The subtleties of race and recruitment in foster care and adoption

How do race and ethnicity factor into adoptive and foster care placements today? Congress initially began work on MEPA in 1994 in order to concretize the principle that a child’s placement should not be denied or delayed because of race or ethnicity.  Simultaneously, there was a genuine concern that MEPA could lead to a discounting of the importance that race and culture play in a child’s life.  There was further concern that MEPA might inadvertently lead to a deceleration in recruitment efforts of persons of color to be foster and adoptive parents. After ten years of social work practice under MEPA, tension still exists in social work practice between the right of the child to a culturally appropriate placement in adoption and the right of a child to a speedy placement regardless of race.

The policy tradeoff, under current law, has been resolved in favor of speedy placement.  The workaday tradeoffs made in social work practice, however, are shielded from direct observation.  In some jurisdictions it seems that a transracial placement should be allowed only after the costs of impermanency have risen to very high levels.

States have a legal duty to recruit vigorously families for all of the children in their care.  Any recruitment strategy should take into account the importance of ethnicity and culture and should clearly promote an awareness and sensitivity to the ethnic and cultural background of the prospective parents.  But nothing in any recruitment materials should be couched in such terms that would actively or even subtly undermine a prospective parent’s belief that the child’s ethic or racial background would, on it own, be a bar to a successful placement.

Consider the case of foster and adoptive parent training in San Jose, as described in a paper summarizing the results of a focus group study conducted by the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard in cooperation with the Urban Institute:
…I just envisioned us taking home an African American little boy.  After watching the movie, I just thought no…that is the one thing about [the training sessions] that didn’t leave a good taste in my mouth.  They did a film and it was very powerful to me.  I came away with the thought that maybe not (adopt a child of another race) (“Listening to Parents,” p. 46).

In the study, transracial placements accounted for over 20 percent of all adoptions across three focus groups that included 92 participants in San Jose, Miami and Boston. Transracial placements accounted for 28 percent of adoptions completed by parents with no prior relationship to the child.

A recent paper in Adoption Quarterly by Mary Eschelbach Hansen and Rita J. Simon estimates that about 15 percent of all adoptions completed in 2001 with public agency involvement were transracial.  This is an increase of about 5 percent from the 1995, although the climb was not steady.  Transracial placements amounted to about 17 percent of African American adoptions in 2001.  There is great variability between the states: Ohio reported 27 percent of adoptions as transracial; Illinois reported only 7 percent.

It seems quite plausible that the variation in the experiences of children of color between the states is explained by attitudes transmitted in training materials. While not an official policy, states, local jurisdictions, and social workers who wish to discourage transracial adoptions may subtly dissuade prospective parents from agreeing to accept a transracial placement, even if it results in longer waits for children.

Researchers Devon Brooks, of the University of Southern California, and Richard Barth of the University of North Carolina found that while a large percentage of adoptive families in California in the late 1980s had expressed a willingness to accept a transracial placement, few actually did so.  The Kennedy School/Urban Institute study reports that adoption administrators in 29 states today feel that interest in adoption is high, but interest in adoption of children from foster care is not high enough (p. 88).

The law requires speedy permanent placement.  Skewed training and recruitment materials should not be used as a back-door method to delay or deny that placement.

The above article originally appeared in California NASW News, 32(8), 6.
Mary Hansen is Assistant Professor Department of Economics, American University, and Research Fellow, Center for Adoption Research, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA. Daniel Pollack is Professor, Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University, New York City, and Senior Fellow, Center for Adoption Research, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA.