By Dianne Anderson

Even during the toughest economic times, foster parenting tends to increase as more families take on foster children knowing there is some financial security coming in to sustain the new addition to their families.

But lately, since the money at the state level has been shrinking, so is the number of black foster parents stepping up to help alleviate the strain of a system where black children are severely overrepresented.

Dr. Cynthia Powell, owner and director of Hudson-Lyndsey Foster Family Agency in Orange County, said that ten percent across the board cuts in funding at the state level have been hard on foster agencies, and has had a chilling effect on foster parents. Potential adoptive parents fear that they won’t be able to take care of the children with so little money coming from the state.

“These days, everyone is in survival mode,” Powell said, adding that especially with African Americans, most everyone lately in the state is just a few paychecks away from hard times. “With such high unemployment, people are less eager to become foster parents.”

Statewide, foster programs like her own are struggling under the cuts, some are giving up altogether and closing their doors.

“I don’t know who’s driving this train, but they need to sit at the table with the people that are actually in the trenches,” she said.

In the California foster system alone, there are over 70,000 children waiting for families.

Nationwide, blacks comprise some 14 percent of the general population, but currently stand at around 40 percent of all foster children in the system. They usually are harder to place, and languish their entire young lives without a real home. When they are emancipated, they have nowhere to go but back to the system by way of jail, or become homeless.

Teen foster girls are also six times more at risk of becoming pregnant than other teens.

Powell has around 100 foster children within the tri-county region and collaborates with nine other agencies. In all, they serve about 800 children in mentoring programs across southern California.

Early this week, Dr. Powell and longtime professional partner, Beautina Robinson, flew to Chicago to meet with the former editor of Essence magazine Susan Taylor,, and collaborate with her national CARE program, as well as the National Alliance of Faith and Justice.

Robinson, president of the Southern California Mentoring Network, said that the new partnerships being formed around fostering is important because so many young people have been left at the roadside, and are lost at a rate faster than the system is able to help them.

“The community now needs to step up and become a very active part, and not just our churches on the corner, but people in the household. Everybody has to step up and save our children,” said Dr.  Robinson, executive director of Teens Happy Home Group Home in Los Angeles County

She said that the children in the foster system often only have one parent, and too many have one or both parents incarcerated.

“They have no family, that’s why they are in the system. It’s crucial that we as adults and community leaders, community persons reach back and take one child,” she said.

To donate time, or foster a child, call the Hudson-yndsey Foster Family Agency at 714.998.9312.