After finishing this second season in which we released two episodes for each of our four Critical Pathways – one with policy and research experts and one with lived experience and practice experts – we’ve decided to share a bonus episode that may serve as a bridge between this season and the future of our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative and this podcast series. If you remember back to our first episode of this season, my team at the Institute shared the vision of our Critical Pathways strategy. In Gabe McGaughey’s words, “There are several high quality initiatives focused on prevention policy, and we don't want to replicate or compete with any of those efforts, but rather connect and elevate them. And in doing so we hope we can accelerate the impact of a collective network.” As we enter further into the Critical Pathways, broaden our awareness and understanding of the impactful work and systems change efforts happening across our state, and deepen our relationships with those doing that work, we hope to elevate the practices, policies, relationships and mental model shifts that are strengthening families and reducing child welfare involvement in their lives. As I started this season talking with my Institute team at Children’s, I thought it would be fitting to finish this season in conversation with my Institute colleague at UW-Milwaukee, Josh Mersky, to further elevate one of those promising approaches. In our conversation, we discuss the research Josh has done with our partners from across the state on the impacts of Family Resource Centers and other universal programs that promote family protective factors and social connectedness. We also explore his journey studying resilience and protective factors and what he has learned about the impact of child neglect and, conversely, how social connectedness may reduce the risk of neglect or mitigate its effects. Dr. Josh Mersky is a founding director of the Institute for Child and Family Well-Being and a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Helen Bader School of Social Welfare. Josh’s research interests include child maltreatment and other adverse experiences that undermine health and well-being over the life course. He is dedicated to working with local and state partners to translate evidence into real-world solutions that improve outcomes for vulnerable children and families. Josh applies his expertise to the design, application, evaluation, and dissemination of effective practices, programs, and policies through Institute projects that include the Strong and Stable Families project that he will discuss today. I encourage you to check out our Institute for Child and Family Well-being website to learn more about those projects.
Host: Luke Waldo
Experts:
:00-:36 – Josh Mersky - If we only focus on poor families, we’re going to miss opportunities to prevent a lot of maltreatment cases. So I think the FRCs have a lot of prevention capacity because they reach a lot of people from all walks of life and because they offer an array of services that can be tailored to match the amount of support that each family needs.”
:37-4:15 – Luke Waldo – Opening and Welcome
4:16-4:18 – Josh Mersky – Hello
4:18-4:29 – Luke – Where did your journey studying resilience and family protective factors begin, and where has it led?
4:30-:10:47 Josh – In the early stages of his professional career before going back to school. Worked in human service capacities with youth who had adverse experiences. This experience led to relationships with children and families that he served and his colleagues. At UW-Madison, he worked on the Chicago Longitudinal Study that studied the Child-Parent Centers. He learned that these programs had a positive impact on short-term and long-term educational, social-emotional, and child maltreatment outcomes. Why? They invest in enriched supports for families like home economics for parents, community outreach. This is a two-generation approach in which they work with both parents and children. They found that parents were more involved in the child’s school and education, and there was less stress in the home. Over the last two decades, he has focused on the causes of child adversity and maltreatment and the programs that can support families and build resilience.
10:48-12:05 - Luke – What have you learned about the impact of child neglect and, conversely, how does social connectedness help to reduce the risk of neglect or mitigate its effects?
12:06-17:34 - Josh – We have known now for a long time that neglect can have adverse impacts on child development. There is good research that neglect can lead to later-life violence at similar rates as abuse. Neglect does not get the same attention as child abuse. Neglect is strongly correlated with poverty, which makes it difficult to separate the two. We need to design effective programs to address neglect as neglect is often neglected by policymakers and funders. Neglect is most likely to occur where there is an absence of strong social connectedness, therefore, investing in and strengthening social connectedness in the home, school, and community is an effective preventative approach to neglect.
17:35-17:51 – Luke - What does social connectedness look like and how does it impact the individual and family?
17:52-24:07 - Josh – Social connectedness as an ecology shows that our closest environments are the most important – family, friends, and peers. We can expand beyond those closest relationships – neighborhood, faith communities – to explain how we function. How our environments are structured has a significant impact on our well-being. Social determinants of health are influential. Promotive factors versus protective factors. For children who have experienced adversity, protective factors are particularly important. Story about his grandmother and their close relationship. A grandparent can be a buffer for children who have experienced homelessness, the loss of a parent, or neglect, which can promote resilience in that child.
24:08-26:14 - Luke - What do FRCs promote or strengthen that has or may have the greatest impact on reductions in child maltreatment and in keeping families together?
26:15-32:33 - Josh – Family Resource Centers have some common elements. They are universal, so all families can benefit from FRCs. FRCs are designed to be comprehensive, so they provide many different services like parenting groups, home visiting, or development assessments. FRCs operate at a community level where they engage and connect community members and resources. At the Parenting Place in LaCrosse, they host a Children’s Festival that brings out many people from the community. Why do FRCs reduce the risk of neglect? Progressive universalism or targeted universalism is when you balance equality of access with equity of resource distribution. The Prevention Paradox illustrates this idea that the majority of incidents of maltreatment occur in families of moderate risk, so we need to be cautious about solely focusing on those living in poverty or considered to be “at-risk”.
32:34-33:01 – Luke - What have you learned from your research on Family Resource Centers?
33:02-39:03 - Josh – The Strong and Stable Families project is funded by the CANPB and works with 18 FRCs across the state. The project gathers data from families that receive services from FRCs and families that do not. What have they learned? FRC participants are mostly above the poverty line, however, most are lower-SES. They tend to have more challenges than the general population. They are more likely to have employment, housing, and healthcare challenges. They also reported many positive Adult Experiences, which include protective factors such as social connectedness. They use the Protective Factors Survey to measure those protective factors. FRC participants have been shown to have similar levels of protective factors such as social connectedness, however, they appear to have less concrete supports such as stable income, housing, etc. compared to the general population.
39:04-39:32 - Luke - What have you seen as barriers to applying this evidence/research in systems? And how might we more effectively translate research and evidence into policies and practices?
39:33-43:37 - Josh – Inertia is a barrier as systems change moves slowly or the status quo reigns. Prevention is difficult to demonstrate the outcomes or ROI to policymakers compared to intervention. If we can show that FRCs serve as a hub that connects to other services and supports, we might see greater investment and buy-in. Hello, Baby is a universal program delivered to all families with a newborn.
43:38-44:08 - Luke – What makes you optimistic about the future of this work?
44:09-47:18 - Josh – There is growing recognition that child welfare systems were not designed to provide services to families, and therefore there is a need to invest more in prevention services to get further upstream. This has led to Family First Prevention Services Act, which has already begun investing more in mental health, home visiting, and prevention programs to families that may be at risk of child maltreatment. Family Resource Centers across the state are critical to their communities.
47:19-48:10 – Luke - Before we let you go, can you share a book or author that shaped or represents your thinking around your work?
48:11-49:59 - Josh – Promoting early literacy is so important as it improves attachment between children and their caregivers. Invest in your local libraries and early literacy programs.
50:00-50:24 - Luke – Dea Wright and the Office for Early Childhood Initiatives is going to be a big fan, Josh.
50:25-50:45 - Josh – Josh will be meeting with Dea to discuss some of their initiatives promoting reading to children in non-professional spaces such as barber shops.
50:46-51:19 – Luke - Thank you, Josh!
51:20-51:34 – Josh – Thank you, Luke!
51:35-56:00 - Luke – 3 Key Takeaways
56:01-57:05 – Luke – Closing Credits
Join the conversation and connect with us!
SPEAKERS
Luke Waldo, Josh Mersky
Josh Mersky 00:07
You know, if we only focus on poor families, we're going to miss opportunities to prevent a lot of maltreatment cases. And so I think the FRCS have a lot of prevention capacity, because they reach a lot of people from all walks of life. And because they offer an array of services that can be tailored to match the amount of support that each family needs.
Luke Waldo 00:42
Welcome to season 2 of Overloaded: Understanding Neglect, where we explore the Critical Pathways that lead to child and family well-being and reduce family separations for reasons of neglect.
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.
Luke Waldo 01:25
After finishing this second season in which we released two episodes for each of our four Critical Pathways – one with policy and research experts and one with lived experience and practice experts – we’ve decided to share a bonus episode that may serve as a bridge between this season and the future of our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative and this podcast series. If you remember back to our first episode of this season, my team at the Institute shared the vision of our Critical Pathways strategy. In Gabe McGaughey’s words, “There are several high quality initiatives focused on prevention policy, and we don't want to replicate or compete with any of those efforts, but rather connect and elevate them. And in doing so we hope we can accelerate the impact of a collective network.”
As we enter further into the Critical Pathways, broaden our awareness and understanding of the impactful work and systems change efforts happening across our state, and deepen our relationships with those doing that work, we hope to elevate the practices, policies, relationships and mental model shifts that are strengthening families and reducing child welfare involvement in their lives.
As I started this season talking with my Institute team at Children’s, I thought it would be fitting to finish this season in conversation with my Institute colleague at UW-Milwaukee, Josh Mersky, to further elevate one of those promising approaches. In our conversation, we discuss the research Josh has done with our partners from across the state on the impacts of Family Resource Centers and other universal programs that promote family protective factors and social connectedness. We also explore his journey studying resilience and protective factors and what he has learned about the impact of child neglect and, conversely, how social connectedness may reduce the risk of neglect or mitigate its effects.
Dr. Josh Mersky is a founding director of the Institute for Child and Family Well-Being and a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Helen Bader School of Social Welfare. Josh’s research interests include child maltreatment and other adverse experiences that undermine health and well-being over the life course. He is dedicated to working with local and state partners to translate evidence into real-world solutions that improve outcomes for vulnerable children and families.
Josh applies his expertise to the design, application, evaluation, and dissemination of effective practices, programs, and policies through Institute projects that include the Strong and Stable Families project that he will discuss today. I encourage you to check out our Institute for Child and Family Well-being website to learn more about those projects.
And now, on to the episode.
Hello, Josh. Thank you again for joining us for this conversation. I'd like to begin our conversation today by learning more about you and your journey in this space of studying resilience and family protective factors. So before we do that, welcome. Great to have you.
Josh Mersky 04:15
Thanks so much, Luke. It's great to be here.
Luke Waldo 04:18
So as I said, we'd like to start by really exploring your journey. So where did your journey to studying resilience and family Protective Factors begin? And where has it led?
Josh Mersky 04:30
Well, again, thanks for having me, Luke. And it's a great question. To start off on I'm going to acknowledge that you use the word journey. So that implies that it my answer, it doesn't have to be short, so so please cut me off if I if I go on too long, but I guess I'd like to go back if I could, to sort of early stages of my professional career. You know, before I went back to school and got my sort of advanced degrees in social work and social welfare, I worked for quite some time for about five years in a variety of different human service capacities direct line social work working with adjudicated youth in group homes working with severely abused and neglected children in residential care working as a mentor and in home counselor. And I guess one commonality across all of those experiences was that the degree to which I was or was not effective, hinged in large part on my ability to form relationships with people form relationships with the children I worked with formulations with their families form relationships with with other staff members. And, you know, I carried those experiences with me when I went to UW-Madison to start my, my doctoral program there, I was fortunate enough to work on a project called the Chicago Longitudinal Study, which has been led by Dr. Arthur Reynolds for well over two decades. And that project focuses on studying the impacts of the Chicago Child Parents Center program or CPC program. This is actually the second oldest early childhood education program in the country next to Headstart, who your listeners may be familiar with. These, these CPC centers are located in various low income communities in the Chicago area. And so they serve largely economically disadvantaged families. And what research has shown is that for children who attended these early childhood programs, when they were three, four or five years old, they had much better outcomes than similar children who did not attend these programs. They had better cognitive outcomes, as well as social and emotional outcomes. And then as the studies gone on, they've shown that this, this, these programs are associated with all kinds of really good long term outcomes, like reduced delinquency and crime, increased educational attainment and employment, better employment outcomes. And what's really interesting is that these early childhood education programs have also been shown to reduce child abuse and neglect. And so some of the research that I did on that project looked specifically at the impact of the CPC program on child maltreatment, and even more specifically, on child neglect. And so then the question I think, is naturally Well, well, why is it that, you know, a preschool program could could reduce child abuse and neglect? Well, what I wanted to highlight about these programs is that they're a little bit different than, say, conventional childcare or preschool programs. They specifically put a lot of investment in enriched services and supports for families. And so families were very much invested actually on site in the centers they actually had specific kinds of educational programs for parents or home economics, kinds of services for parents. They also had outreach services out into the community to really engage families. And so what these programs are, essentially is what's sometimes referred to as a two generation model or a two generation program. You're not just working with the child, you're working with the child and the child's caregivers at the same time. And so some of my research, tried to answer that why question, why did the CPC centers, why did they reduce child neglect? And what I found was, and this maybe isn't a surprise is that these programs, increased parent engagement in school involvement, parents developed stronger connections to school, and in turn, they invested more in their children's education over time. We also found spillover effects into the household, we found that parents who were involved in these programs had fewer stressors in the household, fewer financial stressors, less fun, family con conflict. And so all of those sorts of mechanisms help to explain why participation in these programs reduced child abuse and neglect. And so I spent much of my time at Madison studying that program. But I also developed sort of a body of research focusing specifically on child abuse and neglect, focusing on the consequences of abuse and neglect, but also the processes that lead to abuse and neglect and other related adverse childhood experiences or ACEs. And of course, I’m also very interested in factors that promote positive outcomes in the face of adversity, which is much of what we'll be focusing on today. So just to kind of sum up, much of my work over the last two decades has sort of progressed along these two intersecting paths. I'm interested in the causes and consequences of child maltreatment, and other potentially traumatic events and conditions. But I'm also really interested in studying programs and policies that have the potential to mitigate the effects of abuse and neglect, but also to prevent them from occurring in the in the first place. And so much of what I do with you, Luke, and at the Institute is focused on sort of more applied and translational research that aims to identify and disseminate real world solutions that promote resilience and wellbeing for children and families.
Luke Waldo 10:47
Thank you, Josh, I think you've set up the entirety of our conversation with that initial response, really starting, quite frankly, with your own experience, being as rich and as effective, as you mentioned, due to kind of the relationships, as you pointed out, right, the kind of the social connectedness, which is really the focus of this conversation today, or at least the context of this, this conversation today. And so I appreciate you, really setting us up for the rest of the conversation. So with that, I want to build off of those, those two or three kinds of lanes that you've talked about, which is really neglect, child abuse, and neglect, we're going to focus primarily today on neglect specifically. And conversely, kind of the, the mitigation, right, or the reduction of risk of that neglect, when investing in families’ protective factors, family social connectedness, and so on. And so what have you learned about the impact of child neglect? And conversely, how does social connectedness help to reduce the risk of neglect or mitigate its effects?
Josh Mersky 12:07
Really great questions, Luke. So starting with your first question about the impact of neglect, what I can say is when it comes to long term outcomes, we know from really good research that that neglect is exceedingly harmful, and it's every bit as harmful as other forms of abuse. It's associated with profound short and long term impacts on cognitive, social, emotional, and behavioral development. And we we've known this for a really long time. You can go back all the way if you want to, there are early research done by Harry Harlow at UW-Madison. In fact, he was a primatologist, and he did research on monkeys, they're on macaques. And what they what he showed is that if you deprived these monkeys of social connectedness, if you deprive them of affection and connection with their caregivers, then you could essentially ruin their lives. They, the monkeys became incredibly disturbed. And were unable to function like normal monkeys do. And this this, as awful as that experiment was it really shed light on what happens to humans, what happens to children, when you deprive them of social connectedness, when you deprive them, or withhold warmth, affection, love, this is every bit as harmful, if not more so as withholding basic material needs from a child. And, you know, I found this in my own research as well, you know, I mentioned that the Chicago Longitudinal Study, you know, I found that children who were neglected in our sample, were just as likely as children who were physically abused to later on commit acts of violence and adolescence or adulthood. You know, it used to be thought that, you know, that it was physical abuse that was really the driver of, of later, later life violence, there was a sort of cycle of violence hypothesis. And that's certainly, that's certainly true. But we've, you know, there's really good research to show that that neglect is just as much of a driver of later life aggression and violence as physical abuse. And what's an unfortunate irony, I think, Luke is that even though we know that neglect is pernicious and harmful, it receives far less attention from researchers from policymakers, as well as practitioners. It's what's been known for many decades as the neglect of neglect. And so I'm really glad that you're tackling this important issue. I also want to acknowledge, though that, you know, neglect is a more difficult social problem to address and study in some ways. And it's a very, very much debated topic. In a lot of ways, I know that you and some of your guests have talked before about certain debates within the child welfare field, we know that neglect is strongly correlated with poverty. And so it's very difficult, sometimes in real world practice, to differentiate poverty from neglect. There's also really good debates to be had about what the responsibility of the state is to intervene and how and when we should intervene. And I think, again, others on your podcast have spoken eloquently on these topics. And there's no question that we need to do better when it comes to designing systems that support families and that nurture children. At the same time, I can say with great confidence that child neglect is real, and that it's very, very harmful. Now to the second part of your question, you know, how does social connectedness address neglect? Well, I think my first response sort of speaks to that neglect is most likely to emerge in the absence of strong social connections, it's essentially a manifestation of a lack of healthy social connections in households, and communities where people are isolated, where they lack strong social bonds and rich social networks, you're more likely to see neglect. And so flipping that around, it stands to reason that the strategies that promote social connectedness are likely to be among our best bets for preventing neglect. And I can say from a research perspective, that researchers who study resilience have shown this to be true. So when we ask the question, what helps people to bounce back from significant adversity, what helps people to to overcome these kinds of circumstances, time and again, what's been shown is that relationships are a key protective factor for children and families having at least one constant supportive figure in in your life, ideally, a family member. But it can also be peers, teachers, and others, close figures, those kinds of close social connect connections are really among the best things that a person can have to overcome neglect, and demonstrate resilience.
Luke Waldo 17:34
So I'm going to ask you to build off of that you've in many ways started to answer this, this next question, but I'd like to give you an opportunity to expand on it. What does social connectedness look like? Right? How might we define it and illustrate it for our listeners? And how does it impact the individual and family?
Josh Mersky 17:52
Again, great question, Luke. So, you know, I hope this doesn't come off as too nerdy. But I do think it's helpful to think about social connectedness as sort of like an ecology, think about it in sort of an environmental way through an environmental lens. The most influential and important social connections to us are to be found in environments that are the closest to us, right. So our family, first and foremost, I think those are our most important social connections. But also, of course, our friends are really important social connections. And at certain points in the life course, like say, my son, who's a high schooler, his peers are super important social connections to him, and perhaps even more important to explain in how he how he's feeling on a day to day basis, right. But we can expand beyond those immediate micro systemic connections, if you will, and think of social connectedness outside of of our immediate close relationships, social connections within our neighborhood environments, social connections within our workplace environments, or in our churches and other places of worship. These social connections are also really, really important parts of our of our fabric, or social fabric and help to explain, you know, you know, how individuals in in in families function. And then more broadly, I guess, you can spend expand beyond that to think about broader social determinants in our environments, how our environments are structured, have significant effects on our health and well-being. And many people face challenges and hazards that they simply can't control things in their social environments, these so called social determinants that they don't have control over that, but that nevertheless have an impact on their daily lives. So things like living in areas where there's a lack of affordable quality housing, or living in unsafe and by moments where there are high rates of crime and drug use, where social connections have broken down. All of these types of forces also have a significant impact on our health and well-being. And it's really when you take all of these things together these nested systems, that you get a fuller picture of what social connectedness looks like. Now, if I may I just like to spend a little bit more time addressing the second part of your question, which is, you know, how does social connectedness impact us? There are lots of ways, of course, but again, I want to sort of go back to the theme of resilience. And we know from, from resilience theory, and 50 years of resilience research, sort of some of the common denominators for what promotes success and thriving in the face of adversity. One thing I guess, I want to distinguish, and I hope this, again, isn't too specific. But when we're talking about resilience, I think it's important to distinguish between things that are just good for everyone. And things that are good specifically for people who have experienced adversity for people who have experienced trauma, or in this case, child neglect. So in the resilience world, they like to distinguish between promotive factors and protective factors. Promotive factors, again, are those things that are just good for everyone, right, so things like parental monitoring, well, all kids benefit, if their parents know what they're up to, and if they if they if they supervise them, right, but some kinds of factors are good, or a little bit more special. And those are protective factors. These are things that have particular benefits that are particularly salient for children who are quote, unquote, at risk or who have experienced adversity. And these things may not even necessarily matter all that much for people who have not been exposed to risk. So let me give you an example. I think that's sometimes helpful to animate things for the audience. I like to use this example a lot of that the example of a grandparent. So I had a great relationship with with my grandma, when I when I was a kid, she my grandmom, took me to my first movie, she took me on my first airplane to Disney World, we had a wonderful relationship, I'm just so thankful that she was a part of a part of my life. And when she passed, I was of course, very, very sad about that. At the same time, I can't sit here today with you, Luke and say, definitively that had my grandma not been in my life that I wouldn't be with you today. And I hope that doesn't come off as harsh or uncaring. But the fact of the matter is, I had other resources, and supports both human and material in my life, that likely would have enabled me to reach roughly the same station in life and be with you today. But for some children who didn't have the same advantages that I had growing up, you know, that grandparent can be a lifeline, that grandparent for the child whose parents have died due to substance use, or HIV and AIDS, whose parents maybe ended up in the criminal legal system or what have you, and were absent from their lives and they ended up in the child welfare system, that grandparent can be, can be the difference between, you know, continuing on a trajectory of being involved in in an you know, in systems that they don't want to be involved in, like the criminal justice system. And being here with you today in the in the comfort of my, my home office talking with you on this podcast. So yeah, that's my example of the difference between a protective factor and a promotive factor.
Luke Waldo 24:08
I appreciate Josh, the, the explanation or the illustration of social connectedness, particularly in these really kind of organic or kind of natural relationships and environments that you've you've shared, right you've, you've just talked about your relationship with your with your grandmother, you talked about your, your teenage son's relationship with his peers, you you also talked about how all of us, in some form or another likely have a relationship with people in our neighborhood, people in our faith communities, in our workplaces, and so on. These are places that we are spending a lot of our time. And it makes sense, right? That that's where a lot of the social connectedness in our life occurs. However, as you've stated, in a couple of different ways, there are a lot of families in our country who have experienced high levels of adversity, who are also struggling with issues like poverty, or lack of access to basic resources like transportation, right, like, like a good paying job, like access to childcare, that make it harder and harder to engage with those, quote unquote, natural environments. Right. So I want to transition now into some of your more recent research that's been going on for a while now. So acknowledging that in these more intentional resources for families that might be experiencing what I just laid out, and that is this idea of family resource centers. So if you could take some time sharing certainly what you've learned over time, but what what do family resource centers promote or strengthen that has or may have the greatest impact on reductions in child maltreatment, and in keeping families together?
Josh Mersky 26:15
Right, so as you as you mentioned, Luke, I've been doing work more recently on family resource centers, and I've learned a ton over the last few years about them, I'll share what I've learned, but also acknowledged that there are others who have far more expertise in these centers, including the people that run these programs. But also, my partners of the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board, and I'm sure you've been speaking with them already about these centers. What I can share with you is, is first off that each FRC Family Resource Center is different by design. They provide, then they provide service and services and resources that match the needs of families in their community. So they're not a one's one size fits all type of model. That being said, they do have some common elements, one of which is the fact that they are designed to be universal programs. All families in a community are eligible to receive support from a family resource center. So they don't target only specific families, like families that are low income or, or quote unquote, at risk, all families can benefit from these resource centers. Secondly, Family Resource Centers are designed to be comprehensive in nature, meaning they don't just provide one or two types of services, they provide a wide array of services and supports. Some of these services are more intensive and long term. So these could be parent education and parenting groups or home visiting services. Some of the services they provide are briefer, or more light touch, things like screening in referring children for developmental delays, or meeting basic needs, like you know, they, some of them have diaper banks or food banks, or helping to link families to other local resources. So those are some common elements of these programs, many of them also, back to the sort of the theme of social connectedness. Many of them also operate not just at a sort of an individual family level, but also at sort of that broader community level. So many of them hold like wonderful community events where they engage, engage people and connect people out in the community. I'll highlight one example of that I had the great fortune of going up and paying a visit to The Parenting Place in La Crosse, Wisconsin. And they hold every year an annual children's festival that draws 1000s of people each year into their community. And it is just the most wonderful event you have just children and families everywhere, playing in the mud and eating together and making connections and it's just, it's just really a wonderful event. So all of these things together all these services and resources that I talked about, they all are designed to strengthen families, but again, they can all plausibly be linked to reducing the risk of child abuse and neglect in a community. But if I may expand on that, from sort of the specific to sort of the, the general or more philosophical, if you will, like trying to figure out what will Why do these programs work, why might they reduce abuse and neglect from sort of a bird's eye view from a prevention science perspective? You know, I think the FRCs are so promising again because they are universal programs. They support all families in a community and well everyone is welcomed. And in reality families with greater needs are more likely to seek support. And when they do seek support, they tend to receive more support. And this is what's sometimes referred to in the field as progressive universalism or targeted universalism. It's when you balance equality of access with equity of resource distribution. And so when it comes to prevention, I think this approach is really promising. Because the fact of the matter is abuse and neglect occurs across the socio economic spectrum. It's true abuse and neglect, tends to be more prevalent in low income households and communities. But in reality, there's actually more incidents of maltreatment among families that are above the poverty line, then below the poverty line. And that's simply because there's more non poor families than there are poor families in society. It's just a numbers game. And this is what's known as the prevention paradox. So and by that, I mean, although maltreatment is more likely to occur in a smaller group of high risk households and communities, most maltreatment in the larger society actually occurs in families and communities that are at low to moderate risk. Again, it's kind of a paradox. It's a brain twister. But the bottom line is this loop. You know, if we only focus on poor families, we're going to miss opportunities to prevent a lot of maltreatment cases. And so I think that FRCs have a lot of prevention capacity, because they reach a lot of people from all walks of life. And because they offer an array of services that can be tailored to match the amount of support that each family needs. So that's sort of my big picture case, if you will, I think there are some other points I could make, I won't I won't spend too much longer on this. But the universal services also have the advantage of being less stigmatizing. You know, when we don't target people based on their, their, their poverty status, or their risk status, they may not be feel as stigmatized about the kinds of services that they're receiving. And universal types of approaches like this also, I think, have some cross aisle political appeal. That can also potentially be a winning argument in in the policy arena. So those are some of the reasons why I'm such a fan of these models.
Luke Waldo 32:34
So in addition to some of the takeaways that you just shared with us, what have you learned from your research on Family Resource Centers and, and maybe more specifically, how it relates to our conversation today, right in in the quest of reducing child neglect, more specifically, or, conversely, strengthening social connectedness and family protective factors?
Josh Mersky 33:02
Right, thanks. Yeah. So you know, my research is still ongoing. And we're, I would say, still in early stages, but I do think we've learned a few lessons that I'd like to share. One thing I'm to note is that, you know, family resources centers have been around for a really long time. But actually, there's been very little systematic research on them. They're very difficult to study because they're heterogeneous. They, you know, and so there's just not there's we don't know a lot about their impact. And so I'm really excited about that. I'm the work that I'm doing with the support, again, of the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board. And I should again, note that the Prevention Board has been supporting these programs in Wisconsin for more than 40 years, they've been around a really long time. So the project that we launched together is what's called the strong and stable families project. And this project had two main aims, one, to identify protective factors that reduce the risk of child abuse and neglect. And secondly, to explore the impact of Wisconsin's family resource centers. And we partnered on this project with 18 Different FRC across the state. And as a result of that, we gathered data from over 650 families with children who received services from an FRC. And what we did that I think was was, I think, made for a really good study is that we not only gathered data from families that receive services from family resource centers, but we also gather data from nearly 1500 Wisconsin families with children who did not receive support from an FRC and so we can kind of compare some of the the outcomes of these of these families over time, and again, our research is in its early stages, but I can't say a couple of things we've learned number one who receives services from the FRCs? Well, it's true that we find that families who receive support from these from these centers tend to be a bit more socio economically disadvantaged than the general population. That being said, most FRC households, people who receives support from the senators are above the poverty line. And in fact, nearly one out of five families in our sample who received support from an FRC earned more than $100,000 a year. So again, they provide universal support, and they reach families broadly across the socio economic spectrum. We also found that when we compare these families to the general population, we do see that they do that they tend to have more challenges and barriers than the average family in Wisconsin. So for example, we found that compared to the general population sample, our FRC families were more than three times more likely to be unemployed and in need of a job, they were more than four times as likely to have been evicted and 11 times as likely to have been homeless in the last year. And they were 30 to 40% more likely to face barriers to accessing medical care, mental health care and dental care. At the same time, we also found that these families these families that receive support from an FRC also reported many positive adult experiences that may buffer against the stressors and adversities that they've experienced. For instance, we found that three fourths of the FRC families indicated that their family stands by them through difficult times more than two thirds have resources and opportunities that they need to succeed. And so we found that they have some of these protective factors in place potentially that may help to reduce the risk of child neglect. More specifically, we also actually have started looking at that question of protective factors. So we gathered data using a tool called the protective factors survey. And this looks at protective factors, things like social support, concrete or material support, like economic supports, as well as positive family functioning. And we actually found that, you know, even some of our more disadvantaged families have a lot of strengths and natural resources that they draw upon. In fact, when compared to the general population, the FRC families didn't look all that difference when it came to social connectedness and other kinds of social protective factors. The one area where they did differ by a significant margin was when it came to concrete support, they had fewer economic resources that they call upon. And so that's a lesson that I think we can think about when we're designing these programs and the kinds of supports and services that they need. Lastly, if I may look, I'll just share just one last finding, which is that, you know, we also measured, not just protective factors, but we also measured adverse experience that have occurred in their lives, things like intimate partner violence, substance use mental health concerns, discrimination, and we found again, that those concerns tend to be a bit more prevalent among FRC families in the general population. But when we looked at those protective factors, we actually found that they looks like they actually protect that in the presence of, you know, families who reported that they experienced adversity, but that they also had strong social connections and social support. It seems that those protective factors actually offset the effects of adversity, as long as the levels of adversity were not particularly severe.
Luke Waldo 39:04
Josh, you've shared a lot of really promising outcomes from this research, right. I'm curious, what you have seen as barriers to applying this research into our systems of policies and practices. And then conversely, how might we more effectively translate this research and evidence into our policies and practices?
Josh Mersky 39:33
Well, thanks for the question, Luke. Boy, if only research rule the day, so on a more serious note, I guess I'll say a couple of things about common barriers that we find not just in this area, but in many areas when we're talking about systems change. Number one is just basic inertia, right. So since some tend to be pretty resistant to change because they're large and complex. But also because it's just easier to maintain the status quo than it is to change. And it when it comes to working with change agents, legislators, policymakers, it's just harder to sell them on prevention than it is to sell them on the idea of intervention, it's just a lot more difficult to immediately show someone that you prevented a problem from occurring than it is to show them that you alleviated or remediated a problem that already exists. And so this helps to explain, in part, at least, why funding tends to go disproportionately, disproportionately toward downstream intervention as opposed to upstream prevention. And we see that in just about every system, you can think of whether it's health care, criminal justice, child welfare, et cetera. Now, there's probably not a lot we can do about those barriers, right. It's just the nature of the beast. But there are other barriers that may be a little bit more alterable. And one that I mentioned earlier, is that we just don't have well integrated systems have Child and Family Services, or health, you know, health service systems, mental health, education, economic needs, housing, these systems tend to be somewhat fragmented and siloed. And so I think that family resource centers if we really invested in them, they could sort of serve as linkages within these communities, they could help to link agencies and systems in because on the one hand, they're sort of one stop shops for families, they're places where families, lots and lots of families tend to congregate. And secondly, they kind of could serve as hubs within communities. And if you think of like a hub and spoke model, you have these families coming into these family resource centers as hubs. But if these resource centers are well connected to other agencies and systems and providers within a community, these other spokes, if you will, we could sort of jerryrig, if you will, we could create our own kinds of Hub and Spoke family support systems within communities. And so this is just one model FRCs, or one model I could highlight another from work that I'm doing down in Racine and Walworth, down there I've been working with in those counties, I've been working with the Racine County public health department, as well as the Walworth County Department of Health and Human Services. They've developed this dynamite program called Hello Baby, which is a universal postpartum home visiting program delivered by public health nurses. Again, it's available to all families with newborns. And what they do is they engage families in the home, they provide screening and assessment services to identify family needs. And then they link families to other services and resources within the community as needed. And so again, they sort of served as this as this hub for reaching lots and lots of families, but then linking families to other spokes, within the community. And so I'm just really excited about that work. And just again, more broadly, about this idea of, of breaking down barriers, that that exists to linking child and family serving systems within communities.
Luke Waldo 43:38
You've shared some of your enthusiasm for both of these models, right, both family resource centers and universal home visiting, and you've emphasized quite a bit the real value and impact of universal approaches. I want you to kind of close us out today, continuing on that on that thread or diverging all together and sharing what makes you optimistic about the future of this work.
Josh Mersky 44:09
Right. So on my good days, am I am I am optimistic about the future of this work. I do think that there are some movements within the broader field that give us room for optimism. For one if we're talking about child neglect today. I do think that there's a growing recognition, a general recognition that child welfare systems really were not designed to support families. And I think there's a growing recognition that we need alternative child and family serving systems. And again, as I mentioned before, I think there's a growing recognition that we need to shift some of our resources from downstream intervention to upstream prevention. And we saw this recently, well, somewhat recently at the federal level with the Family First Prevention Services Act, which was one small step toward recognizing that the child welfare system needs to do a better job of reaching out into the community and providing supports to families in their natural environments to reduce the likelihood that children are placed in out of home care. And as a result of that, some states have actually begun to develop more robust infrastructure for services like mental health and substance abuse prevention and treatment or in home parents school based services. So I do think there's reason to be optimistic even at a federal level. Again, going back to the FRCs, I'm optimistic because I think they're a really poorly kept secret. I think once legislators and policy makers learn more about them, I think they're going to like what they hear and see and maybe they'll be more willing to increase public investments in them. But really, if what makes me the most optimistic, I think is my experiences on this Strong and Stable Families project in having observed and interacted with the providers at these family resource centers, the program administrators, the folks who are doing all of this amazing work in our community. We just have really wonderful FRCS distributed all across the state, and I can't give a shout out to all of them. But you know, I mentioned the Parenting Place in Lacrosse earlier, you could do a mental map of Wisconsin and I could take you up to, to Eau Claire and the St. Croix Valley who have just wonderful FRCs, I can take you over to North Central Wisconsin over to Rhinelander, where they have a dynamite Family Resource Center. Moving over to the northeast, the Family and Child Resource Center in Brown County is just fantastic. And then in my own backyard here in the southeast, want to give a shout out to the Parenting Place, as well as the Indian Community School in the Milwaukee area. They're all just doing really amazing mission driven work. And I'm just really proud to have partnered with them on this project.
Luke Waldo 47:19
Thank you, Josh, I appreciate you shouting out our partners and the people that are doing this good work on the ground. And so I have left you with the most difficult question of the day. For last, of course, as somebody who pours over research and does a lot of his own writing, academic writing, for journals and research papers that that illustrate the really good work that's happening across our state like you've shared today. You don't have a whole lot of time to do reading for your own pleasure. But I'm going to ask you, if you could share a book, or an author that has shaped your thinking or represents your thinking specifically around the work that you do.
Josh Mersky 48:11
Well, I appreciate the question, Luke, this is the Ezra Klein question. Right? So, um, truth be told, and I'm terribly embarrassed to admit this. But as you suggested, I, I don't read a ton for pleasure outside of outside of work. And when I do read, I don't often read books, I often read things like long form articles and things like that, like in the Atlantic or what have you. And so at the end of the end of a long day of doing research, or what have you, you know, I often just want to sit down with my family and watch a television show, as opposed to doing more reading and certainly reading about child neglect. Um, so I wish I could offer a really good book, but I just don't have one. But not to use this as a, a PSA opportunity. But I you know, I guess I will just say that. I do think reading is just so fundamentally important. And since we're focusing on child neglect today, I can tell you that I'm a huge proponent of programs that promote literacy and reading to young children. There is no silver bullet. But I think reading to young children is as close as we get, because it not only promotes cognitive development, but it's just a wonderful bonding experience. It promotes attachment between caregivers and children. And so that's my sort of last shout out for the day from from a research perspective is is invest in your local libraries and invest in programs that promote literacy.
Luke Waldo 49:59
Well, Josh, you are now going to be our friend, Dea Wright's favorite person at the office for early childhood initiatives as she is one of our biggest proponents of early literacy and reading to your children. She reminds me each and every time that we spend time together so you'll be high on Dea's list for that comment.
Josh Mersky 50:25
Right on I'm actually yeah, sorry to interrupt look, I'm actually going to be connecting with Dea in a couple weeks, I used to work with her on another project. And we're going to be talking in a couple of weeks about some of her great work that she's doing in the community to promote reading in non-professional spaces, you know, places like barbershops, laundromats things like that, which I just think is awesome.
Luke Waldo 50:47
You know, she's she's done great work across the city of Milwaukee in the early literacy promotion space. So I appreciate you, Josh, for taking the time today, sharing the really great work that that you and your team at the Institute and at UWM have been doing with our Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board in our family resource centers across the state. So thank you again, for taking the time. I really appreciate it. All that you shared.
Josh Mersky 51:20
Thank you, Luke. And again, keep up the great work. It's really a pleasure to be here with you.
Luke Waldo 51:34
I hope that today’s episode and insights from Josh have you thinking more about how we might invest in universal family support models such as Family Resource Centers to strengthen family protective factors and social connectedness. Before we say goodbye to this season, I wanted to highlight three key takeaways to reflect on from this episode that I also believe speak to some of the bigger takeaways from this season.
Thank you again for joining us for this bonus episode, and for being part of our Critical Pathways journey this season.
In this second season, I hoped to share the inspiring work that is happening across Wisconsin and our country within the four Critical Pathways that are guiding our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative. I want to thank all our policy, research, practice and lived experience experts that joined me this season for deep dive conversations that highlighted the pathways towards progress and solutions in our Economic Stability, Social Connectedness, Workforce Inclusion and Innovation, and Community Collaboration Critical Pathways.
If you found this season inspiring, please share with friends, family and colleagues and give us a rating or review as we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Most importantly, if you would like to get involved with our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative and our Critical Pathways, please visit our Show Notes as you will find a link to join us.
Thanks again for listening, and see you soon.
Luke Waldo 56:04
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.