Executive Summary
1. What Results Do You Want?
Race and ethnicity should not be a determinant for bad outcomes for children in the child welfare system. Yet across the country children of color are disproportionately removed from their homes and placed in foster care by state child welfare systems. Policymakers can address these disparities by measuring and improving preventive services, entries into care, placement type, length-of-stay, and permanency for children and families of color. See more information on priorities and indicators for achieving racial equity in child welfare.
2. How Are Your Kids?
Want to learn more about the status of children and families in your child wefare system? Scorecards, prepared by the Alliance for Racial Equity in Child Welfare provide a snapshot of racial disproportionality and disparities in each state. See data for your state, and guidance for understanding root causes and projections.
3. What Can Administrators, Practitioners and Policymakers do?
States’ efforts to achieve greater equity for children of color in child welfare services are still in the early stages, but throughout the country promising policies and practices are emerging.
4. How Can You Ensure Success?
Ensuring success requires good implementation, and clear measures of accountability, setting targeted results, using indicators to measure progress, and applying interventions at the right time to achieve and sustain improvements.