Provides background on and summarizes the major provisions of the Multi Ethnic Placement Act (MEPA) of 1994, as amended by the Interethnic Placement Act (IEPA) of 1996. MEPA/IEPA is the principal federal law that addresses the use of race, color, and national origin in making decisions about foster care and adoptive placements. Social workers and child advocates get basic information about: (1) the impetus behind enactment of MEPA/IEPA, including concerns that children were languishing in foster care waiting for “race-matched” adoptive families; (2) key elements of the law, which, among other things, prohibits states and agencies that receive federal child welfare funding from delaying or denying a child’s foster care or adoptive placement on the basis of the child’s or the prospective adoptive parent’s race, color, or national origin; and (3) misinterpretations of the law, including challenges to the placement of children of color with adoptive families of color. The focus of implementing MEPA/IEPA should include diligently recruiting foster and adoptive families who represent the racial and ethnic backgrounds of children in foster care and who need adoptive families as well as educating child welfare staff on what MEPA/IEPA really requires and otherwise correcting misconstructions of the law.
