Gaps in Research and Public Policies.

The involvement of children of color in child welfare has a mixed history. One of the first in-depth studies to examine this issue was Children of the Storm: Black Children and American Child Welfare by Andrew Billingsley and Jeanne Giovannoni (1972) almost four decades ago. As these scholars noted, however, the problem during the 19th century was the underrepresentation of minority children in child welfare. When orphanages were established to rescue children from the deplorable conditions of almhouses, black children were totally excluded. This exclusion continued during the first half of the 20th century, when many charitable organizations, mutual aid societies, and settlement houses were created to serve poor white immigrants. It was not until the integration period of the 1950s and 1960s that the number of black children in mainstream child welfare institutions steadily increased. The overrepresentation of children of color in child welfare grew during the 1970s and 1980s. For example, a national study (Jenkins et al., 1983) based on out-of-home data collected by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) Office of Civil Rights revealed that black and Native American children were more likely to be in child welfare than in the general census population in 1980, while white and Hispanic children were less likely. Such disparities continue to exist today, since black and Native American children are three times more likely to be in foster care than are white children (Hill, 2006). Important to note, however, is that Hispanic children are also overrepresented in many states and counties (Hill, 2005). While the prevalence of substance abuse and HIV/AIDS in inner-cities might explain, in part, the recent patterns of racial disproportionality in child welfare, other factors related to poverty and race were responsible for the overrepresentation of minority children in child welfare during the 1960s and 1970s. It should be noted that the widespread concern about disproportionality is not mainly about the disproportionate numbers of minority children in child welfare, but more importantly, about their inequitable treatment and outcomes, compared to nonminority children. Children of color are more likely to be screened in at various stages of Child Protective Services (CPS) decision making: reporting, investigation, substantiation, and placement in foster care. They are more likely to remain in foster care for longer periods of time and less likely to be reunited with their birth parents. They are more likely to age out of the system without strong family attachments and more likely to exit to homelessness, substance abuse, out-of-wedlock births and contact with criminal justice systems. Consequently, many child welfare advocates are also interested in reducing or preventing these disparate negative outcomes among children of color. My recent involvement in the issue of racial disproportionality in child welfare began as a member of an internal Race Matters study group formed by Westat Vice President Alexander Ratnofsky in 1999. This group sought to explain some puzzling questions in child welfare. Since the National Incidence Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (which were conducted by Westat in 1980, 1986, and 1993) have consistently found that black families did not maltreat their children any more than did white families, why are black children more likely to be removed from their homes and placed in foster care than are white children (Sedlak & Broadhurst, 1996; Sedlak & Schultz, 2005a, 2005b)? Is the disparate removal of children of color due primarily to racial or nonracial factors? To address such questions, Westat, in collaboration with the School of Social Work at the University of Illinois, invited scholars to present their findings on disproportionality at a research forum. At this Race Matters forum, which was held in January 2001, findings were presented that examined racial and nonracial factors which contributed to racial disproportionality at different stages of CPS decision making - reporting, investigation, substantiation, placement in foster care, exit from care, and reentry. …