I’m in the midst of a three-day conference put together annually by Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition of New York (AFFCNY). It’s so damn good.
There’s so much good info in this conference, but this morning a set of statistics slapped me across the face. I’ve previously mentioned that Black kids are over represented in foster care, but didn’t have the statistics to back it up at the time I made my post.
Now I do.
In New York State:
Black children represent 15% of the population, however, they represent 39% of the foster care population.
Just sit with that set of numbers for a frigging minute.
White children represent 48% of the population, however, they only represent 26% of the foster care population.
Hispanic or Latino children represent 25% of the population, they represent 26% of the foster care population.
So much goes into those statistics but racism is at the heart of it. Economic disparity is playing a massive role and that’s wrapped up in generations of institutional racism. The term “neglect” is so broad and ill defined that it often encompasses folks who are just poor, not intentionally neglecting their kids, and who would do better with more resources. So why aren’t we helping Black families financially so they can stay together, when that costs less than removing kids and putting them in foster care? Why are we drug testing new Black moms at birth without consent disproportionately to new white moms? Why are we so quick to remove Black kids from their families?
Here’s the breakdown of the 14 kids who have been placed with us. It mirrors the statistics I listed above but is even more marked:
- Black – 8
- White – 4
- Hispanic – 1
- Asian – 1
I’m not going to try to solve all the world’s ills here in this post. There are so many things that need to change and there are incredible people working on making those changes. Some of them have spoken at this AFFCNY conference and they’re AMAZEBALLS.
I think it’s important to talk about these statistics though because knowing about the disparity is the first step to changing it.
And now you know.
Since we aren’t going to continue to take long-term foster care placements, I need to find new avenues to create change. I think I’m going to focus first on creating kinship opportunities for foster parents who are in the position we are in: wanting to preserve the child’s family unit but needing to have the child stay with the foster parents for the child’s safety and well-being.
After all, if biological families are being separated and the kids placed in foster care at disproportionate rates, then let’s work on preserving family bonds as much as we can. However we can. Statistics show how much better kids do with biological family in their lives, culturally, racial identity-wise, mental health wise. I think my first activist steps will be to work on ways to make that happen legally.
Other folks are already working on things at the other end: decreasing the rate at which Black kids enter the foster care system, and increasing rates of kinship care rather than placement with strangers. Both are critical to addressing the racial disparities.
If we hack at this from all directions, you know who is going to benefit?
The kids. And that’s the whole point.
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