Home > Children of Color in the Child Welfare System: Perspectives From The Child Welfare Community > Children of Color in the Child Welfare System: Perspectives From The Child Welfare Community: Findings

Children of Color in the Child Welfare System : Perspectives from the Child Welfare Community

Author(s):  United States. Children's Bureau. Chibnall, Dutch, Jones-Harden, Brown, Gourdine

Year Published:  2003

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You are in section: Table of Contents Authors Acknowledgements Executive Summary I. Introduction II. Literature Review III. Methodology IV. Findings V. Discussion VI. Implications for Policy… VII. Recommendations For … VIII. Conclusions Appendix References

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Findings

Study findings are presented in the two sections that follow. The first section presents the findings related to the issue of over-representation. Specifically, this section is focused on the participants' perception of over-representation, including how Federal policies have influenced their ability to work effectively with children and families of color. The second section is focused on examining the types of strategies child welfare agencies have used to meet the needs of children and families of color. It includes information regarding participants' perceptions about what resources would assist agencies to better serve children and families of color, and the types of practices and programs they feel are necessary to reduce over-representation. Finally, it presents information regarding the programs, practices, and strategies that agencies are implementing currently to improve the delivery of services to minority children and families.

4.1 THE ISSUE OF OVER-REPRESENTATION: THE PERSPECTIVE FROM THE FIELD

To gain input from the child welfare field on the issue of over-representation, the project team solicited information from all participants across the nine sites based on the following topic: What is your perception of the issue of over-representation? That is, why do you think children of color are over-represented in the child welfare system? The next section presents the perceptions of the participants regarding this issue.

External factors

Consistent with the literature that relates disproportionality to a variety of risk factors, including poverty and such related problems as family instability, the issues most commonly reported by participants as primary to disproportionality were factors external to the child welfare system. Participants across the nine sites consistently reported such factors as poverty, lack of resources in poor communities, discriminatory practices in the larger society, the characteristics of the families entering the system, and the media as contributing to the over-representation of minority children in the child welfare system.

Poverty and related issues

The link between poverty and child abuse and neglect is strongly supported in the literature. Much of the literature focuses on documenting the link between income and the incidence of abuse and neglect, with lower incomes correlated with a higher incidence of abuse and neglect. Other sources have documented the link between poverty and risk factors. Consistent with the literature, across all nine sites, an overwhelming majority of participants at all levels cited poverty, and poverty-related circumstances, as primary reasons for the over-representation of minority children in the child welfare system.

I think [racial disproportionality] has a great deal to do with socio-economics. It has to do with society. It has to do with politics. It has to do with all the barriers that society and the world has put up for people of color, for poor people. It has to do with the struggle. (Administrator)

You have your money, and then you [have the] people…and the blacks are going to fall at the bottom because of their income and their locality, and the [lack of] jobs and education and all of that. (Direct service worker)

The poverty-related issue that participants talked about most frequently was the relationship between the need for services among minority clients and the lack of resources available to them. According to participants across sites, poverty exposes families to multiple stress factors that compromise their ability to manage day-to-day activities. Because minority families in this country, particularly African-American families, are more likely to be poor than are non-minority groups, they are also more vulnerable to social problems, including child abuse and neglect, domestic violence and substance abuse, among others. Participants were quick to note that, despite their need for services, poor families were more likely to be living in resource poor communities, many of which also were geographically isolated from other communities that might offer support and services. As a result, families living in poverty were the least likely to have resources available to them. According to participants, without access to services, families are further compromised. The more compromised these families are, the more likely it is that they eventually will come into contact with the child welfare or some other social system.

We have waiting lists forever to get any kind of services, [including] substance abuse, domestic violence, [and] parenting classes. When you go into different neighborhoods, Caucasian neighborhoods, we make a referral... within days, they have the services they need. My clients wait months. If we put in the referral or the case is in court but the client hasn't gotten services yet, they'll pull those kids. (Direct service worker)

There's a lack of black resources. We don't have resources in place for [black] people to get help. And if there are resources, there are so many hoops that you have to jump through to get something, even a little bit. People just say, "Forget it. Just take my kids or I'll take them and whatever happens, happens." It's too hard. It's too complicated for people to get anything. (Direct service worker)

Related to resource issues is the visibility of minority families, which, according to participants, is another factor that contributes to disproportionality. Because minority families are more likely to be poor and to lack access to resources, they are also more likely to use public services, including public health care (e.g., hospitals and clinics), and to receive public assistance, including TANF and Medicaid. Participants felt that having more frequent contact with these systems made African-American families more visible in terms of the problems they might be experiencing, including child abuse and neglect. In addition, they felt that individuals employed by public welfare agencies were likely to hold prejudices against the people who used them and, subsequently, to scrutinize their behavior more closely. According to participants, these factors often result in reports to formal systems, including, most frequently, the child welfare and criminal justice systems, regarding African-American clients.

I think any individual, regardless of their minority status, that ends up in a poverty situation is more visible, because they're having to access free clinics, and social services, and welfare, and those types of things… Child abuse, it certainly crosses the broad range of socio-economic classes, however, if you have more wealth to your name, it's easier to cover up. People are less likely to report you. (Administrator)

Participants talked about another discrepancy in resource availability between minority and non-minority clients—the lack of resources African-American families have to negotiate the child welfare system once they've entered it. After years of oppression and negative experiences with formal systems, participants noted, African-Americans are often scared, uninformed, and intimidated when interacting with formal systems. When African-American parents are approached by the child welfare system, therefore, they are often at a distinct disadvantage. According to participants, African-American parents frequently lack important information about how the child welfare system works, the financial resources to navigate the system, including hiring an attorney, and the confidence to advocate for themselves and their children. These factors create a distinct disadvantage for African-American parents that often follow them throughout their family's trajectory through the child welfare system.

Once they enter the system, [African-American] clients feel powerless. (Direct service worker)

Society, it's unfortunate, but we look at black people, poor black people in particular, they're not empowered. They don't feel empowered. They don't feel in power politically. They are not educated. They fear authority and they have a reason to. Because when you look at the jails, when you look at all the systems, they have a reason to be afraid. (Supervisor)

I think one of the reasons for over-representation is there are no advocates for these individuals. They are intimidated by everybody. They don't know how to present themselves. They probably know that something is wrong but they don't know how to address it or explain what it is that they are feeling or what is happening to them. So, a lot of times, they leave [the system] without answers, without solutions, until CPS gets involved again and we've got to go through this whole process again. I really don't think they understand their rights, their roles, what they can really do to help themselves. (Direct service worker)

Community and family characteristics

Studies consistently suggest that over-representation may have less to do with race or ethnicity of minority groups and more with the characteristics of the communities in which they reside. In this study, participants in Illinois, Georgia and Michigan talked about the disorganization of many African-American communities and the disintegration of the African-American family as factors responsible for over-representation.

The black culture that we've created since we've been in this country...is not about "old world" customs. We don't have "old world" customs that [we brought] over here. The other nationalities that I've worked with, the Hispanics especially, there is a strong sense of culture... The child welfare system is a reaction to how society has fallen apart in the African-American community. There is no culture. There is poverty, drugs, teen pregnancies, and no fathers at home. So we take the kids in, clean them up, and put them out, but the problems started a long time ago. (Direct service worker)

In two states, both African-American and Hispanic participants used perceived differences between Hispanic and African-American communities to explain the lower rates of Hispanic children and higher rates of African-American children in the child welfare system. Participants perceived that the Hispanic population, having come to this country more recently and under different circumstances than African-Americans, had not experienced the kind of oppression and disadvantages that African-Americans have. As a result, the Hispanic community has not been affected by years of racism and oppression that, ultimately, has led to social, economic, and political challenges for African-American families and communities. In and around one site, there are enclaves of tightly knit and tightly connected Hispanic communities, comprised of extended families that, while mostly low-income, are not seen as experiencing the same types of challenges as many African-American communities, including substance abuse and domestic violence. In addition, participants felt that because Hispanic families and communities were more cohesive, they were better able to support each other in times of crisis. Bound by a we take care of our own philosophy, the Hispanic community was ready and able to respond, often without outside intervention, to family or community crises. They also tended to have access to resources, often within their own communities, in their own language.

As far as the Hispanic community, I think, it's like, "we take care of our own. We'll take Mama out... and get her straight. [The child welfare system] won't take Mama out and get her straight. We will do that." [The Hispanic community] has our own DCFS system that's not the public child welfare system. (Supervisor)

We need to realize that there are a lot of resources for Spanish families. And they do have families, and strong family support systems, in their own language, in their own communities. They have outreach programs. The Spanish community is growing. It has very strong support. It has strong family support. It has resource referrals, resources that we can tap into immediately. Now, some of them are coming into custody, but a lot of them are not because we have those resources for them. (Supervisor)

I feel that the majority of the Latinos in this county are probably Mexican families that come into the country looking for agrarian work. Because they have larger family compositions we can rely on other family members to help reduce some of the risk to the children… We look to extended families to help with off setting risk factors. (Direct service worker)

To some extent, participants in a third state expressed this viewpoint as well. There, participants were just beginning to notice (or talk about) discrepancies between the number of Hispanic and African-American children coming into care, with African-American children coming into care more often than Hispanic children. The participants were not certain what accounted for the discrepancy, but many felt it was related to the same issues that were discussed above. Specifically, they suggested that the African-American community was more disorganized than the Hispanic community, although they acknowledged that this wasn't always the case.

One participant, an African-American supervisor, reminisced about the African-American culture of long ago. Her perception was that cohesive and supportive were adjectives that were used years ago to describe African-American communities. She spoke of a community with a strong sense of family and connection, a community of families where elders lived in the home, helping to raise the children, and parents worked hard to give their children a life they themselves never had. Lamenting the disintegration of this archetype, she noted that these characteristics had been replaced by less positive ones, including the lack of an extended family, inconsistent care taking, and dependency on public assistance. Years of oppression and related problems had resulted in the disintegration of African-American communities, which had left both the communities and the individuals residing in them powerless to prevent problems or intervene to change things.

One of the things we talked about [in relation to the differences between Hispanic and African-American families] was that there used to be [in the African-American family] a sense of family and a sense of connection and extended family...Older relatives lived in the home and were both being taken care of and taking care of...Now we see some of our African-American families without extended families, and lacking consistent care [for their children]. Whoever is around, that's who takes care of the children. Years ago, if things went wrong, you got sent up north, you got sent to live with family and those kinds of things... [There] was a sense of family and extended family. (Supervisor)

Participants in a fourth state also talked about the challenges African-American communities and families have faced in recent decades as central to disproportionality. Their perception was that generations of economic deprivation had resulted in disadvantages for African-Americans in important areas, including education and employment. They felt that as African-Americans experienced fewer and fewer opportunities, the community found itself disempowered and caught up in a cycle of crisis and response. Over time, African-American communities became more vulnerable to such social ills as drugs and violence and, as communities became more vulnerable, so too did the families that lived in them, eventually finding themselves more vulnerable to involvement in social service systems, including child welfare. According to some participants, these problems persist today except that now, rather than presenting a challenge to be overcome, they have become a part of the culture.

[Disproportionality] is representative of a group in crisis. It's coming from the fact that there are no family resources and so the children are coming into care. It's coming from the fact that families are not intact and so the children are in the system instead. It's coming from the fact that there's a feeling in other [non-black] communities that they can do something to help their community. We need to empower the black communities again so they can rise above their current circumstances. (Supervisor)

Participants in a fifth state were also beginning to examine the child welfare involvement of Hispanic families. In contrast to other sites, they did not suggest that Hispanic families were more organized than African-American families. They attributed their lower numbers to a lesser emphasis on reporting in Hispanic communities, different standards in the Hispanic community regarding childrearing, lower utilization of public institutions (which are responsible for many child welfare referrals), and the language barriers. In one site, participants spoke of rising numbers of Hispanic families due to culture-specific child rearing practices that are perceived as negative in the mainstream culture (e.g. extreme corporal punishment) and the lack of supervision related to the agrarian employment of parents.

They (Hispanic families) don't have access to resources or don't utilize the resources because of the language barriers, and they don't see the bruise on the kid's butt when he's at the Health Department. (Direct service worker)

Discriminatory practices

Some theorists and researchers argue that disproportionality is a result of discriminatory practices within the larger society against minority groups, particularly African-Americans (e.g., differential treatment by race). According to participants in this study, in relation to the child welfare system, this differential treatment manifests itself most often in the over-reporting of minority parents for child abuse and neglect. The systems most frequently involved, at least as reported in this study, are the medical and school systems.

In the case of hospitals, participants in Illinois, Virginia, and Texas noted that clients were most commonly reported for neglect based on postpartum drug tests. They felt that doctors and other health care providers tended to believe that drug use was more common among minority groups. As a result, medical personnel were more likely to suspect and report minority families for drug use during pregnancy. Participants told story after story about clients that had been drug-tested without knowledge or consent after giving birth². In fact, in most of these stories, consent was not even an issue—no one had asked the woman for it. This issue has tremendous bearing on racial disproportionality in the child welfare system, given that currently drug abuse is thought to be one of the major reasons for child welfare involvement with families, although evidence is mixed.

...Far more African-Americans go to [that] hospital for whatever, including pregnancies, than other races, and they would routinely test the babies for illegal drugs in their system, without the mother's knowledge. So that was contributing a great deal, and the other hospitals in the city were doing the same thing. So, if you're an African-American mom and you looked kind of poor, you're kid was likely to be tested. And so there was a report to DCFS, and an investigation, and an indication on your child abuse and neglect tracking system record that you gave drugs to the baby... So, it's more likely that African-American kids were brought into the system. (Supervisor)

School personnel also were implicated for over-reporting minority children, especially for neglect. Again, in three states, participants felt that teachers frequently confused neglect with issues related to poverty, calling in neglect reports regarding children who were, for example, hungry and unkempt or who were sometimes absent from or late for school. While participants did acknowledge that these issues could be associated with neglect, they felt strongly that school personnel were unable to differentiate poverty from neglect and, when dealing with minority (or impoverished) families, were not invested in detecting the difference.

Because most often, what happens, is that people confuse poverty and how it impacts children and families with neglect...[And that's how they end up in the system] (Administrator)

One of the things that we talked about and we dealt with specifically was the issue of poverty versus neglect and abuse, because so many cases come in because of poverty issues. But poverty issues have nothing necessarily to do with child abuse and neglect. We need a whole different system or way of looking at [issues related to poverty], but that is another reason why the proportion [of black children in the system] is so high. (Supervisor)

Just little things, like you see it in the school system. They [say] "Well, she came to school dirty, her clothes are always dirty." And it's usually the minority kids. Well, they [minority families] often don't have a washer and dryer where they can just wash clothes every day. They don't have the money to go to the laundromat daily. But that doesn't mean [the children] are being abused or neglected.(Direct service worker)

We get a lot of calls from schools and from hospitals, and a lot of these mandated reporters don't actually know, don't have a clue, what they should call in... They call in every little thing, and, a lot of times, it is the African-Americans they're calling about, once again, disproportionately. And the Child Abuse Reporting Act states that a report should be called in when there is a suspected case of child abuse or neglect, not any time you see a child walk down the hall with a bruise or a mark... (Supervisor)

Media issues

According to participants, the media also play a role in the over-representation of minority children in the child welfare system. In recent years, there has been increased media attention nationwide to extreme cases of abuse and neglect, especially those involving child deaths. The media attention has left supervisors and workers alike feeling vulnerable and under increased scrutiny from the agency administration and the community. Unfortunately, participants in several agencies reported that these feelings of uncertainty often manifest in their substantiating more cases and, as a result, bringing more children into care.

Workers in two states reported feeling frightened and insecure during times when they were under increased scrutiny from the media, which has become more and more frequent, as least from their perception. During times of increased media attention, and, according to some participants, at all times, workers report being more inclined to both substantiate a case and remove a child. Despite reports that in substantiating a case workers reduce the ever-present fear that one of their children will end up in the media, this coping mechanism also results in feelings of powerlessness. In one state, workers reported questioning their ability to make good decisions, while in the other, workers reported feeling frightened when case decisions were imminent. In addition, because both of these agencies are located in communities that are primarily African-American, substantiating more cases generally means substantiating more cases involving African-American children and families.

[Workers] tend to feel safer placing children in care... because they've gotten pressure about leaving children in homes and something happens to them so they feel safer bringing a child into care. When in doubt, take them out. A lot of times, in African-American communities, they're going to take them out.(Direct service worker)

I know [the agency] is in the spotlight right now. It's safer to just take the case [regardless of the seriousness of the report] and check it out... Also, you never know if it is a 'set-up.' You never know who's setting up or calling in and making an intake. It's safer just to check it out. (Direct service worker)

Participants in another state also reported an increase in both hotline calls and substantiated cases after high profile cases hit the media. To stop what had become a media frenzy, the administration decided not to run from the media, but to respond to them. Now, when cases end up in the media, the administration does two things. First, they give the media the full story, even if the agency was to blame to some extent. Next, they use their opportunity with the media to educate them about other child welfare issues and to give them positive stories to write about, for example, the increase in adoptions or decrease in the number of children coming into care. While the administration feels that this strategy has resulted in more positive relationships and press coverage from the media, workers continue to feel frightened about making bad decisions and uncertain as to whether the administration would support them if one of their cases ended up in the media.

One state has taken a proactive stance with the media. Recognizing the benefit of an informed media with whom you have a formal relationship, the child welfare agency invited a prominent local reporter who frequently covers local child welfare issues to be part of their council on over-representation. By involving him on the council, agency administrators hoped they would have an opportunity to educate the media regarding the mission, philosophy and operations of the agency, thereby providing them with a context in which to interpret and report future child welfare cases. It is not clear whether this strategy will produce its desired outcomes but, for now, the administration is hopeful that it will.

Internal factors

While most responses to the question regarding disproportionality included factors external to the child welfare system, there were two issues internal to the child welfare system that participants discussed in relation to over-representation: 1) worker bias; and 2) agency practices.

Worker bias

I think it's not only African-Americans but also poor people in general. Here I am, a social worker with a Master's degree. I've got the training. But my first court experience, I was really afraid to enter the courtroom [because the people were different from me]. And so, if it [being African-American] has that kind of impact on me, imagine what kind of impact it could have on someone else that is not at my level. (Direct service worker)

In many cases, participants felt that their colleagues, across racial and ethnic groups and job categories, brought preconceived ideas or biases against minority groups, most often African-Americans, to their position within the agency. Participants, most often African-American participants, identified racial bias as a common problem that frequently interfered with good decision making. They felt that many staff, but Caucasian staff in particular, lacked exposure to cultures other than their own and had no context for understanding the cultural norms and practices of minority populations.

There are so many different factors involved in worker bias or racism. Even just going out and doing home-calls in different neighborhoods. I think some workers immediately, just driving into a certain neighborhood, have a particular perception. (Direct service worker)

[Workers] have preconceived notions of how they're going to deal with blacks and other minorities. I worked with a child welfare worker who, before she even went out to the house, before she even interviewed them, already said, "This is what I expect." (Direct service worker)

Maybe my culture is different from a person of color, so having a staff person who you can go talk to and, even for myself, I can find out things from a staff person about somebody else's culture. (Direct service worker)

One frequently cited example of worker bias was the difference in perception between white and black workers regarding what constitutes abuse and discipline, particularly discipline within the African-American culture. Many African-American workers gave examples of situations where physical discipline might be confused with abuse if the individual making the determination had no previous exposure to the African-American community and its disciplinary practices. The participants who discussed this issue were quick to note that they were not trying to justify the use of physical discipline or abusive behavior. Instead they were trying to explain the importance of understanding the cultural context of certain behaviors when critical decisions were being made and the lives of children and families were at stake.

One of the issues that I think has not been addressed would be cultural issues with regard to people of color and forms of discipline that have been passed down for generations. I think the way we were disciplined back in the 70s and 80s... my grandmother went out and got a switch... And now, you know, people of other races, they have "time out." But a lot of African-American families are still raising their kids the way they were raised. There's no "time out."... There are circumstances that come into play. It's not just, you see a bruise and it's a founded case. You still have to look at the circumstances that caused it. (Direct service worker)

Culture plays a very major role in terms of how protective services interfaces with the families. When they go in, understanding the dynamics of the families based on their culture is important in determining whether or not to remove the child. I mean, abuse is abuse; that is not a cultural issue. Neglect is neglect; that is not a cultural issue. But if you have a situation where a child is sitting on the floor eating some collard greens or cornbread with their fingers, that's not an issue of neglect. That is just how some of us of color eat our food. But it can be something as simple as that that can have far-reaching ramifications for splitting up a family.(Direct service worker)

Participants also talked about class bias. Class bias, however, seemed to be more of an issue in those agencies where the client population, the surrounding community, and the majority of agency staff were minority. It may be the case that race is less salient in those communities that are predominantly African-American.

Classism impacts children coming into care... I've even talked to...our own staff who have never experienced poverty or the kinds of conditions or violence that some of our families have had to endure. And because of that, they go immediately to [wanting] to remove the children. They don't see the strength in the families because they are very middle-class and their decisions about whether or not kids can stay in their own homes is based on their own perception… It doesn't matter if they're African-American. They're making those decisions based on their perception as middle class persons. (Administrator)

Overall, participants felt that worker bias had a negative effect on African-American clients. Specifically, they felt that biased decision-making resulted in more African-American children being removed from the home, and fewer returning home to their families.

When you have [workers] who are disconnected from the cultural dynamic of a community that is poor and minority and you send them into that particular community with the force of the law to remove children.... They'll determine the environment to be unsafe... The system does not have controls to limit the subjectivity of the worker. (Administrator)

Agency practices

In some sites, participants did attribute racial disproportionality to internal agency practices. For example, some suggested that their agency had in the past ignored the rising numbers of minority children and did not attempt to address the issue practically. They emphasized the importance of making the reduction of racial disproportionality an important administrative and practice goal. There were specific agency practices that they felt contributed to the large numbers of minority children in care. For example, participants in two sites suggested that their use of a standardized risk assessment tool reduced the number of minority children and families who were involved in the child welfare system. The tool was utilized to make more objective decisions regarding substantiation of cases and the need for placement of children.

Additionally, participants identified the lack of front-end work (i.e., prevention) as having an impact on the numbers of minority children brought into the child welfare system. Additionally, they suggested that the historical recruitment of mainstream (i.e., white and middle class) foster and adoptive parents limit the placement options of minority children, and therefore affect the numbers of children in care. Excluding relatives as service partners and potential placement options also was perceived as leading to higher numbers of minority children in care. Staff training and hiring issues also were raised as contributing to racial disproportionality. These issues will be discussed in greater detail in a later section of the report that examines agency practices and promising programs more closely.

Over-representation and Federal policies

This study sought to assess the impact of Federal policies on child welfare practice with children and families of color, specifically, the Multi-ethnic Placement Act (MEPA) and the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA). To this end, discussions were focused around the following topic: How have Federal policies like MEPA or ASFA changed the way in which your agency serves children and families of color?

The Multi-ethnic Placement Act

For three decades, racially matched adoptive placements for child-welfare involved children were not uncommon child welfare practice. In recent years, however, concern that racial matching practices were contributing to a delay in placing children of color in adoptive homes pushed policymakers to examine it more closely. In the end, MEPA was born.

Passed by Congress in 1994, MEPA is a Federal law designed to remove barriers that might delay or deny the placement of African-American children and speed up the adoption process by prohibiting state's from considering a child's ethnic and racial background when considering placements with prospective parents. MEPA has three primary goals. First, it was designed to decrease the length of time children wait to be adopted. Second, it was designed to prevent discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin. Finally, MEPA was designed to facilitate the identification and recruitment of foster and adoptive families that could meet the needs of children needing placement.

Since its passage, MEPA has been criticized for several reasons, including that its legal mandates do not translate easily into child welfare settings or social work practice because they are vague in nature. In this study, participants' familiarity with MEPA varied based on their position within the agency. While agency administrators were generally familiar with and knowledgeable about MEPA, many direct service workers and supervisors were not. Placement workers were more familiar with MEPA than were investigators or in-home workers, but this is not surprising given that placement workers are responsible for finding and approving adoptive homes for children, a responsibility that requires them to be informed of adoption policies. In far more cases than was expected, however, the research team members found themselves explaining MEPA to participants and fielding questions related to its guidelines and implementation.

I'm not very familiar with that. I don't know what the details of it are. (Direct service worker)

I could probably be more helpful if you would define [MEPA] for me. (Supervisor)

Explanations frequently were required even for those participants who reported having some familiarity with MEPA. Supervisors and direct service workers alike reported confusion about what MEPA was designed to do and, subsequently, raised concerns regarding how to implement it. While this confusion was less commonly reported among adoption workers, they too were sometimes uncertain about MEPA regulations. This general lack of knowledge about MEPA and confusion over its guidelines suggests that there may be a gap between policy and practice when it comes to understanding, interpreting and implementing MEPA.

MEPA has been very confusing to staff. I think there is a fear factor associated with it. [Workers think] "Oh, my gosh, if I do something wrong, I'm doomed. My career is on the line here." And I think that's real. It's been very difficult to train in and answer all the questions staff have [about MEPA]. We have made progress in moving minority children out of care over the last few years but I don't know that I can say MEPA did that. I'm not sure how much staff really know about it. (Administrator)

The literature regarding MEPA suggests that some individuals who oppose it do so because they are concerned about the detrimental affects of transracial placements on a child's overall well being. Specifically, some in the child welfare community believe that transracial placements are detrimental to children's overall well being, including children's adjustment to adoption, their self-esteem, and their ethnic or racial identity (although there is controversy in the field regarding the empirical validity of these concerns).

Participants in three states expressed this viewpoint. In these sites, participants, mostly African-American direct service providers and placement workers, reported that MEPA was contrary to the best interests of African-American children. These participants felt strongly that because race is critical to a child's emotional and psychological well being, one cannot think about the child's best interests when making placement decisions without consideration of race. They talked about the difficulties inherent in raising a black child in a white family, especially in terms of access to culture and culturally specific practices and rituals, and racial and cultural identity. In many cases, workers reported that they lacked confidence in a non-minority family's ability to provide these things for African-American children.

That's very difficult because color does matter. If you have two families that are equal with everything, and one is African-American and one is Caucasian, and the child has only known African-Americans, your color is a factor in placement even though the law says you can't use it as a basis. But if everything is equal and this is what the child knows and this is what the child doesn't know, why would you place him in a situation that is completely unfamiliar with him or her? First of all, the child is going to have adoption issues to begin with. And then you add on the transracial issues of 'why am I different' and ['why am I] being placed in a completely different world than what [I am] accustomed to?' That's difficult. (Direct service worker)

One time, I had an African-American little girl placed with a white family, and they didn't know how to comb her hair. And they called and told me, "We just want to cut it off." I said, "Well, no, we just can't do that. We need to come out and I can give you some lessons. Or you know what? Better yet, I'm just going to take this little girl and I'm going to get her hair braided for her, but we're not going to cut her hair." (Direct service worker)

I have a problem with a black child being in a community where they don't see anybody else that looks like them. I have a problem with a child being in a family that doesn't recognize that they are black kids... This child needs some life skills because the world out there is very ugly. I have to teach my little black boy, "It's ugliness out there" and I have to teach him the skills to learn to deal with that. How is a white family going to teach a black boy that? (Direct service worker)

I think historically a lot of the African-American families will feel more comfortable with an African-American child being in their home. They have expressed it…that if placement were to occur that they would feel more comfortable with an African-American child. (Direct service worker)

Despite their concerns, however, participants agreed that children should not languish in foster care if, for example, a white family was available to adopt a black child, and that they always practiced in a manner that reflected this philosophy. In fact, there was a general consensus among most participants that it was always better for a child to be adopted by a caring family, regardless of race, than for the child to endure a long term in foster care. However, participants did acknowledge that they made placement decisions after careful consideration of a number of important factors, two of which might be the family's race or, more important, their ability to provide the child with culturally specific experiences and opportunities.

Despite the negatives, participants reported that MEPA had helped their agencies broaden the role of the extended family in placement decisions, a positive outcome. They reported that when MEPA was first passed, some of their agencies were desperate to find placement resources for African-American children. In many cases, without a lot of alternatives and little to no additional funding, agencies had no choice but to turn to the extended family network for help. Participants were not sure they would have considered these options if MEPA had not pushed them to consider alternatives.

What MEPA did was make us really pull back and …make sure that we were comfortable placing a child in a home, that we would be comfortable with that family adopting that child, should it come to that. (Direct service worker)

They also reported being pleased with the outcomes related to involving kin. Previously, kin were not generally considered as alternatives for placement for a number of reasons. In some cases, it was assumed that dysfunctional families produced dysfunctional children, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree analogy. In other cases, it was simply assumed that extended families were not interested in fostering or adopting kin because of the added financial burden additional children bring to the family environment. What participants reported, however, was that when family members were given the opportunity, even those with children still living at home, they were willing to assist. In fact, they were willing to assist even if it meant fostering or adopting a child or even a sibling group, an outcome that some participants found surprising.

Participants also perceived extended family placements as win-win situations. Because kin placements often provide stability and safety as well as familiarity and cultural appropriateness, participants report feeling confident that all the important bases had been covered. They also thought that kinship placements would likely result in more positive outcomes for African-American children because they are consistent with the African-American historical experience.

The other thing that [MEPA] has done...is that it has broadened the scope of the role that family [are] able to play. For instance, we never used to recommend relative adoptions. It was seen as being very problematic and creating all kinds of difficult dynamics within the family system. And, now, that's a preferred plan, to have a relative that wants to adopt. So, you work through those other issues and figure out solutions. (Supervisor)

In addition to decreasing the amount of time children wait to be adopted, MEPA also was intended to facilitate the identification and recruitment of foster and adoptive families to meet the needs of children needing placement. As a result, in many cases, agencies have stepped up their efforts to recruit African-American foster and adoptive families, although results have been mixed. Some have had success while others are still struggling to find placements for these children. In places where recruitment efforts have been successful, however, participants report that by providing additional placement options for African-American children, recruitment efforts have helped to move children out of the system, thereby decreasing the number of African-American children in the system.

One good thing about [MEPA] is you can look for the best placement for the child, regardless of race, or color, or religion or whatever, and you don't have to be limited to only looking for one certain type of family. (Direct service worker)

Adoption and Safe Families Act

Passed as law in 1997, the Adoption and Safe Families Act, was designed to promote safety and permanency for children through its emphasis on adoption. ASFA also identifies circumstances under which reasonable efforts to reunify are not required and shortens the timeframe for initiating proceedings for the termination of parental rights. ASFA also provides incentive payments to states to encourage adoption of children out of foster care.

Overall, participants were more familiar with ASFA than they were with MEPA; however, knowledge was still tied to position within the agency. As was the case with MEPA, agency administrators were more knowledgeable regarding ASFA and its implementation than any other group. This is not surprising given that administrators are responsible for ensuring that agency practices are in line with state and Federal policies and regulations. In addition, ASFA includes a number of specific provisions that require or provide incentives to states to change policies and practices to promote children's safety and adoption or other permanency options, including expedited timelines for moving children into permanent placements. As a result, its impact on agency-level policies and practices has often been significant and immediate. Some states, including Minnesota and Texas, had initiated expedited timelines before ASFA was enacted, while agencies in other states quickly had to restructure policies and modify practices to meet ASFA requirements.

Generally, the primary concern expressed by participants regarding ASFA was that its shortened timelines were too restrictive for families dealing with multiple issues. Specifically, across sites and at all levels, participants voiced concerns about whether parents experiencing substance abuse, mental health or other serious problems would be able to manage and change their situations within ASFA timelines. The workers' biggest fear was that they would be forced to move toward termination of parental rights before parents had sufficient time to receive appropriate services or become engaged in treatment in a therapeutic manner.

Poverty wasn't created in six months. Drug addiction wasn't created in six months. So how are we going to take six months to undo it? The kind of logic in that really never made sense to me. (Direct service worker)

The thing about ASFA is we're giving them 18 months to get it together and sometimes it takes them longer [especially in substance abuse treatment]. (Direct service worker)

With regard to [ASFA time limits], especially if you are working with women with substance abuse issues... I've worked in substance abuse... I worked with heroin addicts and that is one of the worst addictions, and these women need more time to get it together. The time limit is not enough. [These] mothers have a right to a second chance to those children. That time limit is just not good. (Direct service worker)

In addition to the shortened timelines, participants talked about the challenges of implementing ASFA without additional financial resources to support mental health and substance abuse treatment for parents working toward reunification and also for potential adoptive families (a perception that is not supported by the reality of ASFA, which provides additional dollars for ancillary services). With the emphasis on permanency, agencies felt pressure to find large pools of adoptive families, while the emphasis on shortened timelines required quick access to quality services, something that is not always available.

If you are going to say you have to meet these requirements in a shorter time period, then the other side of that is that you have to adequately fund services that are going to make it possible for families to do that. You can't get assessments, mental health assessments. There are waiting lists. So it's unrealistic... (Supervisor)

What I've seen in terms of the time limits is that adoptive families are being quickly certified because the resources that were put into certification were not substantial enough [to support lengthy home studies]. I think it's horrible for a child to languish in foster care... but I think it's equally horrible for them to be placed quickly into an adoptive home that's not appropriate for them and where there's no training and support. (Direct service worker)

If you're going to put in a Federal guideline, you've got to give us the tools, the money, everything we need to accomplish that. (Supervisor)

Another challenge related to ASFA as reported by workers in two states is the practice of concurrent planning, a practice that is emphasized in the Act. Concurrent planning is a practice that requires workers to work toward reunification while simultaneously planning for the permanent placement of a child. The strategy is designed to support reunification but also to plan early for an alternative permanent placement should reunification become impossible.

According to participants, one of the problems with concurrent planning is that it seems to make more sense in theory than it does in practice. Supervisors and workers alike talked about the difficulty of being fully committed to two outcomes that seem to be in direct opposition to each other. Workers reported feeling pressured by the competing demands of reunification and permanent placement and the perceived increase in effort concurrent planning requires from them. In many cases, workers felt that they were experienced enough to tell, early on, which cases had a chance for reunification and which ones did not, making concurrent planning seem like nothing more than extra work. Other workers mentioned, on a positive note, that concurrent planning sometimes puts them ahead of the game in cases where reunification became unlikely early on and placement plans had already been arranged.

In one site where the family conferencing process is utilized, participants reported that concurrent planning allowed them to search for a permanent home for children among the community members who came forward to provide support and care for children and families at the initiation of the child welfare referral. Generally, however, workers felt that the benefits of concurrent planning did not outweigh the additional effort it requires. While these issues do not relate directly to over-representation, they may have implications for children of color, especially in relation to the higher numbers of African-American children in foster care currently.

On the positive side, across all sites, participants felt that ASFA had resulted in positive change by increasing permanency options for children. While there were concerns regarding the timelines, participants perceived that the timelines also provided both workers and parents with the motivation to respond more quickly. Many participants reported that the timelines associated with ASFA provided workers with the leverage they needed to both push parents to commit to reunification earlier, or not, and to implement timely consequences when parents failed to comply with the conditions set out in the permanency plan.

It surprised me how much of a turnaround we made in terms of the number of kids we were able to move out of long term placement. It put [parents and families] on a real tight timeline in terms of having to demonstrate that they could work a plan. If they weren't getting it together, those kids would be terminated. And we had to work harder too, to meet their needs more quickly. But it was ok because we should have been doing that all along. (Supervisor)

It motivates families right away, families that might not have been motivated [otherwise]... I think it gives the agency a really good guide, one that was needed to seek and reach permanency for children a lot faster. I've seen a lot of children benefit from it. (Direct service worker)

You'd be amazed at how the service plans look different. Suddenly, they're not trying to make perfect families for kids. They're focused on safety, which is really all you should be focused on...Now, you have to do risk assessments and it has to happen early on and ASFA is wonderful in reducing timeframes so that happens more quickly. We've got a whole lot farther to go but it has moved people and it's raised the bar in terms of permanency. (Direct service worker)

Participants also reported that the timelines pushed workers to assess a family's needs and find appropriate services to meet their needs more quickly. The hope is that an early commitment to reunification combined with immediate access to support services (and timely consequences for non-compliance) will increase the number of children who go home rather than into adoptive placements. Similarly, for those children who are not likely to return home, because parents are unsure about reunification or are unwilling to make the necessary changes to achieve it, workers can begin the search for an appropriate adoptive home sooner than they had previously.

ASFA has really helped us to focus more on the needs for achieving permanency in a timely manner. When our law changed here, we were making those changes anyway, out of necessity to comply with the law locally. [ASFA] was a big adjustment in the way we were thinking. We really had to start being more geared to do stuff faster, up front...I think that you can achieve permanency in a timely manner, if you can do everything in the case up front, and I think ASFA has really emphasized the need for that.(Supervisor)

4.2 EXAMINING THE STRATEGIES CHILD WELFARE AGENCIES USE TO MEET THE NEEDS OF CHILDREN AND FAMILIES OF COLOR

States have been grappling with the issue of over-representation for at least a decade, when studies first began to document its existence. In recent years, however, the child welfare system has come under increasing scrutiny in response to the ongoing barrage of media attention on extreme cases of abuse and neglect, cases often involving minority families. In addition, the recent passage of such Federal policies as the Multi-ethnic Placement and the Adoption and Safe Families Acts also have focused attention on issues related to minority children in the child welfare system. As a result, agencies are once again focused on the issue, including searching for effective practices to respond to it.

To learn more about the strategies child welfare and child-welfare serving agencies use, the study team asked participants to discuss several issues. First, they were asked to talk about programs and practices that might help them better serve minority families. Next, they were asked to discuss strategies that they felt might reduce over-representation. Finally, they were asked to describe programs, practices and strategies they were implementing in their agencies to either reduce over-representation or better serve minority families. This section presents the findings related to these issues.

How can agencies better serve children and families of color?

In addition to gaining insight into the issue of over-representation and the impact of Federal policies on an agencies' ability to serve children and families of color effectively, the team also was interested in learning about factors that would assist agencies to serve children and families of color better. To gain this perspective, discussions were focused on the following topic: What policies, procedures or practices would assist your agency to better serve children and families of color?

In response to this question, participants did not talk about strategies designed specifically to reduce the over-representation of minority children and families in the system. Instead, they spoke most often of philosophical shifts or general practices. Across the sites, participants talked about several areas in which improvements would result in better services for children and families. First, participants talked about changing the nature of service delivery, including emphasizing prevention over intervention and treatment, and establishing collaborative relationships with other service providers and agencies to improve the availability and delivery of quality services to clients. They also talked about needing additional resources to serve clients effectively. In addition, participants also talked about agency-related factors such as administrative support, culturally competent and experienced staff, and reducing caseloads as strategies for improving services to families of color, and families, in general. These issues are explored in greater detail in the following section.

The nature of service delivery: Emphasizing prevention

The overwhelming response to this question was that agencies need to emphasize prevention and provide more front-end or prevention programs and services to families. Participants talked about the overarching philosophy of the child welfare system as being crisis- rather than prevention-oriented, and how it works against rather than for families by focusing on what families are doing wrong or intervening only after family functioning has deteriorated beyond repair. A shift in focus to prevention would allow the system to capitalize on opportunities to stabilize families before they come to the attention of the child welfare system. By providing resources and services to support families before they come to the attention of the system, fewer minority children would enter the system in the first place.

It isn't until the family situation becomes worse and worse and worse and then there is some sort of crisis that involves physical abuse or something more serious that child protection gets involved…There would be a benefit and maybe you would avoid the crisis later on if you could give appropriate services for families earlier. (Supervisor)

One of the things that is a real impediment for us is that we are somewhat crisis oriented and it cuts down a lot on the plan for a thoughtful approach to constructing a service system. We're trying but it is really a hindrance when we are always kind of running ragged trying to prevent some imminent crisis from occurring. (Supervisor)

To shift the focus toward prevention successfully, families need access to quality, community-based services. In many cases, workers reported that their clients lived in communities that lacked basic resources and services, including safe and affordable housing, mental health and drug treatment, and employment and educational opportunities. As a result, clients either did not get services or were required to travel long distances to meet with service providers who were generally not culturally competent. Participants also felt that locating services within the community would help to empower the community, and that an empowered community would be better positioned to support at-risk families from entering the system.

We are now diverting families to community-based agencies where there are family advocates that go out and provide services. The goal is that they will not come back to our attention. They will get the services they need to remain intact and stable. (Supervisor)

Agencies that are really effective, are effective because they are rooted in the community... Agencies that are effective are rooted in the [ethnic] neighborhoods; they're seen as part of the community. It's seen as a place that people feel comfortable stepping up to. It's safe to walk inside their doors. You know they're going to get help there. They have that kind of reputation in the community. And then, when families walk inside the door, they see people that look like family. They're agencies that have come up out of communities of color. (Administrator)

Building public and private agency partnerships

Historically, the relationship between private and public child welfare agencies has been wrought with tension. The tension often stemmed from the perception that public and private agencies were in competition for clients. In addition, the service agendas of private and public agencies were often very different. Some individuals from the public arena felt that the public agency's job has always been to move families out of the system, while the private agencies, focused on profit and sustainability, were sometimes motivated to retain families for long-term services. Regardless of the validity of this explanation, it remains the case that in years past, the public and private agencies frequently operated without regard for one another. In recent years, public agencies have come to recognize the opportunities and resources that are available through new relationships with private agencies.

A lot of what we do now in terms of getting the community involved is our relationship with community providers that we contract with. About three-quarters of our work is done through contractor relationships. And we make the extra effort to recruit ethnically sensitive or ethnic specific provider organizations to work with a number of the families that we serve. And it works. It provides a level of support that families might not otherwise receive. (Supervisor)

In recent years, there has been an increased emphasis on comprehensive, collaborative service delivery at both the state and Federal levels. This, combined with recent reductions in service dollars, and an increasing recognition among service providers of an overlap in client populations across social service systems, has brought public and private agencies together. All nine of the agencies represented in this study currently have relationships with private child welfare agencies, including community-based and ethnic-oriented agencies. These relationships include both formal contractual relationships and informal referral-based ones. While it may not always have been the case, participants feel positively about their current relationships with other service providing agencies and, in most cases, report that it enhances their ability to do their job.

We had this backlog of kids on whom adoptions had not been finalized. And so, we contracted with [a private, African-American focused, adoption agency] and they assisted us. They really assisted us in finalizing those adoptions and finding adoptive homes for those children. It was extremely helpful. (Direct service worker)

I think the communication avenues that they've opened up between [the child welfare agency] and the courts and [other private agencies] and the schools are doing incredible things for our kids. They're really helping to move things along. And I think it's incredible.(Family court attorney)

One of the advantages of having relationships with private agencies is that they can be located within the community, especially the ethnic agencies. The location gives clients access to services that may be less intimidating than services located elsewhere because the providers understand the community's needs.

Additional resources

Overwhelmingly, participants across sites reported that they simply needed more resources to serve clients, including more time to spend with families, and more resources to support families to stay together, including such basic necessities as food, housing, employment, and child care options. Across sites, participants talked at length about the lack of resources and the implications for children and families.

I think the main issue is just having the resources available to meet the needs of our clients. We don't often have what they need and that hurts kids' chances of going home. (Direct service worker)

You ask, "Why are children over-represented?"...One of the problems is that you are really out there alone. You have no resources. You have a family that is homeless but there is no housing they can afford and you have nothing to offer them...A lot of the African-American community, we don't have services to offer them. We're losing a lot of our resources. Funding has cut a lot of resources for families. (Supervisor)

We have waiting lists that go on forever to get any kind of services, substance abuse, housing, domestic violence, parenting classes. And if you can't get the services in place within a specific timeframe, they'll pull the kids. (Direct service worker)

Participants in several agencies felt that minority families could be better served if there were more resources for supporting reunification, including more financial incentives for kin to provide temporary foster care, and in cases where children cannot return home, financial assistance for kin to adopt. Most workers perceived relative placements as a positive alternative to traditional foster care but also recognized the additional strain these placements could put on a sometimes already strained family.

Our approach to placement, preparation and recruitment is one way that we support families. The fact that we offer support after placement is important. When people know that they are going to get supported after placement, especially when they are taking on kin or kids that they know are going to be a challenge from the get-go, it makes a difference. We are not going to place them and leave them. It is all of that combined that does it. (Direct service worker)

How do we get the services and resources that those children will need to maintain those families until they grow into adulthood? There's a piece beyond, "Okay, we've now got homes for these children, we're out of it." As an agency, we've have limited dollars for adoption subsidies. We have limited dollars for post-adoption services, especially for kin, and what we do have we just piece-meal together. It's been a real struggle. (Administrator)

Finally, participants in two states reported that foster and adoptive families are resources that are critical for moving children out of the system, especially for older children. Unfortunately, many agencies continue to experience a lack of minority foster and adoptive families. Participants in both agencies reported having difficulty recruiting and maintaining minority foster and adoptive families and convincing non-minority families to take in minority children. Some participants thought African-American families might be less willing to adopt because many are single parents or are already caring for a sibling's child or an elderly family member. Participants did acknowledge that finding foster and adoptive families for children might not be the best way to serve minority families. However, in situations where a child can not go home, workers must focus on providing a permanent, stable, and safe home for that child and, unfortunately, for many African-American children, those homes do not exist. Foster and adoptive homes, then, are importance resources that are often lacking.

We need more homes, more African-American homes, especially for children 14 and older. It's just the way it is. We would do much better by these kids if we had more homes. We just need more homes. (Supervisor)

We also need to increase the numbers of appropriate families willing to look at these [minority] kids... If you look at the number of African-American families that we've received [foster or adoption] inquiries on versus the number of Anglo families versus the number of Hispanic families, you'll see that, in particular, African-American families are not looking to foster or adopt. (Direct service worker)

Agency-related factors

Participants also talked about agency-related factors that would assist them to perform their jobs more effectively and, in doing so, would result in better services for children and families. Specifically, participants noted issues related to staff and administrative support.

Staff issues

There are many different perspectives about what cultural competence means and what relationship it has to effective practice. In this context, participants agreed that cultural competence meant having a diverse workforce that was representative of the population being served and that, regardless of race, could understand and appreciate cultural differences and similarities within and among groups. While participants did not necessarily feel that supervisors needed to practice race matching when assigning cases, they did feel strongly that non-minority workers needed to be well versed and open-minded to issues related to the particular culture of the client to whom they had been assigned. Participants talked about training and diversifying the staff as potential solutions to increasing its cultural competence. They also noted the importance of finding mechanisms to assess workers on issues related to race and ethnicity before they are hired, such as screening tools or specific interview questions that address issues related to the racial and ethnic make-up of the client population.

I think it's critical to have diverse staff because we're not the only ones involved in the decision making, especially after removal. And if we don't have staff that have an understanding of the cultural and can correct the misconceptions of these other people, then regardless of where we stand on the case, if the judge or someone else sees it differently, the decisions that are ultimately made may not be what we think should happen. (Administrator)

I do honestly think that getting people to understand and appreciate cultural differences and how to work within that context is an effective strategy that's in the best interest of the families; that is what we need to focus on and workers need to have it continually drilled into their heads. We also need that message being brought down from senior management that that is where we are going [toward cultural competence]. We need to be more about serving our community in a way that is amenable to our communities. (Supervisor)

In several sites, participants perceived that a lack of training and experience among workers frequently resulted in culturally insensitive practices among them. To explain this, some noted the lack of colleges and universities that offer courses that prepare students for work with racially diverse groups (except for social work programs which, according to some participants, have courses that emphasize culturally sensitive practice). They also noted the lack of exposure some workers, including both Caucasian and minority staff, have had to people outside of their own racial or ethnic group. This lack of exposure limits their ability to understand the context of other cultures and can result in biased decision-making against certain racial or ethnic groups. For example, participants in three states talked about the role of discipline in African-American families and how someone without exposure to the African-American community might confuse discipline with abuse and poverty with neglect.

A lot of times, when the schools call in their report, the children have explained to them why they received a spanking or why the mother may have spanked them with a belt. And they explain it to the social worker and it still gets substantiated. The way I look at it, why isn't that social worker seeing what really happened or what might have happened and how she can help that family instead of opening a CPS case on them? It is not always abuse and the workers should know that. (Direct service worker)

Participants also talked about the assumptions that are sometimes made about clients who live in certain neighborhoods, with workers associating certain neighborhoods and, therefore, certain clients, generally minority clients, with drug use and violence. In cases where workers perceive that the neighborhood is unsafe or unsuitable, they might be more likely to substantiate a case and then place the child in foster care outside of the community. According to participants, workers who engage in this practice are using it as a means to ensure that they do not have to go into certain neighborhoods for home visits, not because it is the best placement for the child.

So these workers [that grew up in affluent communities], what they see in delivering services or investigating an African-American home is real different from someone who may have grown up in the inner city. And then their sense of how to assess risk if these children are at risk is real different from someone who has been a part of a minority group, and understanding their culture, not being shocked at seeing impoverished circumstances. Their assessment of that situation is going to be real different from someone who has not been exposed to that and their decision-making and assessment of risk is going to be different. (Administrator)

Finally, across all sites workers reported that hiring more workers and reducing caseloads would improve the delivery of services not only to families of color but to all families. Across the board, workers talked about feeling pressured for time to spend with families, make good decisions and complete paperwork in a timely and efficient manner. In fact, some participants felt that they spend more time engaged in administrative tasks than they did working with families or that they feel pressure to trade administrative tasks for practice or practice for administrative tasks, but always lacking sufficient time for either task. These issues, coupled with the demand of working with families that are experiencing a variety of serious problems, including substance abuse, mental illness, and homelessness, resulted in workers feeling overwhelmed, burned out, and subsequently, concerned about the quality of service provision.

Well, we need more workers to do what we want to do, which is to help families. (Supervisor)

We need more workers so we can work with our families longer and with more intensity. (Direct service worker)

We need more staff because it's like you come into the emergency room and you get a band-aid and you go back out in the world. Because of the numbers [of cases], we cannot spend quality time that is really needed with families and children, to keep children out of care. (Direct service worker)

Administrative support

Recognizing the importance of a strong relationship between an agency's administration and its work force, the administration of agencies in three states talked about their efforts to improve services by improving the work environment.

Specifically, they talked about the importance of an agency infrastructure that includes experienced workers, proper supervision and oversight, strong peer relationships, and manageable caseloads. They felt that a strong agency infrastructure could reduce disproportionality by allowing supervisors and workers alike to do their jobs more effectively. If supervisors are able to supervise properly, then workers will be able to do their jobs more effectively, leading to better outcomes for children and families, including fewer children coming into the system in the first place.

This is about effective management...When you think about this as new or emerging practices within the field, I am [talking about] new or emerging management practices that help to strengthen any operation. [Our staff] felt that the leadership was disconnected, that we couldn't bring our staff high enough due to turnover. [The agency administration] did not have appreciation for the challenge of the job, did not have appreciate for how community decisions are actually made, that people felt that they couldn't participate in the system... We were going to build real conduits between top administrators and front-line workers that could really facilitate the exchange of ideas, improve services to families. (Administrator)

Our ratio of child protection workers to their supervisors is too high... If we could get it down to eight child protection workers to one supervisor, that would give supervisors much more time to focus on coaching and supporting staff on a whole broad variety of issues... The lower ratio also helps us get at these attitudinal issues so that if a supervisor picks up that a social worker has a punitive attitude, they can begin to turn that around... This is what can help improve disproportionality. (Administrator)

Clearly infrastructure (e.g., experienced workers, proper supervision and oversight, strong peer relationships, and manageable caseloads) and administrative support is important because, in places where participants felt disconnected from the administration and its decisions, job performance was affected. For example, in one state, staff reported feeling isolated from the decisions that were being made by the administration and, as a result, felt there were unrealistic expectations placed on supervisors and workers. Supervisors, in particular, talked about how it was difficult for them to see the big picture or understand the rationale behind administrative decisions if they were lacking important information regarding changes in practice or policy.

I don't feel like a manager... I really feel like a glorified worker. Because the expectation is that if [the workers] can't do it, [the administration] is telling us that we ought to do it. If they can't go to court, we have to go to court. If they can't go out and investigate, we have to go out there. In the past, we were able to delegate, and the workers were expecting us to be out in the field supervising. It's just more difficult now and I don't understand [the administration's] reasoning behind it. (Supervisor)

In addition, workers in one location talked at length about on-going budgetary constraints and the closing of a regional office. These were issues they did not understand but that were having a serious impact on their work performance. The perceived lack of information regarding the decision to close the regional office, coupled with the loss of income, employment opportunities, and peer relationships for those involved, contributed significantly to the negative feelings workers expressed during discussions.

In addition, supervisors and workers often felt an underlying sense of mistrust toward the administration when it came to media cases. In response to several attacks by the media, supervisors in three states reported feeling pressure from the administration to scrutinize workers decisions more carefully. According to the workers, this increased scrutiny often left them feeling that they could not be trusted to make good decisions and fearful that if they made a decision that resulted in further harm to a child, the administration would not support them.

To me, I can follow policy to the letter, and if a kid dies, I am not going to feel comfortable with my decision... It may be a kid in a family where the worker has established a relationship, they're visiting the family every week, and they've established a relationship with that child, and the child dies. But instead of showing compassion for the worker, [the administration] is like, "what did you do wrong?"... It seems like you can never do anything 100 percent right, even if there's no repercussions. It's just the stress level... If there is an incident where a kid dies, it is already assumed that you did something wrong. (Supervisor)

While issues related to staff and administrative support may not directly influence the over-representation of minority children in the system, there is evidence that they affect it indirectly. When staff are not culturally sensitive, the agency infrastructure is weak, and workers lack the confidence they need to make informed decisions regarding cases, both the work environment in general, and the quality of services provided are compromised. When services are compromised, it is not just families of color that are affected. All families are affected.

What is necessary to reduce over-representation?

After asking participants to talk about changes in policies, procedures or practices that would assist them to serve children and families of color better, they were asked to focus the discussion around the following topic: What types of services, programs, and policies do you think would be necessary to reduce over-representation? The responses fell out into two categories: resources for clients, both external and internal to the agency, and developing community connections.

It is important to note that there is some overlap in responses to this topic and the one preceding it (What policies, procedures or practices would assist your agency to serve children and families of color better?). In both cases, participants talked about the need for resources, both external and internal to the child welfare agency, to serve children and families. They also placed particular emphasis on the need for preventive and community-based services, and to build collaborative relationships with other service-providing agencies. While the overlap may be related to the salience of these issues to the participants, it also may be the case that the two questions were similar enough in nature to elicit similar responses.

External resources for clients

Related to the perception that poverty and poverty-related issues are two primary explanations for over-representation, participants linked the availability of resources, again, preventive resources, for clients to a decrease in over-representation. Specifically, participants referred to the importance of having access to resources external to the agency to help support families to stay together, including adequate housing, educational and employment opportunities, quality child-care services, and financial support. They also discussed the importance of ancillary services, including community-based drug treatment and mental health services, in keeping families stable and children out of the system. According to some workers, if every family had equal access to these resources, over-representation would take care of itself because fewer children would come into the system in the first place.

I think moms need more health services now but we can't find those services. We have very poor quality substance abuse treatment; it's almost a joke. And you [have] a lot of other stuff going on that if we could help, we would keep them out of the system. The quality of service in our area [a predominantly African-American community] is just so lacking. (Supervisor)

If I could fix it, I would put some child care facilities in place that don't charge families so that they can put their child in a safe environment, so they can go and get job training, and they can look for employment, and they can go to work, so that they can have the money they need to do what they need to do to support their family. I would put some facilities in place within their communities where they can go and get some support services. Those are some things that I think would matter [to keeping African-American families out of the system]. (Supervisor)

While tangible resources are important, many participants also talked about the importance of addressing larger, more systemic issues such as the lack of information, advocacy and power they often see in their African-American clients. In two states, participants commented frequently that African-Americans did not know their rights when it comes to social service systems, and have neither the power nor the information they need to advocate for themselves when the child welfare system knocks on their door. Participants gave examples of situations involving Caucasian families where parents, when confronted by the child welfare system, not only knew that they had the right to an attorney but exercised that right immediately. Without knowing their rights, African-American parents were unable to do the same (although it is unclear why this disparity exists and why Caucasian families are better advocates for themselves than are African-American families). In other reported cases, African-American mothers were unaware of hospital confidentiality and consent policies and so submitted to drug tests without having given prior consent. Participants in one of the states talked about cases in which mothers did know that consent was required for drug testing but, too frightened and intimidated to resist, they complied regardless of their desire to do otherwise.

Similarly, once involved with the system, African-American clients are much less likely to know how to negotiate it, especially when it comes to the courts. The most commonly cited example was the assignment of public defenders to minority clients that cannot afford to hire a private attorney, a very common situation. Overwhelmingly participants reported that private attorneys will do a lot more work for their clients than will public defenders and that parents who are assigned public defenders are at a distinct disadvantage, especially in terms of whether the children will go home or not. According to some participants, children are less likely to go home in families represented by public defenders.

Those clients [that are given public defenders] are given an injustice. When they come into the system, where their children are taken away from them for various reasons, most of them are given a public defender, and that's an injustice to the client... Now, you bring someone else, someone of a different race or someone that's middle class, and they come in here with their attorney, and their attorney really looks out for their rights. These poor people don't have anybody to look out for them. The public defender may say, "I'm going to help you" but they have to tell their story to 10 people every time they go to court and that's unfair. That's one of the worst things that happens to our kids... When you take protective custody, and I get to court, if we have a private attorney, those kids are going back home. (Supervisor)

In addition, there was some discussion among participants in three states regarding the social stigma attached to poverty and how that plays out in the courtroom. Many workers felt that, regardless of the quality of the legal representation, the negative stigma associated with poverty often resulted in differential outcomes in court for African-American and non-minority families, with minority families losing their children more often than white families.

I don't know the extent that socioeconomic [factors] play [a role], but I do see it in my section in intake and the courtroom. The people who are socio-economically disadvantaged, they get whatever they get in terms of legal representation, and then the families that happen to be socio-economically advantaged, they tend to bring in private attorneys. And it is very clear when there is a private attorney in there versus a public defender versus a court appointed attorney. The private attorneys will do, in my opinion, a lot more work for the clients than the other attorneys. (Supervisor)

Participants also expressed frustration at their powerlessness to do anything to change these issues for their clients. They talked about empowering African-American communities but recognized that this solution was complex and multi-faceted and, most important, out of the control of the child welfare agency.

I think it is really more about politics than anything else...We have to empower communities but that's difficult. [The child welfare system] can only do so much and that's really limited. (Supervisor)

Agency resources for clients

In addition to addressing issues and resources external to the child welfare agency, participants talked about additional client resources within the child welfare agency, especially monetary resources, as critical to addressing over-representation. One of the issues most frequently discussed by participants was the need for financial incentives and resources for foster and adoptive families, particularly for kinship care providers. Because kinship care practice is one of the oldest traditions in African-American culture, many African-American children who do not live with their parents are already living in informal kinship placements with grandparents or other kin. While the informal practice of kinship care keeps children out of child welfare system, the lack of resources for formal kinship placements often means that families are either not able to take children in at all or are unable to take in additional children when formal placements are necessary. Participants felt confident that family members, including those already involved in informal kinship care, would be more likely to foster and adopt children if financial support and other resources were available.

If we looked at policy changes, I would want us to look at kinship care. Because a lot of the family members that we have been involved with, who might actually be a good resource for children, are not financially able to do it. Or they agree to take it on and find out later that they really can't do it financially. If we increased financial support and assistance to these families... I think we'd have less disruption in the placements that we put them in. (Supervisor)

In addition to incentives to foster and adopt, families also need ongoing post-adoption support services. In two states, workers reported that foster care subsidies are available only to families that are fostering children and are terminated once a family adopts. Once they adopt, families also lose contact with their foster care worker and access to a variety of supportive services—resources they depend on when children are acting out or need emotional support. Participants felt that these restrictions reduced the number of families willing to adopt but that on-going financial and supportive assistance to adoptive families, post-adoption, would increase the number of permanent placements available for African-American children, helping move them out of the system more quickly.

One of the issues that we really struggle with is financial disincentives for relatives or foster parents who want to adopt children. We are pretty generous with our foster care rates... but we have relatives that cannot afford to adopt children and so they don't get permanency for that very reason. So then we get frustrated with them because they won't commit to adopt but really, it is [because] they cannot afford it... People are already struggling and then they take on more... Support those kin with more funding, more services and I guarantee you will get more minorities willing to adopt. (Supervisor)

Community connections

Participants in all sites felt that developing relationships with communities and partnerships with community-based systems and agencies was another important mechanism for reducing over-representation, re-emphasizing the need to establish collaborative and contractual relationships with ethnic and community-based agencies to provide services to minority families. In this context, however, participants talked about moving beyond the provision of community-based services, focusing instead on establishing real connections with minority communities.

[As an agency], we have a real obligation to step forward and be a catalyst and bring community members together with us as partners. To begin to look at what can we do in partnership and how can we use natural supports in the communities, like churches and neighborhood groups, and those types of things. How do we empower [communities] to support families and how do we connect families with those natural resources? (Administrator)

Participants recognized that one way to establish relationships with minority communities was to engage community leaders. Community leaders, whether formal or informal, are often community experts, especially in the African-American communities. Leaders are often individuals that have lived in the community for decades and, as a result, have a great deal of knowledge regarding the community. They know what goes on in the community, including where the problems and resources exist, and often have long-standing relationships with families and local organizations and agencies. Because of their standing in the community, there are a number of ways leaders can assist the child welfare community. They can assist workers to understand the culture and dynamics of the community. This information can help workers decide how best to approach and engage families in social services. In addition, aligning themselves with local leaders may give workers the credibility they need to access and engage family members. Because community members often look to local leaders for guidance, community members may feel more comfortable initiating contact with a child welfare worker if they know the leaders are supportive of the agency's practices.

I think it's crucial that our services are community-based... close to where the people live so they can access them and we can be part of the community... And to really work with community leaders in trying to understand what families need and providing services to families... really reaching out and looking at community leaders as the experts and try to work together with them to connect with families. (Direct service worker)

Once the child welfare community had established relationships and credibility in minority communities, participants felt that they might have new opportunities to work within the community, including educating community members about the mission of child welfare and working proactively with families. Participants acknowledged that partnering with the community would likely be difficult, especially in light of the fact that clients can have preconceived ideas about child welfare workers, based on misinformation and misunderstanding, just as easily as workers can have them about clients.

Partnering with the community is tough because you first have to get through all those sort of miscommunications and misunderstandings and lack of understanding and lack of knowledge [about the child welfare system]. But, then, once you get through all that, it usually pays off. It helps us provide better services because we get input from the community. (Supervisor)

For example, one worker talked about her experience venturing into certain minority communities and how, regardless of her mission, people automatically thought she was there to cart off their kids. Participants felt that if they could get close enough to the community they could educate them about the system, dispelling long-standing myths of the child welfare agency as baby-snatcher and helping them to see that the system could be a resource to them, not just an enemy. Also, by increasing their knowledge about the system and related systems and services, workers could build the community's capacity to respond to children and families in need.

I think that when planning for services and programs for families... it should be more about connecting with the community, with community agencies that are out there, community organizations and just being more hands-on with the community. And not just saying, well, here's how we're going to address the disparity issues, "we're going to hire more black staff." We need to be out in the community. (Direct service worker)

Establishing community connections also is important because it can assist workers to learn about and take advantage of existing community resources, something many workers report knowing very little about. For example, because the church is central to the African-American culture, it can often be a tremendous resource to the child welfare system. Church leaders are often part of the informal community leadership structure and can help workers identify and help families that may be struggling. In addition, the church often has financial resources and services, such as faith-based counseling, that families can access right in their own community. In addition, because recruiting more families of color to adopt is essential to reduce the numbers of waiting children, and because the church has such strong ties within the community, churches can provide an important opportunity for recruiting African-American foster and adoptive parents. This has been the premise on which such practices as One Church, One Child have been built. As a result, many agencies have incorporated a faith-based component to their recruitment efforts. Because of its strong ties to the community, the church has become an important resource for recruiting African-American foster and adoptive families.

One of the things I'm hoping we can be a part of is a real faith-based initiative in the community... There are social services that exist within many of our temples, and churches, and synagogues... and particularly within the African-American community... I would love to see the faith community... taking on the charge of recruiting and certifying foster and adoptive families and providing support for families in the community so that they can identify fictive kin for our children and keep our children home and supported. (Administrator)

Finally, workers in one of the sites talked about giving power back to the communities. Instead of providing services to the community, they felt that the child welfare agencies could redirect some of its financial resources to local agencies and organizations, including faith-based groups, to empower them to find solutions to their own problems, including supporting their own families. While the workers recognized that there might always be a need for a formal child welfare system, they felt that the system could reduce over-representation and better serve communities by re-building them instead of trying to fix them.

4.3 RESPONDING TO CHILDREN AND FAMILIES OF COLOR: PROMISING PROGRAMS AND PRACTICES

The previous two sections were focused on participants' perceptions. Specifically, they were focused on the types of practices, strategies, activities, and policies participants reported as necessary to improve the delivery of services to children and families of color and to reduce over-representation. This section is focused on the actual programs, practices, and strategies that agencies are implementing to both reduce over-representation and meet the needs children and families of color. To examine these, participants discussed the following topic: What has your agency done to improve the delivery of services to children and families of color?

It is important to note that given the exploratory nature of this study, participants were not asked to differentiate between programs, practices, or strategies that were designed to improve the delivery of services to all children and families and those that were designed to reduce over-representation. Agencies also were required not to provide empirical evidence of a program's success. The goal of this study was simply to get input from the field regarding the types of programs, practices, and strategies they had implemented to improve services to children and families of color. In some cases, however, agencies had instituted programs, practices or strategies to improve services to all children and families, regardless of race or ethnicity. While some of the strategies presented here may ultimately reduce over-representation, it is beyond the scope of this study to identify and empirically document them.

Agencies have responded in several ways to improve the delivery of services to minority families. Some agencies are implementing new programs and practices, including prevention programs and recruitment and support efforts for minority foster and adoptive families. Other agencies had initiated system change efforts designed to modify or change policies, practices, procedures or relations between child welfare agencies and related systems to improve operations and services. System reform efforts include: increasing collaboration and coordination between the child welfare and other child-welfare serving agencies, establishing judicial reform, and decentralizing staff into the schools, courts, and community-based agencies. Other agencies have formed task forces or collaborative boards to examine the issue of minority over-representation and identify strategies to reduce it. Finally, agencies also have attempted to enhance agency practices, including providing culturally specific training to staff, and hiring more minority front-line workers and supervisors. These strategies are outlined in more detail in the following section.

Prevention programs

When asked how agencies can better serve children and families of color in the child welfare system, many participants felt strongly that providing more prevention or front-end services was the answer. Specifically, participants felt that prevention services would keep children from entering the system. Fewer children in the system would mean smaller caseloads for workers. Smaller caseloads would allow workers to spend more time with families and to focus limited resources on families that need them the most. In this way, children and families would be better served. Two agencies described prevention programs they had undertaken.

Alternative response systems. Consistent with an emphasis on prevention services, one of the Minnesota sites is implementing two prevention programs in an effort to reduce the number of minority families coming into the system. The first, the Alternative Response System, also being implemented by the California site (and in other agencies nationwide), is an intensive, voluntary prevention program designed to identify and engage at-risk families before they come to the attention of the formal child welfare system.

Program staff work with community-based agencies to identify families but families also are identified through more traditional means, such as hotline calls. Once identified, families are approached and offered assistance. Once they agree to participate, the staff person works with them to identify their needs and develop a plan for service. For example, in many cases parents need parenting classes so those will become part of the service plan. Similarly, if children need counseling, they will be referred to community-based ethnic agencies for services. If the family refuses services, however, the worker can refer the case back to the formal agency for further investigation. The agency contracts with local ethnic based agencies for services because it allows families to receive culturally appropriate services in their own community, and reduce the stigma attached with child welfare involvement. Agency staff reported feeling that the program is less punitive, less blaming and more family-friendly than traditional agency practice.

The same Minnesota site also is supporting the SchoolsFirst program, which provides casework services to struggling families. Developed to enhance school achievement and reduce neglect by providing family support, the program assigns culturally appropriate caseworkers to families who then work with them in their homes to identify needs and negotiate services.

Recruitment and support efforts for minority foster and adoptive parents. Since the passage of ASFA and its focus on permanency, many agencies have implemented strategies to increase adoption and other permanency options for children. In an effort to achieve permanency for children, several agencies are implementing programs targeted toward creating and supporting adoption options for minority families, including recruitment efforts, and strategies to provide financial support to kinship care providers who have assumed guardianship for a relative's child. The sites in Illinois, Texas, California, North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and Minnesota have programs that are designed to increase the recruitment and retention of African-American foster and adoptive families.

In several cases, agencies have partnered with the community to implement culturally specific recruitment efforts. In the Illinois site, HOTEP or Holding on to Every Person is a culturally- and community-based recruitment program designed to increase the numbers of licensed minority foster and adoptive families. The program's primary goal is to promote reunification by placing children in their own communities, preferably with family members, and then supporting the parents and the extended family to work toward reunification. A secondary goal, for those families in which reunification is not possible, is to keep the child as close to his or her family of origin as possible by supporting extended family members or individuals who live in the child's community to adopt. Although the program has recently been curtailed due to funding issues, the program's sponsors are optimistic that they can both find the resources to fully implement the program and that it will promote positive results for children, families, and communities of color.

The child welfare agency in Virginia works collaboratively with One Church, One Child to reduce the number of African-American children in out of home placements. Created in 1985 by the Virginia Department of Social Services and a group of Virginia clergy, the One Church, One Child program has specific responsibility for recruiting families to adopt African-American children out of the child welfare system. Sponsored by an independent agency, the program not only has contracts with the Department of Social Services but also houses a Department-employed child welfare worker within their agency. Built on a collaborative model of service delivery, these recruitment efforts are conducted statewide, with agencies strategically placed throughout the state to facilitate adoptions within those specific regions.

A program similar in its mission to One Church, One Child, the Roots program, a grassroots program based in Georgia, is a private adoption agency that is used by the state of Georgia for recruitment of families for adoptive children. It places all children, but is focused on placing African-American children. Their goal is to decrease the over representation of African-American children in Georgia's foster care system. Using an Afro-centric approach, Roots recruits, prepares and supports prospective adoptive parents who can appropriately meet the needs of children who have been abused, abandoned and neglected. Roots recently moved its offices from a commercial area to a house located in the community to be more integrated into one of the communities it serves.

Texas has two recruitment efforts, both of which are collaborative. The Collaborative Adoptive Network (CAN) is a collaboration between the child welfare agency and several other community-based agencies, such as Casey Family Programs, the Children's Shelter of Texas, and Methodist Family and Rehabilitative Services, to name a few. Developed in response to the lack of minority adoptive families, and funded by a grant from the Kronkosky Foundation, CAN is a recruitment effort targeted at finding and recruiting families of color for children waiting to be adopted, including children with physical, emotional or psychological limitations. Once recruited, CAN provides support to children and their adoptive families during every phase of the adoption process, including post-adoption support services. The other recruitment effort is called Project Ujima. Based on the Swahili word for collective work and responsibility, Project Ujima brings together stakeholders from the African-American communities around the major city in which it is being implemented. Together, they plan and implement culturally specific and community-focused strategies to raise awareness in African-American communities of the issues facing minority families in the child welfare system, and to identify and strategically recruit minority adoptive families.

Texas also has implemented a post-adoption support program to provide education, social support and financial assistance to relative caregivers. In the Comprehensive Relative Enhancement Support and Training (CREST) program in Texas, a collaborative effort with Casey Family Programs, kinship care providers receive services similar to those provided to licensed foster care providers, although financial assistance is more limited. The program began in 1997 as a three-year kinship care demonstration project to increase the number of kinship placements, strengthen kinship placements to decrease the number of disruptions, and reduce the cost of substitute care by encouraging relative care placements. The program has been continued in its city of origin after an evaluation of the project showed that it made notable progress towards each of its objectives, including that the program is highly cost effective. Interestingly, because the program has been so successful, instead of seeking term-limited grant funds to support the CREST worker, the agency opted instead to reallocate existing funds to support the position. An agency administrator reported that by doing so the agency sent a message that it supports kinship care and also secured the program's future within the agency. Workers involved in the program are hoping it will be implemented statewide.

Systems change efforts. In addition to new programs, agencies also are implementing system change or reform efforts. System change efforts are those system- or agency-wide efforts designed to modify or change policies, practices, procedures or relations of child welfare agencies and related systems to improve operations. Operations include decision-making, service delivery, and collaboration and coordination between agencies and social service systems to improve outcomes for child-welfare involved children and families.

Two sites, those in Illinois and California, have implemented system reform strategies that have resulted in the provision of financial support to kinship care providers. In Illinois, through a Federal government waiver, local child welfare agencies now have the option of transitioning relatives that are caring for children to legal guardian status, and to provide them with higher payments than they would receive from child-only TANF payments. Illinois also recently modified the definition of relative to include second cousins and godparents, a significant change for children of color. Because they are now considered relatives, second cousins and godparents are eligible to receive financial and other supports targeted for kinship care providers. The California site is implementing KinGap, a program that provides financial assistance to relative care providers, again, as in the Illinois site, with income above and beyond what they would receive from child-only TANF payments. The California site also has started using state tax revenues that are targeted for children's services to fund kinship and family support centers for relative care providers.

A small rural site in North Carolina has experienced significant systematic reform due to the Families for Kids Initiative, which has been continued with federal, state, and county funds since the ending of their original grant. The overall philosophy of the child welfare agency changed with the initiation of this effort. For example, their goal was to place children in a permanent setting within one year, and to have children only experience one placement prior to permanency. To accomplish these permanency goals, they instituted several changes in practice. First, they now conduct a family conference (called Family Assessments in their agency) on every family with a substantiated case of child maltreatment. Thus, they have brought family members, neighbors and friends, the religious community, professional helpers, and other interested parties to meetings to discuss safety plans and permanency options for children. They also focus on the well being of the child, documenting the child's current functioning and ensuring that appropriate child-oriented services are in place. These meetings occur intensively at the beginning of a family's involvement with the agency and then continue regularly until the identified child receives a permanent placement. Concurrent planning is an integral part of this process; relatives and other members of the family's social network are targeted as potential permanent placements for the children early in the case.

This agency has also changed its organizational structure so that children who become involved in the child welfare system remain with the same staff team, whether they are in the protective, preventive, foster care, or adoption end of the service delivery spectrum. They also use a standardized risk assessment to assist in decisions about substantiation and placement, which staff perceive as reducing the numbers of minority children who may be brought into the system for subjective reasons. Additionally, their targeted recruitment of foster and adoptive families for minority children has increased. In line with this, they began to use relatives, fictive kin (i.e. unrelated persons who have a close relationship with the family), and more diverse foster families (e.g. single parents, low-income parents) as placement options for these children. They also have a foster-adopt model, so that foster parents are encouraged to adopt legally available children in their care. Their philosophy is that all children deserve permanency, so they do not stop recruiting for a home for a particular child until the child ages out of the system. They also made a commitment to keep children in placements within their county so that reunification efforts would not be thwarted by distance. Finally, they worked to reduce the numbers of children in group placements to a minimum, and to reduce the numbers of children discharged from group homes due to infractions. Importantly, the Families for Kids effort included an evaluation, which documented that this site had accomplished most of their goals and had indeed reduced the racial disproportionality in their child welfare system.

Collaboration and contract services. To serve minority clients better and reduce over-representation, agencies also are increasing the frequency with which they collaborate and contract with community-based agencies for services, another form of system reform. While most of the nine agencies had formal contracts with outside service providers, participants in Illinois, Virginia, and Minnesota identified contracts with ethnic- and other child-welfare serving agencies to provide foster care, adoption, and support services to minority clients as a major resource to them.

The Illinois site, for example, has a contract with the Nation of Islam to recruit and support case aides to work with child-welfare involved Muslim families. The agency also maintains contracts with several other African-American and Hispanic agencies to provide a wide range of culturally appropriate services, including substance abuse, mental health and support services, to meet the needs of their minority clients.

The Virginia site has several contracts with local private agencies to provide support services to child welfare workers and clients, but the primary one is with a local private social service agency called Collaborators-II (C-2). Recognizing the potential for staff burn-out, the administration initiated the contract to assist child welfare workers to perform their responsibilities more effectively by providing them with support services and training opportunities. To this end, C-2 provides case planning and adoption studies for families involved in the child welfare system. This service takes some of the burden off the child welfare staff, allowing them more time to complete paperwork or work with families.

C-2 also is responsible for developing and delivering training sessions on a variety of child-welfare related topics to agency staff. Because of the nature and intensity of their work, too often child welfare staff miss out on training opportunities. This aspect of the contract brings the training to the agency and helps agency staff stay on top of current trends in child welfare policies, practices, and related issues. While there are no hard data at this time, participants from both the child welfare agency and C-2 report that these activities have consistently reduced the over-representation of minority families in the system. The Virginia site also maintains service contracts with two of the local faith-based agencies, one to assist in finding foster and adoptive homes for African-American children, and the other to provide child welfare and support services to agency-involved families.

In Georgia, an exciting program for community partnering exists to which the Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS) is very much committed. The Community Partnership for Protecting Children (CPPCP) works in partnership with the local East Point Community Action Team (EPCAT) to protect children who reside in communities that have been identified by DFCS as having a high number of children involved with child protective services. Supported with funds from the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, this collaboration is aimed at building the community's capacity to protect children and keep them from entering the system. EPCAT provides concrete services (e.g., housing, consumable goods, emergency financial assistance) to families at-risk and engages the community in supporting them to keep their children or to facilitate reunification. DFCS also has placed a worker (who considers herself a community organizer) in the EPCAT office so that she can be closer to the community she serves. In this role, she works with the schools, churches, police, and other agencies in the community to set up prevention programs. She also works to facilitate the delivery of services and goods to families identified as at-risk for abuse or neglect, and provides on-site counseling and crisis intervention to families at-risk.

Agencies also are responding by decentralizing staff, getting them out of the agency and into the schools, courts, and community-based agencies.

According to participants in the agencies that are decentralizing staff, this strategy allows workers to educate other social service systems and communities about the child welfare system, which can reduce the number of inappropriate referrals to the agency. It also brings the workers closer to those who need them. For example, the site in Virginia has placed two workers in the courts to help provide a link between the department and the court system, and placed another worker in the school from which a high number of referrals are received by the agency. They also have a worker who has been placed with a private adoption agency to oversee and facilitate placements for agency-involved children. The Georgia site has decentralized its offices to different locations throughout the county to provide better working conditions for staff and easier access to services for clients. The site also has a staff person located in the court to help build a strong relationship between the agency and the courts. The Texas site has an office located in the court staffed with workers from the agency. The agency also has placed a worker in an ethnic-based community service center, which happens to be housed in the neighborhood from which the agency receives the majority of its cases. Not only has the worker been able to see her clients more regularly, but also, now that the worker is in the community center rather than the agency, her clients actually come to her before problems arise or when they are feeling particularly vulnerable or in need of support.

Councils on over-representation. Some agencies have responded to the issue of over-representation by developing and implementing coalitions, councils or other collaborative boards to examine the issue of over-representation, and problem-solve ways to reduce it. The California site has two such councils, the African-American Council and the Spanish Speaking Council. They also have the African-American Advisory and Advocacy Board. Developed in the early 90s, at a time when the agency's staff was overwhelmingly white and the client population overwhelmingly African-American, the Board, composed solely of child welfare staff, came together to examine ways to develop and maintain a culturally diverse and culturally competent staff. The members of the council take pride in the contribution they have made to the agency. For example, since 1996, their efforts have increased the number of African-American workers employed by the agency by 13 percent, as well as the number of African-American supervisors and senior managers.

The Texas site has two such councils. The Diversity Council is an interagency council responsible for ensuring that staff are culturally sensitivity, and the agency supports practices that represent the interests of minority groups, including, for example, recruiting and hiring African-American and Spanish-speaking staff. The Collaborative Adoption Network (CAN), as described above, is a collaborative council composed of representatives from the child welfare agency and several other community-based agencies whose mission it is to find and recruit families of color for children awaiting adoption. While numbers are not yet available, members of the CAN report that their efforts have increased the number of minority adoptions through the child welfare agency and other private adoption agencies.

Finally, Michigan has the Minority Over-representation Think Tank. Formed because of a mutual concern on the part of multiple agencies and service providers regarding the number of African-American children in foster and residential care, the Think Tank is devoted to identifying factors responsible for minority over-representation that are internal to the child welfare system. The group comprises individuals, mostly at the administrative level, with extensive experience working in the child welfare system; particularly in communities that are predominantly minority or that have an over-representation of minority children in the system.

Agency practices. Agencies also have responded to improving the delivery of services to minority families by focusing on agency practices. Specifically, they have been implementing practices related to the training and supervision of staff, as well as implementing hiring practices designed to diversify the staff to represent the client population better.

Most state-administered systems sponsor a training program that is mandatory for new workers. In California, Virginia, Texas, and Minnesota this mandatory training includes a cultural competency component. In the Texas, California and Minnesota sites, the local or regional agency also sponsors its own culturally specific training, which is generally offered on an ongoing basis and is specific to the groups represented locally. In Texas, workers are required to attend cultural diversity training that is designed to raise their awareness of issues related to specific racial and ethnic groups. In addition, the agency offers optional classes throughout the year on specific ethnic groups and related issues. For example, one optional class was designed to teach workers about Mexican American families, including information regarding their religious and cultural holidays. While these classes are optional, workers are required to maintain a certain number of cultural training hours each year.

One of the Minnesota sites provides a range of training that covers issues related to a variety of racial and ethnic groups and also provides staff with an annual stipend that can be applied to outside training. Staff are encouraged to use this money to improve their knowledge of local racial and ethnic groups. The other Minnesota site also offers local training to its workers. Because this site is located in such a diverse county, on-going cultural competency training is imperative to effective service delivery. In the last year, this site has sponsored training sessions on issues related to Hmong, Mongolian and Somali families. The California site also offers its own training which includes components on ethics and values. The Ethics and Values training not only teaches the specifics of working with different racial and ethnic groups but also includes a large component that is focused on assisting workers to recognize their own biases and finding ways to control them while working towards minimizing them.

Staff diversity. Several agency administrators reported that effective practice begins with staff diversity or a staff that reflects the population served by the agency. As a result, they were implementing efforts specifically designed to diversify their staff.

The administration in Texas is committed to diversifying its staff. Administrators talked at length about the importance of having a diverse staff especially in response to a diverse client population. Located in a predominantly Hispanic community, the agency has little trouble recruiting and retaining Hispanic staff. They do, however, have difficulty finding African-American staff. This is not because they have not tried. They have several initiatives in place to reach out to the African-American community. One such program is an internship program targeted toward African-American social work students. Coordinated through the local university and supported by the child welfare agency, the internship provides qualified students with the opportunity for paid employment with the child welfare agency and financial assistance for tuition support. For the last three years, however, the internship position has not been filled. While discouraged by this, the administration continues to set aside the funds for the position each year because, with a large Hispanic and African-American client population, they are aware of the issues related to providing quality, culturally appropriate services to minority clients. Until they fill the internship position, they will continue to search for alternative strategies to recruit and maintain African-American staff and to implement culturally appropriate practices and programs.

The administration in the California site also is committed to diversifying its staff. After coming under fire for decades from the African-American community for what they perceived as differential and inappropriate treatment of African-American children, including the lack of minority workers within the agency, the agency was ready for change. Under the direction of the new administrator, there have been concerted efforts to increase the number of minority staff, including altering the standards by which staff could be hired. Previous requirements for employees to hold a Master's degree were changed to provide opportunities for B.A.-level workers. Altering the standard has significantly increased the number of African-American workers employed within the agency.

Although these changes led to tensions among the staff initially, most of the current staff feel positively about the agency's success in diversifying the staff. In addition, the administrator also restructured the organizational chart, providing management opportunities that previously did not exist for some staff, created minority leadership committees within the agency, and mandated cultural competency training for staff. In combination, these efforts have resulted in a more racially balanced staff that is better positioned to provide quality services to clients, regardless of their race or ethnicity. The administration reports anecdotally that these changes have improved services to children and families of color, although empirical evidence of such changes is not available.

² It is the case that some hospitals do not require consent for drug testing if they suspect a mother has used drugs during her pregnancy or is under the influence of substances at the time she is admitted to the hospital. Regardless, participants perceived that African-American mothers were suspected of drug use and drug tested in far greater numbers than Caucasian mothers or mothers of other racial or ethnic groups. back

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You are in section: Table of Contents Authors Acknowledgements Executive Summary I. Introduction II. Literature Review III. Methodology IV. Findings V. Discussion VI. Implications for Policy… VII. Recommendations For … VIII. Conclusions Appendix References

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Updated on October 9, 2009