Kidsave / Gallup Survey Explores Ways to Boost Black Adoption from Foster Care
A new Gallup survey published last fall has found that while Black children in foster care are more likely to linger in foster longer than children of other races and are more likely than white children to be adopted transracially, the reasons have little to do with the willingness of prospective Black parents to adopt. Black parents face many of the same barriers faced by other adoptive parents, but some – along with many other parents of color – are more distrustful of a system that they believe discriminates against them.
The findings were contained in a report, Americans’ Views of U.S. Foster Care: Elevating Black Americans’ Perspectives and Experiences, published by the Gallup Center on Black Voices in partnership with Kidsave's EMBRACE Project. The report was part of a larger, years-long project by Kidsave to better understand the barriers to fostering and adopting among all parents, but particularly among African Americans.
Previous studies have repeatedly found that Black children in foster care (and children of color generally) are more likely than white children to be adopted by parents of another race. This is partly because of a mismatch between the pool of potential adoptive parents, which is 73 percent white according to the Barna Group, and the pool of children in foster care who are available for adoption, which according to the latest AFCARS data for 2021 is 43 percent white, 21 percent Black, and 23 percent Hispanic.
This mismatch has led to significant levels of transracial adoption for non-white children. According to a 2020 report by Mathematica for the Department of Health and Human Services, over 90 percent of white children adopted from foster care are adopted by white parents. By contrast, just 65 percent of Black children, 51 percent of Hispanic children, and 11 percent of other non-white children are adopted by same-race parents. In all, about half of all adoptions of non-white children from foster care are transracial adoptions.
This disparity is true despite federal requirements that direct states to work to recruit foster and adoptive families that reflect the diversity of children in their care. Acknowledging this reality, the joint project of Gallup and Kidsave’s EMBRACE Project sought to explore the reasons why.
The Gallup survey, which was conducted last spring, found that the attitudes of prospective Black parents toward fostering and adopting were not the primary cause. The survey found that prospective parents of all races were more likely to adopt from foster care the more they knew about it, but Black Americans were more likely (46 percent) than the national average (37 percent) to say they know some or a lot about foster care. In part, this was because Black Americans were also more likely than the national average to say they knew someone who has provided foster care or who has been in foster care.
Overall, probably because of this greater level of familiarity, the report found that more Black Americans have thought a lot about providing foster care (34 percent) or adopting from foster care (26 percent) than is true for Americans as a whole (25 percent and 18 percent respectively).
So why don’t more Black Americans adopt? In exploring the top barriers it found that most of them were issues that were experienced by all races relatively equally. These included the cost of providing foster care (42 percent of Black adults called it a major barrier), insufficient training (41 percent), concern about emotional and behavioral challenges (43 percent), lack of access to mental health services for the child or the family (40 percent), and concern about changes they would need to make to their home or living situation (42 percent).
Prospective Black parents did stand out, however, in a few ways. One was the degree to which they felt that racial and ethnic discrimination was a barrier to becoming a foster parent. One in four Black Americans (25 percent) called this a major barrier. One in five (21 percent) Hispanic Americans said the same thing. The report also found that a third of LGBT adults said that discrimination based on gender or sexual identity is a major barrier to providing foster care.
A separate 2015 study (The Impact of Historical Trauma and Mistrust on the Recruitment of Resource Families of Color) also identified high levels of mistrust among communities of color toward the child welfare system as a major barrier to recruitment of families from these communities.
“What I have seen is that populations of color are far more scrutinized by child protective services,” one Black adult told Gallup. “There are cultural misunderstandings of ways in which different cultures raise children, leading to a higher level of mandatory reporting and scrutiny. There is a higher rate of intervention and removal from their homes.”
Prospective Black parents also stood out in terms of their support for same-race mentoring. Roughly 40 percent of Black adults said that knowing that they could volunteer to mentor a child of the same racial or ethnic background would make them more likely to consider participating in a program that works with children in foster care, which in turn could lead to fostering or adopting themselves. Support among Black adults was higher than for Hispanic (26 percent) or white adults (18 percent).
"I think a lot of people are just nervous,” said one Black respondent in an interview. “The mentoring thing could get you involved with a child so you know what it’s like. Like tiptoeing to the pool.”
Kidsave’s EMBRACE Project (Expanding Meaningful Black Relationships and Creating Equity) plans to continue its work on increasing Black engagement with foster and adoptive youth in the years ahead, including through education and exploring policy and practice reforms.
Voice for Adoption is also pursuing related issues through its advocacy agenda. This has included urging Congress to amend the Multiethnic Placement Act to allow agencies to consider race, color, and national origin as part of a child's needs and best interests when determining placement and permanency. VFA also advocates for more resources for recruiting and retaining qualified and skilled child welfare professionals, with a particular emphasis on prioritizing the advancement of leaders of color.
To learn more about the EMBRACE Project, tune into their latest podcast, “Black Americans Are More Knowledgeable About and Involved in Foster Care – but They Have More Reservations About How the System Works,” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Google Podcasts.
