The Look of Love

Happy Pride Month 2021!!

The Look of Love Niya ParksComment

"Pride stands for courage, it stands for justice, and most of all it stands for love. As we recall the trials the LGBTQ+ community has endured and celebrate the trailblazers who’ve bravely fought for equality, let us recommit to the work that remains. Happy Pride Month!" - The Biden Administration

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Tulsa Race Massacre & The Burning of Black Wall Street

The Look of Love Niya ParksComment

"On the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, we remember all those who were killed and the survivors who bravely continue to share their stories so that we never forget this painful part of our history." - President Barack Obama

Take a moment to learn about what happened: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/interactive/2021/tulsa-race-massacre-centennial-greenwood/?fbclid=IwAR3YO7odk-WmdCexFprZ5mCm7pvCaAriwXgozmqfx9CTI5Z91SsijWuAzpU

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Entangled Roots: The Role of Race in Policies that Separate Families

The Look of Love Niya ParksComment

“Entangled Roots: The Role of Race in Policies that Separate Families, analyzes the three publicly-funded systems that separate families in the United States: immigration, criminal justice, and child welfare. In the immigration and criminal justice systems, family separation is usually an unconsidered, if not quite unintended, consequence of policy, as parents are incarcerated and sometimes deported without their children. In child welfare, family separation is the deliberate result of government policy, as children are removed from their homes out of immediate concerns for their safety. In each system, however, children suffer the consequences of separation. And in each system, children of color are more likely to experience separation and its associated harms." - Elisa Minoff

https://bit.ly/3vyVXyi

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The Trauma of Being Black in Foster Care by Dr. Kizzy Lopez

The Look of Love Niya ParksComment

In this TEDxTalk, Dr. Kizzy Lopez shares her experiences as a Black child in foster care and "the reality of both the trauma and racism Black foster youth suffer." Today, she uses those experiences to advocate for more just child welfare policies, and reminds us that "our action or inaction creates a society that all if our children live in." She also exhorts us to be honest and "acknowledge that racism exists, get educated about the injustices that happen in communities of color, challenge our own unconscious bias, be engaged in policies and practices that dismantle structural racism, and do better because the lives of African American foster youth depend on it!"

https://youtu.be/f_Q1idxiEnw

Child Welfare is Not Exempt from Structural Racism and Implicit Bias

Love Notes & NewsComment

"Continuing to address racial disparity and the subsequent disproportionality in the child welfare system is necessary, because it exists... We must do all that we can to create a fair system, and that includes using an intersectional lens when examining outcomes across sub-populations. It does not mean avoiding a topic that creates discomfort. Perhaps when people commit to increasing critical consciousness, face personal discomfort and support anti-racist legislation and strategies, then real change can begin to permeate the child welfare system." - Jessica Pryce, The Imprint

https://bit.ly/3f0pn2t

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In Honor of Mother's Day 💕

The Look of Love Niya ParksComment

"From Anna Malaika Tubbs, comes The Three Mothers, the first book to celebrate the three great women who raised and shaped America's most pivotal heroes: MLK, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin." - Flatiron Books

"The light Alberta, Louise and Berdis deserve is finally shining on them, not only as mothers, but as women whose lives and examples can stir up the gift in all of us." - Brittany Packnett Cunningham

https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/three-mothers/

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A Proclamation on National Foster Care Month, 2021 - by President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Love Notes & NewsComment

"Every child deserves to grow up in a supportive, loving home where they can thrive and prosper. During those unfortunate times when children cannot remain safely in their own homes, the individuals and families who open their hearts and homes to foster children provide a vital service to their communities. During this National Foster Care Month, we share our gratitude for those who support youth and families by being a resource to children in need and supporting birth parents so that they may safely reunite with their families whenever possible. We also recognize that it takes collaboration and community effort — from local organizations to Federal agencies — to support children, birth parents, and resource and kin families during challenging times.

Young people in foster care have been particularly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. They are navigating circumstances that are already tough, and those challenges are compounded by a public health crisis that made housing, employment and educational opportunities even harder to access.

To support the immediate needs of youth in foster care, my Administration is implementing Federal programs authorized by the Supporting Foster Youth and Families through the Pandemic Act. This law provides additional flexibility and support for youth aging out of foster care, and allows them to access critical services to help them stay in school or participate in a job training program, pay the bills, and better make the difficult transition to adulthood. We have an expression in the Biden family, “If you have to ask for help, it’s too late.” As a Nation, we can proactively help children by advancing a holistic approach to child and family well-being across the country — before it’s too late.

As we work to address immediate needs, we must be clear about long-standing challenges in child welfare and commit to advancing child and family well-being in every way we can. Our children, birth parents, and resource and kin families deserve nothing less. So this National Foster Care Month, we also recognize the histories of injustice in our Nation’s foster care system. Throughout our history and persisting today, too many communities of color, especially Black and Native American communities, have been treated unequally and often unfairly by the child welfare system. Black and Native American children are far more likely than white children to be removed from their homes, even when the circumstances surrounding the removal are similar. Once removed, Black and Native American children stay in care longer and are less likely to either reunite with their birth parents or be adopted. Too many children are removed from loving homes because poverty is often conflated with neglect, and the enduring effects of systemic racism and economic barriers mean that families of color are disproportionately affected by this as well. Children with disabilities are over-represented among youth in care and may be inappropriately placed in group settings instead of provided the individualized support they need. Children in foster care — particularly youth of color and LGBTQ+ children who are already subject to disproportionate rates of school discipline and criminalization — are also at an increased risk of becoming involved in the juvenile justice system. And for LGBTQ+ foster youth, foster care systems are not always equipped to safely meet their needs.

My Administration is committed to addressing these entrenched problems in our Nation’s child welfare system, advancing equity and racial justice for every child and family who is touched by the foster care and child welfare system, and focusing on policies that improve child and family well-being. This is why my Administration’s discretionary funding request for 2022 includes $100 million in competitive grants for State and local child welfare systems to advance racial equity and prevent unnecessary child removals.

National Foster Care Month is an opportunity for us to celebrate the resource and kin families who are supporting children by opening their homes and sharing their love. Crucially, it is also an opportunity to celebrate foster youth and all of their accomplishments, and to celebrate and encourage the many biological parents who are working hard to safely reunite with their children. And it provides an opportunity for us to fulfill our responsibility as a Nation to take care of each other and provide our vulnerable youth and families with the support they need.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim May 2021 as National Foster Care Month. I call upon all Americans to observe this month by reaching out in their neighborhoods and communities to the children and youth in foster care and their families, those at risk of entering foster care, and resource and kin families and other caregivers.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-fifth.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR."

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/04/30/a-proclamation-on-national-foster-care-month-2021/?fbclid=IwAR1-uPlBnVgSoW79LpV3EBhrW9YAtshhMmh6bzRp1Qz1QUCbHCq9tzxKszw

#NationalFosterCareMonth

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Many Say Now Is The Time To Fight Racial Bias In Foster Care - By David Crary @AP

The Look of Love Niya ParksComment

Many Say Now Is The Time To Fight Racial Bias In Foster Care - By David Crary at AP News.

"Bias and racism are widespread in the child welfare system. Black children are taken into foster care at a disproportionately high rate and languish longer before being adopted, reunited with their parents or aging out of the system...

'It’s a perfect opportunity to say let’s stop the madness of unnecessarily removing kids,' said Ira Lustbader, chief program officer and litigation director at the national advocacy group Children’s Rights. 'This is an urgent racial justice issue.'

'You see the difference in the courts — two kids coming in for the same type of neglect,' says foster mom Bridgette Griffin. 'The judge looks at them differently, the social workers deal with them differently. There’s more sympathy for the white parents, unfortunately... It’s not fair.'"

Read on here: http://bit.ly/AP-DavidC

Foster Care and Black Family Separations!

The Look of Love Niya ParksComment

"Separation of families of color at the border was far from the first time that our government has used the taking of children as a terrifying act of persecution. Our current foster care system is an extension of a deeply ingrained history of separating children from their parents based on claims that it would further the children’s “best interests.” Such claims rationalized separating Black families during slavery and Reconstruction and immigrant families at the end of the 19th century, when an estimated 200,000 children, primarily from immigrant Catholic families were put on so-called “orphan trains” often by Protestant “child savers.” Many of these falsely labeled “orphans”—most of their parents were living—ended up as indentured servants in the Midwest...

The family regulation system hurts many low-income white families as well, as other oppressive systems do. But to fully untangle the harmful practices of these systems, we must unpack their racist roots...”

By: Chris Gottlieb of TIME

https://time.com/5946929/child-welfare-black-families/

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