Milwaukee leaders tackle child welfare disparities

DJay Joi spent more than a year in Wisconsin’s foster care system before he was placed with a supportive black family, one that could better understand his background as a biracial child.

“They were part of my culture, parents who took care of me. And at that time, I didn’t think I was lucky, but now I’m more grateful than ever,” said Joi, 24, a senior at Springfield College in Milwaukee.

The child welfare challenges facing Wisconsin’s black families were front and center Saturday morning, as stakeholders and parents discussed how to help parents reunite with children, while also producing positive results for children like Joi. The event, hosted by the Community Brainstorming Conference at a north side church, featured Wisconsin Department of Children and Families Secretary Eloise Anderson and three panelists working in Milwaukee’s child welfare system.

Anderson emphasized that reuniting children with parents or other relatives, then providing those families with necessary resources to ensure safety, remains the first option. Of the roughly 1,000 Milwaukee-area children discharged each year from out-of-home placements, such as foster care or placement with relatives, about 57%  are reunited with parents, 24% are adopted and 19% are appointed guardians.

“The model we have is a very old model of removing kids from homes,” Anderson said. “I think what happens is that as I look at fragile families, it’s not always the kids that should be removed and have services. It’s the family.”

Those sentiments were met with skepticism from many in the crowd of about 100 people. Several parents and grandparents criticized state administrators and workers, saying they felt unfairly treated by those in the system.

Others said racial discrimination has played into black children being disproportionately separated from their parents. In 2015, about 67% of Milwaukee County’s 2,250 children in out-of-home placements were black — even though the county’s population is only 27% black.

Jermaine Reed, the executive director of Fresh Start Family Services, said “we have a problem” in Milwaukee County, and “we have to treat it like a problem.”

“As long as we don’t have these courageous, honest conversations and talk about these issues, we’ll never get to a better place,” Reed said.

Black parents in Milwaukee County are more likely to live in poverty and face challenges that statistically increase the likelihood of run-ins with the child welfare system — suggesting the entire disparity can’t be chalked up to racism. But Ann Leinfelder Grove, vice president of SaintA, a Milwaukee-based nonprofit serving families at various points in the system, said those who work in child welfare should be cognizant of the possibility that they harbor undetected implicit biases.

“These things are real," she said. "They should shape all of our perspectives."