In today’s episode, our last in this series, we will be looking back at our previous seven episodes in an effort to elevate our key lessons learned to present a blueprint towards our ultimate goal of supporting overloaded families and reducing family separations for reasons of neglect. We will be looking at them through the lens of the systems change drivers that we have explored over the past many episodes, by looking at the impact of mental models – our beliefs and biases that influence our behavior – and the relationships and power dynamics that connect or divide us in our communities and systems, and how they influence the important policies, practices and allocation of funding and resources that support our systems change strategies and efforts.
Today’s episode included the following speakers (in the order they appear):
Opening quote: Bregetta Wilson – Lived Experience Coordination, Wisconsin’s Department for Children and Families
Host: Luke Waldo
Experts:
00:00 – Bregetta Wilson – “I kind of joke a little bit. Some of my colleagues and I, we say, “We’ve got to burn it down and start all over.” And in reality, that would make a lot of sense, but it’s very unrealistic. So how can we do what we can from where we’re sitting? And how can we make some remodeling happen, so to speak, within our system?”
00:28 - Luke Waldo – Introduction to final episode and first segment. Whether you are a child welfare director or case manager, a teacher or neighbor, I hope that you are able to find an idea from advocating for and implementing impactful, proven policies and practices to shifting how we think about and treat our communities and families that have been crushed by the heavy hand of systemic oppression and generational trauma and poverty.
4:13 – Bryan Samuels – “If I’m sitting in a child welfare director’s seat, I would” review the neglect definition and how we operationalize it to ensure that we have the best possible definition and our practice is reflective of that definition.
6:04 – Bregetta Wilson – Lived Experience Partners have helped define safety language in our child welfare system through shared decision-making.
6:45 - Luke Waldo – We can take some initial steps to reduce family separations for reasons of neglect by reviewing our state and organizational policies and how they define neglect. We can then share power by refining those policies with Lived Experience partners. Additionally, we can review data to determine if our practices truly align with our neglect definition and policies.
7:54 – Bryan Samuels - Review the data to determine if we are, in fact, separating families based on the definition of neglect, and if we could be serving families in different ways and systems.
9:20 - Jennifer Jones – If we are to tackle systemic inequities and improve health outcomes, then we have to reduce adversity and exposure to trauma.
10:38 – Bregetta Wilson - If we are to meaningfully remedy the historical injustices in our communities, we must value the voice of Lived Experience partners and put them in positions of power that can create systems change. “…and on the back end, we’re getting the outcomes because we know that this is what families said that they need and want.”
13:00 - Luke Waldo – We must use data to inform how we are in fact separating families and who we are disproportionately affecting. From there, how might we change policies such as our mandated reporting standards? How might we educate and train system actors like mandated reporters to confront the mental models and biases that lead to disproportionate numbers of Black, Hispanic and Native American families being investigated and separated by our child welfare system? We should elevate the voice and power of those with Lived Experience to begin tackling systemic oppression and leveling the playing field.
14:45 - Dr. Kristi Slack - We need to address mental models so that we see overloaded families as not always having control over their situations. The pandemic and recession built some empathy in our society as many people suddenly experienced hardship.
16:04 – Dr. Kristi Slack – Means-tested programs like food stamps (SNAP) and the Child Tax Credit are all policies that can serve as maltreatment prevention tools along with the coordination of other systems such as child care centers and schools to support families before they enter the system. We have to be careful to not create more surveillance.
17:53 - Tim Grove – Marshall Plan to improve human capital. Relational connection is our superpower. How do we get people more safe and connected? If we increase everyone’s social connections by 20%, we create the potential for bringing our best selves to solve these complex problems.
21:20 - Luke Waldo – When we invest in concrete economic supports such as a universal basic income or SNAP, we not only reduce the likelihood of neglect for many children, but we also reduce the costs to society of child welfare, healthcare, and criminal justice, just to name a few. How might we confront mindsets that blame poverty entirely on individuals, and reflect on the reality that systems often contribute to entering and remaining in poverty? How might we build more collective empathy that leads to these policy changes that might ensure that safe, affordable housing, healthy food, and childcare is accessible to all?
At a practice level, we should explore programs like the Early Intervention Services that divert families that are experiencing poverty from child welfare to anti-poverty and housing programs.
We need to invest in communities and programs that enhance overloaded families’ social capital.
22:50 - Julie Woodbury – We need to be more proactive, be prepared to meet families’ needs when they first present them. We need to be more trauma-informed, so that we can model healthy boundaries.
23:22 – Ashlee Jackson - Address mistrust by sharing that overloaded families aren’t alone, that you’ve worked with families that experience the same underlying challenges. Support and encourage them, sharing that you believe that they can get through it.
24:02 – Bregetta Wilson – Put families first when developing and implementing our policies, practices and resources.
24:21 – Ashlee Jackson – Advocating for an expanded definition of family so that children can be placed with relatives while their parents work on what they need to do.
24:52 - Bregetta Wilson - Kinship care and kinship navigators put an emphasis on placing kids with their family members. Use data to inform changes. Lived Experience is not new to DCF as it has influenced a lot of decisions over the years like mandated foster parent training and ensuring that youth aging out of foster care have health insurance.
26:35 - Luke Waldo - We do best by families when we let them lead. We have promising and effective programs like Family Finding and Kinship Navigators that seek to keep children with their families, traditions and cultures.
27:30 - Dr. Kristi Slack – We don’t have a prevention system. In fact, identifying prevention services in communities is very complex as there is no single repository. Additionally, many prevention services don’t necessarily prevent maltreatment, so we should begin looking more carefully at what does, especially economic support programs. More specifically, prevention programs should understand the impacts of economic stress on parenting, and importance of economic mobility in their practices.
30:01 - Bregetta Wilson - Build Lived Experience partners’ capacity to advance our efforts to address bias.
31:32 - Dr. Kristi Slack - Listen to families and what they need. A study that they conducted asked workers and families “what do families need?”, and the two groups had different answers. Workers cited parenting while families cited economic support. We need to know what families feel they need as they are the experts on their lives.
33:12 - Luke Waldo – We must do a better job of prioritizing families’ needs over our systems’ timelines and demands. We also need to evaluate the impacts and efficacy of many of our prevention programs, so that we might begin to centralize prevention programs that keep families safe and together into a more comprehensive prevention system.
34:07 - Bryan Samuels - Social innovation and Collective Impact frameworks can bring people together, especially those that have not been there historically, to provide structure to the relationships, networks and systems change work.
36:20 – Julie Woodbury - Describes Collective Impact, data walk, the problem their community faces, and the goals that they set.
38:06 - Bregetta Wilson - “Do what you can from the seat that you’re in.” As systems and organizations are implementing Lived Experience into their practice, it is important to define what the intent is so that there isn’t tokenism, but rather real application for systems change.
40:23 – Luke Waldo – Introducing next segment.
40:38 - Tim Grove – Study with ICFW Clinical Director Dimitri Topitzes explored effectiveness of trauma-informed care. Trauma-informed care can’t just be addressed through training, but rather through culture-shaping.
43:48 – Bregetta Wilson - We need to compensate our Lived Experience partners, and understand the emotional labor that they carry through their work.
44:17 - Dr. Kristi Slack - Evidence-based practice is talking to families about all their options, finding out what they need and where there’s alignment with what’s out there, and then sharing the evidence that supports those options, so that they can make an informed decision as to what they believe will work best for them. “I’m interested in what works for whom.”
46:23 - Bregetta Wilson - Parents Supporting Parents program. Pairing Lived Experience partners with parents that are currently involved in the system, so that they have an advocate that truly understands their experience.
47:00 - Julie Woodbury - Bring everyone together from government to business to Lived Experience partners to social services, and then get community to work together differently through Collective Impact. Once we get the community used to working together, we can normalize this collaboration.
48:31 - Luke Waldo – Whether through Collective Impact, Social Innovation or another framework, systems and community collaboration must become normalized if we are to prevent family separations for reasons of neglect. Through Lived Experience or Peer Support programs, we share power with those most impacted by our systems, and empower leadership and ownership opportunities that can lead to meaningful systems change. Practice models like Community Response models help deflect families from the child welfare system to supportive services such as Family Resource Centers that may lead to social capital that we know is so critical in preventing future neglect.
49:34 – Jennifer Jones - “Prevention happens in partnership.” A public health approach to prevention is essential as it requires all of us.
50:20 - Tim Grove - How do we bring together people from and within communities that don’t always talk to one another to work towards collective solutions? There is a deep resolve to solve these complex problems.
52:50 - Luke Waldo – To prevent neglect we will need to take a structural approach that requires that we partner across systems that include our child welfare, anti-poverty, and housing systems to name a few, and across our communities that include organizations and individuals that haven’t worked together or even necessarily agreed with one another on many things previously.
54:03 - Dr. Kristi Slack – Provides a number of directions that we can go to improve our child maltreatment prevention approaches – policies, public campaigns, and addressing mental models. “There’s a fine line between parental neglect of a child and societal neglect of families.”
56:28 - Bryan Samuels - Child welfare starts on a new big idea or strategy until another one comes along, and then they abandon the previous strategy. This is an exciting, dynamic time for child welfare with more great ideas than we’ve had in a long time, so it’s important that we choose the right strategies and see them through.
59:02 – Luke Waldo – Closing. How might we take these great ideas and translate them into impactful, sustainable solutions for overloaded families?
1:03:03 – Luke Waldo – Gratitude and Goodbye
Join the conversation and connect with us!
Bregetta Wilson 00:00
I kind of joke a little bit, some of my colleagues and I always say, we just got to burn it down and start all over. And in reality that that would make a lot of sense, but it's very unrealistic. So how can we do what we can from where we're sitting? And how can we, you know, make some remodeling happen, so to speak within our system?
Luke Waldo 00:28
Welcome to Overloaded: Understanding Neglect, where we explore the complexity of child neglect, its root causes and challenges that families experienced that overload them with stress, and the opportunities that we have to improve our communities, organizations and systems that build strong families and thriving children.
Luke Waldo 00:53
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.
Over the past seven weeks, we aspired to build a shared understanding of the definitions and underlying root causes of neglect, how families become overloaded by the stress that piles up from those root causes, how our systems have failed to meet the needs of overloaded families, and how systems change informed by evidence, the voice of our communities and prevention strategies could lead to our goal of reducing family separations for reasons of neglect. The challenges and strengths of overloaded families neglect, and the many systems organizations and communities that may help or hold them back are complex, unique by nature. So we recognize that we have likely only scratched the surface of what overloaded families experience and how we might make a better world for them in which they can thrive. I hope, however, that you have found moments of reflection and inspiration from the experiences and ideas of our diverse experts, who represent some of the brightest and most compassionate people I know in our research and policy, direct practice and lived experience fields.
In today's episode, our last in this series, we will be looking back at our previous seven episodes in an effort to elevate our key lessons learned to present a blueprint towards our ultimate goal of supporting overloaded families, and reducing family separations for reasons of neglect. We will be looking at them through the lens of the system's change drivers that we have explored over the past many episodes by looking at the impact of mental models, the beliefs and biases that influence our behavior, and the relationships and power dynamics that connect or divide us in our communities and systems, and how they influence the important policies, practices and allocation of funding and resources that support our systems change strategies and efforts. As you are listening today, I'd ask that you identify at least one strategy, one idea that you believe you can take on and carry out so that it might reduce the weight and burden that overloaded families are currently carrying. Whether you are a child welfare director, case manager, a teacher or neighbor, I hope that you are able to find an idea from advocating for and implementing impactful, proven policies and practices to shifting how we think about and treat our communities and families that have been crushed by the heavy hand of systemic oppression and generational trauma and poverty.
In this first segment, you will hear from Bryan Samuels, Executive Director of Chapin Hall and former commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families in the Obama administration, and Bregetta Wilson, Lived Experience Coordinator at Wisconsin's Department for Children and Families, as they discuss opportunities to address the challenges that we explored in our first episode, namely the complexity of our neglect definitions, and how we operationalize them in our child welfare system. Bryan presents recommendations for child welfare leaders, while Bregetta presents accomplishments made by Lived Experience Partners through shared decision making with those leaders. As always, please share your feedback with us in the ratings and comments section wherever you listen to this podcast. Now, on to the episode.
Bryan Samuels 04:14
If I'm sitting in some Child Welfare Director's seat someplace in the country, and I'm looking at some stuff that I can do immediately, the first thing that I do is I look at the definition of neglect in my state and for my agency. Sometimes the child welfare agency itself has operationalized the definition of neglect through assessment tools that investigators use when they go out to investigate families, but they don't sit down and look at the actual definition of neglect that the state is using as the underlying basis for removing kids and families.
So the first thing I would do is pull out the policy manual, look for the definition of neglect to make sure that the things that are captured in there really do reflect the best policy available. There is a federal requirement that states define what abuse and neglect means in each state. It varies from state to state. But it is required that the state determine the definition of abuse and neglect, right. And so understanding that specific definition is critical. The second thing I would do is look at the extent to which my investigative tools consistently capture the definition, right, so that I'm not having one definition on paper, and then I've operationalized something that looks entirely different from that definition. So I'd want much greater continuity between the underlying authority that I have and the tools that I'm using to drive change.
Bregetta Wilson 06:04
While we don't have a lot of partners, we're definitely looking for more partners to be at the table. We're small but mighty, and they have been a part of some huge efforts. And their input has been embedded. And the the work that we're doing, like I mentioned, the safety language is essential, you know, and so that is going to then trickle down to our counties. And that has the touch of lived experience there. So it's our biggest investment is in our partners.
Luke Waldo 06:45
As you've just heard from Bryan and Bregetta, we can take some initial steps to reduce family separations for reasons of neglect by reviewing our state and organizational policies and how they define neglect. We can then share power by refining those policies with lived experience partners. Additionally, we can review data to determine if our practices truly align with our neglect definition and policies. That data may be able to tell us critical information such as how many families are being separated due to reasons of underlying poverty. In turn, we can then begin to better understand what other systems are failing that allows families to fall through the social safety net and into the child welfare system. And lastly, we can review data to determine if biases influence decision making in regards to family separation. This may create pathways to reducing disparities, which we will explore further in the next segment.
Now, we will hear from Bryan, Jennifer Jones, Chief Strategy Officer for Prevent Child Abuse America, and Bregetta as they explore the challenges from our second episode, Understanding Neglect: Trauma and Systemic Oppression and provide some pathways to solutions.
Bryan Samuels 07:54
As it relates to the underlying determination that investigators make when they remove children from their families. Many times directors aren't actually looking at the data that is driving who's coming into care. So I'd want to make sure from a low hanging fruit perspective, that the families that are coming into care are in fact the families that need to come into care. And those are all things that are within the purview of a child welfare director. He or she does not need anybody's permission to make sure that the tools that I'm using to make these decisions are consistent with those that underlying definition of abuse and neglect.
And third, he or she doesn't need any additional authority to look at the data and make sure that the people coming into the system are the folks that need to come into the system based on the definitions of abuse and neglect. Those are all things that you could do fairly quickly, wouldn't take any new or additional resources. And will give you a really good understanding of how your system is functioning and how well the system is sorting out families that really need child welfare assistance versus those that could be better served through other systems.
Jennifer Jones 09:20
Public health is critical to all of our abilities to to be safe and well and we struggled, we all struggled, and in many different ways, communities of color have struggled even more so than white populations. And one of the things that I would say as well is that we know that ACEs impact communities of color at a much higher rate, at a much higher percentage. And we know that that causes issues of chronic disease and autoimmune disorders and health issues that made communities of color even more at risk for COVID.
The other thing I think, you know, that we learned is that if we're going to address issues of health inequities, we have to make sure we're addressing issues of diversity, we have to make sure we're preventing child abuse and neglect, because we saw how that played out. You're at a much higher risk for ACEs if you're a person of color, you're at a much higher risk then for chronic disease and autoimmune disorders, diabetes, and then you're at a much higher risk for dying of COVID. And so we have to be better about getting to the front of that story, and making sure that we are preventing it from happening in the first place.
Bregetta Wilson 10:39
It comes with a lot of leaning into the unknown. When you think about the broader system, like the historical challenges of, you know, we can talk about history for days, so we probably will be here, I mean, for a long time, it's important to recognize how that system, that historical structure that was set into place, so many years ago, to keep those who are impoverished or different, and oppressed, has still been fueled by certain positions that are in power. I think that if valuing the voice of lived experience, not as just having those with lived experience, you know, provide input on this program or take a look at this, what we create it is really about having those with lived experience, not just at the table, but within positions of power, that can create that change, and working with those that are in power, and those who are in certain seats, to be able to be influential, to build in a better system.
I kind of joke a little bit, some of my colleagues and I always say, we just got to burn it down and start all over. And in reality that that would make a lot of sense, but it's very unrealistic. So how can we do what we can from where we're sitting? And how can we, you know, make some remodeling happen, so to speak within our system by making sure that the lived experience voice is not just for show or not just because it sounds good, but it's intentional, and that is applied, and that we are all doing, who are elevating the voice of lived experience our part into ensuring that within our positions and our power that we are making sure that families and those were lived experience, and their input is being applied? And not just applied, but on the, on the back end, we're getting the outcomes because we know that this is what family said that they need and want.
Luke Waldo 13:01
While episode two and the idea of healing generational trauma and historical systemic oppression may seem overwhelming, I hope that you heard some concrete examples of strategies that can do just that. First, as Bryan shared, we must use data to inform how we are in fact separating families and who we are disproportionately affecting. From there, how might we change policies such as our mandated reporting standards, so that reporters are empowered to support overloaded families and for example, report to child protection systems only as a last resort, when all supports and solutions have been exhausted? How might we educate and train system actors like mandated reporters to confront the mental models and biases that lead to disproportionate numbers of Black, Hispanic and Native American families being investigated and separated by our child welfare system? And finally, as Bregetta shared, we should elevate the voice and power of those with lived experience to begin tackling systemic oppression and leveling the playing field. If we do this authentically, as Bregetta said, we're getting the outcomes because we know that this is what family said that they need and want.
In this next segment, Dr. Kristi Slack of the University of Wisconsin School of Social Work and Institute for Research on Poverty, and Tim Grove, Senior Consultant at WellPoint Care Network will provide pathways towards solutions for the complex questions that were discussed in our third episode, Understanding Neglect: Poverty. Dr. Slack shares the importance of confronting our individual and societal mental models towards families that are overloaded by economic stress before providing concrete policy and practice recommendations. Tim follows by revisiting the impact of human and social capital, and how it can serve as a superpower not only in economic mobility, but also in solving our most complex problems.
Dr. Kristi Slack 14:46
I think much more attention to resilience and protective factors and strengths, in the research and in policy frameworks, and you know, prevention program frameworks, much more attention to the structural, the root causes of maltreatment and neglect in particular, although still an uphill battle with that, there's definitely more attention to it, you know, and I think to in terms of being able to sort of change public discourse and how much control parents have over the situations they are in is, perhaps something we were better able to do during a global pandemic, when a lot more people are experiencing hardship. You know, and the same thing during the recession in the mid 2000s, when there's sort of greater understanding that economic hardship can happen to anyone that you've not, aren't necessarily at fault for, it breeds empathy, you know, and understanding from the public from society at large. So maybe that's one silver lining that could come out of the pandemic is that there's there's a greater understanding of the hardships that many families face, and that we, as a society have some responsibility to help solve them.
I mean, a lot of what I've looked at, and what I'm, and the research that I'm aware of, is more than a means tested programs, you know, whether it's TANF, whether it's WIC, whether it's SNAP, whether it's SNAP is Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, what used to be called food stamps, and WIC is the Women, Infants and Children's, I think, Nutritional Assistance Program and the Earned Income Tax Credit. And the recent Child Tax Credits that were authorized at the federal level. While we haven't seen sort of outcomes from that, that was a huge natural experiment in the US is to suddenly provide lots of families with this additional economic assistance. So I've looked primarily at those economic assistance programs.
But there are folks that have, you know, looked at early childhood programs as part of that safety net and in a potential policy tool for reducing child maltreatment, where you can look to other systems that aren't sort of these higher risk systems, you can look to education systems, you know, you can look to healthcare systems, you know, what roles can they play in identifying families that need additional support? And how do we help coordinate some of that service delivery, with the caveat that you don't want to set up this extensive over-surveillance system of families, for the purpose of rooting out, you know, families that may need to have deeper and system involvement? You know, we want families who need the help from child welfare systems to be noticed and reported, but it also has to be a fair system. And we know there's lots of disproportionality and who gets noticed and labeled as in reported for child maltreatment.
Tim Grove 17:54
I think in some ways, we're trained maybe with a bit of a Western bias, to again, assess, diagnose, and then look for an intervention. I start to think about what would a Marshall Plan look like in the US to address human capital writ large? And I come back to Dr. Perry's teachings quite a bit. So he's got this beautiful concept called state dependent functioning. But at its core, it's this general idea that when we are safe, when we are relationally, connected, we bring our full human potential to whatever interaction, right. Dr. Perry recently has called relational connection the superpower of our species for you action hero folks who like that kind of reframe, right?
So I start to think, and there are groups nationally that are doing this, how do we just get people more safe and connected? What does that look like? And you can't talk about people feeling safe and connected without talking about these conversations. We've brought up the historical intergenerational trauma, structural process, et cetera, et cetera, right. So, but I do think whether it's Fennimore, Wisconsin or Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to give a Western reference, the collective advantages to everybody's human capital improving 20% would be transformative, and we know that playbook relatively well. If I can paraphrase Joy DeGruy, you've got to stop the oppression, you've got to stop it at the individual and structural and systemic level. And then you've also got to help people individually sort of find a pathway to healing.
But I think sort of even for those who don't have histories of trauma who have survived the past couple of years, we know some good strategies to sort of just broadly improve human capital. And I have to believe when we are at our collective bests, we can solve all these problems. There are real problems. The world is burning. I mean, I'm not a climate expert, but I mean, I know most of us here that and sort of the dissonance involved makes us turn away and say, I can't deal with that. Now. That's a real problem we've got to solve. Structural process, whether it's racist process, other sort of isms are real problems we've got to solve. Our political system needs quite a bit of attention to. A real problem we've got to solve. The underlying process for me is let's bring in the best form of ourselves to that problem solving process, and see what happens.
Luke Waldo 21:20
When it comes to neglect prevention, as Dr. Slack said in the segment, and Jennifer Jones said in the previous episode, we know what works. When we invest in concrete economic supports, such as a universal basic income or SNAP, we not only reduce the likelihood of neglect for many children, but we also reduce the cost to society of child welfare, health care and criminal justice, just to name a few. The greatest challenge to the supports is not our ability to pay for it, but rather the mental models that many hold as Dr. Slack shared. So how might we learn from the pandemic and recession so that we confront mindsets that blame poverty entirely on individuals, and reflect on the reality that systems often contribute to entering and remaining in poverty? How might we build more collective empathy that leads to these policy changes that might ensure that safe, affordable housing, healthy food and childcare is accessible to all? At a practice level, we should explore programs like the Early Intervention Services that divert families that are experiencing poverty from child welfare, to anti-poverty and housing programs. And as Tim shared, we need to invest in communities and programs that enhance overloaded families' social capital.
In this next segment, Dr. Julie Woodbury, Family Preservation and Support Manager at Children's Wisconsin in our Black River Falls region, Ashlee Jackson, Family Support Specialist II at Children's Wisconsin in our Milwaukee region, and Bregetta discuss strategies that leverage the strengths of the families that we serve, to tackle the challenges that were previously discussed in our fourth episode, Overloaded Families.
Dr. Julie Woodbury 22:50
We need to be ready when they are, when they ask for help, we need to be available to go and help. The system itself is reactive. We need to be proactive and be there earlier in the timeline, trauma informed, building the relationships, you know, modeling the healthy boundaries and supportive networks, helping empower the family for their own family well being. That's what works.
Ashlee Jackson 23:22
It's prevention, that awareness. But I would even include it, now, I think you said in the beginning, we talked about boundaries. Like I'm very open. I think that if families know that all families go through these things at some point in time, or have someone that's, you know, experienced this, or you know, those kinds of things, and we can share that with them, they'll be more open to actually discuss the real issues and those underlying problems with us because they don't feel judged. They don't feel, you know, criticized by us. They know, you know, you've been there, kind of done that thing. And you're there to support them and get through it.
Bregetta Wilson 24:03
A part of DCF's strategic transformation is really looking at putting families first and really adapting the culture of what does it look like? How do we put this into action? How does our policies or programs or things that we can influence help us elevate putting families first?
Ashlee Jackson 24:21
Advocate for expanding our definition of family. You know, like I said, we can keep kiddos with those distant relatives and those kinds of things that's still family versus removing them and putting them in a foster parent or group home or you know, something like that, if we're aware of, you know, might not be blood, but it's still family. I think we need to expand that definition and provide our kiddos with safe place so they still can be while their parents are working on things with their family.
Bregetta Wilson 24:52
One example is kinship care, our kin navigator work, where we didn't really always emphasize the importance of placing children with family members. You know, you may be familiar with Family Finding, which was a program at, you know, at Children's that try to really put efforts into finding family members so that children can stay with their family members. Really not just saying putting families first, but putting strategies into place looking at our trainings that we currently have for the workforce, looking at our language that we're using, looking at diversity, equity and inclusion, and how that impedes on decision-making factors across the state and can data, you know, because data says a lot, it tells a story, and how can we use that data to make improvements and really call out certain aspects of the system that we know aren't working and do something about that?
And so, lived experience is not new to DCF, I always try to highlight that, especially in this role. You know, I was very fortunate to be a part of the very beginnings of lived experience in DCF in 2005, when they formed the Youth Advisory Council from engaging youth. And so when you think about some of the accomplishments those youth made around supporting policy around mandated foster parent training, or ensuring that youth aged out of foster care have health insurance. These are some of the same type of successes that we want to begin to elevate as we put families first.
Luke Waldo 26:35
Julie, Ashlee and Bregetta said it beautifully. But in summary, we do best by families when we let them lead. When we show compassion and listen to what families truly need, we build the foundations of a trusting relationship. From there, if we truly commit to the belief that a person or family is not defined by their biggest mistakes or darkest moments, we position ourselves to see the potential, the growth and the strengths of those that we serve. Additionally, as Ashlee and Bregetta shared, we have promising and effective programs like Family Finding and Kinship Navigators that seek to keep children with their families, traditions and cultures.
Next, you will hear from Dr. Slack and Bregetta as they share powerful examples of how we might better understand the challenges that overloaded families face if we just ask them. They discuss the opportunities that we have to incorporate lived experience more authentically into our programs and decision making as a pathway towards better understanding the problem.
Dr. Kristi Slack 27:27
We don't have a prevention system, right. And it reminds me of about 10 years ago, maybe even longer now. Then doctoral student Katie Maguire-Jack, who's now a associate professor at the University of Michigan and renowned expert in maltreatment prevention, but when she was in the our doctoral program, we tried to do kind of a catalog of all the child maltreatment prevention programs in the state of Wisconsin. And I cannot tell you how difficult that task, because there's no central repository, you know, where you go to, like, see where they all are. And so we tried following certain funding streams, we, we tried contacting, you know, the county human services agencies, family resource centers, home visiting networks, and it was this iterative process of trying to like figure out where they all were, and it took like a year and a half, right. And so that just is, is a testament to sort of how disconnected everything is when it comes to maltreatment prevention.
And the other problem we have, this is a little bit of a tangent, is that pretty much any child maltreatment prevention you can make up in your head is going to sound good, you know, where it's going to be something that you think will work. But the reality is, only a small percentage actually do work, you know, to prevent maltreatment. They may accomplish other things, families may like them, workers may like delivering them, but they don't all work. And so we don't invest as much energy in evaluating what works as we should in the prevention field. And, you know, as we do more of that, and hopefully we will continue to do more of that, it may become clear what sort of the best array of prevention services are to have available to families in every single community. But right now, I don't know that we can really answer that question. So you can start with some some easier things like ensuring that prevention programs understand the importance of economic stability and the impact of economic stress on families and parenting. And can they systematically sort of ask questions about that, you know, some needs assessment around that and help families link with programs that they may be eligible for, not just by giving them a number by but by also advocating on their behalf. That's one thing.
Bregetta Wilson 27:30
One of the things that people do well is follow trends, you know, we were good at that, we're good at following the trends, you know. And while lived experience definitely has been, so to speak the hot topic, not just in Wisconsin, but nationwide, I think that the consistency around it. And what other states are doing is really building the momentum up around, continuing on not just having lived experience partners at the table, but being instrumental in some of the decision making processes, the co-design and programming, creating a space where we can not just bring lived experience partners to the table, but build their capacity, so that they can also share their stories in a way that is meaningful, that also allows for others and different roles and positions to see that perspective and address some of their own bias. So one of the things that's really promising is us building up our lived experience framework, building up the capacity of the parent leaders that are currently at the table and continuing to bring them along with us, with this work and not not leave them behind, you know, to make sure that they are not just included, but they are also a part of changing the fabric of what child welfare looks like in Wisconsin.
Dr. Kristi Slack 31:33
I think one of the first things we need to do is just hear directly from families what they need, you know, and the reason this, you know, it sounds like Well, duh, of course, we should know this, right. But I recall when we were first starting to work on the community response model, and part of our sort of data evaluation for the implementation study was to have the child welfare agencies say what they thought the needs were for the families, they were referring to community response, right. And then we had the families tell the community response workers what they needed. And there's a mismatch, believe it or not, but also some overlap. So it wasn't entirely these disparate camps of needs, right. But certainly the families much more often reported needs around their economic situation. And the child welfare staff much more often cited needs around parenting. Now, the families themselves also often cited needs around parenting, you know, so this, it wasn't just an either or kind of thing. They weren't mutually exclusive. But I think we need to know what families think they need the help with, because they're the experts on their own situations, right. And we don't have a lot of those studies, you know, and I think so that's, I think a really obvious place to start is just finding out what those needs are instead of assuming what they are.
Luke Waldo 33:12
Simply put, to understand the problem, we should be asking those that are experiencing it firsthand. Whether it's through lived experience partners as Bregetta has shared, or through more targeted assessments of parents and families as Dr. Slack mentioned, we must do a better job of prioritizing family's needs over our systems' timelines and demands. We also need to evaluate the impacts and efficacy of many of our prevention programs, so that we might begin to centralize prevention programs that keep families safe and together into a more comprehensive prevention system.
In this next segment that explores strategies that may tackle the previous challenges from our sixth episode, Understanding the Drivers, you will hear from Bryan, Julie and Bregetta. They provide guidance around how we might implement collective impact, social innovation, and lived experience models into our practice to improve our connections within our communities, and share power and decision making with all stakeholders.
Bryan Samuels 34:07
There are a ton of collaborative frameworks that people have used across time to bring people together. And so we can put together a list of those kinds of collaborative frameworks. But again, it starts with a commitment to changing systems. It starts with investing time and understanding the problems that exist in the system. It starts with a commitment to bringing other folks to the table who wouldn't otherwise be there. And I don't think there's a magic formula here. I think you begin with a set of commitments, and then you try to hold yourself accountable for achieving those commitments. But I don't think there's a single structure there needs to be a structure because ultimately, you want that group to go from a process of getting to know one another and appreciating the leverage that each organization has into the solution, you want to start there, right? But you want to have enough structure that people know you show up on the same day of the month, that you show up at a specific time, that when you show up, certain things will already be done.
So you need this kind of backbone undergirding that exists to be successful. And that when you bring all of these people around the table, they have a common understanding. A lot of folks have used social innovation frameworks, or collective impact frameworks for setting the table. And so that's, that's another resource. There's a wide literature around these strategies. Social Innovation is a really important framework. Collective impact can give you a lot of detail about how to set the table for community and state collaboration. So I really encourage people to take a closer look at collective impact as an organizing framework. There's limited evidence that by itself, it achieves a ton of great outcomes, right. But it is a very useful framework for thinking about how to organize the process by which people begin to work together with community.
Dr. Julie Woodbury 36:18
There's a child care network already established in Jackson County working on the childcare problem. And because we're the only resource really in Jackson County, we were asked to help with that. And we were asked to do everything because we're the only resource. So we came in, and I was talking about starting collective impact around the problem. So the process is that you invite everybody you can possibly think of to the table, do a data walk, you get all the data you can collect around the issue in your area, you walk everybody through the data, and they write notes on what they think is surprising, or they actually interact with the data. So what was surprising, what is alarming? What what do you think we can improve? What do you think their thoughts on the data, then you take that and compile it and then come up with what needs to be solved for, in order to try to, you know, come up with a solution to the problem, then you figure out the strategy to solve the problem, break it into parts, and then build a collective around the solution.
So we got everybody we could possibly invite to the table, we did the data walk, some of the data was disturbing. I guess this is overdue, I would use, you know, the county lost $2.5 million in revenue two years ago alone, like when the pandemic hit for lack of workers with no childcare. So that's just one of the statistics. We have 250 childcare slots and need 1100. So I mean, there's some pretty big gap there. For the collective impact, we decided we were going to try to create 500 childcare seats in the next three years. That's the goal of the impact that collective impact right now. And so we are at the stage where we're building the collective around the six strategies.
Bregetta Wilson 38:06
We can always do better. One of the things I recently learned that I've adopted as part of my mantra, and a part of my, part of my mission statement is, is you know, do what you can from the seat that you're in. And sometimes we don't realize how much power we have in seats that we hold. So when you think about the lived experience voice, and how a lot of systems are trying to infuse lived experience voice into practice, it comes with understanding what the intentions are, and the power that comes with trying to infuse that voice to create change. Because one of the things that I've learned is, if lived experience advocates are not leading the things that are essential to change, then we're just falling victim to being a part of the same system. And so one of the things that I've realized in my time from the Youth Advisory Council in 2004 to being now in this role, we have evolved, because clearly my position is Lived Experience Coordinator. And yet, it takes looking back at what we've done with the input, how has that input already been applied to system change? What does that look like? How do we validate the input that we've created by showing the system, the program, the policy, the law that has influenced the input from those with lived experience.
Luke Waldo 40:23
Now, Tim, Bregetta, Dr. Slack and Julie provide some additional practices and policies such as trauma-informed care, evidence-based practice, and Parents Supporting Parents that you may find useful to your blueprint for change.
Tim Grove 40:36
I do want to reference the three year study we did when you start to measure empirically. Hey, is this stuff you all are talking about just kind of a pipe dream? Or can we actually do this? Can we actually make this happen? So people love a good choir. But if the choir is not singing the right song, or doesn't sort of have the influence on people you want it to have, it's not quite as effective, right? So what I want to just reference for folks is in that three year study for system players, in this case, child and family wellbeing staff at SaintA, at least back then it was SaintA, now WellPoint, the rates of permanency for folks who acted in a trauma-informed way were double, double. When our colleague, Dimitri Topitzes, at UWM, first shared that data, we thought it was a mistake. It can't be that good. The P-value for you data wonks out there was .0001. That's a remarkable discovery. Even though there are scores of limitations to that study, it was sort of at least an introductory way to start to ask, when system actors do this, what can we expect, right? So that's one thing to think about.
And I would just make a quick editorial note on that. Some systems believe that being trauma informed means training people. And that's it. And even if systems declare that they're aware that doing more is necessary, it's sometimes really hard for them to marshal the will, the motivation, the resources to push beyond that. I say that because for the comparison teams in that research study, the average hours of training for those staff was about 12 to 14, they were pretty well trained, and yet they were outperformed by their sort of other teammates, because there was an operational push to be trauma informed. So having said that, I think the other both/and side of this is we've got to engage with the public health people. We've got to engage the health people, we've got to engage community organizers, we've got to engage community institutions, even in rural farming communities, to start to think about, what can we do to create the conditions that make the outcomes we might want more plausible? How do we get people interacting with each other? How do we get them interacting with each other in spaces where it gets a little uncomfortable?
Bregetta Wilson 43:48
Compensation is definitely important. Parent leaders, parents need to be compensated to give their time. And you know, their emotional labor is very real to the work when engaged in lived experience partners. And so being aware of that is priceless. Because you know, you can't, you can't put a value on that, but compensating for time and commitment is important.
Dr. Kristi Slack 44:17
You know, the term evidence based practice, right? So that gets thrown a lot around a lot. Now, evidence based programs usually refers to a program that's been evaluated and has an evidence base behind it, right. Evidence Based Practice, as it's supposed to be applied is talking with families about what all the different options happen to be, you know, in their community or in an agency, finding out what they need, and where there's alignment around, what's out there in terms of services. And then if you know about the evidence behind any of these services, sharing that with the family so that they can make a decision for themselves. Like, I may not want this program that's been repeatedly shown to have a huge impact because there's other things about it that just don't work for my family. So I may want to choose this other program, that even though there's not as much of an evidence base, just the way it's delivered, or what it's focused on is makes more sense for us. That's evidence based practice, right? It's just having that conversation with families and being transparent about the options held, understanding what they need and want, and then finding, you know, the solution that makes sense for them as unique family.
And I get worried about, you know, initiatives like family, the Family First legislation that passed a couple years ago, where funds are going to be delivered only to certain programs that have an evidence base behind them, right. Or under the Obama administration, there was a moment in time where they were only going to find Home Visiting programs had an evidence base behind them. But then there was this backlash, and it changed to be, you know, Evidence Informed Home Visiting programs were also okay. I don't want to stifle innovation by just perpetuating funding only certain programs, you know, that may have already shown to work for some families. Because the real question to me isn't what works, it's what works for whom.
Bregetta Wilson 46:24
Really, you know, one of the things that Wisconsin is doing is very small scale, but we have the Parents Supporting Parents program. And that program is a nationwide program. There's a model based out of Iowa that Wisconsin is utilizing where a lived experience partner is partnered with a parent who was currently engaged in the child welfare system. And really talking with that partner, that parent being a supportive person, being an advocate, almost, you know, our parent leaders have mentioned, we need to advocate in the system with us.
Dr. Julie Woodbury 47:00
You know, we just send out invites to everybody and get everybody to the table. And then now we're now we're gonna build the workgroups around the six strategies. And that's everybody from elected officials all the way through the business community, childcare providers, school officials, people from the Ho Chunk nation, the government, legislature and our own government and legislature. And, you know, we have the Children's leadership in Black River Falls is involved. And then social services, everybody, everybody, we can get our move on that the idea is to get the community to work differently together, once we tackle this issue and work toward the goal of 500 increased seats over the next three years, we can then move that into Okay, so now we've you know, we're solving for this, can we work on say the drug issue? And, you know, how do we solve for the drug issue we just come up with as you know, we look at the data like where are we now with the drug issue? How do we solve for that, or whatever other, you know, the mental health issue or the housing issue or whatever other issue, it's, once you've changed the way you're doing the problem solving, and make progress, we can change the issue, but the community is already used to working together in a manner that is sustainable.
Luke Waldo 48:23
I hope that you discovered at least one practice model or framework in these past two segments that can help build trusting relationships and community around the complex challenges that you are working to solve. Whether through collective impact, social innovation, or another framework, systems and community collaboration must become normalized if we are to prevent family separations for reasons of neglect. Through lived experience or peer support programs, we share power with those most impacted by our systems, and empower leadership and ownership opportunities that can lead to meaningful systems change. Lastly, practice models like community response models help deflect families from the child welfare system to supportive services such as family resource centers, that may lead to social capital that we know is so critical in preventing future neglect.
In this last segment that provides key lessons learned from our previous episodes, we will hear from Jennifer and Tim as they discuss the importance of public health and community engagement in response to our seventh episode, Moving Upstream.
Jennifer Jones 49:34
A public health approach to prevention is absolutely critical, right? It's not just about us. It's not just about our one sector. It's not just about one discipline, prevention happens in partnership, and we all have a collective responsibility to ensure that all kids and families and communities are safe, are thriving, are well cared for. This idea of a public health approach, right? It's not just you, the prevention field is the anti poverty field. It's the early childhood field. It's the school system, that we all have this collective sense of responsibility to ensure that kids are safe. And I think we saw, I think that became really clear, this idea of public health is critical.
Tim Grove 50:19
When I talk to my friends and colleagues who are part of that culture and community, they often struggle with the conversations they hear that are occurring nationally and otherwise, right. And I just try to be patient with that and sort of stay in the room and keep saying, let's keep talking. Let me try to understand where you're coming from. Maybe I can inject a little bit where I'm coming from. But we've got to leverage our public health counterparts and others, again, to help us design ways that kind of encourage and motivate people to be in spaces and have those conversations.
And one quick note of encouragement. I was in Madison a couple of times, in the past few weeks doing some work with patient advocates, and a graduate class of public health students. And when I've got people who are 19, or 18 to 25, I tend to give a pretty consistent message. Part one of that message is acknowledging the world they have grown up in has been difficult, maybe punctuated by the past couple of years, and all those dynamics. But what I see in that group of people, I think, if we can sing the right tune from the choir, is a deeper resolve to solve the damn problem. And they already intuitively recognize that individual solutions alone won't get it done. They will many times outright reject that as being too simplified and not substantive enough. That is really encouraging. Given that at some point, they're going to be in charge anyway, right, I find quite a bit of encouragement, I think maybe our role can be sort of helping with the discussion of how to frame the problem solving process, give them some food for thought about what dynamics to sort of consider. And if there's a reason I get hopeful, that's one of the reasons.
Luke Waldo 52:50
Prevention happens in partnership. As we've heard throughout today's episode, and our series, to prevent neglect we will need to take a structural approach that requires that we partner across systems that include our child welfare, anti- poverty, and housing systems to name a few, and across our communities that include organizations and individuals that haven't worked together, or even necessarily agreed with one another on many things previously. It starts with a clear and aspirational goal that I believe we can all agree on, prevent neglect, so that we can keep families together. From there, we hope to bring more people and communities, more organizations and more policymakers together to work in partnership towards that goal. As Tim said, there is a deep resolve to solve these complex problems. I choose to believe him.
In our final segment, Dr. Slack, and Bryan will bring it all together by reminding us of the important systems drivers from policies to mental models. Bryan closes it out by expressing that this is an exciting, dynamic time for child welfare, with more great ideas than we've had in a long time. And therefore, it will be important that we choose the right strategies and see them through.
Dr. Kristi Slack 54:03
I think the first thing we need to do is just make more people aware of those really staggering statistics we talked about earlier. I already think there, once you learn that it's impossible, I think to ignore those facts. And I think it's going to require some political will on the part of our policymakers and politicians. And I think quite frankly, large scale, almost marketing campaigns. You know, and that's what you see a little bit with some of these larger frameworks that have become popular in recent recent years, like the CDC's Essential for Childhood, is there's money behind getting the word out about these frameworks and how they're, you know, they do offer a different frame in terms of who's responsible, you know, for helping families be stable and healthy and well. And they point to policies as well as systems and other structural factors as playing an important role. So you know, I, you see more and more of those which is, which is good. And I think the more we see of that, the more way of thinking will sort of permeate the prevention landscape for maltreatment, and hopefully the way society at large thinks about, you know, who's responsible.
So I usually save this for the very last thing I say, in a, in a conversation like this, one of my favorite quotes ever was by Teresa Rafael, the Executive Director of the National Alliance for Children's Trust and Prevention Funds. And what she said was, there's a fine line between parental neglect of children and societal neglect of families. Right? And that just resonates every time I say it, or repeat it, and you know, every time I hear it, it always makes so much sense to everybody in the room, you know, I'm not sure that it would have gotten the same reaction 20 years ago, I think there's more receptivity to it today. So that's, I think, a promising thing. So we'll see where the, what this next new era of prevention brings in terms of that way of thinking, I'm hopeful that it will continue to kind of permeate the way we think about prevention and the way we design prevention interventions. But we'll have to see.
Bryan Samuels 56:28
Unfortunately, child welfare has a good idea, and then they start chasing it, and they get halfway there. And then they feel like they're running out of steam. So then they pick up another idea, and they chase it halfway. And then they run out of steam. And so what you end up seeing is a child welfare system that has cobbled together half baked strategies for improving the lives of families, but never take it to fruition. And so I think this is a space where it would be easy for us to take all of these great ideas, and only get them halfway across the finish line. And then pivot to another interesting idea. And I think we really need to make a commitment to following through on a good idea if that good idea is related to working in the community.
And it's about dedicating resources, time and effort to moving the community. If the good idea is around community pathways and identifying prevention programs than it is focusing on the prevention literature, understanding the programs that are available in communities, understanding which of those services are likely to meet the diverse needs of families in the community. And then figuring out how to grow the availability and capacity in the community to deliver those services could be a critical contribution to success.
So I think we've got these great ideas at the table. I think we can't pursue all of them at the same time, being thoughtful and deliberate about who can do what, but taking a more collective approach to coming back and bringing that work back to the table, I think, is really, really critical. If we're going to take advantage of what I feel like is a very dynamic time in child welfare. There are probably more good ideas on the table today than have been on the table in child welfare for the last 10 years. So it's a really exciting time to be in child welfare. But I think it's going to take a really purposeful, deliberate process of taking these great ideas and translating them into strategies that are ultimately going to either improve the way the system functions, or it's going to be just one more half effort for which we don't invest enough resources or time into getting it right.
Luke Waldo 59:02
I'd like to close this series with the words that inspired this podcast and our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities Initiative. As we've heard throughout these episodes, words have tremendous power as they influence how we think about the world around us. So please pay close attention to what you hear and imagine as I share them.
Children thrive when they have regular interactions with responsive caring adults. Families experiencing significant stressors related to financial insecurity, housing instability, or the impact of systemic oppression and trauma can be overloaded with stress interrupting those interactions. Families that are experiencing this overload of stress are at greater risk for having neglect identified as a threat to their child's safety. If we ensure that communities are equipped to ease the burden on overloaded families, we make resilience a real possibility.
Neglect, as defined by the state of Wisconsin, is the failure refusal or inability on the part of a caregiver for reasons other than poverty, to provide necessary care, food, clothing, medical or dental care or shelter so as to seriously endanger the physical health of the child.
This last single sentence is at the heart of this podcast series as it represents the heartbreaking reality that too many overloaded families face. And yet, too many of us are unaware that neglect is the reason that seven out of every 10 children in our state are separated from their families by our child welfare system. As Dr. Slack emphasized in this previous segment, I hope that this podcast series has brought some light to what we have kept in the shadows for too long, that once we are aware of the troubling statistics that we've shared throughout this podcast, we become inspired to confront and change them. I hope that it also challenges us to consider the power of the very different words in the definition that I just shared, failure, refusal or inability, that determine how we think about overloaded families and neglect.
How might we see and support overloaded families, if we understand that they are temporarily unable to provide care for their child because of financial hardship, compared to the idea that they refuse to provide that care? These words matter. So do the troubling fact that too many families live in poverty and under the weight of generational trauma and systemic oppression.
As today has been an episode of many key takeaways, I will end with just one rather than my typical three, and it will come in the words that Dr. Slack quoted moments ago, "There's a fine line between parental neglect of children, and societal neglect of families." I hope that today's episode, as a combination of the lessons learned from the previous seven episodes, provided you with at least one idea as to how we might improve our systems through impactful policies, practices, and targeted resources, building trust and sharing power with our communities and families, and reflecting on and changing some of our mental models, those deeply held beliefs and biases that have led to systemic oppression.
So as Bryan asked in the final segment of this podcast series, I ask you, how might we take these great ideas and translate them into impactful sustainable solutions for overloaded families?
Thank you for joining us for this eighth and final episode. We appreciate you for taking this journey with us. If you have been inspired by this podcast series, or are already doing the critical work of supporting overloaded families to reduce neglect, and would like to become more involved in our initiative, please visit our website at uwm.edu/icfw, and sign up. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share with friends, family and colleagues. Also, if you rate us on whatever podcast platform you listen to us on, it makes it easier for others to find us. And 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.
Luke Waldo 1:03:03
Before I sign off, I'd like to one last time express my profound gratitude to all our speakers for sharing their stories and expertise with me and all of you. Their commitment to improving the lives of children, families and their communities is inspirational. And finally, this podcast would not have been possible without the support of Gabe McGaughey whose vision for this initiative gave roots to these conversations. And Carrie Wade, whose tireless attention to detail and creativity pulled these uniquely compelling conversations into a coherent narrative. I can't express my gratitude enough to you both. I'm Luke Waldo, your Host and Executive Editor. Thank you again for listening. I hope to see you again soon.