The EMBRACE Project

Kidsave has been busy promoting EMBRACE over the last few months, and we have so much to share! We held an in-person meeting at the Gallup headquarters in Washington D.C. with leaders in child welfare and DEI, including the CEO of National Adoption Agency and the Commissioner of Administration for Children and Families.

We are planning a pilot program and educational campaigns. The pilot program will be in Los Angeles, Houston, and Virginia at Kidsave’s sites, and we are also planning to find a partner in Atlanta, Georgia. The pilot program will include the following components: increased recruitment of Black families and families who want to mentor and adopt Black children, cultural competency training, family coaches, and mental health services for mentoring and adoptive families.

Kidsave also met with seven senators from Virginia, California, and Texas to discuss the pilot program and apply for appropriations requests. We added two leaders to our honorary task force team – Senator Alex Padilla from California and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee from Texas, 18th district. We also launched a monthly newsletter in January 2024.

In addition, our EMBRACE project has been featured in 10 media outlets. In fact, the Los Angeles Times published about our EMBRACE project. Our DEI Strategic Communications Manager, Shantay Armstrong, the face of EMBRACE, had her op-ed, “Opinion: how to prevent Black kids from becoming stuck in foster care,” published after months of campaigning for our project. 

“In the 15 years that Kidsave’s, Shantay Armstrong, served as a caseworker in impoverished communities in New York City and the Bay Area, most of her cases were Black or brown children. Research shows that on average, Black children spend longer in foster care than white children. Black youth are also more likely than white youth to age out of foster care without a family.”   

In the LA Times Article, Shantay discusses how all foster children deserve a chance at finding their forever families. However, Black and brown children remain in foster care for too long without needed support. State and federal leaders can change that. She further discusses the challenges that predominately Black and brown communities face in the child welfare system and actionable solutions. 

Several actionable solutions arose from Kidsave’s national study in partnership with Gallup. A few include:  

1. Educational campaigns focused on positive representation to change perceptions within Black communities about the child welfare system.  
2. Policy change supporting placement waivers & administrative support would allow families who do not meet the income and housing eligibility requirements, including Black families, to foster and adopt.  
3. Anti-discrimination laws and enforcement are also needed to ensure that applicant families are evaluated without racial or implicit bias. 
4. Investing in recruitment in Black communities to find and encourage potential foster parents and support those who get involved. 
5. Peer support and formal education within the system could increase cultural competency among non-Black families who are fostering or adopting Black children. For example, parents may need to learn how to properly care for Black children’s hair. This is the kind of connection and support that can improve thriving and outcomes for families and Black children in foster care. 

Shantay also emphasizes that to truly reform the child welfare system, we must also focus on preventive services and reform the systems that have led to the disproportionate representation of Black children at risk of remaining in foster care until adulthood. This would include a wide array of funding and policies that would support biological families that are trying to stay together, such as continuous postpartum coverage for low-income women and reduction of child protective services intervention in cases of neglect due to poverty, to best ensure that these children and their families can succeed. 

At Kidsave, we are working hard to address the barriers in recruitment of Black and brown families and the over-representation of children of color in foster care.

Links:

• Read the full article here
• Learn more about EMBRACE
• Read the National Study from Gallup in Partnership with Kidsave