Protecting Kids---and Destroying Families

By: Sarah Karp, Kimiyo Naka and Micah HolmquistA child welfare law that pushes for parental rights to be quickly terminated so foster children can be adopted has become a new, more expedient way to tear black families apart, writes Northwestern University Law Professor Dorothy Roberts in her new book, “Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare.”

The problem with the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, Roberts argues, is that it has carried on the system’s “most glaring injustice—the racially biased removal of too many children from their homes.” It has also created a new, mostly black group of “legal orphans” whose biological parents have been given up on.

Roberts refers to two investigations by The Chicago Reporter. In January 1999 the Reporter found increasing terminations of parental rights in Cook County, with black families facing the highest rates. And an October 1999 investigation revealed that Illinois encouraged caseworkers to terminate parental rights and quickly push foster parents into adoption.

She contends that even when a relative takes in the child—as is often the case in Chicago—the family is unfairly subjected to state intrusion.

A Chicago woman named Devon, for example, had taken care of her four nieces and nephews since they were toddlers. When a new caseworker was assigned to her, Devon was told that her apartment was too small. Soon afterward, the children were removed from her home and weren’t returned for more than a year.

Roberts acknowledges that some will argue the system justifiably protects the rights of children rather than their parents. But, she adds, “the enormity of the racial gap suggests that at least some significant portion of children are removed from their homes unnecessarily.”

“Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare” is published by Basic Civitas Books in New York.
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Rather than sticking with his proposed $485 million budget cuts that “hit the hardest by far on programs that serve the poor,” Gov. George H. Ryan should look at other options, argues John Bouman in December’s Illinois Welfare News. Bouman, deputy director of advocacy for the National Center on Poverty Law, notes that Ryan contends he had to look for cuts in areas like Medicaid and the Department of Human Services because they are the biggest programs. Ryan proposed trimming mental health and substance abuse programs. The governor should instead consider reforming how Illinois purchases drugs under Medicaid and closing or reducing corporate tax loopholes, Bouman writes.

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In November, the owners of Rienzi Plaza, an apartment building at 600 W. Diversey Parkway in Lakeview, renewed its Section 8 contract with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, agreeing to continue to set aside 147 of its 249 units for subsidized, low-income renters. The tenants are mostly immigrant senior citizens and the working poor. Sheldon Baskin, a member of the partnership that owns the building, said the partners decided to renew the contract for five years based on assurances from the Cook County Board that it will include Rienzi Plaza if it approves a real estate tax deduction for some buildings that renew Section 8 contracts.
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The Chicago Housing Authority has yet to provide job training and counseling to as many residents as it promised in 1999 when it received a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. The Residents’ Journal reported in its August/September issue that the department awarded the grant in 1999 for CHA residents receiving Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. The CHA planned to serve 1,200 residents, but by June 30, 2001—its original deadline—it had served 342, Stacy Davis, manpower development specialist for the department, told the Reporter. As of Sept. 30, the CHA had enrolled 686 people and downgraded its plan to serving 900 residents. CHA officials did not return phone calls.