Racial disparities in the child welfare system’s interventions to keep children safe are a widespread cause for concern – and for good reason. Yet combatting and preventing discrimination in assessments of the best interests of children and families need not mean, and must not mean, diminishing efforts to prevent child abuse and neglect.
In fact, revealing new research suggests that the role played by bias and discrimination, intentional or not, may be more complex than is often supposed, and may sometimes take the form of inspiring too little intervention to keep certain children safe.
In a working paper published in November by the National Bureau of Economic Research (https://www.nber.org/papers/w33154), researchers from Duke and Brown universities, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York find that “concerns over unwarranted racial disparities [in rates of foster care placement] are justified across the U.S., although they have been falling over time.”
But the researchers also report that these justifiable concerns include the seldom-discussed possibility that “white children are disproportionately left in homes where they are likely to experience future abuse or neglect.”
The 45-state study confirms that “unwarranted disparities” are common nationwide in the rates at which Black and white children are placed in foster care — “meaning that Black children are more likely to be placed in foster care than white children who face equal potential for [maltreatment] if they were left at home.” The study also finds that states with more Black social workers tend to see lower rates of this kind of disparity.
But importantly, the researchers’ careful analysis of the discernible risks faced by children who are or are not placed in foster care shows that foster care placements – and racial disparities – are heavily concentrated among cases where the risk of future maltreatment is high. “We find that both Black and white children are more likely to be placed into foster care when they are likely to experience maltreatment at home,” they write, adding that “the bulk of placements seem to be offering protection to children.” Racial disparities, they add, are more than 5 times higher among cases where children are at risk than in other cases.
These findings are in part reassuring and in part worrisome. It seems bias, conscious or not, can cut both ways. “The finding of relatively low [disparities] among cases without maltreatment potential,” the scholars suggest, “reduces concerns that Black children are disproportionately removed from safe homes.” Instead, “higher placement rates [when risks of maltreatment are high] may disproportionately benefit Black children.”
But at the same time, lower placement rates among white children facing similar risks raise “a possibility of disproportionate ‘under-placement’ of white children from home environments with potential for subsequent maltreatment.”
We believe no efforts should be spared to eliminate all unwarranted racial disparities in child welfare decisions – but also that children’s safety should remain a paramount objective. We share the concern expressed in this new study that the general reduction in disparities over recent years has come about almost entirely because “placement rates for at-risk Black children have significantly declined over time” while the already lower placement rates among similarly at-risk white children have changed little.
Surely reducing racial disparities by reducing the general standard of protection offered all children is not the best we can do.