Village Arms Founder Kelis Houston believes that Child Protection Services (CPS) in Minnesota has disproportionately impacted and possibly targeted African American families. This has led her to become a proponent of the African American Family Preservation Act, which aims to prevent out-of-home placement and promote family reunification.
Houston first saw how harmful CPS practices could be to families through the court process, where she would be present during the moment of separation between a child and their parents. These traumatic moments were often the result of a parent simply struggling financially, such as a mother not having food in the refrigerator the day CPS stopped by.
Seeing that the state was often a worse guardian than the parents, Houston took a full-time position as a cultural specialist with Dakota County. There, she served in the Guardian ad Litem program, advocating for children through the courts.
“There, I saw how the county and the courts work together to perpetuate disparities,” she said. “Those prima facie cases, the judge just rubber-stamped whatever the counties bring in.”
Houston has utilized her roles in several organizations, including the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP, where she currently co-chairs the child protection committee, to build momentum towards an overhaul of the system, which she believed ripped families apart based on the conjecture of a government employee.
In a recent testimony to the Minnesota Senate legislative task force on child protection, Houston said that 26% of the children in foster care were Black, although they make up 10% of the state population. She also said that Black children are three times more likely to be reported, with families experiencing two to seven times higher rates of removal compared to white children.
Houston referenced several factors that led to these disparities during her testimony, one of which was removal bias, which resulted in Black families being less likely to receive in-home services that prevent removal. She also stated that the state was more likely to permit white children to remain with their families and remove Black children from theirs.
Another factor Houston presented was that poverty was often labeled as neglect. Because Black children are more likely to live in poverty compared to white children, their families are more likely to engage with public resources such as public transportation, housing, and clinics, which increases their chances of engaging with CPS.
These disparities have led Children’s Rights, a children’s advocacy group, and the Minneapolis NAACP to file a lawsuit last month against the State of Minnesota alleging that its child protection agencies have discriminated against Black families.
The lawsuit requests an immediate investigation into the state’s child welfare system and its use of federal funds. The suit references explicitly Hennepin and Ramsey counties as having caused harmful impacts on Black families.
Black residents make up 13% of the population in Hennepin County while experiencing 60% of the removals and 55% experience termination of parental rights, according to Houston.
In 2020, Houston was invited to pilot the African American Family Preservation Act in Hennepin County, where she worked directly with families to reduce their chances of separation. Village Arms, Houston’s agency, administered the pilot with the County.
Whenever a case concerning a Black family came in, a family liaison would go out with a county investigator. In the process, they would identify the children’s relatives, determine what support services they needed, and organize a consultation meeting.
Four provisions guided the pilot program. One was to reduce the number of Black children removed from the home. The second was to ensure family and community involvement. Thirdly, they worked to divert families from terminating parental rights at the end of their case. Fourthly, they aimed to reduce maltreatment findings.
“We served over 200 families throughout those three years. Using safety plans and family at the investigative stage, we closed over 90% of our cases without a child removal. We were able to keep a vast majority of those cases from moving to ongoing child protection,” Houston said.
Despite showcasing how successfully the bill can be implemented, it has faced some opposition in the legislature. In a House Children and Families Finance and Policy Committee meeting on March 21, Rep. Heather Keeler (DFL) raised concerns about the bill’s language.
“I just really need to caution us that the constitutionality piece of this is real,” she stated. “I’m happy to join in the effort to discuss that. I just think we need to blend and work on it but have that honest piece of conversation.”
Frustrated, Houston pushed back against Keller’s claim against the bill. “I want to address that because this body has done a lot for the Native American community, but it has done nothing for the African American community,” she stated during her time in the meeting.
Keller and others have claimed that the bill violates the 14th Amendment by creating unequal protection for Black families over other groups, but Houston stated the bill aims to stop the harm happening to African Americans.
Thomas Berry, a colleague of Houston’s on the Minneapolis NAACP, echoed her sentiment and stated that the bill’s language had been changed to bring more people into its fold of protection. “This bill does not cause disparities for other groups. In fact, it says ‘other disproportionate groups.’
“They asked for that to be put in the language, and it was added. All it is saying is, ‘Hey, take into consideration the family, culture, all of these things that matter to all of us,’” Berry stated.
The name of the bill was recently changed to the Layla Jackson Law after an eighteen-month-old child who was killed by her foster father just four months after she was placed in his care. Houston underlined how Jackson’s death occurred after County officials failed to intervene after multiple reports of concern posed by the child’s family.
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