‘90s FAMILY : Community Dedicated to Saving the Family

Marian Wright Edelman was in town recently to call attention to what she predicts would be the devastating effect of the “contract with America” on poor children. Not only would budget cuts drop 5 million to 6 million children from welfare rolls, hundreds of thousands of new orphans would be created, said Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization.

What children need, she said, is “responsible” rather than “reckless” change.

In Los Angeles, one promising strategy is the fund’s Black Community Crusade for Children, spearheaded by the Charles Drew Child Development Corp. in the Watts-Willowbrook area. Its goal is to keep children out of the public welfare system altogether.

In Los Angeles County, 1 in 13 African-American children is in foster care, says Carolyn Reid-Green, founder of the nonprofit group, the area’s largest Head Start provider. Increasingly, foster children are either troubled adolescents or medically fragile infants and young children. Many are shifted from home to home and receive little support after age 18.

Locally, 41% of those who end up in juvenile corrections came from foster care.

For many African Americans, foster care is an emotionally charged issue, recalling longstanding wounds black families incurred when slavery separated children from their parents.

Reid-Green tells the story of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, whose mother was sold to a plantation 20 miles away. “One day, she heard on the slave network that he was sick, so she did her work during the day and walked all night to be with him.” His biographers said that on that day, “Frederick Douglass knew he was somebody’s child.”

Until recently, she said, the community tended to absorb children with problems or those born to very young mothers. But with the weakened economy and tight finances, many could not afford it any longer and black children started to go into the public child-welfare systems, she said.

Minorities compose about half of the 550,000 children in foster care in the United States.

Last month, Reid-Green hosted an emergency summit of the nation’s top black professionals, academics and child-welfare policy leaders to rally support for the local Black Community Crusade, which aims to develop community institutions to mobilize the black community to consider ways to help children and families.

“This capacity-building is deliberate, intentional, targeted and strategic,” she said.

With a $200,000 grant from the Burton G. Bettingen Foundation, the Black Community Crusade has already hired four staff members.

Some strategies may eventually include increasing family-preservation services to troubled families, recruiting more adults who will adopt, serve as legal guardians or even surrogate grandparents for children who must be separated from their families.

Green said the crusade has received support from the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services. She hopes to offset any opposition from foster parent groups by emphasizing that the crusade embraces all solutions, including foster care when it is unavoidable.

Nationally, the Black Community Crusade also has convened an anti-violence network of grass-roots and policy groups and is training community leaders at a center in Tennessee, on the farm of the late author Alex Haley. The hope is that in rebuilding the black community’s tradition of self-help, bridges will be built between the poor and the middle class. More information can be obtained by calling 1-800 ASK-BCCC.

Reid-Green said that working to give children permanent homes or support will not only benefit the children, but will also help heal the community.

“We can’t have a generation of people who have no control over their families,” she said.

“This is a way for the black community to put its arms around its children, really embrace its children and say, ‘Although communities have changed and families have changed, we still very much claim you. You are ours. And we take responsibility for you.’ ”