Intercountry Adoption: Regulatory Changes to Accreditation and Approval Regulations in Intercountry Adoption

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF STATE <CFR>22 CFR Part 96</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Public Notice: 12242]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1400-AE39</RIN> <SUBJECT>Intercountry Adoption: Regulatory Changes to Accreditation and Approval Regulations in Intercountry Adoption</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Department of State. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Department of State (the Department) publishes a final rule revising the Code of Federal Regulations to amend requirements for accreditation and approval by the United States to provide adoption services in intercountry adoption cases. This rule amends regulations to provide clarification, updates, or other adaptation of familiar accreditation and approval standards for intercountry adoption. It also includes a new section with alternative procedures for primary providers that apply in intercountry adoption by relatives. The new regulations for adoption by relatives simplify and streamline the adoption process by limiting the number of adoption services the primary provider must provide. The final rule emphasizes that accredited agencies and approved persons comply with all applicable laws in foreign countries where they provide adoption services. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule becomes effective January 8, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> • Technical Information: Emily Spencer, (202) 647-4000, <E T="03">adoptionoversight@state.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preamble Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Introduction</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Overview of Major Changes and Provisions in the Final Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Adoption by Relatives</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Compliance With All Applicable Laws</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Child Care Payments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Procedures and Requirements for Adverse Action by the Secretary, Including for Challenges to Such Adverse Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Pausing on Revising Standards in Subpart F</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Other Significant Changes</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Section-by-Section Discussion of Significant Public Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Timeline for Implementing Changes in the Final Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Regulatory Analysis </FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Introduction</HD> This final rule amends 22 CFR part 96 and the changes clarify and update the 2006 final rule that established the regulatory framework for the accreditation and approval function required under the 1993 Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (the Convention), the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000 (IAA), and the Intercountry Adoption Universal Accreditation Act of 2012 (UAA). The Department drew from its 17 years of observations and experience with the accreditation regulations to reflect the rule's practical operation, and from the observations of adoption stakeholders including, but not limited to, adoptive parents, adoption service providers (ASPs), Congressional offices, adult adoptees, and law enforcement authorities. On November 20, 2020, the Department published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM, often referred in this preamble as the proposed rule). The proposed rule included changes to subparts A, B, E, F, L, and M and a new subpart R. The Department intends to examine changes to the remaining subparts at a later time. This final rule takes into account public comments received in response to the NPRM. The Department appreciates the extensive feedback received from stakeholders in response to the NPRM and notes the many contributions from stakeholders who recommended substantive revisions to the Department's changes in the proposed rule. The final rule incorporates many of the substantive revisions proposed by the public. Additionally, as explained below, this rule does not include three major sections of the proposed rule. The Department will consider consultations with stakeholders before making further regulatory proposals relating to these three sections. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Overview of Major Changes and Provisions in the Final Rule</HD> This section of the final rule summarizes the major differences between the proposed rule and the final rule. This overview is followed in part III by a detailed, section-by-section discussion of significant comments received in response to the NPRM. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Adoption by Relatives</HD> The long-anticipated  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> new provisions on adoption by relatives were welcomed by most commenters, though some thought the new provisions did not go far enough in streamlining the required adoption services and should have further limited the role of primary providers in relative cases. Most commenters, however, welcomed the simplified role of the primary provider in the proposed rule requiring primary providers to focus on three of the six adoption services listed in the CFR:  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The IAA provided in section 502(a) for establishment by regulation of alternative procedures for adoption of children by relatives. The Department did not include alternative procedures for adoption by relatives in its accreditation rule published in 2006, which this rule amends, opting to pursue it later once the new accreditation rule was implemented. Adoption service providers with clients adopting relatives asked frequently over the intervening years when the Department would produce alternative procedures for relative cases. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  22 CFR 96.2 Definitions: <E T="03">Adoption service</E> means any one of the following six services: (1) Identifying a child for adoption and arranging an adoption; (2) Securing the necessary consent to termination of parental rights and to adoption; (3) Performing a background study on a child or a home study on a prospective adoptive parent(s), and reporting on such a study; (4) Making non-judicial determinations of the best interests of a child and the appropriateness of an adoptive placement for the child; (5) Monitoring a case after a child has been placed with prospective adoptive parent(s) until final adoption; or (6) When necessary because of a disruption before final adoption, assuming custody and providing (including facilitating the provision of) child care or any other social service pending an alternative placement. </FTNT> • (3) Performing a background study on a child or a home study on a prospective adoptive parent(s), and reporting on such a study; • (5) Monitoring a case after a child has been placed with prospective adoptive parent(s) until final adoption; and • (6) When necessary because of a disruption before final adoption, assuming custody and providing (including facilitating the provision of) childcare or any other social service pending an alternative placement. The new provisions in § 96.100 allow a primary provider to develop and implement an adoption service plan addressing only three adoption services noted above in adoption by relatives. In all other intercountry adoptions, the primary provider must develop and implement a service plan for providing all six adoption services, in accordance with § 96.44. The provisions in § 96.100(d) require that the alternative procedures in § 96.100 be performed in accordance with the Convention, the IAA, the UAA and their implementing regulations. Some commenters expressed the preference that post-placement monitoring should not be required at all in adoptions by relatives. The Department emphasizes that post-placement monitoring mandated in the IAA remains an important element of the adoption services in the final rule, including with respect to the adoption by relatives. Adoption services five and six include essential services related to monitoring the continued well-being of the child's placement and to ensuring that the prospective adoptive parents can care for the particular needs of a child. Unlike other services that may not be applicable or made redundant in the context of a pre-existing relationship, services 5 and 6 apply equally whether or not the child is related to the prospective adoptive parents. The public comments also revealed disagreement regarding how the term “relative” should be defined and to which family relationships the alternative procedures for primary providers should apply. Some commenters preferred the relationships found in the regulations of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) at 8 CFR 204.309(b)(2)(iii) which are exempt from the prohibition on prior contact with a child's parents or caregivers. Section 96.2 Definitions includes a definition of relative relationships that applies solely to determinations of when those alternative procedures for primary providers in § 96.100 may be used. Although the Department's and DHS's definitions overlap quite a bit, they differ enough in content and purpose that the Department retained its proposed definition of “relative” in the final rule. The definition of “relative,” and other public comments related to subpart R are further addressed in the section-by-section discussion in part III, below, and in appendix A at the end of this notice. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Compliance With All Applicable Laws</HD> In the NPRM, the Department proposed a new section 96.29 in subpart F identifying conduct that does not conform to the regulatory framework of the IAA. Commenters found the new provisions to be duplicative and pointed out that agencies and persons were already required to operate in accordance with the Convention, the IAA, the UAA, and their implementing regulations. They suggested that restating the principle again as a new standard in subpart F was not necessary ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 330k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━