Improving Foster Care Outcomes

Floor Speech

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Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Madam Speaker, first, I thank the Honorable Congresswoman from the great State of Florida, the Honorable Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, for yielding.

Madam Speaker, today I rise because June is National Reunification Month, and we owe it to Black families not to be silent about what the child welfare system has done to them in both tragic and traumatic ways.

I say to you today, Madam Speaker, the effects have been devastating and long-lasting on our children. The fact that we even have to have a National Reunification Month says it all.

How can it even be possible that a system that purports to help Black families has been so chiefly responsible for the separation of the very families it supposedly exists to serve?

This kind of morose contradiction cannot be allowed to persist and linger because whether some people in this country are willing to admit it or not, families come in all shapes and sizes. Families come in all colors and configurations. They even come in various economic conditions and levels of education.

All of them are still families, and all of them deserve our commitment. All of them are dependent on the work we do in this Chamber, and the Members of this body cannot just care about the families that remind them of their own.

No matter the race or configuration of a particular family, we are here to serve every family in this country. Either we care about all American families or, in truth, is it that we only care about some, most, or none?

Black families deserve all the rights and opportunities extended to every other family in this country. In fact, considering the historical assault on this country's institutions and policies against Black families, one might even suggest that Black families deserve to have more than most. We have been through a lot.

I am honored to be a Member of this congressional body and to represent the First Congressional District of the State of Illinois. When I think of the life of a young child who was kidnapped from West Africa by the name of Phillis Wheatley in 1753, who was manumitted from slavery in 1773, our Nation has come a long way, but let us never forget that a child had been kidnapped who was 8 years of age. They approximated her age because of the size of her teeth. She had to go up and talk to John Hancock and others and had to recite poetry that we later came to find out were anagrams. She was an absolutely brilliant child, and she was the first person of African ancestry from 1619 to 1753 to have been manumitted from slavery.

I want us to know that Black families are more valuable simply because they have been through so much. Black families don't have their value just because they have been through so much. It is because of the compassion they have had to grow. Not one family is more valuable than the others. We all have different experiences, and sometimes they have had a long-lasting and devastating legacy of neglect that has too often resulted in outright violence.

We rise tonight to reflect on the role of this tragic system and how we might strengthen bonds and not just perpetuate historical problems and systemic norms in the child welfare system that is tearing so many families apart.

I am convinced now more than ever that we must do whatever we can to reduce the need for foster care and strengthen families in whichever configuration they are formed.

Until the system of child welfare can see the value in keeping families together, we must hold the system accountable for what we know to be right. What we do, we also have to know is the right thing. We know that, yes, every child should be protected, and they still need their mothers and their fathers no matter the frailty and the conditions that they suffer from.

Yes, children should have their basic needs met, too, but they still need their grandmothers and grandfathers.

Our child welfare system should not separate children. Our child fostering system that is supposed to help feed and nourish children should not separate children in any case.

Every child who has a brother or a sister deserves to have a relationship with their brother or sister they possess. As much as children should be protected from whatever seeks to threaten the integrity of their lives, it is also the case that no child should be erroneously or permanently separated from people who love them.

We must change the economic conditions and political factors that make it even possible for Black children to end up not being cared for by their relatives because of a lack of capacity and their resources.

There is a reason Black families are more likely to be investigated by child protective services and to have their children removed and placed in out-of-home care. There is a reason more than 50 percent of Black children in the U.S. will experience a child welfare investigation before their 18th birthday and 10 percent of Black children will be placed into foster care.

These are not accidental occurrences. Rather, they are the manifestation of a deep and pervasive systemic bias. Black children spend more time in foster care; Black children have more placements; and, yes, Black children are less likely to be reunified with their families.

Somebody needs to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. Since the children of our community cannot speak on the floor of this Chamber tonight, we dare to speak for them. Tonight, we pick up the standard for their cause and declare emphatically on their behalf: Let these children return home to loving families. Let them be treated with respect. Let's give them the presumption of innocence and virtue that they deserve. Let them be reunited with the kindred spirit that produced them and continues to love them in spite of the challenges that they face.

This pattern of unjustified investigation and prolonged separation must be brought to an end, not just for the sake of the children but also for the sake of this Nation's future.

Unless the children of our community are returned to the loving arms of their families, no child in this country is safe. No child can sleep easy tonight, and we will not rest until the circle is restored and until the village can, once again, decide for itself what is best for our children.

As we work to keep them safe, let us live to make them free because the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it alone.

We thank God for the life, the living, and the legacy of the Honorable Phillis Wheatley, a child who was separated and was the first to be manumitted to be free in America, a child who was kidnapped that God had borne free and who had to have her rights restored as a human being.

Madam Speaker, I thank the Honorable Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick from the great State of Florida for her continued service.

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