Blacks, Native Americans Highly Overrepresented in Foster Care, Report Shows

July 05, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

Most states continue to place high rates of African-American children in foster care, said a recent report on race and foster care by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Justices (NCJFCJ).

The report, Disproportionality Rates for Children of Color in Foster Care, breaks down the disproportionality rates of children in foster care for each state in 2004 and 2009. Disproportionality is calculated in this study by taking the population of children in foster care for a particular race and dividing it by the proportion of the same racial group in the child population.

There has been a national decrease in African-American disproportionality rates – the rate was 2.65 in 2004, and dropped to 2.36 in 2009 – but nearly every state involves a higher amount of African-American children in foster care than their population figures would predict. States with the highest disproportionality rates of African-Americans in foster care in 2009 were Wyoming with a rate of 6.0, Utah (4.4), Wisconsin (4.2), and California (4.1). Hawaii and Oregon were the only states where African-American children were actually under-represented in the foster care population.

Most states with high African-American disproportionality rates also remove a high rate of children, period, according to research by the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, which calculates its state rate-of-removal index by dividing the number of children removed from their homes by the number of children living in poverty.

Of the 17 states with a rate above 2.5, only Illinois and Ohio have a rate-of-removal index below the national average of 18.3. Four of the 17 states – Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa and Colorado – are in the top 10 on the rate-of-removal index.

 

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