Last year, 39,325 reports of suspected child neglect were made to Wisconsin’s Child Protective Services. In other words, every single day 108 people across Wisconsin felt worried enough about a child to take the time to report them with the belief that they or their family would receive some support or intervention to ensure that the child was safe and well. Of those nearly 40,000 reports, 88% were unsubstantiated for maltreatment. In fact, over 26,000 or 2 out of every 3 reports of neglect were screened out, which means that they don’t receive any form of service or response to the concerns that the person that reported them had for them in the first place. These are often reports of struggles with economic insecurity as 85% of families investigated by CPS are living at or below 200% of the federal poverty line. A teacher is concerned because a child comes to school without a winter coat in January or didn’t have dinner last night or shared the that they recently lost their home. But poverty doesn’t equal neglect, and Child Protective Services wasn’t designed to provide services or the resources to prevent neglect, it was designed to intervene once neglect has occurred. So the question becomes: How might we create a better alternative to reporting overloaded families to Child Protective Services, so that they receive the targeted support and resources that they need to thrive? How might we empower teachers, police officers, social workers, doctors and nurses who are on the frontlines of supporting overloaded families to build trust through referrals and connections to prevention services and resources rather than suspicion through reports to Child Protective Services? I invited Jennifer Jones to have this conversation today to explore these challenges through the work that she and Prevent Child Abuse America are leading to build an aligned and comprehensive primary prevention ecosystem in the United States.
Host: Luke Waldo
Experts:
:05-:14 - Jennifer Jones – “We must disrupt the status quo and advance equitable access to opportunities and environments that all families need to thrive.”
:22–4:35 – Luke Waldo – Welcome, Opening, and Jennifer Jones’ bio.
39,325 reports of suspected child neglect were made to Wisconsin Child Protective Services. In other words, every single day, 108 people across Wisconsin felt worried enough about a child to take the time to report them with the belief that they or their family would receive some support or intervention to ensure that the child was safe and well. Of those nearly 40,000 reports, 88% were unsubstantiated for maltreatment. In fact, over 26,000 or two out of every three reports of neglect were screened out, which means that they don't receive any form of service or response to the concerns that the person that reported them had for them in the first place. These are often reports of struggles with economic insecurity, as 85% of families investigated by child protective services are living at or below 200% of the federal poverty line.
So the question becomes, how might we create a better alternative to reporting overloaded families to child protective services so that they receive the targeted support and resources that they need to thrive? How might we empower teachers, police officers, social workers, doctors, and nurses who are on the front lines of supporting overloaded families to build trust through referrals and connections to prevention services and resources, rather than suspicion through reports to Child Protective Services?
4:36-4:44 – Jennifer Jones – Thank you for the invitation to join the pod again.
4:45-4:56 – Luke - Why is a Primary Prevention System needed today in the US?
4:57-11:25 – Jennifer – Why we need a Primary Prevention System in the US.
In 2022 over 3 million children were investigated for child abuse or neglect in this country, and of those children, over 550,000 were considered victims of child abuse and neglect, and 74% of those were for neglect. Almost 40% of all children in this country are subjected to a child welfare investigation. For white kids, it's 28% and for black kids, it's significantly higher, at 53% so over half of black children in this country experience a child welfare investigation before they are 18.
Families lacking income and resources for basic needs are often referred to the child welfare system for neglect, and we know that this disproportionately impacts black and indigenous families. We know that too many families are being subjected to harmful investigations. We know that too many families are being separated due to a range of things that could be addressed earlier, like poverty. There's great disproportionality, especially for black children and families, and overall, there is too little investment in prevention in this country.
We don't just want to prevent kids and families from coming to the attention of our nation's child welfare system. We want to reach them before they are in crisis, so they have what they need when they need it in the communities in which they live. We want to ensure that all children and families are living a purposeful and happy life with hope for the future. That is the heart and the foundation of our new theory of change.
We believe that we need a drastically different approach to supporting families, ensuring what they have to what they need to be happy, healthy and economically secure. We must change how our society values and cares for all children and families. And in doing this, we will write the next chapter of primary prevention in this country.
11:26-11:58 - Luke – What so many families who are feeling overloaded by the weight of poverty or social isolation need is someone to lessen that load. So how might a primary prevention ecosystem do that? What does Prevent Child Abuse America hope to change or accomplish with this theory of change?
11:59-16:33 – Jennifer Jones – What the PCAA Theory of Change for a Primary Prevention System aspires to accomplish, its North Star, and its process.
Theory of Change principles and 5 strategies.
16:34-17:44 – Luke – How might we implement the Theory of Change?
17:45-21:05 – Jennifer – It creates a Primary Prevention strategy for everyone across the country. Plug and Play Theory of Change. The flexibility for each community is critical as this is not a “one size fits all” solution. Unify and align a diverse group of actors.
CHSA has adopted the North Star, which shows the collective energy.
21:06-21:17 - Luke – Thank you, Jennifer.
21:18-22:09 – Jennifer – Thank you, Luke.
22:10-24:02 - Luke – 3 Key Takeaways.
24:08-25:32 - Luke – Closing Credits
Join the conversation and connect with us!
Jennifer Jones 00:05
We must disrupt the status quo and advance equitable access to opportunities and environments that all families need to thrive.
Luke Waldo 00:22
Welcome to season 3 of Overloaded: Understanding Neglect, where we explore how we might change the conditions that overload families with stress, so that families can thrive and children grow up with a strong foundation built on positive childhood experiences.
Hey everyone, this is Luke Waldo, your host for this podcast series and the Director of Program Design and Community Engagement for the Institute for Child and Family Well-being, our partnership between Children’s Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Helen Bader School of Social Welfare.
Last year, 39,325 reports of suspected child neglect were made to Wisconsin’s Child Protective Services. In other words, every single day 108 people across Wisconsin felt worried enough about a child to take the time to report them with the belief that they or their family would receive some support or intervention to ensure that the child was safe and well.
Of those nearly 40,000 reports, 88% were unsubstantiated for maltreatment. In fact, over 26,000 or 2 out of every 3 reports of neglect were screened out, which means that they don’t receive any form of service or response to the concerns that the person that reported them had for them in the first place.
These are often reports of struggles with economic insecurity as 85% of families investigated by CPS are living at or below 200% of the federal poverty line. A teacher is concerned because a child comes to school without a winter coat in January or didn’t have dinner last night or shared the that they recently lost their home. But poverty doesn’t equal neglect, and Child Protective Services wasn’t designed to provide services or the resources to prevent neglect, it was designed to intervene once neglect has occurred.
So the question becomes: How might we create a better alternative to reporting overloaded families to Child Protective Services, so that they receive the targeted support and resources that they need to thrive?
How might we empower teachers, police officers, social workers, doctors and nurses who are on the frontlines of supporting overloaded families to build trust through referrals and connections to prevention services and resources rather than suspicion through reports to Child Protective Services?
I invited Jennifer Jones to have this conversation today to explore these challenges through the work that she and Prevent Child Abuse America are leading to build an aligned and comprehensive primary prevention ecosystem in the United States.
Jennifer Jones serves as the Chief Strategy Officer at Prevent Child Abuse America where she develops, implements, and advocates for an integrated strategic framework to help grow PCA America’s leadership role consistent with national prevention priorities, and serves as the lead on regional and national strategic partnerships.
Prior to her current role, Jennifer was the Director of the Change in Mind Institute and the Co-Director of the Safety and Resilience Impact Area at the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities. Our team at the Institute worked closely with Jennifer as part of Change in Mind. Jennifer has also worked at the Wisconsin Children’s Trust Fund and the Department of Children and Families.
Jennifer is an affiliate of the Institute for Child and Family Well-Being, in recognition of her collaborative spirit and shared values. Jennifer received her master’s in social work from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and bachelor’s in social work from Marquette University.
Jennifer joins us today from her home in Madison. I would like to thank you, Jennifer, for all you have given to our team over the years, and for the inspiration and guidance that you have given most recently to our current initiative. Welcome, it’s awesome having you back on the podcast.
Jennifer Jones 04:36
Thank you so much, Luke. It's always good to be here. It's always good to be in your space as well. Thank you for inviting me back to the podcast.
Luke Waldo 04:45
Of course, great to see you. And we're going to start with the big why question. So why is a primary prevention system needed today in the United States?
Jennifer Jones 04:57
So great question, Luke and I want to start our conversation today by providing a little bit of context for our listeners. And so some of this you certainly are very familiar with, and folks listening, maybe as well. But I think it's important in terms of providing the context to the why, to the why PCA America Prevent Child Abuse America created a theory of change for primary prevention in the United States.
So in 2022 over 3 million children were investigated for child abuse or neglect in this country, and of those children, over 550,000 were considered victims of child abuse and neglect, and 74% of those were for neglect. So we know that almost 40% of all children in this country are subjected to a child welfare investigation. For white kids, it's 28% and for black kids, it's significantly higher, at 53% so over half of black children in this country experience a child welfare investigation before they are 18.
Families lacking income and resources for basic needs are often referred to the child welfare system for neglect, and we know that this disproportionately impacts black and indigenous families. So all of this combined, right? We know that too many families are being subjected to harmful investigations. We know that too many families are being separated due to a range of things that could be addressed earlier, like poverty. There's great disproportionality, especially for black children and families, and overall, there is too little investment in prevention in this country.
And so we know that child welfare system reform work is happening right? It's happening all over the country. It remains critical to ensure better outcomes for families and young people who are already in the system and who are entering every day. But we also know that the broad set of factors that are impacting families again, many of which are tied to poverty, that they must be addressed sooner. So we also know that loving and secure relationships, feeling a sense of belonging, participating in community traditions. All of these positive childhood experiences are critical for long term health and well-being. And some of the research that I've done, and others continue to do, and I continue to do, that the more positive childhood experiences you have, the less likely you are to experience negative outcomes in adulthood, even despite having adverse childhood experiences or a high ACEs score.
So we don't only want to prevent the bad things from happening, we need to promote and grow the good things. So child abuse and neglect is solvable and preventable. If we support families before they are in crisis, we can prevent child abuse and neglect if we are willing to address the social determinants of health like poverty and systemic racism, however, historically in our country and in our prevention field, what we have consistently overlooked are these systemic issues that are inherent in people's lives, like I mentioned, poverty, racism, lack of affordable and safe housing.
So as a result, for decades, our interventions and policy responses have really been directed towards individual behaviors, and they don't address these systemic issues that we know are contributing to generations of trauma in this country. So it's essential, and it's imperative that if we're going to make any movement or move the needle on any of these outcomes, to change these cycles of intergenerational trauma that we not only have to address these individual traumas and adversities that people have experienced, but it is essential and critical that we're addressing the context in which people live and the systems that they interact with.
So all of all of these things we know, right? And this is why we believe at Prevent Child Abuse America, that now is the time for a bold and innovative approach to prevention in this country. This is why PCA America's theory of change for primary prevention in the US is so needed right now in our history. So our theory of change represents a new comprehensive approach to guide primary prevention practice, to guide the broader field and to change the way we function and support the well-being of children and families. This shift allows us to move again from this individual level interventions that help children and families, quote, beat the odds, right, to building an aligned and comprehensive primary prevention ecosystem in this country that can actually change the odds for current and future generations. We know that primary prevention is about creating the conditions for all children and families and communities to thrive. It's addressing the social determinants of health. We don't just want to prevent kids and families from coming to the attention of our nation's child welfare system. We want to reach them before they are in crisis, so they have what they need when they need it in the communities in which they live. We want to ensure that all children and families are living a purposeful and happy life with hope for the future. That is the heart and the foundation of our new theory of change. We believe that we need a drastically different approach to supporting families, ensuring what they have to what they need to be happy, healthy and economically secure. We must change how our society values and cares for all children and families. And in doing this, we will write the next chapter of primary prevention in this country.
Luke Waldo 11:26
Thank you, Jennifer, for providing a powerful foundation for why a primary prevention ecosystem is needed. There are too many families who are being reported to Child Protective Services, a deeply intrusive system that is not designed to prevent neglect or abuse, but rather to intervene once it's occurred. What so many families who are feeling overloaded by the weight of poverty or social isolation need is someone to lessen that load. So how might a primary prevention ecosystem do that? And what does Prevent Child Abuse America hope to change or accomplish with this theory of change?
Jennifer Jones 11:59
Yeah, I think that's a that's an excellent question, Luke. And I think that the PCA America theory of change aligns in many ways with your Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities, initiative. And so I'm going to share three in particular that are about sort of your broader intent around your initiative. And then certainly, as it relates to some of the critical pathways,
I think first and foremost, probably the most significant alignment is your call for building a community of support for overloaded families and addressing the systemic issues that impact their lives. I think you call them addressing the system failures, right? That is the core of our theory of change. It's the foundation of what we are attempting to do here. So getting at the root causes of child abuse and neglect and addressing issues of poverty must be the focus of our work in prevention, and your initiative calls that out quite clearly and right up front and as has identified as such, the critical pathways that that we need to to address those root causes.
I think secondly, you talk a lot about building a shared understanding of these root causes. So we agree with that, but we would take it one step further, and we believe we actually need to shift those mindsets, right? And so our typical prevention response in this country has been focused on the individual. I said that earlier, right? This idea that we provide parenting classes or we give folks access to substance use services and mental health services, all very important, but it won't address the systemic issues that we know have heavy influence and impact on people's lives every day, whether they realize it or not. So we need to change this narrative. We need to change the narrative from this idea that it's bad parents with issues to an understanding that parents are impacted by poverty. They're impacted by systemic racism, things often outside of their control, and so they need services and supports before there are in crisis, and we need to work to eliminate poverty in this country.
And third, several of your critical pathways which which you mentioned, are important aspects of our theory of change. So this idea of building a primary prevention ecosystem in this country is based on the premise that we all need to take on the collective responsibility of supporting and caring for our neighbors and families right the ecosystem is reliant on a diverse array of actors working in this collective and unified way to achieve our aspirational outcomes and our North Star. This includes individuals and organizations that, to date, have not seen themselves as contributors to the prevention of child abuse and neglect, but indeed, the work that they're doing actually is important to supporting families, and at the end of the day, does prevent child abuse and neglect. And additionally, this idea of shared language and goals is a leverage point in our ecosystem, and the research shows that if we have this idea of shared goals, along with the other leverage points, some of which I mentioned, that we can create equitable and positive childhoods for all children.
And then lastly, as you mentioned your emphasis on economic stability, we've identified financial stability and economic mobility as one of our aspirational outcomes, and as such, our strategies, which I shared, are working to move the needle on several measures and indicators related to economic mobility, including things like housing security and food security. So there are obvious, obviously, other ways that our work aligns and and I think there, over the years have have have been ways that our work continues to align, whether it's through Change in Mind, or whether it's through now the Prevent Child Abuse theory of change. These were just a few that I thought were important to highlight. I think our collective efforts will help to build this ecosystem that supports overloaded families and ultimately prevents child abuse and neglect.
Luke Waldo 16:34
Thank you, Jennifer, and as you, you you talk about our collective efforts, right and the and the opportunity to to build a more connected and more intentional primary prevention system. How might we, especially those listeners today who may be working in direct practice with families right, who may be connected to their communities in a way that they they feel, oftentimes frustrated right by these broader systemic challenges that they feel cannot be changed by one person or even one community. How might we, How might our listeners, implement this theory of change so that we can achieve, or we can reach the North Star that Prevent Child Abuse America has has set out where all children and families thrive?
Jennifer Jones 17:44
Yeah. So we we announced, as I mentioned earlier, the theory of change. At our sold out conference in Baltimore, there were over 1200 people there, and that was sort of the first launch of our theory of change. It created a lot of buzz and excitement, both at the conference and since then, and so there's great momentum around this work across the country, we're hearing things like for the first time, we have something to collectively embrace and rally around. But what I will say is that throughout our process, it became clear pretty early on that the value of this theory of change is not just for PCA America's own strategy efforts, but that it creates a primary prevention framework for the entire country.
So what we set about our adaptive strategy process to create our theory of change. Our intent initially was to create PCA America's strategy, right? Our theory of change. But what we realized is that this is a broad framework that everyone can collectively unify around. So we created this idea of a plug and play theory of change where anyone in our network or any organization across the country can insert their own strategies and their own values into the theory of change, and their efforts will align with our work. It will align with our work to build this comprehensive primary prevention ecosystem. It will help us achieve our shared outcomes collectively, for kids and families, and ultimately work towards our North Star, that all children and families are living a purposeful and happy life with hope for the future. We believe that this flexibility is crucial, right, a one size fits all approach to change isn't adequate to address the complexity that we know exists, right, the complex ecosystem conditions that exist in a variety of geographic locations across the country.
The plug and play nature of this theory of change not only helps to build ownership to create the change, but it actually allows us to unify and align diverse, a diverse array of actors and entities and efforts around this shared vision. And in fact, as you know, Children's Home Society of America has adopted our North Star, that all children and families are living a purposeful and happy life with hope for the future. As their North Star, that's the collective energy that we are aiming to achieve with the PCA America theory of change.
So anyone who is interested in our theory of change, they can download the entire document, certainly from our website, and learn more about why, the why, but also about the how. But we also have our plug and play template that folks can access there organizations can access folks in the community that want to lead this work in their geographic locations. And of course, we at PCA America would be more than happy to work with anyone who is interested in aligning, adapting or implementing any aspect of our theory of change.
Luke Waldo 21:06
Thank you, Jennifer, for your partnership, and above all else, your commitment to improving the lives of children and families and for sharing today this promising vision for a primary prevention system.
Jennifer Jones 21:18
Thank you so much, Luke, for having me today, and thank you again for your leadership and thought partnership as we really work to build this primary prevention ecosystem in our country. Your contributions and leadership to our work to the prevention field are invaluable. We are so grateful for Children's Wisconsin, for Prevent Child Abuse Wisconsin, you all are critical partners in ensuring the success of this theory of change, but in ultimately eliminating child abuse and neglect in this country, which I believe we can do. We are excited to work closely with you and our other state chapters and partners to make it happen. So thank you again for inviting me back. I look forward to to hearing the next season of the podcast.
Luke Waldo 22:10
Thanks so much, Jennifer, and have a wonderful rest of your day I hope that today’s episode and insights from Jennifer Jones have you thinking more about how we might build a primary prevention ecosystem, so that we may improve the conditions for overloaded families and prevent family separations for reasons of neglect. Before we go, as always I wanted to highlight three key takeaways to reflect on as we move into our next episodes.
Thank you for joining us for today’s episode. We hope that you will come back and listen next week as we continue to explore how we might change the conditions that overload families with stress, so that families can thrive and children grow up with positive childhood experiences.
If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share with friends, family and colleagues. Also, leave us a rating or comment so that we can see your reaction and reach more people.
To learn more about the experts that you heard today, visit the Show Notes, which is where you will also find links to sources or information that were mentioned in today’s episode.
Thank you again for joining us. See you next week.
This podcast would not have been possible without the support and talents of Carrie Wade, who is responsible for our technical production and original music composition. I can't express my gratitude enough to Carrie for all she has given to this project. I'm also grateful to my team at the Institute for Child and Family Well-being at Children’s Wisconsin, who drive the Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative and contributed to the ideas behind this podcast.
Finally, I would like to thank all of our speakers that you have heard today and throughout the podcast for their partnership, their willingness to share their stories and expertise with me and all of you, and their commitment to improving the lives of children and families. I'm Luke Waldo, your Host and Executive Editor. Thanks again for listening and see you next time.