Enhanced adoption assistance is available to an adoptive or prospective adoptive parent who enters into an initial adoption assistance agreement on or after January 1, 2009, for a child with special needs as described in §700.804 of this title (relating to Who is a child with special needs?), who is in an approved adoptive placement, provided the child also meets each of the following criteria immediately prior to the signing of the adoptive placement agreement: (1) The child is in the managing conservatorship of DFPS and all parental rights to the child have been terminated for at least 24 months; (2) The child has an authorized service level of "specialized" or "intense" as defined in Subchapter W of this chapter (relating to Level-of-Care Service System), or, the child had such an authorized service level immediately prior to being placed in a facility or home operated or regulated by another state agency, such as an intermediate care facility for persons with mental retardation and/or related conditions (ICF/MR); a nursing facility, or a community-based waiver services (HCS) residential program; (3) The child is living in: (A) a foster care home or other residential child-care operation that is regulated by the DFPS Child Care Licensing Division and is approved under Licensing minimum standards to provide treatment services as defined in §749.61 of this title (relating to What types of services does Licensing regulate?); or (B) a facility or home operated or regulated by another state agency in this state or in another state that provides comparable treatment services; and (4) The child has not been adopted despite our having made extensive and ongoing local and national adoption recruitment efforts. These efforts must include considering and following-up with families who initially appear able to meet the child's needs and express an interest in adopting the child, and either pursuing or ruling out adoption by these families; and (5) The selected prospective adoptive parent is only willing to adopt the child if enhanced adoption assistance is available. |
| Source Note: The provisions of this §700.807 adopted to be effective January 1, 2009, 33 TexReg 9270; amended to be effective March 1, 2010, 35 TexReg 875; amended to be effective March 1, 2011, 36 TexReg 589 |
