The Los Angeles Department of Child
and Family Services is launching
a pilot programme called blind
removal.
Now, this is the government agency
that deals with child welfare
issues.
DCFS is the government agency that
also makes decisions about whether
or not a child should be removed
from a home based on the safety of
that household.
Now, I want to tell you more about
this blind removal pilot program
because what it has to do with is
the overrepresentation of children
of color within the foster care
system meaning the children who
are typically removed from these
households happen to have
parents who are black or Latino.
And it looks as though there might
be issues with some implicit bias
in the decisions that are made.
So blind removal is meant to take
the race component out of it as
social workers are deliberating.
In regard to whether or not
they remove a child from a home, so
I want to tell you how the numbers
look right now so you can
understand why this is a problem.
So for instance, 7% of children in
Los Angeles County are black,
while 24% of those removed from
their homes.
From last April to this March,
were black.
According to the LA County
Department of Children and
Family Services, 20% of children in
the county are white,
with 12% of those removed.
So as you can see, there's an over
representation of black children
being taken out of their households
are moved out of their households.
Now three quarters of children
removed from their homes in LA and
2020 were either black or Latino.
Okay, so social workers typically
have access to a wide array of data
on the child in question.
Anything from the family's race to
household income,
that kind of stuff.
And so the idea behind blind
removal is maybe we take the race
data out of it to ensure that
potential implicit biases don't
play a role in whether or
not a child is removed from a home.
Blind removal typically kicks in at
a meeting involving social workers
and supervisors who collectively
decide what to do about a child
race and related factors
are redacted from files and are not
part of those deliberations.
Now, has this been tested
anywhere else?
Why yes, it has, in fact,
Nassau County, New York actually
decided to look into this and do
an experiment with blind removals.
And here's what they found.
5 years after race and
related factors were eliminated
from removal deliberations in
Nassau County, 21% of children
in Foster Care were black compared
with 57% before blind removal.
After seeing those results, the New
York State officials announced in
October that they would implement
blind removal statewide and so
they're some, I want to get into
the reasons that social workers
give for removing the children.
But clearly, they found that this
blind removal process
was successful in Nassau County.
So now it will be a program that's
utilized statewide in New York but
I wanted to get your thoughts was.
We have these discussions in these
debates about class essentialism,
and race essentialism and
all of that.
And it seems like in this
particular case, race or
implicit biases about race play
a giant role in the decisions that
these social workers make.
Yeah, of course, and
just full disclosure.
My mother has been a foster
care provider for decades now.
I'm somebody who grew up with
foster kids in the house and
so I've heard the stories about how
they got taken away
from their families and
not just that the reason
why this is important is because,
when you place kids in what we call
the system, is traumatic man.
Like some of the stuff that these
kids have to deal with when they
get put in the system is harsh,
it's hard.
It makes it so that it's very
difficult for them to go on and
live normal lives when they become
these transient people.
And they're constantly living with
strangers and,
just some of the stuff I've heard.
From foster kids that I've known
throughout my life about people
putting physical locks on
refrigerators, right,
in the homes that they stayed in.
This is why this matters like
these, it's not fun, it's not
cushy, when these people have
to basically had their lives and
become a ward of the state.
And so yeah, and by the way,
I know in New York City, the social
worker force is very diverse.
Nassau County,
which is adjacent to New York City,
of course in Long Island,
very diverse.
And don't think for a second that
these implicit biases don't affect
black or brown people, they do.
That's how insidious racism is.
That's how insidious prejudice is,
it infects.
All of us in our thinking, so
don't think for a second that black
people can't internalize some
negative thoughts or some beliefs
about a black patheology
while themselves being black.
It happens all the time.
And so that's why this is important
to take all of that out, so that
people can make unbiased decisions
about the situation that a child is
living in, of course, some of these
kids are coming from very adverse
situations with substance abuse,
sexual abuse, neglect, etcetera.
There's some harrowing stuff that's
happening a lot of times when these
kids get removed, but, a good
system is doing the work to get
these parents in a position where
they can bring the child back in a
safe loving and caring environment.
And that's what we should be
working towards less removals and
not more.
>> Yeah, I totally agree with you
on that and one thing that seemed
promising in the way that officials
at DCFS have been talking about
this is they seem to be aware that
it's a problem, that implicit bias
is a problem, but more importantly,
they're aware of how this is
a small slice of something that
can be reformed or changed, but it
in no way deals with a much broader
problem of systemic issues, right?
So when you look at why children
are removed from their families,
the social workers have to provide
reasons for it.
And so here are the reasons that
they typically cite.
In LA County, for instance,
the biggest reason that children
are removed from their homes is
neglect, followed by other factors
including caretaker absence,
relinquishment and exploitation.
So, want to focus just briefly on
neglect and other factors
including caretaker absence.
So is it because the parent is
working a minimum wage job and
literally can't afford living in
Los Angeles working full
time with a minimum wage job and
needs to work more, right?
So what's leading to that absence,
there's an entire systemic issue
here.
When it comes to
the way our economy is set up, that
also needs to be addressed, right?
So there's that.
I mean, exploitation is
exploitation.
There's no excuse for
that if a child is in any way being
exploited or abused, he or
she is in an incredibly dangerous
situation and
that issue needs to be resolved.
And then of course, the third most
common reason is physical abuse.
But again, like taking a step back
and looking at the system as
a whole, and how it's intentionally
set up to put various groups of
people at a disadvantage that
needs to be addressed as well.
Dealing with the implicit bias with
one government agency in
Los Angeles.
It's a good start.
But luckily DCFS understands that
it's not the end all be all and
it certainly doesn't solve
the problem completely, >> Yeah,
and it's important for everybody
to understand that class and
race they work in tandem to sort of
reinforce one another, right?
The idea being that if somebody is
black, then they are more more
likely to be of the poor class,
they are more likely to have less
access to means which means they
are less likely to be able to
provide the essentials for
what a social worker might deem
a suitable living situation.
So, I think what we get tripped
up is when we disentangle these
two issues,
they're always forever linked.
The reason why people harbor
negative feelings towards black
people is because 1 is this idea
that they had no means and that,
that means they're more predisposed
to do deviant sort of criminal
stuff that we don't agree with
doing, right, like that's the point
of that idea of blackness being
this horrible thing.
It's like no, when you're black,
you do these horrible things
because of X, Y and Z.
And the financial and
economic situations of what people
perceive black people to have or
even if you're not,
even if you can be black, but you
can be from a certain neighborhood
that people deem to be harmful or
scary or an environment
that are quote unquote, a child or
ward of the state should be in.
All of those things come into play.
You can't separate them out, right?
This is not just a race issue.
It's not just a poor people issue.
They're always working in tandem
with one another.