Foster Children at Risk, and an Opportunity Lost - New York Times: Two decades ago, New York City embarked on an experiment aimed at better assisting and protecting its most vulnerable black and Latino children. At its heart, the effort involved creating and supporting foster care agencies that would, at long last, be run by men and women of color.
...Twenty years later, the city’s ambitious undertaking to improve foster care for the city’s black and Latino children has spanned four mayoral administrations and consumed hundreds of millions of dollars in city, state and federal money. The New York Times spent months examining the investment in minority-run agencies — what once seemed a bold and overdue shift in one of the most challenging areas of social policy.
It is as much a story of trouble as of triumph. The Miracle Makers Inc. of Brooklyn, which swiftly grew into one of the largest of the minority agencies, was banished from foster care in 2005 after years of poor performance that shortchanged children. Two other minority agencies, responsible for hundreds of children, were shuttered and their officials convicted of stealing money. Another closed after city investigators found that agency staff members were giving jobs and contracts to relatives.
