Resources that Address Improvement

• Mitigating the Effects of Racial/Ethnic Disproportionality
  This paper focuses on practices that might mitigate the effects of disproportionality on the children and families who are already in the out-of-home care system. Practices are recommended to improve permanency planning for them and to reduce disparity in their outcomes.

• Seven Steps to Develop and Evaluate Strategies to Reduce Disproportionate Minority Contact
  This guidebook from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's Juvenile Justice Evaluation Center discusses disproportionate minority contact (DMC) in the context of a seven-step evaluation approach, focusing especially on the first two steps: identifying the problem and implementing an evidence-based intervention. The approach has applicability to child welfare, as well.

• Understanding and Addressing Racial/Ethnic Disproportionality in the Front End of the Child Welfare System
  The existence of disproportionality throughout the child welfare system is well known. There are four major "front-end" decision-making points: referral of a case to the system, investigation of a referral, substantiation of the referral, and removal of a child from the home. This structured review of the literature, commissioned by the Bay Area Social Services Consortium, examines the nature of disproportionality in the front-end of the child welfare system. The first section outlines the problem, and describes several theories about its cause. The second section describes interventions that have been developed based upon those theories, and assesses the effectiveness of the interventions. The report concludes with a section on the implications of the study's findings for research and practice.

• Reducing Disproportionality and Disparate Outcomes for Children and Families of Color in the Child Welfare System: Framework for Change
  This document, developed for use in the Breakthrough Series Collaborative on Disproportionality sponsored by Casey Family Programs, offers a framework that describes the key components that child welfare systems must address to reduce and ultimately eliminate racial disparities in the child welfare system. This framework is not prescriptive but instead identifies eight principles to guide action and seven key component areas that if addressed in policy, programming, practice and training are likely to lead to positive outcomes.

• Disproportionate Representation in the Child Welfare System: Emerging Promising Practices Survey
  Disproportionate representation is evident in child welfare agencies across the nation. Minority children and families are overrepresented, relative to White children and families, at key decision points in child welfare agencies. Many child welfare agencies are addressing the issue head on, while others are in the early stages of tackling the issues in their own jurisdiction. The National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators (NAPCWA) requested information about a state's use of over 40 practices that have been deemed "promising practices" by various groups and researchers. The survey responses were used to produce a general picture of efforts to mitigate disproportionality.

• Places to Watch: Promising Practices to Address Racial Disproportionality in Child Welfare Services
  This paper from the Casey-CSSP Alliance for Racial Equity documents the efforts of ten jurisdictions as they attempt to address and change the contributing factors that have led to racial disproportionality in their child welfare systems

• Public Policies and Practices in Child Welfare Systems that Affect Life Options for Children of Color
  This report from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies examines the impact of the child welfare system on the ability of minority children to pursue positive life options and presents promising practices to bring about improvements.

• Racial Equity and Subsidized Guardianship: Critical Issues in Child Welfare Policy and Practice
  This issue brief is designed to provide a general overview of the issues that were raised by national experts at a 2005 conference and to lay out questions to help guide the next phase of the discussion: developing consensus around a specific set of strategies to maximize permanence and address racial/ethnic disproportionality and disparities.

State Efforts to Address Disproportionality

• California
  • Early Intervention and Differential Response: Decision Points Where Fairness and Equity can be Addressed and Evaluated
    This matrix from the California identifies key decision-making issues involving cultural competency throughout the life of a case, and strategies that can be used to address both individual and systemic biases leading to the disproportionate representation of child populations in the child welfare system. From the California Social Work Education Center.

  • Raising Our Children Together: A Report on Recommendations for Reducing the Disproportionality of African American Children in San Francisco's Child Welfare Systerm
    Describes nine major recommendations, including specific actions and strategies, resulting from a task force.

• Iowa
  • DMC Resource Center
    The DMC Resource Center at the University of Iowa serves statewide and community efforts to reduce over-representation of minority youth in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems. The DMC Resource Center is a coordinated effort between the Department of Human Services and the Iowa Department of Human Rights, Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning.

• Michigan
  • Equity: Moving Toward Better Outcomes for All of Michigan's Children
    This report from the Michigan Advisory Committee on the Overrepresentation of Children of Color in Child Welfare makes 11 recommendations for action by the Department of Human Services, the Legislature, private agency providers and community partners.

• Minnesota
  • Practice Guide for Working with African American Families in the Child Welfare System
    A resource tool designed to help caseworkers enhance their case practice with African American families.

  • Study of Outcomes for African American Children in Minnesota's Child Protection System
    This 2002 report to the Minnesota Legislature contains a description of a study conducted to identify the nature and extent of disproportionate outcomes for African American children in Minnestota, as well as recommendations for change.

  • African American Comparative Case Review Study Report
    This case review study in four Minnesota counties was conducted to take a close look at case practice and service delivery for African American families in comparison to Caucasian American families by examining the level, type and delivery of services. The review found that, in most cases, there were no statistically significant differences between African American and Caucasian children for case services and case outcomes at assessment, case management in the home and reunification services. However, it found differences in case and family characteristics during the assessment process. Furthermore, it found that race interacts with other case characteristics in a way that is predictive of some case dispositions. The report included recommendations for practice beginning with prevention and continuing through permanency.

• Ohio
  • Minority Disproportionality
    The Public Children Services Association of Ohio has put together a group of resources on disproportionate representation of children and youth of color in the child welfare system, including three articles from their newsletter Heartbeat:
    • The Color of Child Welfare
    • How Other States are Addressing Minority Disproportionality in Child Welfare in their newsletter, Heartbeat.
    • A Closer Look: The Overrepresentation of Minorities in Ohio's Child Welfare System.

• Tennessee
  • Entry and Exit Disparities in the Tennessee Foster Care System
    The study from Chapin Hall is based on Tennessee children first placed in foster care between 2000 and 2005, inclusive. The first part of the analysis focuses on entry rates and differences in the likelihood that children will enter foster care. The report also examines how entry rate disparities at the county level vary in relation to characteristics of the local population. The second part of the report examines exit patterns in order to assess how length of stay and exit type influence disproportionality. After adjusting for other attributes, among children who are either reunified or adopted, white children exit more quickly. Among children discharged to a relative's care, African American children move more quickly even though children placed with relatives stay longer than children in other placement settings, regardless of race.
• Texas
  • Disproportionality in Child Protective Services: Statewide Reform Effort Begins with Examination of the Problem
    Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) and the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) were directed by the state legislature to determine whether Child Protective Services (CPS) enforcement actions are disproportionately initiated against any racial or ethnic group after accounting for other relevant factors. The findings generally confirm the dominant views found in the child welfare research literature regarding disproportionality in the CPS system. HHSC and DFPS are committed to examining all policies and procedures that may affect disparities and develop a remediation plan to address the problems identified in this report. A follow-up report will be provided to the Legislature in July 2006, as mandated.

• Washington State
  • Racial Disproportionality in the Child Welfare System in King County, Washington
    Qualitative and quantitative data on racial disproportionality, and a discussion of next steps. Prepared for the King County Coalition on Racial Disparity in November 2004.

Teleconferences

• Racial Disproportionality in Child Welfare: Tools and Strategies for Change
  On May 24 and July 26, 2005, the NRCFCPPP and CWLA hosted two teleconferences for state foster care and adoption managers. To listen to the audio files, visit our archived teleconferences page.