By Dianne Anderson

For no other reason than poverty, Black moms are at the whim of the social service system that keeps them in the spotlight of mandated reporters who are trained to not ask questions or investigate, but just report.

Charity Chandler-Cole said for all the claims of abuse or neglect coming out of the school system, only 10% are substantiated. Most are Black, Brown and poor, meaning that 90% have needlessly had their children’s lives disrupted by investigations, child examinations, or law enforcement showing up at the door.

The kids are removed for ten days, while the parent’s name is set up in a database and a predictive algorithm, putting them at future risk of child welfare involvement.

It’s a vicious cycle that could be handled by giving poor parents more resources and financial support.

“Society feels we don’t love our kids as much as other parents. If kids come to school with mismatched socks or certain behavioral issues, or say they’re hungry, all these reports are made to a hotline where millions of dollars are invested to investigate these claims,” said Chandler-Cole, and Chief Executive Officer of CASA of Los Angeles.

She said that Black parents and moms are automatically perceived as bad mothers.

Back in her childhood, she also was trapped in the system when she stole underwear. Author of “Stranger Danger,” she spotlights her experience in foster care and juvenile justice where she said benevolent strangers were disguised as protection in the system.

After she got out of foster care, she researched the group home where she was placed. They were getting $5,600 a month per child.

“That was three times my mother’s salary, if not more. Had my mother been given a fraction of those resources to support her children, we would have been out of the system that did more harm than good,” said Chandler-Cole, MPA, who serves as Chair of the Board for the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, and served on Commissioner for LA County Children & Families where she co-chaired its Racial Justice Committee.

Costs to warehouse kids are enormous, and she said they are needlessly medicated to a “zombie state” at high-level facilities to avoid normal childhood behaviors. About half the kids in the state foster system are Black, which she said is direct or indirect racism and bias.

CASA data show that only 20% of kids in the system for actual abuse, while 80% from neglect that stems from poverty.

“Black children are seen as needing saving from their Black parents, instead of providing resources for Black parents, [who are] at the top of every bad list to be criminalized and punished for poverty related issues,” she said.

Black families also face a long list of requirements that don’t address why children are removed, she said. If they fail to meet the requirements, parental rights are terminated, such as with one 25-year-old mom whose child died from a respiratory disorder.

At the time, the COVID-19 variant was responsible for hundreds of deaths of young children, but police interrupted the mother’s candlelight vigil, and the system took her other children away. The woman lost her job as court dates got pushed up again and again.

“She would walk and take buses in the rain, I called an Uber for her. She almost lost her apartment. She lost her car. They did not see this Black mother worthy of needing support and time to grieve. Their response was to take all her kids away,” she said.

At CASA, Chandler-Cole is involved with all facets of mandated reporting, and addresses issues at the state level. In the past two years, the program developed a prevention and intervention program to help quell the flow of young people unnecessarily entering the foster and juvenile justice system.

CASA for Los Angeles County is one the biggest in the nation with extensive background in legislation, and working initiatives. They advocate for families, and call out poverty and racism as they work directly with the court, and with young people.

“We are the only organization that exists that speaks to everyone, attorneys on both sides, social workers guardians, children and judges,” she said, adding that they help model policy implementation. “It’s real cute to get policy passed, but it means nothing if we’re not implementing it.”

In Long Beach, Jess Blaisus with the nonprofit Extraordinary Families is seeking more volunteers and encouraging Black families to join their resource parent program for foster children, particularly as Black children are so overrepresented in the system.

Of the 6,000 children who entered foster care in the County last year, she said nearly 90% were separated from their first family due to neglect. Of those, one-third will be in care for at least two and a half years.

Citing a 2021 study from the American Public Health Association, she stressed that removing children from their communities based on race has a long horrific history in the US, and within the child welfare field.

That study found that 47% of Black and 50% of Native American children in the California study cohort were investigated by CPS during their childhood, and Black and Native American youth in foster care are overrepresented at four times their demographic proportions.

“It’s both explicit and implicit racial biases, there is a long history of stereotypes of Black mothers, people are much more likely to report a Black family to CPS than a white family. Add on to that hyper-vigilance of the system in disadvantaged neighborhoods and the systemic equalities,” said Blaisus, director of philanthropy and community relations.

There is hope in a recent state bill passed last year, SB 1085, which mandates that courts could no longer separate children from their families based solely on poverty.

She said her program spends a lot of time training their resource parents, but the main goal is to reunify kids with their natural parents, unless it is no longer possible and parental rights are terminated.

“That means that family was unable to fix whatever it was that caused separation in the first place and there’s a family that ends up losing their kid. Some families say fantastic, they’re going to give them the life I can’t give them. Others are heartbroken,” she said.

Last year, about one-fourth of families of their cases were reunited with their first families. One-fourth were able to identify relatives or close friends that could fill the gap of caregivers to maintain continuity for the child in the community. About half were adopted.

Depending on the courts, adoption usually takes about 18 months, and after three months 90% of children are still in care. About two-thirds will be in care for over a year, and one-third for over two and half years.

Mostly Black kids are overrepresented languishing without a real home, or aging out.

“We do have Black resource parents  and always appreciate when someone can share cultural identity with kids in care. Of our resource parents about half are BIPOC, ” she said.

She said they are looking for people established in the community who can share their networks and wisdom, and work with children under 18 in their foster programs.

“Whatever their background, one of the reasons Extraordinary Families was founded was to really include people,” she said. “It started with LGBTQ community and continued with single parents, we want to keep that ball rolling to serve the community.”

To volunteer with CASA, see www.casala.org, or call 323.859.2888

For Extraordinary Families, see  https://www.extraordinaryfamilies.org/

For more information the American Public Health Association Study, see

https://bit.ly/3YOI5iP