VFA Submits Testimony for Hearing to Consider the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson Proposal
Hearing to Consider the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson Proposal
Monday, September 25, 2017
United State Senate Committee on Finance
215 Dirksen Senate Office Building
FROM: Voice for Adoption, 1220 L Street NW, Suite 100-344, Washington, DC, 20005
Voice for Adoption (VFA) urges the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate to reject the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson proposal.
In short, this legislation will be devastating to the nation’s child welfare system.
This legislation will undercut the past work of the Senate Finance Committee to reduce the number of children in foster care, to strengthen families that adopt, to support young people that exit foster care and to reduce and prevent child abuse.
VFA urges Senators to think of the young men and young women with foster care experience that you have sponsored as interns, fellows and temporary staff. They have told you their stories about the trauma they have experienced, the multiple placements and the missed opportunities in their care and support.
Too often these young people have told you stories of parents or guardians who could not access the needed drug treatment, mental health and health services that might have kept their family intact and all siblings together.
The young men and women, you had the opportunity to meet, represent the 10 to 20 percent who, for reasons we cannot fully explain, were resilient enough to make it all the way to college. These young adults were even more extraordinary in that they also made it to Capitol Hill. Not as visible to you are countless others, their brothers and sisters (figuratively and literally) who did not make it to college or to Capitol Hill. For too many of them there may be a future of juvenile justice, trafficking or just a life of struggle.
