Episode 58 – Racial Bias In Foster Care
Our thoughts on a report on racial bias in the Michigan foster care system. The news report we read excerpts from can be found at the Detroit News. The full report from the Center for the Study of Social Policy can be found here.
sos22 said,
March 17, 2009 @ 11:36 am
Missouri Baptist in Springfield, MO is also allowing us to us your podcast as training hours!!!!!
Beverly Tran said,
April 22, 2009 @ 6:36 am
The amount of power and money involved in child welfare is massive, involving multiple funding streams of Social Security and Medicaid, yet pails to the levels of waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars. Poverty is codified as the crime of abuse and neglect for eligibility of a child entering foster care is strictly based on being impoverished. Hence, as poverty increases so shall the number of child removals to foster care. Billions of dollars of federal fraud are found through only cursory audits conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General and U.S. Department of Justice, Additionally, OIG has identified a number of State financing arrangements and other revenue-maximization tactics that inappropriately increase Federal Medicaid payments to States. Children are being double-billed, provided for unnecessary medical services and phantom programs are funded that bill fictitious children and services. This is what is called fraud, or more intuitively, federal false claims.
Every year, lawyers across the nation are settling an increased number of lawsuits against states, child placing agencies and foster parents to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, all because the nation has not had the opportunity to be exposed to the child welfare industry for what it is: a market. Shrouded by the FOIA laws, states are able to construct federal funding schemes in what is termed as “the best interests of the child”.
As for understanding why there exists racial bias in Michigan
Foster Care, one must possess the financial sophistication to be able to muddle through federal funding structures to know that child of non-European decent hail more money because they are automatically classified as “special needs” or what is more readily recognized as “at-risk”.
Secondly, the only way for these families to access medical and other resources for the children is for them to be placed under the aegis of the state.
Perhaps the time has come to depart from the mentality of “snatching” children to correct the situation, to “foster parenting” to the families by keeping the children in the home.
Beverly Tran