In the News: Report on Why African American Children Make Up the Majority in Foster Care Numbers
48 states and the District of Columbia responded last month when the Government Accountability Office(GAO) conducted a survey between November 2006 and January 2007. Key contributing factors?
Poverty, bias and difficulty in finding adoptive parents.
“Families living in poverty have greater difficulty accessing housing, mental health, and other services needed to keep families stable and children safely at home,” the GAO found. “Bias or cultural misunderstandings and distrust between child welfare decision makers and the families they serve are also viewed as contributing to children’s removal from their homes into foster care. African American children also stay in foster care longer because of the difficulties in recruiting adoptive parents and a greater reliance on relatives to provide foster care who may be unwilling to terminate the parental rights of the child’s parent -- as required in adoption -- or who need the financial subsidy they receive while the child is in care.”
The GAO report found that while African American children made up less than 15 percent of the population in the 2000 Census, yet represented 34 percent of the children remaining in foster care at the end of 2004.
First, we have abuse risk factors such as a single parent home and poverty, which attract more attention from social workers and other officials who, in some cases, are mandatory reporters of mistreatment. This brings about more attention to the family, whether the child is placed directly into State's custody upon report or the family is required to seek services to maintain the child at home. These services most families in poverty conditions are unable to obtain due to a variety of reasons, one of which being poverty. The child then remains in foster care or is whisked away into foster care once family preservation services have failed to be utilized.
It seems like these families are living in a vicious cycle. Is foster care the best answer, or perhaps we need more community based services?
SOURCE:GAO Report Examines Why Disproportionate Number of Black Kids End Up in Foster Care - blackamericanweb.com
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Suggested Reading
African American families must be educated on the importance of bonding during the first three years of a child’s life, or the child may develop Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) which leads to defiance. Problems with these children start during the toddler years. We adopted our son who had been placed in several homes by the time he came to live with us. We didn’t know then that he had RAD. It took us eleven years and 22 different therapists to get him help. Devon was growing progressively violent, and our family was coming unglued because of his behaviors. He was like many young children whose needs are not met when they are babies. Many children adopted out of orphanages around the world such as in China have RAD too. Besides being left to cry in a crib for hours, perhaps a child is born to a young mother who cannot care for the baby; the parent is on drugs…or just overworked trying to make a living. When a child’s needs are not met, they develop RAD which is a self-survival condition which not only makes them defiant, but wanting to stay in control. Left untreated, that child can become violent like my son, and grow to become a sociopath. A parent then gets frustrated and hits the child, and the child is taken out of the home. It’s no mystery why so many African American children in the inner city are in foster care. Very few people know about RAD. It’s important that parents learn Mindfulness, how to find inner peace while living in the moment to develop patience with their children. Financial difficulties among other problems should not be taken out on kids. When one person practices Mindfulness, the entire family benefits. Janet Alston Jackson, author of the USA Book News award winner, “A Cry for Light: A Journey into Love.”