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Promoting same-race adoption for children of color

Promoting same-race adoption for children of color.

by Leslie Doty Hollingsworth

Opponents of policies to protect same-race adoption for children of color assert that it is necessary to lift all restrictions on transracial adoption (alternately referred to as "interracial," "interethnic," or "transethnic" adoption) of the many children of color believed to be "languishing" in foster homes, residential programs, and institutional settings. This article briefly presents the history of the transracial adoption controversy and discusses its current status; counters assertions typically used to oppose same-race adoption policies for children of color; summarizes the positions of several social work organizations regarding adoption and race; and makes recommendations for education, policy, research, and practice.

History of Transracial Adoption

The adoption of orphaned children from other countries by U.S. families began in the 1940s with the end of World War II (Simon & Alstein, 1977). A rise in the number of such adoptions accompanied later wars, including the Korean and Vietnam Wars (Silverman, 1993). In the 1960s, widespread use of artificial birth control, the legalization of abortion, and decreased social stigma associated with bearing a child outside of marriage were accompanied by a substantial decrease in healthy white infants available for adoption. There was, however, no corresponding decrease among African American and other children of color (although foreign countries began to establish rules that limited some adoptions in those countries).

It has been suggested that adoption agencies, feeling the pressure of reduced fee income, found in the availability of children of color an opportunity to increase adoption fees (McRoy, 1989). One writer (Bartholet, 1991) suggested that as the United States became accustomed to children of color from other countries in its communities, it became easier to accept the transracial adoption of African American children. By 1971 transracial adoptions had reached an annual high of 2,574 (Simon & Alstein, 1987). Responding to this increase, a 1972 meeting of the National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW) ended with a resolution opposing transracial adoption:

Black children belong physically and psychologically and culturally in black families where they can receive the total sense of themselves and develop a sound projection of their future. Only a black family can transmit the emotional and sensitive subtleties of perceptions and reactions essential for a black child's survival in a racist society. Human beings are products of their environment and develop their sense of values, attitudes, and self-concept within their own family structures. Black children in white homes are cut off from the healthy development of themselves as black people. (quoted in McRoy, 1989, p. 150)

In response to that resolution, and to the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 giving tribal courts exclusive jurisdiction over American Indian child custody proceedings, some states established policies and procedures limiting transracial adoption and requiring that serious efforts be made to place children of color with adoptive parents of their own racial or ethnic group. Agencies specializing in same-race placements were established, and many traditional agencies modified their programs in the same direction.

Some parents who had adopted transracially were offended, however, by the NABSW resolution, perceiving it as not based in truth and disagreeing with the assertion that they were not capable of parenting their adoptive children of color adequately (Hermann, 1993). White foster parents began to file legal suits to prevent children of color who were in their care from being placed with same-race adoptive parents and to be allowed to adopt the children themselves (Elias, 1991). Advocates of transracial adoption, some of them transracial adoptive parents themselves (Bartholet, 1991; Mahoney, 1991), began to speak and write publicly in its support and in opposition to same-race protective policies. Criticism of protective policies for same-race adoption has included the following assertions:

* that same-race placement policies result in retention of children in foster care for longer than necessary, which may result in delay or denial of placement for children of color and therefore in long-term harm

* that there is no systematic recruitment of white parents to correspond to that of families of color, and therefore families of color are being given unfair advantage

* that same-race policies give families of color an edge in receipt of adoption subsidies, because children of color (whom same-race parents adopt) are eligible for such subsidies by nature of their "special- needs" status

* that agencies apply differential screening criteria to prospective black parents than to prospective white families (such as socioeconomic status, age, and marital status requirements), even though these have not been ruled out as viable criteria for selection

* that empirical studies have been biased toward studying the negative aspects of transracial adoption

* that in spite of such biases, studies have failed to document a negative effect of transracial adoption in areas such as general adjustment and self-esteem and, in some instances, have indicated a possible benefit with regard to the transracial adoptee's ability to get along with and in a white world

* that there is no empirical support for the contention that parents of color do a better job at socializing their children ethnically

* that racial matching policies are in conflict with antidiscrimination legislation, such as the U.S. Constitution and Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Bartholet, 1991; Mahoney, 1991; National Coalition to End Racism in America's Child Care System, cited in McRoy, 1994).

A result of the opposition to same-race policies has been that "states have begun to reassess their policies which include race as a viable consideration in placement decision making" (National Coalition to End Racism in America's Child Care System, cited in McRoy, 1994). Subsequently, transracial adoptions began to increase in the early 1980s (McRoy, 1989). Bill Pierce, president of the National Council for Adoption, estimated that 12,000 children were transracially adopted in 1992 (Richman, 1993). Accurate national data on the numbers of transracial and same-race adoptions are not available because after 1971 the federal government no longer required states to maintain and report such data.

On December 22, 1995, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published final rules implementing the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, a mandatory system of data collection on all children covered by Title IV-B of the Social Security Act, Section 427 ("Foster Care," 1997). Included are rules requiring states to collect data on all adopted children who were placed by the state child welfare agency or by private agencies under contract with the public child welfare agency. However, national adoption data are not yet available.

The recent increase in transracial adoptions has been influenced by a trend among child welfare agencies toward greater flexibility in eligibility to adopt. Such changes have included less rigidity regarding age, income, housing, family composition, and infertility examination requirements; attempts to make application procedures and agency locations and hours more convenient for prospective adopters; less emphasis on the need for matching the characteristics of child and parent (which may have facilitated same-race placements); a willingness to select single parents or those who already have birth or adopted children; openness to adoption by foster parents, caretakers, and relatives of the child; use of adoption resource exchanges; use of active and ongoing recruitment methods, often using the mass media and featuring specific children; and expansion of adoption subsidy programs (Child Welfare League of America, 1988). Although some of these changes may facilitate same-race adoptions, they have also opened the way for increases in transracial adoptions. People interested in adopting transracially typically either originally desired a white infant or preschool child and became willing to adopt a child of a different race or were the child's foster parents (Child Welfare League of America, 1988).

The Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 prohibited agencies or entities engaged in adoption or foster care placements that receive federal assistance from "categorically deny[ing] to any person the opportunity to become an adoptive or foster parent, solely on the basis of the race, color, or national origin of the adoptive or foster parent or the child" and "from delay[ing] or deny[ing] the placement of a child solely on the basis of race, color, or national origin of the adoptive or foster parent or parents involved" (p. 4056). However, this law allowed "an agency or entity to which [the preceding applied to] consider the cultural, ethnic, or racial background of the child and the capacity of the prospective foster or adoptive parents to meet the needs of a child of this background as one of a number of factors used to determine the best interests of a child" (p. 4056).

Opponents of same-race protective policies criticized the qualification in the Multiethnic Placement Act that allowed race, culture, and ethnicity to be considered at all and the absence of penalties for failure to conform to the requirements of the act. Advocacy efforts with regard to federal and state adoption policy continued, and in August 1996 legislation was signed that modified the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994. This legislation, which was enacted as a part of the Small Business Job Protection Act of 1996, had two sections: Section 1807 (Adoption Assistance), which allowed a tax credit to adoptive families with incomes not exceeding $75,000 of up to $5,000 ($6,000 in the case of children with "special needs") annually for qualified adoption expenses, and Section 1808 (Removal of Barriers to Interethnic Adoption), which removed the qualification provided by the earlier act and simply prevented any entity that receives federal funds from denying any person the opportunity to adopt or provide foster care and from delaying or denying the placement of a child on the basis of the race, color, or national origin of the adoptive or foster parent or the child involved.

Alternative Considerations

Given the history of transracial adoption, social workers need to be aware of alternative considerations to those that resulted in the current legislation. Delays in moving children of color out of the out-of-home care system are caused by factors other than restrictions on transracial adoption and can be resolved by actions other than lifting such restrictions. Improvements in six areas would alleviate such delays and lessen the need for transracial adoptions. First, because there are insufficient non-kin foster families of color, policies favoring adoption by foster parents are increasing the numbers of transracial adoptions. Second, there are indications that sufficient numbers of families of color are available to adopt healthy infants of color if such families are sought out and if traditional barriers to adoption are eliminated. Third, many children of color in the child welfare system are not available for adoption or have special needs. Fourth, overrepresentation of children of color in the child welfare system has been linked to disparities in services related to ethnic group. Fifth, children of color may be counted as being in foster placements when they are actually in permanent kinship care. Finally, poverty, which disproportionately affects families of color, has been associated with the abuse and neglect that often result in the out- of-home placement of children.

Policies Favoring Adoption by Foster Parents

Many children of color are placed with non-kin foster families (as many as 52 percent in California, according to Meyer & Link, cited in Barth, Courtney, Berrick, Albert, & Needell, 1994). Barth, Courtney, Berrick, Albert, and Needell noted that among the California children they studied, only two-thirds of African American children were placed in African American foster homes, and only 31 percent of Hispanic children were placed with Hispanic caregivers. (Because the figures for children of color include kinship placements, the actual proportion of placements of children of color with same-race, non-kin foster families is much lower than they found.) In contrast, 92 percent of selected white children in foster homes were placed with white foster families. The researchers noted that "when children were not placed with ethnically similar foster parents, they were almost always placed with Caucasians [and that] nearly one-half of Caucasian foster parents were caring for children of color" (Barth, Courtney, Berrick, Albert, & Needell, 1994, p. 245).

What has come to be known as the "fost adoption" program (Barth, Courtney, Berrick, & Albert, 1994) emerged in the mid-1970s (Meezan & Shireman, 1985) to promote the placement of children in foster homes with the explicit expectation that the foster parents will adopt the child if reunification with the birth parents fails. Before this program was implemented, foster placements were established in such a way that they would interfere neither with the reunification of the child with her or his birth parents nor with the permanent placement of the child in an adoptive home. Foster parents were considered temporary substitutes, and they were urged not to become attached to the child. If they did become attached, the child was often removed to another placement. With the advent of the "fost adoption" program, white foster families began to seek adoption of children of color placed in their homes, sometimes from birth, even when the children were not placed with the intention of their future adoption by those foster parents.

Thus, insufficient numbers of foster families of color reduce the likelihood that children of color will be adopted by a family of their same racial or ethnic group and gives an advantage to transracial placements. There is evidence that even children of mixed racial parentage tend to be confronted with racism or problems of racial identity while they are in placement, and researchers have recommended that these factors be considered in the selection and preparation of potential foster parents (Folaron & Hess, 1993). Increasing the numbers of available foster families of color has the potential, therefore, for increasing same-race adoptive placements (Rezendes, 1994).

Barth, Courtney, Berrick, and Albert (1994) compared children who were adopted within two years of entering foster care with children who remained in foster care for longer than two years before being adopted. Although they found no effect of ethnicity on "the odds of a timely adoption," an item consistently related to length of time until adoption was whether the child welfare worker and the foster family with whom the child was placed planned, at the time of the placement, that the child would be adopted by the family. The authors added, "the fact that an adoption is planned at the time of foster placement or that a child is under one month of age both decrease the odds that a child will stay in foster care more than two years" (p. 167). Because there was no effect for ethnicity, it can be concluded that the effect of age and planned placement occurs for children of color as well as for other children. If the pool of foster parents is less likely to contain foster parents of color, and if adoption plans continue to be made at the point of initial foster placement, especially within the context of the increased restrictions on same-race adoption protective policies, the likelihood that a child of color will be adopted by someone of her or his own race or ethnic group is diminished and the odds of a transracial adoption are increased.

Availability of Adoptive Families of Color

Evidence indicates that the number of families of color who are willing to adopt healthy infants may be sufficient if agency recruitment and eligibility policies are responsive to the cultures and lifestyles of such families. Early studies documented the failure of adoption agencies to implement culturally sensitive recruitment strategies and eligibility standards for potential adoptees of color (Day, 1979; Herzog, Sudia, Harwood, & Newcomb, 1971). Although many states and agencies took action to correct these circumstances, a recent survey by the North American Council on Adoptable Children (Gilles & Kroll, 1991) found that 83 percent of agencies in the 25 states studied acknowledged that organizational barriers continued to exist that prevented or discouraged families of color from adopting. The most frequently cited barriers were "institutional/systemic racism; lack of people of color in managerial positions; fees; 'adoption as business' mentality; communities' of color historical tendencies toward 'informal' adoption; negative perceptions of agencies and their practices; lack of minority staff; inflexible standards; general lack of recruitment activity and poor recruitment techniques; and 'word not out'" (pp. 7-8). With regard to the "adoption as business" mentality, one agency head was quoted as saying, "If your agency relied on fees, where would you place a minority kid . . . with a white family that can afford to pay, or a black family that can't?" (p. 14).

When adoption services and programs have become more responsive to families of color, such families have come forward to adopt. Haring reported in 1975 (cited in McRoy, 1989) that following changes in public and private adoption practices to encourage same-race adoptions, 70 families of color were approved for every 100 available children of color, reflecting an increase from 1971 (Herzog et al., 1971) of 39 families of color approved for every 100 children of color (and 116 white families approved for every 100 white children). More recently, a study by the North American Council on Adoptable Children (Gilles & Kroll, 1991) of 17 agencies specializing in finding same-race adoptive placements for children of color found that these agencies located same-race placements for 94 percent of their 341 African American children and 66 percent of their 38 Hispanic children; nonspecializing agencies obtained an average of 51 percent of same-race placements of 806 African American children and 30 percent of 168 Hispanic children (p. 8).

A number of sources have identified agencies that are exemplars in successfully engaging same-race adoptive families ("Adoption," 1992; Gant, 1984; Hairston & Williams, 1989; "Homes," 1993; Jackson-White, Dozier, Oliver, & Gardner, 1997; McRoy, Oglesby, & Grape, 1997). Hairston and Williams (1989) found that more than half of the 58 African American adoptive families they surveyed viewed the services they had received from exemplary national African American adoption agencies or programs as having led to their decision to adopt. Others (Gant, 1984; Gilles & Kroll, 1991) have similarly identified agency characteristics associated with successful recruitment of same-race families.

Availability for Adoption and Special Needs

Many children in out-of-home placements either are not available for adoption or have characteristics that make them difficult to place. Thus, they should not be included in numbers of children "languishing" in the system who are considered easily adoptable. Regarding availability for adoption, the Voluntary Cooperative Information System (VCIS) (cited in Flango & Flango, 1994), using figures received from states reporting, estimated that nationally 71,000 children had a permanency plan for adoption at the end of fiscal year 1992, meaning that their child welfare workers expected that parental rights would be voluntarily or involuntarily terminated and that the children would then become eligible for adoption. Of that number, it was estimated that 17,000 adoptions had been finalized and that another 17,000 adoptions were in the process of finalization. VCIS estimated that 21,000 children were in substitute care and still awaiting a decision regarding a final disposition. (The plight of the remaining 16,000 children was not clarified by VCIS, but because they were not included in one of the three categories mentioned above, they are assumed to not be imminently available for adoption.)

Two conclusions may be drawn from these data. First, half of children in the child welfare system may not be available for adoption (21,000 in out-of-home care awaiting final disposition and 16,000 not included in the statistics). Second, there is a difference between a child's having a permanency plan for adoption and actually being available for adoption. Child welfare workers, on assessing a family, may record adoption as the permanency plan without that ever becoming a reality, leading to incorrect assumptions among the public and among policymakers that children in such in-stances are actually available for adoption. Although these data are not restricted to children of color, they point to the inaccurate conclusions on which policy decisions may be made. With regard to children with special needs, the Child Welfare League of America (1988) observed that "there is a surplus of potential parents seeking to adopt white infants and preschool children and a shortage of those applying for those children who are available and need families" (p. 5); available children are "minority, severely handicapped, . . . age 12 or over; and in foster care four or more years" (p. 5). Thus, although the latter children are heavily counted among those who are languishing in out-of-home care, they are not the children that potential parents are seeking to adopt. Transracial adoption laws that are more liberal would not be expected, therefore, to decrease the numbers of these children substantially.

Inequities in Services

Disparities related to ethnic group have been observed in the prevention and intervention services that children in the child welfare system receive (Barth, Courtney, Berrick, & Albert, 1994). The implication is that prevention and intervention services are associated with children's successful exit from the child welfare system, although the authors do not speak directly to this point.

Mech (cited in Gould, 1991) found that African American children "were more

likely to have no contact with workers than were white or Hispanic children" (p. 64). Similarly, African American families studied in the first three months after placement of their children were found to have experienced a mean number of agency contacts of 2.9, compared with a mean of 7.2 for white families (Close, cited in Williams, 1991). In Connecticut white children and foster families received more services and supports than children and foster families of color (Fein, Maluccio, & Kluger, cited in Barth, Courtney, Berrick, & Albert, 1994).

The issue of inequities in provision of services is especially important in family preservation, the process of providing intensive services and resources to families at risk of a child's removal from the home, usually because of real or threatened abuse or neglect. Williams (1991) noted that placement was avoided in more than three-fourths of families who received family preservation services and that children were able to remain in their own homes, safely, for one year after intervention. Recent research (Fraser, Pecora, & Haapala, 1991) has suggested that family preservation services may result in fewer placements for families of color compared to white families. Among families in Washington State, only 18.2 percent (10 of 55) of families of color who received family preservation services required the out-of-home placement of children, compared with 29.8 percent (75 of 252) of white families who received these services. These results suggest that intensive services can keep children of color out of out-of-home care.

Kinship Foster Care as Permanent Care

One of the most potentially misleading elements in the argument surrounding children of color in the out-of-home care system is the presentation of foster care statistics. Such statistics seldom distinguish kinship foster placements (placement of dependent children in the homes of relatives who have been formally approved, and subsidized, as foster parents for this purpose) from non-kinship foster placements. This distinction is important. Barth, Courtney, Berrick, Albert, and Needell (1994) noted that in California, two-thirds of the growth in the foster care caseload from 1984 to 1989 could be accounted for by the rise in kinship foster care. (This increase represents children who may otherwise have been placed in group homes or residential settings.) They also cite figures indicating that in 1990 kinship foster care accounted for 48 percent of all placements in New York (Meyer & Link, cited in Barth, Courtney, Berrick, Albert, & Needell, 1994). In New York City alone, the number of children in kinship foster homes rose from 151 in April 1985 to 14,000 in June 1989 (Thornton, 1991).

Children of color are widely represented in kinship foster placements. Forty-six percent of selected children in kinship foster care in California were African American, compared with 32 percent white children, 14 percent Hispanic children, and 9 percent children of other ethnic groups (Barth, Courtney, Berrick, & Albert, 1994). Ninety percent of kinship foster families in a Baltimore study were African American and 10 percent were white (Dubowitz, Feigelman, & Zuravin, 1993).

Two issues are important here. First, many kinship foster placements are considered permanent placements. In interviews with kinship foster parents in 20 homes, none of the children had a permanency goal of return to their parents (Thornton, 1991). In 19 of the 20 cases, the children were expected to be discharged to independent living when they became eligible (typically at age 17 or 18 years); in contrast, independent living was a goal for only 42 percent of children who were in nonrelative foster placements. When the kinship foster parents were asked "How long are you willing to provide care for your related foster child?" 100 percent of those who responded indicated they expected the children to remain with them until they were independent, until they no longer needed to be there, or as long as the foster parents were able to care for them. Similar findings were reported by Barth, Courtney, Berrick, Albert, and Needell (1994).

Second, kinship foster placements frequently do not result in formal adoption. Therefore, placement in relative foster care has consistently been linked to a corresponding decrease in the odds of adoption, especially for children of color, as if these were permanency failures. Barth, Courtney, Berrick, and Albert (1994) noted that "other things being equal, entering foster care under one year of age more than doubles a child's odds of being adopted but being placed initially in a kinship home cuts the odds by one-half" (p. 161). Thornton (1991) found that kinship foster parents were not interested in adopting the children in their care. Even when they were aware of available adoption subsidies, 85 percent of kinship foster parents stated that they would not adopt; one additional kinship foster parent stated that she would adopt only if she was pressured by the agency. Ninety-one percent of foster care case-workers indicated awareness of this mindset on the part of kinship foster parents.

The reluctance to adopt formally among African American kinship foster caregivers is based in cultural definitions of family and attitudes about family relation-ships. For example, the reason given by 70 percent of kinship foster parents for their unwillingness to adopt was that they already considered the child and themselves as being a part of the same family and that it was therefore unnecessary to adopt and would be confusing to the child (Thornton, 1991). They were content to maintain a grandparent-to-grandchild caregiving relationship. (In most instances, kinship foster parents are grandparents or great aunts or uncles.) Also, 30 percent of kinship foster parents were concerned that adopting the child formally would result in conflict in their relationship with the child's biological parents.

In summarizing factors associated with the likelihood of being adopted, Barth, Courtney, Berrick, and Albert (1994) asserted that kinship foster care should not be considered a substitute for adoption. At the same time, they pointed out that it must, under law (Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980), be understood as an option for adoption. In spite of this, foster care statistics may continue to combine relative and nonrelative foster placements, inflating the number of children who are in out-of-home care and appear to be available for adoption. If kinship foster caregivers are accepted as a part of the child's family, and the child's planned long-term placement with them considered an acceptable alternative to adoption, the numbers recorded for children who are available for or requiring adoption, especially children of color, should decrease dramatically.

Effects of Poverty

An overriding issue to be addressed is the circumstances that cause children of color to be in out-of-home placement in such large numbers. Living in poverty is one such circumstance, and it disproportionately affects children of color. Over 46 percent of all African American children lived in poverty in 1993, as did 41 percent of all Latino children; only 14 percent of white children lived in poverty (Children's Defense Fund, 1995). Fifty-six percent of children living with their mothers only were poor, compared with 12 percent of those living with married parents, and children of color were more likely than white children to live in mother-only households.

Poverty has been linked to the circumstances that result in out-of-home placements. A recently released National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect ("Survey Shows," 1996) showed that "children from families with annual incomes below $15,000 were over 22 times more likely to experience maltreatment than children from families whose incomes exceeded $30,000. They were also 18 times more likely to be sexually abused, almost 56 times more likely to be educationally neglected, and over 22 times more likely to be seriously injured" (p. 3). Children of single parents had an 87 percent greater risk of being harmed by physical neglect and an 80 percent greater risk of suffering serious injury or harm from abuse and neglect. Thus, children of color may be at greater risk of abuse and neglect, which may be associated with the inadequate resources and resulting stresses their parents confront. Poor children are at risk of permanent removal from their families simply because of their economic position in society.

The direction of public policies currently is to speed up the transracial adoption of children of color without first correcting the resource deficiencies that cause the children to be in out- of-home care. Such policies ignore the complexities of this situation and risk giving one group (those desiring to adopt a young child) an advantage while failing to protect those who are among the most vulnerable (poor children and families). Social programs originating under the Family Preservation Act of 1992 (Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993) are examples of corrective efforts. For example, most states have programs modeled after the original Homebuilders, Inc., of Tacoma, Washington (Kinney, Madsen, Fleming, & Haapala, 1977). In such programs, child welfare workers are available to families on a 24-hour basis to provide immediate services and resources to facilitate the child's safe presence within the family. Wraparound programs (VanDenBerg & Grealish, 1996) coordinate the provision of services and resources to families, but on an ongoing rather than time-limited basis and as a collaborative community effort. These two programs are examples of how states may invest in families in attempting to prevent their breakdown.

Social Work Organization Positions

The formal positions of social work and related organizations serve as a guide to social work practice in the context of considerations of race and ethnicity in adoption. There is some variability in these positions, and this article briefly summarizes several.

In its most recent policy statement, NASW (1997) included the following: "Placement decisions should reflect a child's need for continuity, safeguarding the child's right to consistent care and to service arrangements. Agencies must recognize each child's need to retain a significant engagement with his or her parents and extended family and respect the integrity of each child's ethnicity and cultural heritage" (p. 137). The policy statement continues, "The social work profession stresses the importance of ethnic and cultural sensitivity. An effort to maintain a child's identity and her or his ethnic heritage should prevail in all services and placement actions that involve children in foster care and adoption programs, including adherence to the principles articulated in the Indian Child Welfare Act" (p. 138). With regard specifically to principles related to adoption, the statement reads, "The recruitment of and placement with adoptive parents from each relevant ethnic or racial group should be available to meet the needs of children" (p. 140).

In the concluding paragraph to its current position statement, the National Association of Black Social Workers (1994) stated,

In conclusion, family preservation, reunification and adoption should work in tandem toward finding permanent homes for children. Priority should be given to preserving families through the reunification or adoption of children with/by biological relatives. If that should fail, secondary priority should be given to the placement of a child within his own race. Transracial adoption of an African- American child should only be considered after documented evidence of unsuccessful same race placements has been reviewed and supported by appropriate representatives of the African-American community. Under no circumstance should successful same race placements be impeded by obvious barriers (i.e., legal limits of states, state boundaries, fees, surrogate payments, intrusive applications, lethargic court systems, inadequate staffing patterns, etc.). As such, it will be mandatory that national policies with adequate funding be adopted as part of any new legislation. (p. 4)

The most recent standards of the Child Welfare League of America (1988) include an emphasis on the preservation of the birth family:

When children's rights to the care and protection of those who gave them birth are jeopardized, society should, through its appropriate designated agencies, provide support to birth parents to make it possible for children to remain in their own homes. Children should not be deprived of their birth parents solely because of economic need, or the need for other forms of community assistance to reinforce parental efforts to maintain a home for them. (p. 2)

With regard to the role of the extended family, the standards read, "When children's parents are unable or unwilling to rear them, efforts should be made to have members of the extended family assume the parenting role and responsibility, providing they can offer the care and protection that the children need and that this is the desire of the birth parents" (p. 3). Finally, with regard to considerations of race and ethnicity, "Children should not be deprived of the opportunity to have a permanent family of their own by reason of age, religion, racial, or ethnic group identification, nationality, residence, or handicap" (p. 4). The standards include the clarification that federal legislation is perceived as safeguarding the rights of children.

The North American Council on Adoptable Children (NACAC) (Gilles & Kroll, 1991) has reaffirmed its original position, established in 1981, which stated as follows:

Placement of children with a family of like ethnic background is desirable because such families are likely to provide the special needs of minority children with the strengths that counter the ill effects of racism. . . . The special needs of minority children who are of mixed ethnic background, school age, sibling groups or who have handicapping conditions should be considered in order to prevent unnecessary delays in placement. NACAC supports inclusion of multiethnic adoption as an option for children. (p. 37)

In 1988 NACAC (Gilles & Kroll, 1991), in addition to encouraging federal, state, and local officials to "fully utilize family resources in minority communities through aggressive and culturally sensitive recruitment and retention programs" (p. 38), decided to "direct [its] resources to the development, growth, and empowerment of minority adoptive parent groups" (p. 38). In 1990 it resolved the following: "Recognizing that fees charged prospective adoptive families present barriers to the most culturally appropriate placement for children in need of adoption, NACAC advocates that all child-placing agencies have as a goal working to develop alternative funding sources to cover all costs related to adoption services by working with both private and public sectors" (Gilles & Kroll, 1991, p. 38).

Five themes can be noted from among the position statements of these professional organizations regarding transracial adoption: (1) that ethnic heritage is important; (2) that children be raised preferably by their biological parents or, when not possible, by other biological relatives; (3) that economic need alone is not an acceptable reason for children to be deprived of their biological parents; (4) that efforts should be made to ensure that adoptive parents of the same race as the child are available and systemic barriers should not interfere; and (5) that placement with parents of a different race is acceptable and even preferable when the alternative means a child is deprived of a permanent home and family. It is important that social work organizations publicize these positions to their members and advocate for public policies that facilitate these themes.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Inequities exist in the eligibility and recruitment of non-kin foster families and adoptive families of color, in services provided to children and families in the child welfare system, and in the increased tendency of poor children to be in out-of-home care. Statistics on the numbers and characteristics of children of color who are in foster care and who are available for adoption may be misleading. Public policies that disallow the consideration of race and ethnicity in adoption give an advantage to families who desire to adopt transracially. At the same time, they fail to correct the circumstances that cause children of color to require out-of- home placement, and they fail to eliminate methods of maintaining or interpreting statistical data that may be misleading.

The following recommendations are made to lessen the need for transracial adoption. First, foster families of color should be actively recruited for kinship and non-kinship foster care and especially to participate in fost adoption programs, if such programs are to continue. Second, active and ongoing efforts to recruit and retain adoptive families of color should be increased so that the pool of available families equals or surpasses the numbers of children of color who are available for non-kin adoption. Third, creative strategies should continue to be developed to recruit adoptive families of color for "hard to place" children or children with special needs. Such children should continue to be placed according to their individual needs. Fourth, public policies and agency procedures should be established to require that children of color receive equitable services in all areas of the child welfare system. Fifth, statistics and outcome data relating to kinship foster care should be separated from those pertaining to nonrelative foster care; the benefits of the former as an acceptable permanent alternative to adoption should be evaluated. And sixth, policymakers should address the larger issues involved in ensuring that all children have access to the economic resources that can help them remain out of the child welfare system.

Social work has a central role to play in carrying out these recommendations. This role may include advocating in agencies for equitable (bias-free) selection; recruiting foster and adoptive families; orienting agency administrators, board members, and the general community regarding cultural definitions of "family"; conducting research that can scientifically inform public policy; participating in practice oriented to strengthening and unifying families while protecting children; and educating students and new professionals in the competent performance of such roles. A review of committee reports of the most recent adoption legislation (H. Rep. No. 104-542, 104th Congress, 2nd Sess., 1996) demonstrates that statistical data, and the way they are collected and interpreted, play a primary role in the development of public policy. It is important, therefore, that social workers be actively involved in ensuring that complete and accurate research and numerical data are disseminated to public policymakers.

A limitation of this article is that in some instances the data were derived from studies of children in out-of-home care in a limited number of states. However, the consistency of the findings and the fact that research data on these topics are limited render available data useful in interpreting the state of the field and suggest directions for future research, policy, and practice.

Finally, seeking to solve the problems associated with the overrepresentation of children of color in the child welfare system by protecting transracial adoption is simplistic and fails to protect those who are most vulnerable in this society - the children dependent on that society. A more responsible approach is to understand and eliminate the circumstances that constitute the base cause of this situation. The most recent adoption legislation (Small Business Job Protection Act of 1996) only became effective on January 1, 1997, so it is too early to determine how adoption agencies will respond. However, this will be an important area for review.

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Leslie Doty Hollingsworth, PhD, is assistant professor, School of Social Work, University of Michigan, 1080 South University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1106; e-mail: lholling@umich.edu. The author acknowledges Paula Allen-Meares and Kristine Siefert, University of Michigan School of Social Work, and Shelley MacDermid, Purdue University Department of Child Development and Family Studies, for their review of earlier versions of this manuscript.

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