CRENSHAW : Children Get Second Chance on Childhood

The scene is a typical one in hospitals: An infant swathed in white blankets cries lustily as it is handed over to an eager parent.

But this is not a hospital; it’s a small, wood-paneled office on Crenshaw Boulevard that houses the Grace Home for Waiting Children, a foster family placement agency. And 3-month-old Justin, like many of the home’s charges, has health complications because his mother used crack cocaine during her pregnancy.

Grace Home director Girma Zaid, who witnesses the happy exchange, says his policy of placing black children temporarily with black foster families is a crucial step to repairing homes broken by drug use.

“Historically, children in black families have been raised by their extended families--aunts, cousins, grandparents,” Zaid said. “We must reclaim that culture in order for these children to get back on track as soon as possible.”

Until last month, Zaid was deputy children’s services administrator of the adoption division of the county’s Department of Children’s Services. Zaid said he was appalled by the disproportionately high number of black children--33,000 out of 55,000 countywide--who are temporarily removed from their birth homes because of physical, sexual and emotional abuse or neglect.

About 80% of infants entering the Grace Home have drug problems, most related to cocaine use. “African-Americans are only 11% of the county population, yet our children are two-thirds of the child welfare system,” said Zaid.

To begin remedying the problem, Black Employees’ Assn. president Clyde Johnson and Department of Children’s Services director Peter Digre devised a plan early last year for a community-based foster family agency that would match children ethnically as well as geographically.

“Usually black children are placed far from their birth home, in Palmdale and places like that,” Zaid said. “But the system requires the birth parent to visit the child as part of his or her recovery. How can a recovering crack mother get up in the morning, with no transportation, to visit a child three or four hours away? In some ways, the child welfare system is set up to destroy a family.”

Grace Home operates out of the office of the Black Employees’ Assn., which is licensed by the state to run a family foster agency. The home, which started up in November, typically places children within a nine-mile radius of their birth homes. So far, Grace has placed 55 youngsters in 23 foster homes.

Zaid said that in his 15 years with the Department of Children’s Services, he came to believe that placing black children with non-black families compounds emotional problems. “With a non-black family, a black child stands out, feels different,” he said. “They’re sitting ducks for stares and questions. What they need is to feel comfortable, like they belong.”

A three-year-old state policy, which resulted from a bill by Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles), makes “ethnic matching” for foster children a priority at the Department of Children’s services.

To create an optimal setting for the children, Zaid and assistant director Louise Fernandez--the only other Grace Home staffer--conduct 30-hour training workshops for prospective foster parents. Extensive interviews help to guard against the likelihood of abuse in foster homes.

The agency receives no funding other than about half of the $1,283 to $1,515 monthly payment the state allots for each child placed, Zaid said. The foster parents are paid $520 to $659 a month per child, depending on the age of the child. The balance of the money goes toward paying administrative and office costs, two social workers and miscellaneous items for the children, many of whom arrive with little more than the shirts on their backs.

But for foster parent Corrie McNeal, money is not the issue.

“I just love babies,” said Corrie McNeal, a 69-year-old foster parent of three infants. She also is the mother of 11 children and has 65 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“I had a grandchild who was a drug baby who died,” McNeal said. “The black children, they don’t get the attention they need. We’ve got to start treating them right.”