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Children of the Storm: Black Children and American Child Welfare

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This book is a must read for Leaders and professionals in child welfare and students in college and graduate school who hope to work in the field of child welfare. Written in the late 1960's it is still very relevant to practioners and leaders in the field today. The authors viewed and analyzed the impact of systemic and institutional racism on Black children in relation to child welfare. The overall premisis of the book illustrates with words, that poverty, discrimination, and a distinctive history placed black children at a disadvantage and in a very different situation than white children in the child welfare welfare system in the United States. The authors looked at child welfare practices throughout the United States, focusing on data in major cities including; Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Cleveland. The authors proposed possible solutions to resolve the issues and barries uncovered in their research. The child welfare landscape today reflects other minority groups in additions to the whites and blacks addressed in the book. Although, two pieces of legislation at the federal and state level have impacted child welfare since the publication of "Children of the Storm" many of the age old problems raised by Billingsley and Giovannoni still exist for black children and other minorities.
The book was a call to action for child welfare reform. Billingsley and Giovannoni envisioned a reformation with the creation of new agencies and the deliberate reorganization of existing agencies and practices with Black leadership in the forefront of the reformation. As a professional in child welfare and Behavioral Health for the past twenty years I belive the call to action and reformation is still needed. Reading Billingsley and Giovannoni's "Children of the Storm," Can serve as a beginning to ignite the fire needed to move the reformation forward.