Black youth make up two-thirds of the kids in Milwaukee's foster care system.
This worries Jermaine Reed. He is determined to make foster care a more effective system -- especially for black youth.
He calls foster care an incubator for the criminal justice system.
"Children being in foster care is a trauma event. Period."
Jermaine is the executive director of Fresh Start Family Services, Wisconsin’s first private placement agency run by an African American. He also hosts Fresh Start Today, a radio program on WNOV dedicated to educating the black community about child welfare.
He believes that bias in the system and a lack of culturally appropriate care causes further damage to a group of kids already walking around with too much trauma.
Jermaine worries that without proper treatment, black children in the foster system are at greater risk of picking up a gun.
