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

12/20/2018
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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. Coalition member Tara Wallace said that reflects the strain of having a record number of kids in foster care in Kansas.

“At the rate we’re going,” she said, “this situation is only perpetuating itself.” 

Wallace is the president of the Topeka chapter of the Kansas African American Foster Care/Adoption Coalition. She joined five former foster youth, representatives of social workers and the ACLU, the foster parent organization FosterAdopt Connect, the Kansas Association of Community Action Programs, Kansas Appleseed and other individuals with past or current experience working in child welfare to form the coalition’s steering committee.

The report released Thursday morning echoes concerns brought up by a task forceexamining Kansas foster care and a recently filed federal lawsuit that alleges Kansas has rendered children in its care effectively homeless with frequent moves.

Strengthen Families Rebuild Hope recommended Kansas better support struggling families with improvements to safety net programs such as food stamps and cash welfare.
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“Families are on this tightrope,” said Becky Fast, a coalition member who heads the National Association of Social Workers’ Kansas chapter. “When you don’t have food assistance, cash assistance, that our state used to provide, that often knocks them off.”

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