Race and Foster Care

MORE BLACK CHILDREN ARE TAKEN FROM THEIR HOMES

They're staying longer in foster care
Sunday, November 19, 2006
By KIM HORNER / The Dallas Morning News

Margie Williams has cared for dozens of kids as a foster mother for the Refuge House agency. She currently has five children in her care.

Foster mom Margie Williams doesn't pay attention to the race of the children she cares for.

"All I see is a child who needs my love," she said.

All five of the children with her now are black. So were most of the two dozen other foster children she's cared for over the years.

Her experience follows a local, state and nationwide trend that's raising concerns among child-welfare advocates: While black children do not suffer a higher rate of abuse than other races, far more are removed from their homes.

Ms. Williams' foster kids also reflect another disturbing trend: Black children remain in state custody longer."They [Child Protective Services] really try to find someone – they go through every family member," Ms. Williams said. "But normally the [black] kids stay in the system a while."

In Texas, about 13 percent of the child population is black, according to Child Protective Services. But about 26 percent of the children removed from their homes are black, as are 34 percent of kids waiting to be adopted. A total of 32,474 children in Texas are in foster care.

Black children make up an even larger part of Dallas County's child welfare system. They represent 22.4 percent of the county's child population, 45.6 percent of children removed from their homes and 52 percent of children waiting for adoption.

Nationally, black children make up 15 percent of the child population and 35 percent of the children in foster care, according to Casey Family Programs in Seattle, which is working with several sister organizations that have launched a campaign to reduce those numbers.

There are many theories about what causes the disparity, including poverty and racism – as well as risk factors that impact minority communities most, such as high levels of unemployment, homelessness and a greater number of single-parent families.
Kids who stay in the foster system until age 18 have high rates of homelessness and poverty, according to the Casey Family Programs.

Overrepresentation of blacks in the child welfare system has become a major issue for state officials and child advocates. Many gathered in Dallas to discuss the issue on Thursday and Friday at a child welfare symposium sponsored by the W.W. Caruth Jr. Child Advocacy Clinic at Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law.

Joyce James, assistant commissioner for Texas' Child Protective Services, said the agency is working on several initiatives to address the disproportionate numbers of blacks in the system.

"Children belong in families," Ms. James said. "When they can't live with their birth families or kinship families [extended relatives], we are responsible to make every effort to find permanent adoptive homes for them."

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, of which CPS is a part, researched data related to child removals as a result of a 2005 reform bill and developed solutions to the disparity.

The state discovered that 60 percent of families of children removed from the system in 2004 had incomes of less than $10,000 a year.

Poverty contributes to many neglect cases because a parent working two jobs, for example, may leave children unsupervised. Or a child may be exposed to dangerous or substandard conditions because the family cannot afford heat or plumbing, officials said.

CPS has added training that examines poverty's impact on families, and the agency has been working to connect parents with social services such as food stamps, day care and legal services so their children can return home sooner. In addition, the agency is trying to recruit more foster and adoptive parents and increase the number of children in kinship care, in which a close relative takes care of the child and receives limited financial assistance.

Ms. Williams, foster mother for the Refuge House agency, said the children who have come to live with her desperately need the help. Many were born with drugs in their systems and have depression or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, making it difficult to find adoptive parents. Some have been traumatized by sexual abuse. Kids act out by fighting, talking back, skipping school – and a couple have smeared feces on the wall, she said.

Like so many children in the child welfare system, the five youths in Ms. Williams' care – ages 16, 14, 13, 11 and 7 – face years in foster care. Ms. Williams said none of them wants to be put up for adoption because they hope to return to their families.

Until then, she plans to keep working with them to help them "blossom and bloom." She said the hardest part is when they have to leave.

"I learned just to work with them by being in this business," she said. "I find that these children, they really need love. They really need someone to take them in and treat them well."

E-mail khorner@dallasnews.com