The Mission of ACT

Children have a right to a permanent home. Yet foster children continue to move from home to home and to remain in foster care for long periods of time. Such moves and continued impermanence damage already vulnerable children. They are hurt, feel rejected, and fail to attach or love.

Many children remain in the foster care system until they are 18 when they become emancipated. They enter the adult world with no committed, lifelong family to rely upon, no support in difficult times, and no roots in the world.

The price of this failure and delay is high. The state's financial price tag is considerable, but the cost to the child is even greater. Crime, mental illness, homelessness, and other serious adult problems are all highly correlated with the lack of stability stemming in good part from foster care drift.

A wonderful window of opportunity opened with the enactment of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA, November, 1997) and the comparable Indiana legislation (PL35, March 1998.) Recognizing that one year is a very long time in the life of a child, this legislation mandates action toward permanence within 12 months of the child's move to out-of-home care.

Passing legislation makes permanence within one year possible. It does not guarantee that permanence will happen. Grumbling that such mandates cannot be fulfilled, lawyers moved to circumvent the one-year mandate. ACT thinks permanence within one year not only can but must be done for the good of the children in care. ACT proposes that we stop being slaves to bureaucratic time or legal time and begin acting in child time. A year is a very long time in the life of a child.

Who We Are

TIM POWERS is ACT's President. Tim is President of School Datebooks, located in Lafayette, Indiana, and the originator and publisher of the annual Foster Parent Journal. He is a graduate of Hanover College.

PETER KENNY is ACT's Executive Director. He is an attorney practicing throughout Indiana and specializing in foster care and adoption issues. He is the co-author of The Right to a Permanent Home.

FRANK SLABY is ACT's Secretary/Treasurer. He is a businessman, a farmer, a professor, and holder of an MBA degree.

The ACT Board

MARK BONTRAGER. Attorney and social worker and deputy director of a child care agency in Napa, California.

BONNIE HUXFORD. An Indiana clinical psychologist with experience in the evaluation of bonding and the consequences of its disruption. Dr. Huxford practices in Anderson and also specializes in Christian therapy and neurological testing.

JAMES KENNY. An Indiana clinical psychologist practicing in Rensselaer. Dr. Kenny is the author of ten books on children and family as well as the co-author of The Right to a Permanent Hoome. He is a biological, foster, and adoptive parent.

MARTHA NORD. A former teacher and a daycare provider with degrees in education and social work. Ms. Nord is a biological, foster, and adoptive parent.

TAMALA OLIVEIRA. A linguist and teacher, with degrees from Cornell and the University of Michigan. Ms. Oliveira is currently a law student at IUPUI with expertise in issues of due process.