Foundation Releases New Report on Disproportionality

I am honored and excited to announce today the release of the Parental Rights Foundation’s brand-new Disproportionality Report, now available on our website!

Featuring official federal government data from the Children’s Bureau of the Department of Health and Human Services and from the Census Bureau, our report puts that data into a graphic format that clearly and visually brings the dry numbers to life.

At a glance one can see how families of different races are being affected by child welfare agencies, and particularly by the foster care system, at rates that are disproportionate to their level of the overall child population.

In some states, it is Native American children who are hit the hardest. In other states, it is African American or perhaps Hispanic children.

Today, you can see for yourself at just a simple glance, thanks to our latest report.

And the layout lends itself well to being shared with lawmakers and policymakers in your particular state. That’s because the report is laid out as a series of easy-to-print one-pagers, with each state’s situation presented on a single front-and-back sheet.

So, whether you’re a researcher or child welfare professional wanting to see the condition of your state, or a concerned voter wanting to bring awareness of the problem to your congressman, it’s easy to find just where your state’s child welfare department stands.

This project, highlighting the 2022 data (the newest available), has been months in the making, and we are hopeful it will be as helpful and powerful as our first such report was back in 2018.

As the second in a series, this report moves us from a single snapshot to a picture showing movement: where we are, compared to where we were before. It shows the direction we are heading.

With this report, we can see where change has taken place through 2022 and where it hasn’t—and whether that change is for the better, or for the worse.

Here’s our underlying concern: While some statistical disproportionality may be expected in any system, the breadth of nation-wide disproportionality displayed in this report suggests that racial bias plays a significant role in separating families.

When fundamental parental rights for all are respected and protected, there will be no room for personal bias to decide whose family is destroyed and whose is not.

This report shows that, as a nation, we still have a lot of work to do. We must make sure families are secure, regardless of race, as the fundamental rights of all parents are preserved and respected. Only then will we see bias reduced and all types of children protected in their rightful homes.

Thank you for engaging with this report and sharing it with your friends, family members, and lawmakers. Together, we can highlight the problem of racial disproportionality and then offer a powerful solution: fundamental parental rights for all families.

Sincerely,

Michael T. Ramey
President

P.S.—If you are able to support our ongoing efforts to protect parental rights for all, please do so here.