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Fight for Our Girls: Applying an Intersectional Lens to Girls of Color Facing Status Offenses
The Center for the Study of Social Policy's latest brief in the Fight for Our Girls series centers intersectionality, trauma and the racialized and gendered history of the juvenile justice and child welfare systems as important aspects to understanding the full narrative of girls of color who are systems-involved. Girls of color who commit status offenses - such as running away, missing school and violating curfew - are often narrowly seen and defined as social problems that require intervention at the individual level. So long as the juvenile justice and child welfare systems continue to ignore the structural inequities and trauma that so often contribute to these behaviors, these systems will continue to fail girls of color.
Read the full brief here.
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Invisible Youth: The Intersection of Public Systems and Immigration Policy
With U.S. immigration policies under fire, children who are involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems are seldom part of the conversation. One of the most vulnerable populations to changes in immigration policy are the 23 percent of children in the U.S. who are either immigrants or children of immigrants. These children are often invisible to public systems, despite being a population that is often of particularly high-need due to their increased likelihood of living in poverty, lacking health insurance and experiencing other barriers that prevent access to public benefits and social services. Read more about this issue and potential action steps for youth-serving systems here.
The Growing Demand for Muslim Foster Homes
The state of Michigan has one of the largest Muslim populations in the U.S., but you wouldn't be able to tell that is the case if you look at their foster care system. Currently, Michigan does not maintain data on how many Muslim children are in the system but we know there are not enough Muslim foster homes to keep up with demand. In an effort to recruit more Muslim foster parents, the
Muslim Foster Care Association was created. Read more
here.
The Question That Often Plagues Us All: When Should a Child Be Taken From Their Parents?
A recent piece in The New Yorker provides a complex, deeply personal account of a young mother's experiences with the child welfare system. This piece also provides insight into the mind of a caseworker, a judge, foster parents, and lawyers. It is the actions, advice, and opinions of all these players that often determines the fate of a child once they enter the system. Read more here.
'Jane Crow': How Foster Care is Being Used to Punish the Most Marginalized Families
The New York Times takes on racial disparities in the child welfare system in a riveting piece. Read more here.
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Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls' Childhood
A groundbreaking study and report was released by Georgetown Law's Center on Poverty and Inequality in late June detailing the consequences of black girls being viewed as less innocent and as more adult than white girls of the same age.
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These findings show that pervasive stereotypes of black women as hypersexualized and combative are reaching into our schools and playgrounds and helping rob black girls of the protections other children enjoy," said report coauthor Jamilia Blake, an associate professor at Texas A&M University. "We urge legislators, advocates and policymakers to examine the disparities that exist for black girls in the education and juvenile justice systems and to pursue reforms that preserve childhood for all."
Read the full report here.
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The Leadership Conference Education Fund is mobilizing passionate individuals to assist with protecting the civil rights of students nationwide. The Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education is responsible for ensuring equal access to education and promoting educational excellence through vigorous enforcement of civil rights. Recently, the department has posted a
public notice in the Federal Register seeking public input about what regulations and guidance to repeal, replace and modify. Your comments will help determine how the department moves forward. Comments are due by
September 20th.
Click here for a sample comment that you can use as a template.
Click here to read what the Department of Education is considering rescinding, modifying or replacing.
Click here
to learn more about why this is important.
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Established in 2004, the
Alliance for Racial Equity in Child Welfare provides national leadership in support of improved outcomes for children and families of color involved with the nation's child welfare system. The Alliance is guided by a coalition of national organizations, state and local leaders, judges, researchers, practitioners, policymakers, advocates and parents, as well as alumni and youth who have directly experienced the child welfare system.
The Alliance is supported by funding from the Annie E. Casey foundation and is managed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy. |
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