White Couple That Abused Adopted African Children Avoid Jail Time

A white couple made headlines last year after they adopted two African children only to neglect, starve and force them to live in deplorable conditions. One year later, the pair has escaped any jail time. Why are we not surprised?

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Illinois Lawmakers Demand Child Welfare Officials Better Serve Spanish-Speaking Families

Illinois lawmakers and advocates are calling on state child welfare officials to better comply with a federal court order to serve Spanish-speaking families, an issue they say has become more critical amid heightened fear among immigrants of interacting with government agencies.

The calls come in response to a ProPublica Illinois investigation last month that found that the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services has, for decades, repeatedly violated a 1977 federal court order that mandates the agency provide services to Latino families in their primary language.

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Kristin Davis describes horror at racism shown to black adopted daughter

Kristin Davis has said she was “horrified” over the “institutionalised” racism her black adopted daughter faced, even as a baby.

The Sex And The City actress is mother to Gemma, seven, whom she adopted in 2011, as well as a son she adopted in 2018.

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For generations, Illinois' child welfare agency has failed to adequately serve Spanish-speaking families

When his son was born in 2014, Jorge Matias held the infant in the hospital and sang him the lullabies he had learned as a child in Guatemala. He teased the boy’s mother that he would raise their son to speak Spanish, and one day the two of them would talk in secret around her.

But the boy was born with heroin in his system and, when it cleared from his body, Illinois child welfare officials placed him in a foster home. To get his son back, Matias had to complete a long list of requirements, including ending his relationship with the boy’s mother, a heroin addict.

More >> For generations, Illinois' child welfare agency has failed to adequately serve Spanish-speaking families

CPS worker alleges racial discrimination in boy’s removal

A special investigator for Child Protective Services in Central Texas says his superiors threatened retaliation after he accused officials of using the race of a black woman to influence their decision to remove her son from her custody.

Chris McMahan filed complaints with the Department of Family and Protective Services and the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, the latter an employment discrimination claim, the Houston Chronicle reported.

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American Indian adoptees deal with painful past and family separations

Jane Harstad gave birth in 1986 to her first child, a son. Soon after, a pediatrician asked for her family’s medical history. She didn’t have a clue. She didn’t know who her biological mother or father was, let alone what medical conditions they had.

Harstad, who is Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, was adopted shortly after birth through Catholic Charities adoption services in 1965. The agency placed her in a white, middle-class family living in St. Paul, Minn.

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Acknowledging an ugly history, Belgium apologizes for taking mixed-race children from African colonies

Belgium’s prime minister has formally apologized Thursday — on behalf of the nation — for the kidnapping and forced adoption of thousands of children from former Belgian colonies in Central Africa.

According to The New York Times, Prime Minister Charles Michel took responsibility for the atrocities committed decades ago in remarks to Parliament.

More >> Acknowledging an ugly history, Belgium apologizes for taking mixed-race children from African colonies

The US adoption system discriminates against darker-skinned children

When it comes to adoption, Americans might assume that each child is treated equally. But research shows that darker-skinned children are repeatedly discriminated against, both by potential adoptive parents and the social workers who are charged with protecting their well-being.

Social workers are often called upon to assess a newborn’s skin color, because skin color influences potential for placement. As a 2013 NPR investigation found, dark-skinned black children cost less to adopt than light-skinned white children, as they are often ranked by social workers and the public as less preferred.

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Minnesota lawmakers push to reduce foster placement of African-American children

Two Minnesota legislators reintroduced a bill Monday aimed at limiting out-of-home placements for African-American children and keep families involved in child protection cases together as much as possible. The so-called Minnesota African-American Family Preservation Act would also establish greater oversight when black children are moved to foster families.

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Protecting parents from the child protection system

The parents I represented as a longtime legal services and civil rights lawyer never expected to find themselves on the wrong side of a child-abuse hotline call. Erroneous judgments, finding both guilt and innocence, issue at alarming rates, often without any court review.

The system has become a behemoth, with 7.4 million hotline calls in 2016 alone. Only a tiny fraction involves serious physical or sexual abuse — that's the good news in these staggering numbers. With nearly 74 million children in America, hotline investigations affect huge numbers of children — and not in a good way. One study found that 53 percent of African-American children experienced a child abuse or neglect investigation at some point in their lives. Child abuse registers list millions of perpetrators, most of whom never had a day in court before their names were listed.

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Reducing Delinquency Among African American Youth In Foster Care

In my recent study entitled, “Reducing delinquency among African American youth in foster care: Does gender make a difference in crossover prevention,” published in the journal Children and Youth Services Review, I use an interdisciplinary lens to address an issue of timely importance. I discuss how resilience theory can be applied to the foster care system to identify promotive factors that may later reduce the likelihood of youth engaging in delinquent acts. This issue is important as intervention development may be informed and policy changes made to improve the developmental outcomes of this at-risk group to reduce their likelihood of engaging in delinquency.

This issue is important as children and youth in the foster care system are more likely to go on to commit delinquent acts and be involved in the juvenile justice system. This is especially the case for African American youth who are overrepresented at every level of the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. In thinking about what works to aid African American youth in the foster care system to stop their trajectory into delinquency, it is important to contextualize their experiences – meaning identifying what factors may have contributed to these youth becoming involved in the foster care system in the first place. Later, I will review the findings of my study which identifies factors that may aid African American youth in discontinuing their trajectory into delinquency.

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Advocates: Black Kids Are More Likely To Land In Foster Care, Just One Thing That Needs Fixing

African-American children are much more likely to land in the Kansas foster care system than white children.

A report from Strengthen Families Rebuild Hope, a coalition of organizations and people who have experience with the foster care system, concluded that Kansas falls in line with national trends. But the disparity in Kansas, with black children 75 percent more likely than white children to be pulled from their homes, has gotten worse in the past two years.

More >> Advocates: Black Kids Are More Likely To Land In Foster Care, Just One Thing That Needs Fixing

Pa.'s Black youth more likely to be in, stay in foster care: Report

Compared to the rest of the nation, Pennsylvania’s African-American youth age 14 and older are more likely to experience foster care than youth in other states, according to a new report.

Approximately 43 percent of Black youths in Pennsylvania were in foster care in 2016, compared to 28 percent in the U.S., according to the report from the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private philanthropy organization devoted to improving the lives of children and their families. And 33 percent of youths ages 14 and older were in foster care in the state, compared with 25 percent across the U.S.

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UN experts concerned over racial bias in Dutch child welfare system

In May, police took the children into care, including a breastfeeding infant – reportedly without “duly considering their best interests, preserving the family structure or first providing instructions on how to combat problems in the home,” the experts said.

“This family separation has caused immense trauma and psychological damage and we are deeply troubled about the impact on the children’s physical and mental wellbeing,” said E. Tendayi Achiume, Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and Michal Balcerzak, Chairperson of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent.

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Why Trump's America Makes Me Regret Adopting My Daughters

Our daughters came home from China more than a decade ago. The first time their tiny feet touched American soil, we made a big deal of it. We were so happy about everything they’d inherit as newly minted Americans—our already head-over-heels love for them, every opportunity we could afford, and freedom from China’s oppressive government and its controversial (and now somewhat lifted) one-child policy. The same policy that was, most likely, the very reason they were available to join our family half a world away.

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'Dawnland' documents untold story of Native American child removal in the U.S.

“Dawnland,” a documentary which will begin streaming Nov. 6, follows the first government-endorsed truth and reconciliation commission in the U.S. as Maine investigates the devastating impacts of Native American child removal.

“Dawnland” is premiering on the PBS series Independent Lens, as part of November Native American Heritage Month programming.

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The painful story of one of Maine’s darkest chapters

Less than fifty years ago, one in four Native American children lived away from their families. They were in boarding schools or foster care or adoptive homes, all because the government had removed those kids from their relatives.

Sound like the type of horror story that happens somewhere else? Unfortunately, it isn’t. It happened in Maine, and the new documentary “Dawnland” examines the deep wounds the policy inflicted and the state’s effort to begin to bring some healing through the creation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The film will air nationwide on public television on November 5 and be screened at the University of Southern Maine on November 16. Ben Pender-Cudlip co-directed “Dawnland” and talked to 207 about the story it tells.

More >> The painful story of one of Maine’s darkest chapters

Why adopting black babies costs less than adopting white babies

Yes, someone actually wrote an article with this headline.

Black babies cost less. My wife and I learned this sitting on a worn couch across from two white women explaining the fee schedule for adoptions.

The cost to adopt a newborn black infant was a fraction of that to adopt a white one. At another agency, we were offered a deal on twins — adopt one and get the other at half off. Years before America asked "do black lives matter?" I could tell you: "Not as much."

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Black children in Travis County 8 times more likely to be removed by CPS than white children

African-American children in Travis County were nearly eight times more likely to be removed from a home by Child Protective Services than white children during the year ending Aug. 31, according to new state data.

Black children in Travis County also were 4.6 times more likely to be reported to CPS as victims of possible abuse and neglect than their white peers and 5.1 times more likely to be investigated by CPS. The disparities in Travis County are the highest among the state’s seven largest counties, a recent report by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services found.

More >> Black children in Travis County 8 times more likely to be removed by CPS than white children

Indian Child Welfare Act ruled unconstitutional, tribes vow to protect Native children

The future of a law designed to help ensure the survival of tribal cultures and place Native American child custody decisions in the hands of tribes is in jeopardy. The federal Northern District Court of Texas ruled Thursday, Oct. 4 that the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is unconstitutional. Judge Reed O’Conner, an appointee of President George W. Bush (R), stated that the law is a race-based statute and that the law requires state courts to enforce a federal law.

The law placed issues of Native American child custody under the jurisdiction of tribes, and its intent was to protect the integrity of Native American families and culture. The law gave preference to tribes and the children’s families when it came to placement of native children.

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• Federal court strikes down Native American adoption law, saying it discriminates against non-Natives