National Adoption Month, 2001

___________________________________________________________________

Title 3--
The President

Proclamation 7493 of November 5, 2001

National Adoption Month, 2001

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

Children deserve to be raised in loving families with
parents who protect and nurture them. For some
children, adoption is their best chance for a healthy
and happy life. Each year, American families adopt
approximately 120,000 newborn or older children,
providing them with a loving and supportive
environment.

Despite this substantial number of annual adoptions,
more than 134,000 children are currently waiting
adoption. While our foster care system can provide a
safe, temporary home for these children, adoption would
give them the love and stability of a permanent family
that would better enable them to develop to their full
potential.

My Administration is working to help states promote and
support adoptions. This year, 35 states and the
District of Columbia received adoption incentive awards
for increasing the number of children they placed from
foster care into permanent homes. States have
reinvested these bonuses to enhance their adoption and
child welfare programs, which has resulted in an
unprecedented 79 percent increase in adoptions from
28,000 in 1996 to 50,000 in 2000.

Although we have made dramatic advances in encouraging
adoption, we must strengthen our efforts to find a
safe, loving, and permanent home for every child
awaiting one. One important way to advance towards this
goal is to ease the financial burden on families that
adopt children. The tax relief bill that I signed into
law earlier this year extends and increases the
adoption tax credit for qualified expenses from $5,000
to $10,000 per child. The new law also increases the
tax credit for adoptive parents of children with
special needs from $6,000 to $10,000 per child,
regardless of expenses. Parents who adopt children with
special needs will benefit from this meaningful tax
credit because it will help cover unique adoption
costs.

Ensuring the provision of post-adoptive services also
plays an important role in facilitating successful
adoptions. I support the Promoting Safe and Stable
Families proposal, currently before the Congress, which
would improve post- adoptive services by prioritizing
research and evaluation for these services and
establishing systems to ensure that they are available
to meet the needs of adoptive families. In addition,
this proposal provides for education and training
vouchers to children adopted after the age of 15.

Adoptive parents have a special calling--sharing a
loving home with children in need, offering them hope
for a brighter future. Federal, state, and local
governments must continue supporting these quiet heroes
as they make the considerable sacrifices and receive
the countless blessings of parenthood that come from
providing a child with the chance of a lifetime--an
upbringing in a happy and healthy home.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the
United States of America, by virtue of the authority
vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United
States, do hereby proclaim November 2001, as

National Adoption Month. I call on all Americans to
observe this month with appropriate programs and
activities to honor adoptive families and to
participate in efforts to find permanent homes for
waiting children.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
fifth day of November, in the year of our Lord two
thousand one, and of the Independence of the United
States of America the two hundred and twenty-sixth.

(Presidential Sig.)B