Child Welfare Outcomes for African-American Children Monitored Under a Consent Decree: The Deal Effect

Overview: State child welfare systems monitored under a consent decree lack focus on decreasing racial disproportionality and disparity for children and youth in foster care. This research examined the prevalence, and impact that racial disproportionality and disparity have on African American children in two Georgia counties under a federal consent decree.Proposal text: Child welfare outcomes guide decision-making and policy development that will improve children’s rights. Improving rights for all children in foster care is the purpose of child welfare, however, these outcomes fail to adequately address racial disproportionality and disparities for African American children. Racial disproportionality (RD) in child welfare results from the overrepresentation of one racial group comparative to their representation in the general population.

Over the past fifty years, research studies on racial disproportionality and disparity in child welfare show significant variations in foster care placements of children under the age of 18 by racial groups (Ashley & Brown, 2015; Chipungu & Bent-Goodley, 2004; Johnson-Motoyama, Moore, & Jeri L. Damman, 2018; Prycea, Lee, Crowe, Daejun Park, & Owens, 2019; U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008; Yi & Wildeman, 2018). In 2008, the Committee on Income Security and Family Support held the first legislative hearing on "racial disproportionality in the foster care system” (U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008).

Background:
Prior to the congressional hearing on racial disproportionality in child welfare, Georgia’s Kenny A. ex rel. Winn v. Perdue, 218 F.R.D. 277, 286 (N.D. Ga. 2003) posit “the juvenile court's own mission of ensuring that children removed from their parent's custody because of abuse or neglect are not further harmed when the juvenile court orders them into the custody of the state.” Subsequently, Georgia Governor, Roy Barnes, reached a settlement consent decree, commonly known as Kenny “A”, that provides for monitoring nine child welfare outcomes for children in Fulton and Dekalb foster care systems by two independent accountability agents. Twenty-seven reports between 2003 and 2014 occurred under the leadership of three governors, one commissioner, and six directors.

Methods:
This cross-sectional design examines (Chen, 2018) multiple National Data Archives on Child Abuse and Neglect (NDACAN) datasets over a ten-year period. NDACAN datasets provide national, state, and county-level case information. This research design included data wrangling and analysis using R language in RStudio.

Results:
This presentation discusses child demographics and characteristics, family demographics, and foster care data points linked to Kenny “A” outcomes. Between 2015 and 2019, results show trends in child welfare outcomes and racial disproportionality in Georgia’s child welfare system, specifically Fulton and Dekalb counties. In 2019, African American children represented 44% of the foster care cases, while being only 34% of Georgia’s population (AFCARS, 2019). AFCARS data shows a fluctuation in the number of children in foster care over a ten-year timeframe. Georgia’s administrative data shows a continual decrease in children in foster care between 2003 to 2014 under Governor Perdue and a steady increase from 2015 to 2019 under Governor Deal. These outcomes occurred in concert with executive leadership philosophical shifts. Data visualizations show changes in foster care exits correlate and align with the hiring and firing of the DHS Commissioner.

Conclusion:
Examining racial disproportionality in a child welfare system under a consent decree provides added information on how mandated changes in child welfare policies and increases in resources impact the safety, well-being, and permanency outcomes for African American children.