Word: fostering
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...take race into account in adoptions, according to a new report from the nonprofit Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute--despite a 1994 law that prohibits doing so. While supporters of the Multiethnic Placement Act say attempting to match black children with black parents lengthens the time kids spend in foster care, the report argues that white parents are often ill-prepared to handle race-specific identity issues. It recommends race-related training for white parents as well as a drive to get more black parents to adopt...
Beverly and David Cox never expected to make a permanent home for the baby girls they call by their initials, M.W. and T.W.; they intended only to provide foster care until the sisters' schizophrenic mother or another relative assumed responsibility. But that was five years ago, before the Coxes purchased a swing set, stocked their home in suburban Delafield, Wisconsin, with The Lion King, Pinocchio and Aladdin videos, and learned to distinguish M.W.'s tastes (macaroni and cheese) from T.W.'s (jelly sandwiches, hold the peanut butter). It was also before the Milwaukee County Human Services Department asked the Coxes...
...roughly 440,000 children who currently languish in America's foster-care system, 20,000 are available for adoption, most of them older children between the ages of 6 and 12. Among the adoptable children, 44% are white and 43% are black. But 67% of all families waiting to adopt are white, and many of them are eager to take a black child. The hurdles, however, are often formidable. Though only three states--Arkansas, California and Minnesota--have laws promoting race matching in adoptions, 40 others favor the practice...
...separate class action against the state of Texas, filed jointly by lawyers at the conservative Institute for Justice in Washington and three liberal Harvard law professors--Elizabeth Bartholet, Randall Kennedy and Laurence Tribe--that aims to have race-matching practices declared unconstitutional. Argues Tribe: "Leaving African-American kids in foster care rather than allowing them to be adopted by loving parents inflicts very serious harm on children...
Bill Mandel couldn't agree more. In 1991 he and his wife became foster parents of Robyn, a three-day-old, crack-addicted black infant who had been abandoned on San Francisco's Mission Street. For more than a year, the Mandels were never contacted by county social workers. But when they tried to adopt Robyn at age 14 months, the county sought to remove the child from their care, citing the lack of a racial match. The Mandels obtained a restraining order, then in May 1994 won the right to adopt. Mandel has little patience for those who worry...