Building a better city for foster kids

My election would not only bring to City Hall New York’s first female mayor; it would also bring our first adopted mayor. My parents, a labor negotiator and a teacher, raised five kids in their Brooklyn home. Three of us were adopted: myself, my brother Matthew and my sister Elizabeth, who spent seven years in foster care.

When I think about my adoption and my family, one thing is clear. Everybody needs a forever family to support them. Family is forever. We need more families like mine.

That’s why improving our foster care system is deeply personal to me. The first step is addressing the racial disparities in our foster care system. Black children account for more than half of the 9,000 children in the city’s foster care system. Once in foster care, Black children are more likely to remain there without being adopted or reunified with their families.

One proven way to root out systemic racism is moving to “raceblind removals” that deliberately omit racially identifying information when child welfare authorities are making a determination about whether to remove a child from her home.

In Nassau County, implementing this process led to a drop in the number of Black children removed from their homes. Without a race-blind process, Black children accounted for 55.5% of the removals made in Nassau County in 2010. By 2015, after adopting a race-blind process, Black children accounted for just 29% of the county’s removals.

New York State has pushed the race-blind process, but New York City so far hasn’t gone along. That must change.

But changing the way we make child-removal decisions is only the start. As mayor, my appointments to Family Court and the leadership of the Administration for Children’s Services will be diverse to reflect the communities they serve. We should prioritize appointees who have had personal experience with the foster care system.

We must also ensure that our child welfare system isn’t punishing parents for being poor — especially as families are facing the challenges of job loss due to the effects of the pandemic. Neglect, which drives the majority of ACS cases, is often used as a stand-in for poverty, such as a lack of food, clothing, housing and medical care.

We have an obligation to ensure all children are cared for. That means making it easier for families to thrive and access benefits to overcome poverty so their children have a safe and healthy living environment. As mayor, I would initiate proactive enrollment campaigns to achieve 100% uptake among families eligible for Medicaid and SNAP, and offer free tax preparation to help families claim the Child Tax Credit — which as of this year provides all low- and moderate-income families with up to $3,600 per child.

We must also deliver meaningful economic relief and job pathways for the most vulnerable New Yorkers. This will help give all families the opportunity to raise children with dignity.

Once children are in foster care, we need to match as many as possible with permanent families, and provide wraparound supports and services for those who age out of the system. In 2019 alone, 620 children aged out of foster care without a family upon turning 21. “Age-outs” constituted 15% of all children leaving foster care. By comparison, adoptions constituted 17%. Children leaving foster care without a forever family are more likely to experience hardships like poverty, homelessness and criminal justice involvement.

We can find more forever families for kids by learning from existing programs that work, readying children for adoption by addressing trauma from abuse, neglect and abandonment. When children do age out of foster care, we must make sure they are set up to succeed on their own by guaranteeing a right to housing through age 25, with rental assistance vouchers.

We must also address the effects of COVID-19 on foster care. Available placements are in short supply, with group homes stretched too thin and prospective foster parents grappling with understandable health concerns. Yet foster needs will increase given how many young people’s parents have suffered the loss of a caregiver; between March and July 2020 alone, 4,200 children lost a parent statewide, and more than half of those kids were in the Bronx, Brooklyn or Queens.

Vaccinating as many people as possible and defeating the virus will reopen placements and make prospective parents feel more comfortable fostering or adopting. But we must also make foster parenting more practical for the 21st century. We should expand promising ideas like the Mockingbird Family Model being piloted in Queens, which connects foster families with one another as a network to lean on for help and community.

I know how important a just and compassionate foster care system is to families. At long last, let’s build one.