Less Diversity in Supervisors of Foster Care

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Child welfare advocates and officials said the minority-run agencies [minority-governed, neighborhood-based foster care agencies.] had become casualties of a system that, under Mr. Mattingly [John B. Mattingly, head of the Administration for Children’s Services], incorporated stricter and more frequent monitoring of performance. And some minority-run agencies, which tend to have trouble with fund-raising in the low-income neighborhoods where they are based, have struggled in the difficult economic climate–unlike the older, more established agencies, which have endowments and deep-pocketed donors to help them ride out an economic downturn.

Five years ago, Mr. Mattingly and child welfare advocates in New York recognized that the minority-run organizations were in peril. {snip}

Since then, widespread support for the minority-run agencies has been overcome by the reality that some agencies were underfinanced, lacked strong leadership and were not taking good care of the children they supervised, advocates and providers said.

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The city terminated its contracts with another minority-run agency, Concord Family Services, in September 2008, months after a sham adoption scheme was discovered at the agency. {snip}

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Emory Brooks, the president and chief executive of Community Counseling and Mediation, one of the four remaining minority-run agencies, said {snip} “I’ve never been comfortable with the idea that we should be given any special allowances or additional points because we happen to be minority and because we happen to be located in the minority community,” he said. {snip}

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