Adoption tracking gains steam in Oklahoma House

Statistics on a state agency’s unsuccessful adoptions would be posted under a bill that cleared a House panel Monday.

Rep. Jason Murphey, R-Guthrie, said Senate Bill 794 would help determine why some adoptions didn’t work out. Names would stay confidential.

The state Department of Human Services publishes statistics on its successful adoptions, and should have to show how many were unsuccessful, Murphey said. The bill, which moves to the full House, does not deal with adoptions arranged through private agencies or attorneys.

Caprice Tyner, DHS legislative liaison, told the House Human Services Committee the agency would have no problem reporting unsuccessful adoptions but hasn’t been asked to do so.

Tyner said DHS finalized 1,307 adoptions in 2007, and two of those were dissolved.

She said the process is similar to terminating parental rights. Psychiatric problems are a main cause.

Amber Given, program director for Peppers Ranch, a Guthrie nonprofit group that deals with abused and neglected children, requested the bill.

"I worked with foster care kids extensively, and one of the trends I see happening is kids coming into higher levels of care and group care because their adoptive placements haven’t worked out,” she said. "Some kids I’ve seen have been adopted multiple times or been in adoptive homes, but the adoptions were never successful.”

Given, who said her group is changing its focus to help foster parents, said the number of unsuccessful adoptions reported by Tyner seemed too low.