Focusing on National Reunification Month

Floor Speech

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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Jackson for yielding. I am so happy to be joining him and Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick for this Congressional Black Caucus Special Order hour. Indeed, it is a special honor to talk about our children and what they need.

I am so proud to be a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Not only am I a member of this esteemed body that is concerned about foster youth, but I am also a member of the Bipartisan Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth, and I serve in that caucus as one of the six bipartisan chairs.

I thank the CBC and its members who supported the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth's Shadow Day this past June 14, last week. I thank all the Members of the House who took time to allow a former foster youth to join them in their day's activities as well as to hear from and learn from their shadows.

If you didn't have a foster youth this year, be sure that Gwen Moore will be calling upon you next year to enjoy this important experience and feedback between the delegates and Members.

My fellow CBC members, in particular, demonstrated their commitment to this special community through graciously hosting a former foster youth in their office for 1 day and addressing the whole delegation and cohort of 30 former foster youth from across the country, representing 20 States, directly during the youth's townhall meeting.

I thank those CBC members who stepped up last week to host a shadow, including my Congressional Foster Youth Caucus co-chair, Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove; my Ways and Means Committee work fam subcommittee ranking member and longtime foster youth advocate, Representative Danny Davis of Illinois; and others, including Representative Emanuel Cleaver, Representative Terri Sewell, Representative Bobby Scott, Representative Barbara Lee, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Representative Summer Lee, Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, and Representative Shontel Brown.

Mr. Speaker, I will give a special shout-out to Representative Maxine Waters, who was busy with her committee and didn't actually take a shadow, but she met and spoke with one of the students that I shadowed and made his day. He was someone who was born in Los Angeles, and it made his day to meet the Honorable Maxine Waters.

We also went over to the Senate side and met with Senator Booker. My particular shadow, Theron, is someone who is a licensed therapist, and his experience in foster care is that it is easier to get in trouble and to come in contact with the juvenile justice system for doing nothing but being a foster youth. He wants to make sure that we put a focus on the juvenile justice system with regard to its nexus with foster care.

We have to stop the foster care-to-prison pipeline, Mr. Speaker. These are things that our foster youth are telling us.

I represented two outstanding foster youth, Shay Grey Woods and Theron Ogedengbe. Just like all the foster youth that I have gotten to know and had the privilege to participate with during Shadow Day, including the late Dosha ``DJay'' Joi, I have been the student. I have learned from them. They have informed me about the kinds of legislative initiatives that need to occur and what we need to do.

Mr. Speaker, just let me say, these foster youth who come here every year are leaders. These are people who have somehow overcome the many barriers that foster youth experience, and they are able to be a voice to speak for them. We should not think that because we meet these brilliant, young, educated foster youth that there aren't thousands more of them who are falling through the cracks for want of our guidance and care.

It is a reminder. I remind you that behind all these statistics, there are real people and real stories that demonstrate their incredible resilience and hope that they have.

The reason that I am really proud of Shadow Day is because it elevates the voices of the over 377,000 children in out-of-home care as of the end of 2021.

Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, disproportionately, Black children are overrepresented in the child welfare system. In my own home State of Wisconsin, 28 percent of the youth in out-of-home placements were Black or African American, whereas African-American youth in Wisconsin only constitute 9 percent of the population. They are overrepresented by three times.

The data from the United States as a whole is similarly disproportionate, with 22 percent of children in the United States in out-of-home care being Black and only 14 percent of youth in the general population being African American.

When you say that you want to lift up National Reunification Month, it is something we need to lift up because we have all heard the old adage that you divide and conquer. This is our future workforce. These are our future builders, doctors, teachers, people who repair our roofs, and it is just about impossible to do that when they start out with so many adverse childhood experiences, like being separated from their birth parents, sometimes unnecessarily.

In a perfect world, no children would ever be separated. Of course, we understand that sometimes that is in the best interests of the children. Far too often, it is our policies under our child welfare system and our welfare system and our unwillingness to support parents where they are that are creating these out-of-home placements.

I want to talk about some very specific reasons that children are taken out of these homes, if you will bear with me.

Child neglect is the number one reason that children are taken out of these homes. No one wants children to be neglected. Not a single person in the United States Congress would want a child to be stuck in a home where they were being abused and neglected.

That is really an overstatement of what actually happens. What actually happens is there are a lot of people who have more month than money. If you come to June 26 and the resources for that household have dried up, with some of the most onerous policies that we have around who can get SNAP, also called food stamps, and when you think about parents living in situations where 48 percent of their income has to go for housing, and not necessarily good housing--houses with lead paint in them and lead pipes and vermin, and they are still paying almost half their income for housing, we see a situation where children can easily be loved yet neglected.

One of the things that I am going to do is reintroduce, as I have done for several cycles, the Family Poverty is Not Child Neglect Act. I want to reinforce the notion that these agencies should not be snatching kids out of their homes when providing maybe some SNAP or other resources to the family could preserve that family.

It is in the best interest of children to be at home if they can be. My bill would make it so much harder for these agencies to use poverty as a rationale to pulling families apart.

I am looking for other ways to do it. I don't want to take up all the time, but I just want to mention a second reason that children are placed out of home, it is because of parental substance abuse.

Mr. Jackson, I have known you and your family for a long time, so I know that you recall how substance abuse has become a real curse in this country. Drug affliction and addiction happens in every corner of the United States. How is it treated?

In some communities where there are fentanyl addictions, which are tragic; meth addictions, which are tragic; opioid addictions, which are tragic, we are proposing government interventions to help people. But when children of foster families become addicted, they are treated often like criminals and have their children taken from them instead of them being offered treatment.

So this year's theme for National Reunification Month is ``We believe in the resiliency and strength of our families.'' If that is going to be our motto, Mr. Jackson, we ought to do something to reinforce this strength and resilience and not just talk about it.

We need policies that match this audacious goal. Policies like the new exemption from SNAP time arbitrary and harmful time limits in the Fiscal Responsibility Act for former foster youth up to age 24.

The White House has done a marvelous job, they estimated that as many as 50,000 youth who have aged out of foster care will now be exempt from onerous timelines which say that in the 3-year period you could only be eligible for SNAP for 3 months. In 3 years you can only get SNAP if you are an adult, but we have exempted foster youth from that provision because who do we know, Representative Jackson, who is 18 or 19 on their own and can figure it out? I know I was still eating at home when I was 19.

I am so proud, again, of you and Mrs. Cherfilus-McCormick for spending this time to lift this up to our community and our constituents. I am inspired by your dedication and recommitted to working with you as we move forward.

I thank you for yielding to me, Mr. Jackson.

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