By Justin Slaughter
AmeriCorps VISTA Intern

Last Monday I read the front page headline of the San Francisco Examiner someone had dropped at my desk, and this government statistic stared me in the face: San Francisco places children into foster care at rate of 80 percent above state average. The article’s author was citing the percentage of the entire minor population in San Francisco that enter, or are already in, foster care for a one year period, a statistic that is tracked by the Child Welfare Dynamic Report System run by California Department of Social Services and U.C. at Berkeley.

An official statement is provided from the deputy of San Francisco Human Services Agency (HSA), who points out that, though staggeringly high, these numbers of entry are of historical consequence and have been declining over the last ten years in San Francisco. City Supervisor Sophie Maxwell then loosely criticizes HSA at the very last sentence of the article, ostensibly to highlight the article’s underlying answer as to why San Francisco has so many children in foster care: “they [HSA] always go, ‘We’re trying this and that’…But, then you see the numbers and they’re still shocking.”

Following Maxwell’s subtle finger-pointing, implying that the city has tried and failed to keep kids out of foster care in the first place, the article quickly mentions that during the so-called crack epidemic of the late 80’s, which brought many thousands of local children, a large number of them black, into foster custody, the city policy was to automatically place a child in a foster home if the city could trace any amount of drugs in the child’s system. The comments posted to the online article follow the same assumption that the city of San Francisco has hastened children into care at unusually high rate, calling the headline statistic “shocking” and “embarrassing.”

But before we jump from the author’s unearthed statistics to the conclusion that the foster care system is screwing up, and like all statistical assumptions, we should be cautious.

First, the foster care entry and in-care statistics alone, though accurate, do not reveal anything about the physical and mental well-being of San Francisco foster children. The numbers say nothing as to whether a child, though best tended to by a person of biological or kin relation in ideal circumstances, would otherwise be better off served outside the system.

Secondly, the number of San Francisco foster children who reach permanency, the number one priority of Human Services Agency for the life of each individual foster child, is not even mentioned or compared in the article; though this obviously is a prime indicator of a functioning HSA policy.

Why are so many children taken from the home in the first place? Is it also possible that a high number of children in foster care means that HSA is investigating, substantiating, and preventing abuse and neglect above the state average? This makes just as much sense as the flip-side of the article’s theme.

The idiosyncrasies of the San Franciscan foster care system–its over-representation of black children in the system, the majority of child placements out-of-county, and a high rate of entry above state average–are surprising to many in our community. Are abuse and neglect numerically and racially disproportionate around the Bay? None of us want to entertain this proposition, which is not provable and inevitably judgmental and discriminatory.

And when you hear a mother who lost custody of her child lament on the article’s comment section that “I am out numbered, out matched and can no longer fight this battle alone,” one has to ask: does the arrogance of government streamline children away from families into public custody unjustly? Are we helping or hurting San Francisco families?

Statistics don’t answer the questions that would take years of research to figure out. The article only leaves it up to the reader’s imagination.

Related posts:

1. Newsletter: August 17, 2010
2. How 20-Something’s Fare Rough Times: Some of Us Go Home, Others Wish They Had One
3. March 02, 2010