases where the
biological parents decide without coercion that they do not want or cannot meet
the responsibility of parenting any more. 

That's a long way of saying that the rate of termination of parental rights cannot
be figured out as Marian Bussey suggests except in states in which you know the
proportion of voluntary relinquishments.

 


-- Begin original message --

From: Marian Bussey <Marian@AmericanHumane.org>
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 14:44:22 -0600
Subject: RE: termination of parental rights
To: Child Maltreatment Researchers   <CHILD-MALTREATMENT-RESEARCH-L@cornell.edu>
Reply-To: CHILD-MALTREATMENT-RESEARCH-L@cornell.edu

You can calculate the number of children in foster care whose parental
rights have been terminated using the AFCARS databases.  I'm working with
that data right now and just ran those frequencies. In FFY1998, in the
combined 39 states plus D.C. and Puerto Rico reporting, 10.3% of children
were legally free for adoption (either both parents' rights terminated, or
one parent terminated and one parent died, or both parents died).
The reported range within states is from 0% (Delaware and Florida - not
possible to tell if they don't report this data) to 31.8% (Texas).  See
attached table.


This may not meet your needs, because it is point-in-time data. But you
could also calculate the child's age at termination, the time to termination
from entry into foster care, etc. Hope this helps,



Marian Bussey






-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph. A. Vorrasi [mailto:jav9@cornell.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2000 10:01 AM
To: Child Maltreatment Researchers
Subject: termination of parental rights


Can anyone direct me to a source that documents the national prevalence of
terminated parental rights?  This information is not in the annual CDF
Yearbook, and countless on-line searches and library queries have been
fruitless.  Thanks very much.

Joseph Vorrasi
jav9@cornell.edu



-- End original message --


Richard P. Barth, Ph.D.
Frank A Daniels Professor 
Jordan Institute for Families
School of Social Work
301 Pittsboro Rd
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC  27599-3550
(v) 919 962 6516
(f)        962 1486