When 5-year-old Darrien and 7-year-old Ryzelle Barrone showed up at Gladys Gray’s doorstep last August, they had already been through seven foster homes. For four years the boys had bounced around the system while their mother, Lakisha Barrone %uFFFDwho g
The boys are two of 6,023 Black foster children in Cook County. And even as the state applauds its lowest foster care numbers in more than a decade, the system remains overwhelmingly African American. According to the Department of Child and Family Services, Black children account for 80 percent of the 7,562 children in foster care in Cook County.
White kids account for 787, or just 10 percent, while Hispanic kids make up 602 or 8 percent. On a state level, whites make up a bigger chunk with 6,327 or 34 percent of children in the system. But Black children are a majority again with 10,699 or 57 percent%uFFFDdespite the fact that African Americans are just 15 percent of Illinois’ population.
Hispanic kids account for 1,108 or 6 percent. High rates of poverty and substance abuse, combined with lack of affordable housing are some reasons a 2007 federal study by the Government Accountability Office found for Black children’s over-representation in foster care. But limited access to support services%uFFFDfinancial, social and emotional%uFFFDare also a critical reason, the study found.
This was not lost on Gray, a 56-year-old mother of two adult children and an adopted teenage son, who realized that Lakisha was fighting alone. She had fled Oklahoma in 2003, at just 19 years old. “I have a mother in Oklahoma, and I have an aunt in Kentucky, but other than that I don’t have any family. Both sides of my family are racist. I’m (racially) mixed, so that leaves me in the middle,” said Lakisha, who herself grew up in foster care.
She arrived in Chicago during the winter with two babies, an expired housing voucher and no money. It left her with a tough choice. “I was devastated. But I felt, at that time, and I still feel like that now, I’d rather done what I did and put (the boys) in DCFS custody than leave them cold, hungry, with no shelter,” Lakisha said. While Lakisha struggled to get on her feet, the boys suffered abuse in the system.
By the time they arrived at Gray’s, they had been classified by their agency as “specialized.” “It devastated me because we’re not just dealing with a pet, we’re dealing with human lives here, and what you do to them when they are young now, will have an influence on their adulthood,” Lakisha said. Gray noticed Lakisha’s dismay, and despite undergoing chemotherapy for cancer diagnosed a few months after she took in Ryzelle and Darrien, began helping Lakisha build her life.
She allowed her weekly visits and took her and the boys on family vacation. She babysat Lakisha’s third child, Keyanna, while Lakisha visited colleges, and helped her find and furnish an apartment. Propelled by Gray’s support, Lakisha swiftly reached her agency’s benchmarks, and will get her boys back in July. Nicole Oliver, the boys’ case manager, said this is rare in the foster care world. “Most of the time, foster parents and the natural parents don’t have a lot of contact, but Gladys took the initiative to form a relationship.
No foster parents (I’ve seen, has) ever done that (to that extent) before. She’s gone above and beyond what’s expected,” Oliver said. But this type of support is critical to driving down the number of children in foster care, according to DCFS Deputy Director of Communications Kendall Marlowe. “It’s more important than ever for us to recruit foster parents who are eager to work with a child’s biological family.
“When foster parents work with biological parents from the start, they can build a bridge to a safe and successful return home%uFFFD. We can’t consider the child outside of the context of their family, children are best raised by families, not by services or programs,” Marlowe said. On May 5, Gray was awarded the Chicago chapter of the National Association of Black Social Workers’ Rose Love Memorial African- American Foster Parent Appreciation Award, in a ceremony that Lakisha, Ryzelle, Darrien, and Keyanna attended.
But Gladys said the bigger reward is her new family. “Lakisha is like my daughter, and (Ryzelle, Darrien and Keyanna) are my grandkids. It’s been a two-sided thing. “I’ve been a comfort to them, but they’ve been a comfort to me. I went through chemotherapy, and that caused a lot of pain, but taking care of them gets my mind off of what I’m going through,” Gray said.
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