A rare data set obtained by The Imprint from Minnesota’s Department of Human Services reveals the state has struggled to diversify its pool of foster parents — years after criticism from federal officials. Our reporters took a deep dive into the fraught implications for children of color, from exposure to racism at home to ‘growing up without reflections of their greatness and contributions to humanity.’
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When she ran the African American Adoption Agency in Minneapolis more than two decades ago, Marquita Stephens helped develop a training program for foster and adoptive parents planning to care for kids of a different race. It involved a Bingo-like game. Agency staff handed prospective parents a scorecard, with boxes to mark after they answered a series of questions.
“What is the race of your physician?” The parent would put a pebble in a corresponding box. “What is the race of the majority of your neighbors?” Another pebble.
The training helped all participants, Stephens recalled, but it was particularly beneficial to white parents.
“By the end of it, you had a chance to see what your world looked like, as it was racially composed,” Stephens said. “You had to talk about the notion of bringing a child of a different race into that world — and then you talk about what you want to do to adjust that world in order to ensure that you can build a healthy ethnic identity in this child.”
To this day, when Minnesota children of color are taken into foster care and placed with people who are not their relatives, odds are they will end up in a white home, an Imprint data analysis has found. But the difficulties that are prone to arise — and solutions like those Stephens sought — are not routinely acknowledged or adequately addressed, according to interviews with foster youth, adoptees, child welfare professionals and academics.
Data compiled by the state’s Department of Human Services for this outlet show that in 2022, more than 40% of the 4,051 Minnesota foster children placed with strangers were Native American, African American, Asian American/Pacific Islander or Latino. Of the licensed, non-relative foster parents who received them, twice that percentage were white. In some counties where foster youth are mostly children of color, 100% of foster parents are white, state statistics show.
That poses potential problems for great numbers of children, said JaeRan Kim, a South Korean adoptee raised by a white Minnesota family. Kim is now an associate professor in the School of Social Work and Criminal Justice at the University of Washington, Tacoma.
“Racial needs are as important to the development of children as their physical and their emotional and their spiritual and their educational needs — it’s a crucial part of who they are,” Kim said.
In an interview, the state’s new Department of Children, Youth and Families commissioner, Tikki Brown, acknowledged the ongoing concern. She said the topic has come up repeatedly in her discussions with some of the 6,200 foster youth her agency serves.
“They’re all interested in having some cultural awareness from the folks that are taking care of them,” Brown said.
There are shortcomings in the data Minnesota collects. It is aggregate, and does not include “multiracial” or “multiethnic” categories, so a significant number of children and some foster parents check more than one box. But Brown acknowledged the role the state must play in ensuring a diverse foster parent pool.
“It’s one thing to provide safety and a loving home, but the layers of providing that care are really important as well. The more variety and diversity we can have means that we can have a better match for children in the system who are undergoing great trauma and don’t need extra layers added on to it,” Brown said. “We can do better, and the kids deserve better.”
Family first
When a child is removed from home following allegations of parental abuse or neglect, social workers must first seek out family members, many of whom become licensed foster parents.
The state’s child welfare agency and representatives of five counties who run local child protective services emphasized their current success on that front: Statewide, 65% of all Minnesota foster children now live with kin, well above the national average of 35%. The total number of kids removed from home has also declined steeply in recent years, amid a national shift.
All children who are members of tribes or eligible for enrollment are protected under the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, known as ICWA. The 1978 law requires that relatives, fellow tribal members and other Indigenous caregivers are prioritized as caregivers in the foster care system. Minnesota state law deepens those protections.
Recently, the state passed the Minnesota African American Family Preservation and Child Welfare Disproportionality Act, which broadens ICWA-like protections to all children overrepresented in foster care.
But under other state and federal laws, when no relatives are available, children must be placed in the first licensed foster home available that serves their “best interests.” Those interests include tribal values, medical, educational, religious and cultural needs and — if they’re old enough — the child’s preference. But federal law bars states from considering race or ethnicity in placement decisions.
“The more variety and diversity we can have means that we can have a better match for children in the system who are undergoing great trauma and don’t need extra layers added on to it.”
— Tikki Brown, Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families
Robert O’Connor, 57, has seen firsthand the potential consequences of transracial placements, which involve parents who take in children of a different race. He gained this experience as a Black child adopted into a white family living in nearly all-white Minnesota communities in the 1970s, and, in the decades since, as a mentor and educator to adoptive and foster families nationwide. He is currently an associate professor and department chair in social work at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul.
O’Connor acknowledged that the social climate has improved for multiracial families, with more awareness of parents’ need “to provide that bicultural living experience” for the whole family, and to advocate for “social and political issues” that will likely affect their lives.
For other white parents raising children of color, he encourages them to not “play ostrich around race, culture, ethnicity and privilege,” which remains an urgent challenge in a country where racism and bigotry persist.
One white couple who adopted a Black child he has mentored underscore this sobering reality. O’Connor said the parents have been asked shocking questions, including: “‘Aren’t you concerned about those boys becoming rapists?’ Those kinds of questions and some harassment — those kinds of things were not infrequent,” O’Connor said, even in communities that do not appear to be “outwardly hostile or racist.”
O’Connor also pointed to identity-related discomfort among many Black children raised in all-white families. One Black child he met, who had been adopted by a white family, “seemed uncomfortable in my presence, just because of my skin color,” he said. “Unless their parents provide them with the proper directions, it’s going to be more challenging for them to navigate a community they otherwise would be able to comfortably navigate.”
Equally destructive for these children, he added, “is growing up without reflections of their greatness, and contributions to humanity.”
Federal law vs. ‘long-held social work values’
Transracial foster care placements and adoptions have been researched and evaluated for decades, with scant hard evidence to date that children in such households have more serious behavioral or emotional problems than peers taken in by caregivers of the same race.
But much remains unexamined about the longer-term outcomes in education, careers and mental health, according to “Transracial and Intercountry Adoptions: Cultural Guidance for Professionals,” a book by social work researchers Rowena Fong and Ruth McRoy. They conclude that while transracially adopted people may struggle more with “racial and ethnic identity and racial discrimination” as they approach adulthood, much depends on how foster or adoptive parents prepare for almost-inevitable challenges such as classmates singling out a Black child for looking different than their white family.
Fong and McRoy also contend that federal laws barring any consideration of race in adoptive placements “contradict long-held social work values” — namely, the importance of respecting children’s cultural heritage.
This issue has been litigated in recent Minnesota court cases involving ICWA.
An unsuccessful legal challenge to ICWA that reached the U.S. Supreme Court last year involved Robyn Bradshaw, of the White Earth Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. She battled in court for years to gain custody of her granddaughter from white foster parents Danielle and Jason Clifford.
In granting the adoption in 2020, a Hennepin County trial court acknowledged the child had a positive experience with the Cliffords — but that wasn’t enough. “The Cliffords can provide love, attachment, an active two-family household and extended family, and ample financial resources,” the court ruled. But Bradshaw can sustain the girl’s “connection to her tribe, to her Ojibwe culture, to her sister, and to both sides of her family in a way that the Cliffords cannot.” After six years of litigation, the child returned to the White Earth community, where she attends powwows and is learning her Indigenous language.
In an ongoing case, Judge Michael D. Trushenski disagreed with white Minnesota foster parents who argued they had met foster children’s cultural needs. He ruled last year that while a pair of Red Lake Nation twins lived with a white foster couple, “they did not attend a single tribal event. They never met their older sister or many of their other extended family members.”
Speaking to The Imprint last year about her recently published memoir, Sandy White Hawk, founder of Minnesota’s First Nations Repatriation Institute, reflected on the trauma she’s had to live with after being adopted into a white home as a toddler.
White Hawk, now 70, describes her adoptive mother as abusive, a woman who made her feel that being a Native child was something to be despised, not celebrated, and that her adoption into the white, missionary couple’s home had rescued her from a life of destitution on her reservation.
White Hawk said she grew up believing “I was an ungrateful, dirty, ugly little Indian kid” from a “reservation full of people who didn’t really want me, anyway.”
In interviews, some former foster youth described more positive experiences, and noted the complexity of these issues.
Ansaia Phillips is among them. When she entered foster care as a young teen, she considered it “the best decision” made for her, given her family’s struggles at the time. But as a Black girl, she then experienced depression and confusion navigating different foster and group homes headed by white caregivers.
“That really was detrimental for me, not seeing a lot of people like me and not really knowing how to take care of myself, like how to do my hair or what products to use and things like that,” Phillips said.
Now 20 and studying to be an electrician, Phillips emphasized that parenting children of a different race can be a positive experience — if the adults educate themselves. “As long as they’re meeting the right criteria to adapt to that kid, I don’t think skin color matters,” she said. “I just think you need to know the things that are important to that culture before you get the kid.”
Pez Davila, a 32-year-old Black community organizer who runs a nonprofit for youth in Duluth, spent time in a white foster home as a teenager. He said the experience benefited him at a turbulent time.
But Davila also said there needs to be greater engagement with residents about the shortage of foster parents — particularly between the Black community and his local St. Louis County social services. A culture shift is needed, he added.
“They have to teach these workers or agents to be more personable; they need to change the narrative about what people think of them,” Davila said. “But at the same time, if you have problems with these kids being in white homes, why don't you step up?”
“Because there’s no discussions around their racial identity, they go off into the world as adults and then they find that they don't have the skills to deal with the more explicit racism or discrimination.”
— Professor JaeRan Kim, University of Washington
Fong and McRoy point to one possible reason for the shortage of Black foster families nationwide: Recruitment of diverse families has become an “afterthought” to agencies due to “fear of violating the colorblind policies.” Those include amendments to the federal Multiethnic Placement Act in 1996, which exposed states to costly penalties if they delayed a child’s placement while looking for a same-race match.
Today, Black adults have conflicted views on becoming foster parents, according to a 2023 Gallup poll of more than 5,400 people. More than a third of the 1,563 Black respondents had “thought a lot” about becoming foster parents, compared to one-quarter of others surveyed. Black adults also expressed far greater distrust in the foster care system. In essence, they were less likely to see foster care as equitable or helpful to kids and families, even though they were more eager than other demographic groups to step up.
Some minority-specific recruiting efforts have had notable success with Black families.
State officials told The Imprint that while local child welfare agencies are responsible for foster parent recruitment and training, an initial orientation must cover “cultural diversity, gender sensitivity, culturally specific services, cultural competence, and information about discrimination and racial bias issues.”
But such sessions may not adequately prepare caregivers for issues likely to arise, child welfare experts say — such as racism displayed by the foster family’s relatives, or children simply feeling they don’t belong. Child welfare workers may encourage white foster parents to listen to podcasts, watch relevant films and read up on the importance of positive racial identity in childhood, but “there’s no way to really have families demonstrate that they can and will affirm the child’s racial and cultural needs after the child is placed,” Professor Kim said. And there can be unanticipated outcomes, even within well-intentioned families.
“What often happens is that a child of color is protected in their home,” she said. “Because there’s no discussions around their racial identity, they go off into the world as adults and then they find that they don't have the skills to deal with the more explicit racism or discrimination.”
Foster parents ask: How can we help?
Two years ago, Carmella Hines, a 31-year-old Black social worker at the Minneapolis foster care agency Family Alternatives, got a call from Chad and Keelin Henderson. The white couple was poised to adopt 6-year-old Black twins from foster care. The Hendersons were alarmed because one of the children had just told them she “wanted to be white because her teachers were white and her parents were white.”
The couple repeatedly told their daughter she is “beautiful” and “unique,” and they wanted her to grow up with a positive identity and strong Black women as role models. So they reached out to Hines for support. Would she take their daughter out for the day for some meaningful conversation and a mani-pedi?
For Chad Henderson, it was important to understand his “limitations as a white parent and saying, ‘You know what? I’m in over my head on that one,’” he said in an interview. “We try and surround ourselves with people who are really great folks of color to be role models for them as well.”
The Hendersons have participated in Umoja, a camp for families caring for Black children through adoption, foster care or kinship care. They adopted the children with the intention of keeping them close to their biological family, and some of their siblings were adopted by the Henderson’s friends, who live nearby. Keelin Henderson took classes at a salon in Minneapolis to learn how to care for her daughter’s hair, and the couple makes sure they have books featuring Black characters at home.
Despite their efforts, Hines wasn’t surprised that the 6-year-old was already questioning her identity. “Conversations like this are going to start to come up,” she said. “It comes up when they’re 6 years old, when they’re 7 years old, it’s going to come up over and over.”
Hines knows this from experience. She and her eight siblings were removed from their Minneapolis home at different times as their parents struggled with addiction, she said. When Hines was 9, she was adopted by a white woman and a Black man and stayed with them for about five years before being placed back into foster care.
Some memories have stayed with her, decades later. While living with the adoptive family, Hines said, she endured racist remarks from the woman’s brother, who would make fun of her for things like how she pronounced the word “ask.”
Numbers on foster parent race telling, if imprecise
The federal government tracks the races of foster parents in its Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System. But researchers familiar with the data say those numbers are far from accurate — in part due to a large number of cases where no information is provided.
The more refined data that Minnesota’s state agency provided The Imprint is based on self-identification during the licensing process. Categories include White, African American/Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Pacific Islander, or Hispanic/Latinx. Each category included homes with “at least one associated foster parent of the given race/ethnicity.”
Matching these children to a transracial placement is impossible to count through the anonymous, aggregate data set. Nonetheless, white foster parents in Minnesota comprise more than three-fourths of the total, roughly reflecting the state’s white population. In 2022, the most recent figures available, there were just 300 Black or multiracial Black foster parents in the state, compared with 1,090 Black or multiracial Black children in non-relative foster homes for at least a day.
That same year, there were 1,596 Native American children in foster care — roughly eight times the 205 homes headed by Indigenous foster parents receiving them.
The nationwide growth of multiracial or multiethnic identification poses a challenge for exact tracking of the diversity in Minnesota’s foster home pool, and also underscores the disparities. Statewide, 4% of foster homes had a caregiver identified in more than one racial, ethnic or tribal status category — meaning the share who are white-only could range from 77% to 81%. Meanwhile, 28% of children in the dataset are multiracial or ethnic, and identified under more than one category — such as Black and white, or Native American and Latino.
State officials confirmed a central theme that the statistics reveal: the figures show that white foster children are likely to move into a white family home when they enter foster care with strangers. Kids of color are likely to enter a home of a different race, potentially complicating an already traumatic experience in the custody of a state with enduring discrimination in housing, employment and lending.
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Counties look to kin
The Imprint shared its data findings and requested comments from five county social service agencies that had some of the least diverse foster parent pools and the most diverse child populations. They ranged from St. Louis County, a sprawling logging-and-mining hub that spans from Duluth to the Canadian border to the smaller Blue Earth County south of Minneapolis, known for its hog, corn and soybean production.
Each stated a commitment to placing children with kin, reflecting growing state and national priorities. They agreed that having a diverse foster parent pool is important, particularly given the disproportionate impact foster care has in communities of color. Nonetheless, St. Louis, Stearns and Clay county officials acknowledged they still struggle to meet that goal, despite regularly hosting foster parent recruitment events.
The county officials did not dispute that they lacked diversity among foster homes, but noted the state data’s missing category for multiracial caregivers. Allowing respondents to select more than one race would “better reflect the rich tapestry of backgrounds and experiences among individuals who open their homes to foster children,” said Nicholas Henderson, the director of human services for Stearns County in central Minnesota. Henderson added that his county’s recently approved caregivers include adults who identified themselves as Ukrainian, East Slavik, Somali, Black, Hispanic, Italian and Native American.
“Another barrier for us, especially in north St. Louis County, is that our population is not diverse overall,” said Nicole Curphy, director of the county’s Children & Family Services Division, noting the vast rural expanses that make up one of the nation’s largest counties by square mileage.
Whatever the barriers, experts like Angela Tucker want the issue better addressed. Tucker, a 38-year-old Black woman adopted by a white Washington family, has made her personal journey public through films, books, trainings and advocacy for transracial adoptees nationwide. She acknowledges the many well-meaning and loving white adults who care for other people’s children — and she is not uniformly opposed to the practice.
That said, “if you’re a transracial adoptive parent, you cannot give your child everything they need,” Tucker said. “It has nothing to do with parenting abilities and everything to do with the fact that there are some life lessons that have to be learned from a person of color.”
Alex Perez and Nancy Marie Spears contributed to this report.
