Diversity Screens Shrink Foster Pool

Modern foster‑care recruitment increasingly tests applicants for cultural‑diversity signals and the correct institutional language (for example: 'do you have toys reflecting a child's cultural background?', separate cooking equipment, and formal logs). Those requirements raise transaction costs and cultural barriers that disproportionately deter working‑class potential carers and favor middle‑class applicants who can buy the signals and master the rhetoric. — If screening for performative diversity competence reduces the supply of foster carers, it has immediate consequences for child welfare outcomes, equity of placements, and the socio‑economic makeup of caregiving.