After a single African American mother gets picked up by police in Jacksonville, Florida for substance abuse, concerned neighbors in the low-income housing complex quickly mobilize, moving her children to safekeeping. The local child welfare agency supports this action, and facilitates family reunification a few days later when the mother is released. Profoundly touched by neighbors' diligence and care toward her children, the woman agrees to drug counseling and other support services within her community.

The threads of this story generally unravel very differently. In many cities, the arrested woman's children would, most likely, still be in foster care homes located miles away from anything familiar. The mother would be answering to government officials whom she neither knows nor trusts. And this case would become one more statistic underlying an alarming fact—though African American children constitute only 15 percent of the U.S. child population, they represent 49 percent of the foster care population.

African American, Native American and Latino children are disproportionately represented in the foster care system by a margin of more than two to one, according to the Child Welfare League of America. And among those children, African Americans are overwhelmingly in the lead.

Even more startling is how long children of color are kept in the system. The Department of Health and Human Services conducted a national study in 1994 and discovered that while 43 percent of white children entering the child welfare system are out in less than three months, only 16 percent of African American children leave within three months.

Some say that the inequities are rooted in poverty. Yet about 70 percent of African Americans lived above in the poverty level in 1995.

Others say drugs are the culprits. The erosion in families caused by drugs contributes to the concentration of child protection services in African American communities. Yet statistics show that more children are taken from their homes in black communities than in white neighborhoods equally decimated by substance-abusing parents.

What about government policies? "Kinship care" is the norm for many black children in the child welfare system—where long-term foster care is given by a grandmother, aunt or other relative. Yet state payments to these caregivers are often cut once formal adoption takes place. Does this discourage struggling kin from providing a legally permanent home?

At the intersection of all these possibilities is race. For many observers, racism and a general lack of cultural sensitivity emerge as underlying factors in the disproportionate snapshot of our foster care population.

Bias can occur anytime, beginning when a child is assessed by a front-line social worker after an allegation of abuse or neglect has been filed, according to Sheryl Brissett-Chapman, director of the Baptist Home for Children and Families in Bethesda, Maryland. Generally workers from outside the community, charged with maintaining a child's safety and well-being, must base their decisions on removing a child from the home on what they see.

"What does well-being look like for a poor, black kid?" Chapman asks.

The "Browning" of the System
For years, the African American community took care of its own. The Baptist Home for Children and Families started offering shelter and services to homeless women and children around the nation's capital in 1914. "We didn't even get our first black child until 1969," says Chapman.

Thomas D. Morton, president and CEO of the Child Welfare Institute in Atlanta and a member of the National Commission on the Role of Culture and the Assessment of Risk in African American Children and Families, confirms that the first national study of the child welfare system in 1963 found that children of color comprised 16-17 percent. By 1977, that percentage had increased to 33 percent. By the end of the 1980s, they represented nearly half of the system.

During the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s we witnessed the full-scale "browning of the child welfare system," Chapman asserts—a trend that transformed child welfare from a workable model into an overwhelmed system. Communities broke apart. Social workers became less prepared for what they had to sort out. Fewer families were willing to take in foster children. "We basically watched the de-professionalization of child welfare," Chapman says.

No doubt about it, says Kathy Barbell, who directs the foster care unit of the Child Welfare League of America, our foster care system "is predominantly made up of children of color." Barbell adds that resources tightened considerably since the child welfare system became overwhelmingly African American.

Why is that? Barbell responds, "Why is there racism in this country?"

As children were coming into the system in dramatically increased numbers, says John Mattingly, a child welfare expert with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, "we often asked front-line workers to weigh the damage that might be made by keeping the children with the family with what might happen if the child was taken. Underlying all of this is that most of these kids were African American."

"We're woefully behind in making cultural assessment when placing a child," says Millicent Williams, senior staff associate of the National Association of Social Workers. Social workers are part of a larger society that struggles with issues of race and culture, she says, as are their supervisors and child welfare administrators.

The drug epidemic particularly targeted women of color in disadvantaged communities. And linked to this documented fact were rigid new drug laws that could put a young woman in jail for her first offense, according to Mattingly, leaving children without a caretaker.

But Thomas Morton won't buy the argument that drugs alone brought vast numbers of African American children into care. "What you've also got is a very different way that black children are served by the system than are white children."

Commission Examines Role of Culture
Children from impoverished African American neighborhoods are not necessarily at risk, Chapman asserts, having grown up in poverty herself. Chapman recalls that at nine years old she often watched over a pack of younger children. An outsider may view such youthful supervision as neglect, though Chapman never doubted her ability to keep the kids in line.

Our child welfare system places a high penalty on neglect, often removing a youngster from a family if there's an absence of food, shelter, clothing or adequate supervision. About 54 percent of substantiated reports to child protection authorities in 1995 were about neglected children; 25 percent were physically abused and 11 percent sexually abused. Yet, Chapman asks, "How do you separate out unwilling from unable?"

Standards for neglect are subject to racial stereotypes and may be insensitive to cultural differences, surmised the Black Administrators in Child Welfare. So in 1997 they established the National Commission on the Role of Culture and the Assessment of Risk in African American Children and Families. The 40-member commission, directed by Chapman, has combed the child welfare field for pertinent research, best practices, local policy and regulation as well as culture to draw its conclusions.

Often there are two very similar cases of child neglect, says Joyce Johnson, staff director of the commission. But then one family gets services while the other child is removed from the home. "Is it cultural," asks Johnson, "or possibly jurisdictional differences?" In their quest for answers, commission members took a hard look at the various assessment tools used by social workers examining children at risk.

The commission's findings will be published later this year. At that point Johnson hopes the child welfare profession will use their recommendations to develop a "culturally competent" set of assessment tools for social workers empowered to wrench apart families. Any training or discussion in cultural differences is now done at the discretion of local child welfare agency administrators. Johnson would like to see national standards that mandate familiarization with cultural issues.

Child safety is still everyone's primary concern, she says, but no one wants those decisions based on arbitrary factors.

Where is the System at Fault?
Most alcohol and illicit drug using parents don't come in contact with the child welfare system—a documented reality that Morton uses to raise the possibility of a "bias" operating within the child welfare system. He cites a 1999 Health and Human Services report that concludes "substance abusing African American women are more likely to come to the attention of Child Protective Service agencies than are white or Hispanic women with substance abuse problems." "Do child protection workers more closely monitor the African American neighborhoods because of safety issues—or because of racial stereotypes?," observers ask.

"At every important decision point, there might be some bias which causes black children to penetrate the system—and once in it, to remain longer," Morton answers. They often lack the resources to fight back.

"Poor, black people can't take on the system," says Chapman. And some people don't want to, she says, because overburdened families and communities start to believe that funneling a child through the system is the only way to get necessary services, like medical attention or three square meals served regularly.

The hiring of African American child protection workers doesn't eliminate or reduce the bias, according to observers. They're still outsiders coming in. And these similarly skinned officials represent government, not the community.

Millicent Williams agrees. "Minority families are more visible in society. A wealthy child could be sent away to a boarding school—that's foster care for those who can afford it."

Casey and Clark Initiate Reforms
Both the Annie E. Casey and the Edna McConnell Clark foundations are now shaking this beleaguered system at its roots: expecting new growth from the families and communities with the most to gain—and lose.

The substance abusing mother in Jacksonville, Florida could turn to her housing complex in a crisis because of a new community child protection partnership that re-ignites shared care-giving. The Florida Legislature paved the way for this child protection reform in 1993 by mandating a change that led to a system of locally tailored services for troubled families and more informal community supports, such as neighbors, clergy and grassroots organizations.

Two years later the Clark Foundation chose Jacksonville as one of four cities to receive seed money and technical assistance with the goal of refocusing responsibility for the safety of children in the community. The other cities are St. Louis, Missouri; Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Louisville, Kentucky. At each site, the neighborhoods are working with child protective services agencies to re-think traditional policies and practices.

"What's coming out of this are solutions that wouldn't be thought of in a more traditional model," says Myra Rosenbaum, program associate at Clark Foundation. She relays a story about a mother who couldn't afford to renew her car registration. Without her car, she couldn't get her children to various services. The family team assigned to her case found flexible funding to pay for the registration, allowing the woman to keep her car. "It could have escalated into something much worse," comments Rosenbaum.

Jacksonville is a racially divided city, with many African American families being served many white social service administrators. "You really feel that divide," says Rosenbaum. "But I think the bias is being addressed with folks in the community taking the lead and getting to families earlier with supports that are relevant to what people want."

"In terms of more systematic racism," she adds, "I don't know what we're going to be able to do about that."

Casey's Family to Family
"There's a lot that the child welfare system can't do," agrees John Mattingly. "There's also an awful lot that we can do. Once the children come into care, the data indicates the outcome for African American children is poorer. Our view at Family to Family is that we can do something about that. We can build partnerships in those communities to insure that siblings stay together and they get the care that other kids get. If we have to pay extra attention to that, then we should."

The Annie E. Casey Foundation designed Family to Family in 1992 in consultation with national experts in child welfare. Their premise of a more family-centered approach takes in neighborhood resources, considers cultural differences and attempts to serve many of the children now placed in group homes and institutions. States and counties funded through this initiative were asked to develop new family foster care service systems within one or more local areas. Communities targeted were those that traditionally place large numbers of children out of their homes, including Cleveland, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Birmingham, Albuquerque and Cincinnati.

"As you reach out to people to say 'let's keep the children here,' then the next step is, 'how do we work with the family? How do we build stronger interventions earlier on?' Basically we want a unit of care workers who know the community they're serving," explains Mattingly.

Adoption and Safe Families Act
The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, intended to increase the number of adoptions out of foster care, has also done considerable harm in prying children loose from African American families, according to Morton and others.

Among other provisions, the recent law instructs states to more aggressively terminate parental rights, freeing the children up for adoption. Regulations stemming from the legislation impose a new 15-month time frame before filing-of-termination proceedings can begin. "Quite simply," Morton says, "the child most likely to have been in care 15 out of the past 22 months is African American."

Fifteen months wouldn't give a single mother undergoing substance abuse treatment enough time to successfully break her addiction and reclaim her children, she believes. "I don't think the best social policy is the severing of one family for the re-creation of another," Morton says.

Chapman relays the story of her niece who wouldn't willingly terminate her parental rights, despite her problems, because she was afraid that no one would care about her anymore. She had a point. In fact, current policies encourage care givers to seek help for substance abuse, but once a parent loses the children, concern for that troubled adult's lifestyle dissipates.

Can the Community Offer Solutions?
The Casey and Clark initiatives place considerable stock in the ability of communities to care for their own. Some people question whether the truly caring community is a romantic ideal. There are privacy issues at stake. Would one family air secrets with another? And, with so many mothers working out of the home, who's really looking out at the neighbor's kids?

"Maybe the community shift is only symbolism," says Sheryl Chapman. "What they're doing is still an important shift in values."

"The idea of instilling some sense of responsibility on the community for the well being of children is a very good thing," agrees Morton. "I laud their efforts to do that."