Changing Disparity in Child Welfare

Acknowledging Disproportionate Outcomes and Changing Service Delivery (2008), focuses on the need to address racial disparities in the United States foster care system.  The article also references the Children’s Defense Fund’s 2007 report entitled America’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline to help explain the myriad racial and economic disparities that exist among systems connected to child welfare.  Additionally, McRoy pulls evidence from the 2006 United States Government Accountability Office’s study regarding African-American children in the foster care system. 

            McRoy’s research explains how African-American children are not only more likely to be placed in foster care, but that they also stay in foster care longer than Caucasian children.  The lack of adequate family support services is a significant contributing factor that hinders African-American families.  In fact, McRoy cites that although there are not more African-American parents involved in substance abuse than Caucasian parents, more African-American children are removed from homes due to their parents abusing substances because African-American parents have limited access to treatment programs, and lack of treatment prolongs the reunification process. In addition, many African-American children come from single African-American mothers who may be parenting several children and living in neighborhoods with inadequate resources.  Complicating the issue, and impacting African-American families in the child welfare system, are the disproportionate rates of incarcerated African-American men.  McRoy writes that in 2006 there were 3,042 African-American males in prison for every 100,000 African-American men in the United States compared to 487 Caucasian males in prison for every 100,000 Caucasian men in the United States. McRoy posits that racial bias affects disparities regarding decision-making. I have to agree.

            One of the recommendations she makes is to have systems collaborate and work together in order to identify stressors and support through community analysis. Such analysis can be affective if agencies hire an ethnically diverse and culturally competent child welfare staff.  I really like McRoy’s suggestion that staff experience job training in the very neighborhoods and communities, including the churches and the schools, for which they are hired to serve.  I also like McRoy’s idea for assessment tools that address African-American culture in order to strategize how best to provide support, resources, and ideas to inspire people to look beyond bias in order to clearly see challenges.  McRoy writes about multisystems collaborating as well as state and federal policies changing such that they prioritize ending racial and economic disparities. 

            After reading the article, I decided to log onto the Children’s Defense Fund website to see if any changes have occurred since 2007.  Although I read that between 2009 and 2010, there was an eight percent decrease in the number of African-American children in foster care, I also read in the Children’s Defense Fund’s report entitled Portrait of Inequality (2012), that African-American children are more than twice as likely as Caucasian children to be placed in foster care, are over six times more likely than Caucasian children to have a parent in prison, are more than three times as likely to live only with their mother, are more than 2 ½ times more likely than Caucasian children to live with neither parent, and also have the highest rate of abuse and neglect.  At first it seemed to me as if there had not been any progress since McCroy’s article was published in 2008.  However, the Children’s Defense Fund has started a Cradle to Prison Pipeline campaign to advocate for quality, accessible, and comprehensive services, including mental health coverage, in order for children to have positive preventative supports and services.  Although the statistics still reflect overwhelming disparity, one can find change evolving through child welfare campaigns, such as the Cradle to Prison Pipeline, which emphasizes and educates society about the very strategies for which McRoy advocates in her article, and for which I strongly support.

http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=53dfb0fc-bc8d-4519-82b1-5125bedab680%40sessionmgr198&hid=106&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=pbh&AN=33553792

http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/33553792/acknowledging-disproportionate-outcomes-changing-service-delivery

http://www.childrensdefense.org/zzz-child-research-data-publications/data/portrait-of-inequality-2012.pdf

http://www.childrensdefense.org/campaigns/cradle-to-prison-pipeline/