In today’s bonus episode, we brought together some of our Overloaded: Understanding Neglect experts to thank them and celebrate our collective effort that led to this podcast series. But before we went out to celebrate, we sat down to discuss two topics that have become even more relevant, more top of mind for many of us. First, we explored the Legislation and Policy that have been passed, renewed or begun implementation this year. Then, we discussed the challenges and opportunities that we face with our Workforce within our child welfare and maltreatment prevention systems.
Today’s episode included the following speakers (in the order they appear):
00:15 - Bryan Samuels – Executive Director, Chapin Hall - Opening quote: “But I believe we have every reason to believe that we can grow a population and a workforce that can effectively meet the needs of families. But if we only stay in the deep end, I think we continue to struggle with a limited pool of front-line workers who are stretched to the max.”
Host: Luke Waldo
Experts:
00:40 – Luke Waldo – Introduction to bonus episode and first segment. The conversation begins in response to the following questions that I asked them to consider: How might the policies/legislation that have been passed recently impact overloaded families and neglect prevention? Where do you see the greatest opportunities through these policies to improve individual, family and community well-being that might reduce family separations for reasons of neglect?
3:56 – Jennifer Jones – Failures at the policy level, particularly concrete economic supports, are one reason why we haven’t seen reductions in child neglect. MIECHV, CAPTA, and the Child Tax Credit are two opportunities that help us address child neglect and promote race equity. Policy is important, but only if access is truly available to those that need it.
9:08 – Bryan Samuels – Policies and programs need “to see themselves less as a safety net that’s trying to catch people, and more like a springboard that’s trying to support families moving towards improved well-being.” We need to invest in a system that supports families much earlier than child welfare, so that child welfare has a smaller footprint and is involved in fewer families’ lives. We can then reinvest those child welfare dollars in family and community well-being.
13:00 – Jennifer Jones – How might we pull together many of the existing government programs (see below) to create a more comprehensive child abuse prevention system?
14:01 – Tim Grove – Remembering Uvalde, Texas and how it led to policy overcoming politics. “Can our political system actually solve problems? Can our partisanship diminish? Can people on both sides of the aisle come together?”
“Can we go back and find whatever that was after Uvalde happened, the best maybe of who we are, can we find a little bit more of that?”
16:19 – Bryan Samuels – “There are always challenges to making good policy in the context of bad politics.” However, we have seen policy developed based on good science, with Family First Prevention Services Act as a recent example.
18:09 – Jennifer Jones – We have also seen evidence of bipartisanship as a response to good evidence with MIECHV. Individual and family testimony of the importance of home visiting in their lives to policymakers has proven to be effective as well.
19:11 – Tim Grove – Recent Wisconsin Youth Risk Behavior Survey report. Uvalde’s tragedy may have been the spark to get meaningful legislation passed. 30% of kids report a pervasive sense of hopelessness, which, if ignored, could have staggering implications for our future.
20:56 – Jennifer Jones - Only 5% of the $30+ billion spent on child welfare goes to prevention. Advocate for additional funding for prevention in addition to funding for families that are struggling now. This will lead to a cost savings in our child welfare, healthcare, corrections, etc.
22:50 – Tim Grove – We are asking the same people who work with our most vulnerable kids to do more work. How do we address our limited capacity and our overloaded workforce?
24:27 – Jennifer Jones – Child welfare system needs to become a child maltreatment prevention system according to the defund, abolish child welfare movements. Jennifer believes that a prevention system should run alongside a child protection system, so that child welfare staff doesn’t have to wear three or four hats.
26:22 - Luke Waldo – Review of previous segment and introduction of upcoming segment. The workforce conversation begins in response to the following question that I asked them to consider: As we have experienced significant changes in our workforce over the past few years due to the Great Resignation, impacts of minimum wage increases, emphasis on Lived Experience; and approaches to our workforce practices and culture such as Trauma-Informed Care, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, etc., what challenges and opportunities do you see for the future of our workforce in Child Maltreatment Prevention/Child Welfare Systems?
28:41 – Bryan Samuels – Runaway and homeless youth space. Around 4 million youth experience homelessness/housing instability each year. 50% experienced homelessness for the first time when surveyed, which means prevention and intervention both need funding and support.
Child welfare shouldn’t be working directly with TANF, however, TANF should see itself as reducing the likelihood of its participants entering the child welfare system. When something bad happens in child welfare, we don’t hire more people, we ask them to do more.
Growing evidence that paraprofessionals can effectively deliver evidence-based interventions when trained well. This could be a solution as we go further upstream, so that we can get these evidence-based services scaled and into more communities. It would also reduce the stress and demands on front-line workers.
35:15 – Jennifer Jones - Prevention system needs to create access for families no matter where those families reside.
36:23 – Tim Grove – Can we add this funding for prevention, or will we be expected to reduce the current child welfare intervention funding if we request more prevention funding?
37:06 – Bryan Samuels – When running the Illinois child welfare system, they were able to reinvest cost savings when they reduced the number of children in the system back into more preventive services. Family First Prevention Services Act went to the Congressional Budget Office to see how the money would be spent and how much savings over time it would create.
40:30 – Jennifer Jones - We need the political will to make the investment upfront, so that over the years we can see the savings on the deep-end systems side. We can then consider pulling money back from the deep end systems when we see that there is less need for them.
41:10 – Gabe McGaughey - A lot of our prevention services aren’t funded by federal or state dollars, but rather by local philanthropists, organizations like United Way. So how might we support local municipalities to invest more in prevention and evaluate effectively how they might improve well-being outcomes and save money for their communities?
42:17 – Luke Waldo – Introduction of workforce question.
42:38 – Tim Grove - Secondary trauma moving to Moral injury. How does this impact who you want to be as a professional and who you can be as a professional? The past few years have impacted our ability/capacity to be our best self.
44:36 – Bryan Samuels - Increasing discussion of safety culture and moral injury within child welfare. Organizations need to be more committed to supervision, understanding what work demands and what we can realistically put on our staff. Think about how safety culture works in healthcare and air travel. We shouldn’t ask our pilots to work more than they can do so safely. The same should go for our child welfare staff. We should also be mindful of how long a person should be working in the same position.
49:16 – Jennifer Jones – We need to provide financial support for our workforce to be able to address their own financial challenges. How might we make our services more adaptable like virtual Home Visiting to encourage work-life balance? Invest in diversity in our workforce. Eliminate barriers that make it difficult to hire individuals with lived experience. “We have to change the face of our workforce to look more like the people and communities that are part of those systems.”
51:55 - Tim Grove – Dr. Vikram Patel’s “task shifting”. What if there was a way to distill, translate what professionals know, and support and train the local community members and leaders so that they can deliver it to their community? Task-shifters in trauma-informed care and clinical work is a real possibility, which could lead to greater trust within communities.
54:43 - Luke Waldo – Closing and Gratitude.
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