Child Protection United States Project #60187

Finding Families for Black Youth in Foster Care

Project Report | Mar 11, 2025
Strengthening Support for Black and Marginalized Youth in Foster Care

By Development Team | Kidsave Staff

At Kidsave, we believe that every child deserves love, stability, and a family. Our EMBRACE Project is dedicated to ensuring that older youth in foster care, particularly BIPOC and LGBTQ+ children, receive the cultural, emotional, and identity-affirming support they need. These children often face additional barriers due to systemic inequities, making it necessary to provide tailored resources that respect and uplift their identities. As part of this initiative, we are excited to launch our Peer Mentor Pilot Program this spring, which offers a new way to provide emotional and mental health support for marginalized youth.

The Peer Mentor Pilot Program connects adults with lived experience, such as former foster youth, adoptive parents, and mentors, with families in our Kidsave Weekend Miracles Program. These Peer Mentors provide culturally and identity-affirming support. They help families create a welcoming and understanding environment for the children in their care.

BIPOC youth in foster care often face cultural disconnection and instability, which can deeply impact their sense of identity. Many experience multiple placements, making it difficult to build lasting relationships. This program fosters meaningful connections between Peer Mentors and families. It provides strong emotional support and increases the likelihood of successful placements.

The pilot program will launch in Los Angeles. Five Peer Mentors will be hired and trained to work with prospective host and adoptive families. Over the course of a year, they will receive specialized training in cultural competency, identity-affirming practices, and trauma-informed care. The program’s impact will be measured through ongoing evaluations. The ultimate goal is to expand this model and provide more youth with the support they need.

As well as the pilot program, EMBRACE is focused on amplifying the voices of Black, Latino and LGBTQ+ youth in foster care. This February, we celebrated Black History Month by sharing powerful stories from Black youth in foster care, as well as from Black adoptive parents and mentors making a difference. As we move into March, we continue this mission with Women’s History Month, honoring the resilience and leadership of womenwho have shaped the foster care system and fought for the rights of children in care.

Through storytelling, social media engagement, and advocacy, we aim to shine a light on the systemic challenges marginalized youth face in foster care while promoting solutions that create lasting change. Many navigate the foster system without guidance from adults who share their cultural backgrounds and understand their struggles. The Peer Mentor Pilot Program is an essential step in addressing this gap by ensuring that youth have access to mentors who reflect their experiences and identities.

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Nov 12, 2024
Creating a Foster Care System that Embraces Every

By Development Team | Kidsave Staff

In Texas and across many regions, the foster care system often operates under a “one-size-fits-all” approach, ignoring the unique needs of Black children and other marginalized youth. Systemic biases result in a disproportionate representation of Black children in foster care—not due to higher instances of abuse or neglect, but largely because of misinterpretations rooted in systemic racism and cultural misunderstandings.

We recently came across a story that truly illustrates this. A woman shared with one of our staff how her mother was denied the chance to care for a relative because their household was labeled “chaotic.” This judgment may have been derived from cultural bias and had negative long-termeffectson the child’s well-being. What the system dismissed as chaos was, in fact, a dynamic, loving environment that celebrated family strength. Because of this misunderstanding, their family lost the opportunity to stay together. This isn’t just one family’s story but part of a broader systemic failure to recognize the strengths of Black families and other marginalized communities. Too often, cultural differences are mistakenly viewed as deficiencies, resulting in unnecessary family separations. The result is usually longer foster care stays for Black children, who face emotional distress, a fractured sense of identity, and a higher risk of aging out without a permanent family.

A path forward begins with cultural awareness and sensitivity at every level of the foster care system. Programs that recognize and respect a child’s unique background and provide culturally sensitive mentoring and mental health support have shown success in reducing unnecessary separations and building strong, supportive connections. When professionals honor and value cultural differences, children benefit.

This year, we have focused on engaging with child welfare agencies, policymakers, and potential advocates for EMBRACE about the results of the study – all to develop the partnerships that can help us make the difference in the lives of Black children in foster care.In the coming months, we will be implementing our first phase of the EMBRACE study recommendations in our Weekend Miracles program in California and Texas, beginning with cultural responsiveness training and peer-to-peer support for families as they navigate welfare systems.

EMBRACE is dedicated to transforming foster care into a system that respects each child’s background and fosters true belonging. We advocate for changes like cultural competency training, reduced caseloads for social workers, increased funding for family reunification, and culturally qualified mental health practitioners. By supporting EMBRACE, you’re helping create a foster care system that meets every child’s unique needs, building a future where they can truly thrive.

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Jul 11, 2024
Inclusive Support Initiatives at EMBRACE

By Tiffany Chiang | Development Intern

Kidsave's EMBRACE project aims to drive meaningful change by supporting Black families and youth interacting with the child welfare system and providing cultural competency training for all families. Our latest initiative is currently in development and includes enhancing cultural humility, establishing peer mentoring programs, and implementing targeted recruitment strategies to serve our communities better, particularly marginalized groups, integrated into our Weekend Miracles Program.

Cultural competency and humility are central to our mission. Kidsave is introducing training programs for mentors and adoptive families to build skills in understanding and respecting diverse cultural backgrounds.

Kidsave is developing a peer mentoring program that connects adoptive and host families. This provides a platform for sharing experiences, advice, and emotional support among adoptive families. We aim to ease and support the transition for new families, ensuring they have access to the resources to care for the unique needs of Black and brown youth.

Building trusting relationships in marginalized communities is essential for our targeted recruitment efforts. We recognize that historical policies and structural racism in child welfare have created distrust in Black communities. Our strategy includes ensuring diverse staff representation at events, partnering with local Black organizations, and conducting focus groups and surveys of Black Kidsave families. Cultural humility training for program staff ensures our team is prepared to support the unique needs of Black and Brown families and reflect on their relationship to society.

Through our initiatives in cultural humility training, peer mentoring programs, and targeted recruitment, EMBRACE is dedicated to creating a more inclusive and supportive community for all children and families, making a lasting impact.

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