Is the Foster Care System Racist?
The main goal of the foster care system is to help and protect kids… isn’t it? Unfortunately no, and the outcomes are often disastrous. Naomi Schaefer Riley, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, reveals the disturbing truth.
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Script:
If children are a society’s most precious resource, then why do we treat the most vulnerable among them—those who are abused and neglected by their parents and placed into foster care—so badly?
It’s a question that should deeply trouble all Americans. Here’s why.
There are approximately half a million children in foster care in the US.
Those who age out of foster care without finding a permanent adoptive family face a much higher likelihood of homelessness, substance abuse, and even sex trafficking than those who do find a permanent adoptive family.
To use just one example, one in six of California’s state prison population has spent time in foster care.
Given these grim numbers, the goal of the foster care system should be clear: find the best, most nurturing environment for these children to put their lives back together.
Sadly, this is not what usually happens.
When children are removed from their biological families because they are in danger, the first and, in many cases, the only priority of our child welfare system is to keep the family together.
Even when children have been physically or sexually abused.
Even if they have been deprived of food or health care.
Even if their parents are so strung out on drugs they cannot function.
That’s right: the goal of the foster care system is to reunite children with the same parents who abused or neglected them.
If you think this is likely to lead to disastrous outcomes, you’d be right.
Of the dozens of examples I could cite, here are two.
In New York, Julissia Batties had been taken away from her mother shortly after birth. Little wonder, since the mother had lost custody of her four older children in 2013 over safety concerns. In 2021 over the strong objections of her grandmother, Julissia was returned permanently to her mother. A few months after that, she was dead, beaten to death by an older step-sibling. Julissia was seven-years-old.
In Los Angeles, the Department of Children and Family Services ignored both the findings of its own caseworker and the orders from Juvenile Court to remove four-year-old Noah Cuatro from his home. Signs of malnutrition and abuse were painfully obvious. But the department’s goal—keep families together—overrode concerns about the boy’s well-being. It cost Noah his life.
Overall, the family reunification track record is not a good one. 20-40% of kids who are reunited with their families end up suffering maltreatment again.
The system, however, seems impervious to facts. One New Orleans judge, for example, decided there were too many black children coming to her court, so she simply stopped removing them from their abusive families, despite outcries from local child welfare workers and pediatricians.
Behind this obsession with family reunification lies an even more pernicious reality: the notion that parents and children must be racially matched. In other words, only black parents can raise a black child or Hispanic parents a Hispanic child, or Native American parents a Native American child; and that to believe otherwise is to endorse a new form of colonialism.
This is not new. It goes back decades.
In 1972, the National Association of Black Social Workers took “a vehement stand against the placements of black children in white homes for any reason.” The group called transracial adoptions “unnatural,” and argued that such placements were evidence of the continued “chattel status” of African Americans.
This view is now child welfare orthodoxy even though federal law prohibits it.
The Multiethnic Placement Act—passed in 1994 during the Clinton Administration—bars the consideration of race in the placement of children for foster care or adoption.
Sadly, it is often ignored.
Put starkly, the system that is supposed to protect children prefers they be in an abusive home of the same race rather than in a safe home of another race.
For the complete transcript visit: https://www.prageru.com/video/is-the-foster-care-system-racist
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It amounts to the left wanting to continue promoting racism- divide and conquer.
Put blacks with white parents and they don’t buy into whites are evil…
My husband and I were rejected in TEXAS because we own guns and did not believe spanking was necessarily is abuse. Overall we were infertile and only experienced parents could adopt special needs children- AND THEY ARE ALL SPECIAL NEEDS.
The system is run by leftist social workers who are primarily socialists.
My brother also infertile, a MSW/CPS worker, Democrat was given two sibling brothers.
Yah- all parents were inexperienced and all first children can be special needs.
I see they have turned this agencies into garbage as other agencies and destroying those that need the help the most.
I have read even more stories about sexual abuse, starvation, physical abuse, and even murder by foster parents. CPS workers can and do lie about circumstances at a child’s biological parents home and then lie to take the kids and place them elsewhere for incentives. There are even news stories about CPS workers that abuse the kids themselves. These people make judgments, often without even having their own children, that are based on their own personal definition of what abuse and neglect are. I think the statistic for false allegations is somewhere around 80 to 90 percent, with many reports being unfounded. People need a good lawyer in this day and age. State mandated reporters like doctors or hospital staff have vindictively called CPS to harass parents and coerce them. I have read about parents who wanted a second opinion and had their children removed because of lies from medical staff. The family is under attack these days and it comes from all angles. I grew up in an abusive home, CPS never took us and though it was challenging. I'm glad I wasn't placed somewhere else because it could have been so much worse.
it sounds like one of your points is just ''Gay kids are bad'', but it can't be that it's actually what you meant, can someone explain? 4:13
I had cousins placed in foster care and then returned to their drug addled mother and grandmother. They grew up to be addicts themselves.
While i agree the foster care system is shoddy, simply bc its govt ran (like EVERYTHING GOVT RAN), we cant play into the games of the antinatalists who say having kids leads to fostercare issues. I thinknwe should sterilize those who cant keep their legs shut and keep having children taken from them. Free, 100%, nothing left in there. It would save them from cancer, endo, and a host of other reproductive issues down the road.
So, one of my goals (when I grow up) is to try and fix the system as much as I can, and also focus on helping adopting all the teenagers in the foster care system. I want to set up an organization to help as many people as I can adopt teenagers (assuming the people are good.) Any ideas how I could help with this issue?
The system is controlled by the deepstate
As a 30 year professional in the field of child welfare, I can say a lot of this is bunk.
prager u actuually congratulated gay couple who bought fertilized embryos and had them implanted in 2 diff women…dont tell me your Godly cause the entire situation is an abomination to God
Its very racist. I worked in the field. I wont be surprised if other madness happens to children in that system
My wife and I did foster care for several years in the state of Idaho. We eventually left the program for the very reasons you mention here. We saw too many instances where the only focus was to return children to dangerous and abusive circumstances against all reason. We had nothing but compassion for the kids we cared for, but I came to feel nothing but anger and contempt for the adults involved, including case workers, some parents, lawyers and judges. The foster system is broken. Reunification is frequently not in the best interest of the children. I submit that once a parent crosses certain lines of addiction or abuse, they don’t get to be parents anymore.
I don't see problem 😳😳 all race of children needs to be with there Race.
This is because the Democrat party, and their Leftist supporters, have refused to allow the foster care system to be improved. Question: if someone can "identify" as a different gender, then can't a person also "identify" as a different race or different age? What about if the child "identifies" as a different race (or age)?
Can’t put them in different races but can put them in same sex relationships
PragerU is unrivalled beast of "Everything is black and white, everything is easy to fix, there are no such things as grey areas".
Instead of placing these children with people who want to love them, they are returned to a parent whose only concern is to get a bigger welfare.
Child Protective Services have these oddly generic and legislatively broad regulations in all the states. They are given a lot more freedom and little oversight or regulation assuming the "best interest" of children is going to get served. Teachers get to say anyone is abusive and CPS comes running to interrogate and investigate, then harass families. There are no consequences for a false accusation because that supposedly reduces the incentive to report and might cause a child who needs help to be skipped over for fear of retribution. Then, the families who are truly awful seem to just coast on by because like career criminals, they don't scare over "authority" and discussions about the trouble they might be in. All the while, good wholesome families get raked over the coals and freaked out as CPS and the false accusers give them the stink eye.
The system is broken. Also, the stats in most places that revolve around Foster care do not shine above stats that come from abusive families. It is complicated because even when abused, when a child is removed from their family, they don't necessarily see it as a happy thing that gives them freedom and safety. They often just feel guilty like it is their fault and the foster care givers who get stipends for caring for them are subject to the same levels of corruption you find anywhere where "money for kids" can be found. They may or may not abuse the kids like their previous families but are not necessarily the right kind of people to really connect to and nurture these children who need extra attention and care.
Also, the system that lets bad parents just stay bad people without any form of rehabilitation is really not going to find any success in reuniting families. If we focused more on setting bad people straight by jailing them, getting them help, and letting them find ways to seek out redemption, we'd probably find more success. You cannot make people change but if they are bad enough that we cannot allow them to continue specific behaviors, we should really consider how we deal with the societal consequences of those behaviors. If it is so bad that a child is in danger…you should be in jail. You should be monitored and observed and you should not just have your kids removed and you get to carry on with your horrible ways for another kid.
the foster system is messed up in many ways… my sister in law and her husband took in kids through fostering… their intentions were stellar… their experience was terrible. The kids had so much trauma they were uncontrollable.
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There are so many half-truths and outright misinformation in this presentation that I found it hard to watch. Yes there are many problems with the foster care system. Changes can and should be made. But Ms. Riley is only slamming the system by expound on the problems without any viable alternatives. If religious intervention is the answer, then we would have no need for the foster care system. Furthermore, problems with abusive parents existed for centuries without being resolved by the churches.
The failure of any group to care about and/or successfully improve the foster/adoption system is why I can never be pro-life. It is better for the child to never be born into personhood than to only be born to make a point before being discarded.
That said, the rejection of traditional family values is to blame for so much of this suffering. Is casual sex was not acceptable and the norm was for a child to be wanted by married couples, far fewer children would end up this way.
https://youtu.be/rNGasC1opZg
trusting church and priests with little kids? you lost me there ma'am
If it exists … it is racist.
I’m an ex-foster parent. 6 amazing kids came through my home for very brief periods of time. My ultimate goal was adoption and in the end I had to give up. This video tells you exactly why. It’s not about the kids. It’s about family reunification at any cost and they’ll drag kids through countless different homes as long as there is some relative somewhere who might, maybe, possibly, one day, in the future, consider fostering them… The best thing that can happen to a foster kid is for all of his or her traceable family members to die, as that’s literally the best chance they have for a long-term foster placement or even better, adoption. It’s beyond sad.
BTW every kid through my doors came hopped up on Ritalin prescribed by foster doctors, and I was legally obligated to keep them on it. Disgusting.
Our government has a disease that’s rotting our society from the inside out. We need to get these political “rulers” out of our lives and begin taking care of each other like human beings.
The government doesn't do anything well, economical, or efficient. Not one thing.
This is NONE of governments business. Government CANNOT do ANYTHING efficiently. I was removed from the home and I saw from the inside the operation and it is horrendous. I do not think giving government, at any level this authority is a good idea. If the government were forced to step out of the way, private faith based organizations would step in and fill that vacuum. The more we give government control, the less freedom we have.
Man…this made me tear up.
One of the things that can also be mentioned is how quick those government agencies take children away when there is a suspicion of something and it turns out that the issue is some rare medical issue. I think of the story of a little girl who had a very rare disease that caused her to bruise and also it was hard for her to gain weight(so she would be taken in to the doctors bruised and seemingly malnourished.) The doctors ran all kinds of tests and were just discovering that she had this disease but they (gov't)took her away from her parents and placed her in an abusive situation for several years before the courts finally awarded her back to her parents. Then we see these horrific cases where parents are so abusive and end up killing their children, even though those agencies KNEW that those poor children should not be there. None of it makes sense.
Colin Kapernick and Michael Oher are living proof that black kids live better lives with White foster families
This is why prisons are overpopulated. We have advanced much in technology but little in wisdom.
If allowing a child to identify themselves precludes a religious person from helping them, then that seems to be more of an issue with that religion and that host family than an issue with the foster system.
Faith organizations do not account for most foster homes, despite your assertions that they do. I'd like to see some evidence of this.
Where's the evidence that foster children must be placed in a home of their own race? I know this is always a preference for everyone, for obvious reasons, but you called it orthodoxy, so where's the evidence that your assertion is true?
The foster care system has some failures, but it has many more successes, and far outperforms any amount of prayer.