requests for the most basic repairs on her apartment and then ACS the city remove her kids saying the apartment was unsafe? Hadn't she gone to the Housing Authority, to housing court, and even her political representative in an effort to make the city repair her apartment?

"I don't know why they did this," Sibley says. A year and a half later, her ceiling has been fixed, but the city retains custody of two of the kids. "I just want my grandkids back."

In January, Sibley joined a group of other families in filing a class-action suit against the city, saying her grandchildren were wrongfully removed from her care. The suit alleges that the city's policies are racist, because African American children form a disproportionate share of the foster-care population.effects have been sweeping. "One out of every 10 Central Harlem children is in foster care," says Mike Arsham, director of the Child Welfare Organizing Project, a Harlem-based organization for parents whose kids are or were in foster care. Arsham believes the city punishes parent and child by separating them and that it's a quick fix. "Child-welfare policy," he says, "is being shaped more by tabloid headlines than by decades of street-level experience."

indeed, the tabloid headlines from Lisa (Steinberg) to Elisa (Izquierdo) tell a terrible tale. And, at first glance, the mayor's response seems logical: better many children placed unnecessarily in foster care than one child dead at the hands of abusive parents. But the facts suggest otherwise. In 1995, the year Elisa Izquierdo died, 31 children died