Today’s episode intends to provide a framework of systems drivers along with some concrete examples of how we might move our child welfare system towards a child and family well-being system. We hope that it provides an initial framework along with some inspiration as to how each of us has the power to influence systems change through the seemingly small acts of compassion and challenging our own biases. Through those small acts real change begins, especially in a system and society where historical inequities and trauma have deep roots that persist today. How might we challenge those inequities in our policies and practices within our own organizations and communities? How might we share power, leadership and decision-making with those that we serve? And how might we learn from the policies and practices that have allowed families to fall or be separated before we actively supported them? Join us today to hear our experts share their experience with those questions.
Today’s episode included the following speakers (in the order they appear):
Opening quote: Bryan Samuels – Executive Director, Chapin Hall
Host: Luke Waldo
Experts:
0:00 – Bryan Samuels – “We often miss the opportunity to recognize that the relationships that are needed to get into communities and to successfully leverage the assets that exist there requires trust-building and power-sharing.”
00:24 – Luke Waldo – Introduction to the child welfare system’s organizing principles, systems change and its drivers – policies, practices, resource flow; relationships and power dynamics; and mental models.
5:04 – Tim Grove – We too often celebrate individual efficiencies and productivity in child welfare rather than lowering caseloads and addressing systemic issues. We risk burnout. Explores the impacts of Pair of ACEs and equity on the cycle of healing people and sending them back into combat.
8:26 – Jennifer Jones – Address systemic and community-level inequities to improve family well-being.
9:48 – Bryan Samuels – To understand what communities need, there must be authentic engagement and trust building, which often conflict with system timelines.
11:16 – Luke Waldo – If our systems face a trust deficit, then we must address them by better understanding and often challenging mental models. Flip the waterfall, turn the tables as Julie mentioned in the last episode.
12:01 - Dr. Julie Woodbury – What are the top issues in your community? What could we do about it? “We judge others on their behaviors, and ourselves on our intentions.”
13:23 – Bryan Samuels – Engaged community residents to promote healthy development. Community is a powerful lever in changing the day to day lives of people. Systems Transformation framework. There are already assets in communities to leverage.
14:56 - Tim Grove - Address bias to promote equity.
16:54 - Luke Waldo – Building trust requires that we authentically engage communities, share power, and give them leadership and ownership opportunities.
18:12 - Bregetta Wilson – We make up the system. How do we level the playing field?
19:25 – Bryan Samuels – California Endowment funded a number of community engagement efforts throughout California and had varying outcomes.
20:40 - Hannah Kirk – Building formal and informal supports in child welfare programs.
21:36 – Bregetta Wilson – The importance of consistency from child welfare professionals. The power dynamics that exist within our court system. The power of language in building relationships and trust.
24:24 – Luke Waldo - Changing population level outcomes requires policies, practices and resources to address the underlying root causes that we’ve discussed.
25:38 - Bryan Samuels - Community Pathways, Family First Prevention Services Act, Home Visiting, and Family Resource Centers to provide support to overloaded families when they need it most.
28:14 - Dr. Kristi Slack –Community response for deflected populations so that they receive actual engagement from supportive services such as Family Resource Centers.
29:12 - Jennifer Jones - Cutting short TANF benefits led to increase in child maltreatment reports.
29:57 - Bregetta Wilson – What if we gave families the opportunity to buy a home and then wrapped supportive services around them to build self-efficacy and address poverty?
32:20 - Luke Waldo – Systems collaboration must become normalized if we are to prevent family separations for reasons of neglect.
32:52 - Dr. Kristi Slack – Systems integration conversations have been happening for a long time. Risks and benefits of systems integration and collaboration. Siloed systems need better coordination.
35:40 - Bryan Samuels – Policies that impact cross-systems collaboration through an example of Medicaid and Child Welfare. Flexible funding and time are needed to reform our child welfare system into a more integrated child well-being system.
40:09 - Luke Waldo – 3 Key Takeaways
43:10 – Closing and Gratitude
Join the conversation and connect with us!
Bryan Samuels 00:00
We often miss the opportunity to recognize that the relationships that are needed to get into communities and to successfully leverage the assets that exist there requires trust building and power sharing.
Luke Waldo 00:24
Welcome to Overloaded: Understanding Neglect, where we explore the complexity of child neglect, its root causes and challenges that families experience 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. Hey, everyone, this is Luke Waldo, your host for this podcast series and the Director of Program Design and Community Engagement for the Institute for Child and Family Well-being, our partnership between Children's Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Helen Bader School of Social Welfare.
Last week, in the first part of this episode, we started our conversation on systems change by identifying and understanding the problems that hinder our ability to reach our aspirations for our children, families and communities. We discussed problems that derive from our policies, practices and resource flows that too often focus on interventions with families when it's too late, and therefore lead us to treating the symptoms of root causes like trauma and poverty rather than preventing them. We explored the problems of mistrust between our systems organizations and the families that they serve. This mistrust is often caused by power imbalance and absence of authentic engagement, which leads to families feeling that their voices and experiences are not valued, and ultimately, not reflected in how we design our policy, practice and resource solutions. And lastly, we heard many examples of the challenges underlying our mental models, the beliefs and biases that we hold and that influence our behavior. These mental models drive our relationships, who we invite to the decision making table, and how we develop our policy practice and research priorities. If we are to achieve transformational systems change that reduces family separations for reasons of neglect, we will have to confront our historical mental models and the inequities that they have created.
In today's episode, we shift our focus from the problems to the opportunities that we have to effectively change our child welfare system, so that we might reduce family separations for reasons of neglect. It's important that we revisit the child welfare system, the guiding principles from which systems change opportunities will be explored today. The child welfare system is organized around the following principles: ensuring child safety, achieving permanency with a safe and stable family, and promoting well being.
Throughout today's episode, we will again frame the opportunities for systems change through the drivers that we discussed in the past episode. We use the drivers defined in a framework developed by FSG and John Kania, Mark Kramer and Peter Senge called The Water of Systems Change. They are policies, practices, and resource flow, relationships and power dynamics, and mental models. The complexity of systems change is real and therefore demands that we recognize that many of these drivers interact fluidly with one another. As Kania, Kramer and Senge write, "It is important to keep in mind that systems change, as a way of making real and equitable progress and critical social and environmental problems, requires exceptional attention to the detailed and often mundane work of noticing and acting on much that is implicit and invisible to many, but is very much in the water." I will do my best to point out these mundane details to make them more visible, more approachable. But I asked you to listen carefully for them as our many experts share their experience.
To begin our conversation, we are going to turn the system's waterfall upside down as Dr. Julie Woodbury discussed in last week's episode, and begin with a focus on mental models and how they impact trust, inequities, and the relationships between our systems, staff, and the families that we serve. First, Tim Grove talks about equity and the troubles with our focus on individual efficacy and healing while often ignoring the damaged systems and communities those individuals work and live in. Jennifer Jones follows Tim with a call to shift our focus more towards those community level solutions. And then Bryan Samuels discusses the tension between our system timelines and the ability to create authentic community engagement and trusting relationships. 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.
Tim Grove 04:48
I think a lot of people are having this conversation and and I think there is a national trend going on too, right? Have we been too hyper focused on individual efficiency? And what I mean by that is what we tend to do is recognize and reward the individual performers for managing a remarkably high caseload, right? So we will laud them, we will say things like you're the Employee of the Month, or you're the Employee of the Year, we'll give them a big award for whatever. I think with really good intention, quite frankly, but I start to worry, well, what message does that send everybody else about what's required to perform the basic duties of the job? Right?
So I think a lot of systems are starting to push back a little bit on that and saying, Can we have a both/and discussion here? Sure, we want to encourage people to be efficient and be productive. But if we keep loading them collectively, with too much of an ask whether it's students in a classroom, whether it's patients per day, whether it's sort of families per case manager, we run the risk, especially in the conditions we're in today of burning quite a few of them out. And some would say creating a little bit of moral injury for those individuals who want to help, who want to be compassionate, who want to be empathic, and would argue they just can't, when we blame them, versus looking at systemic responses, I think we potentially do a little bit of harm and need to rethink that.
And the irony is not lost on me. Advocates and disenfranchised communities have been arguing this for years. If we just exclusively assess, diagnose and treat the individual without addressing the conditions, back to Dr. Ellis's characterization of what's going on in the ground under this under the roots in the soil, we kind of like the veteran metaphor would be well, we'll treat your PTSD and then keep sending you into combat. And we'll treat your PTSD and keep sending you into combat with the combat never ending, right. So if we hear that wisdom from advocates in these communities who have said, You've got to address the systemic stuff, equity has to be a priority, there's a reason that WellPoint, why equity became the first word in our mission statement. And some of that reason, there are other reasons for it is embedded in this conversation, it can be kind of victim blaming, to keep saying to somebody heal your trauma, if only to send them back out to a community in a world where those systemic processes are still occurring.
Jennifer Jones 08:23
You know, for decades, our interventions and policy responses have been directed towards this idea of addressing individual behaviors. Same with resilience, right? We all believe that resilience is internal, and that we have to make people more resilient. But we're not actually addressing the systemic issues that are contributing to generations of trauma. And so again, I think it's absolutely essential and imperative that if we're going to move or make any movement to change these cycles, have intergenerational trauma to impact these inequities that exist not just in Wisconsin, but we know exist all over the country that we have to not only address the individual ACEs and adversity about the conditions and systems in which people live. And that's why we love Dr. Wendy Ellis whose work around the Pair of ACEs because it really brings that to the forefront it not only it shows and represents what we all experienced. A majority of us have experienced Adverse Childhood Experiences, have ACEs, have an ACE score, and it really brings to light the inequities that actually make it even harder for people to be well and to be healthy and to not participate in risky behaviors.
Bryan Samuels 09:48
We often have a genuine sense of authenticity when we go to the community, right, that we're going there because we want kind of an unvarnished understanding of what's happening, right? That we want to get unique insights into the specific dynamics that are producing higher rates of neglect cases, for example, but we often miss the opportunity to recognize that the relationships that are needed to get into communities and to successfully leverage the assets that exist there requires trust building and power sharing, right?
And so it's often important to think about the process of community as one that begins with building trust. And across time, one then leverages that trust to get the information and the resources necessary to make change happen. So that trust component to the community change is really critical. And when we're faced with tough timelines, we tend to ignore the trust building aspects of the work. And in doing so we diminish the likelihood that we're going to get the kind of engagement necessary to truly make change happen at the community level.
Luke Waldo 11:16
As you just heard from Tim, Jennifer, and, Bryan, if we are to improve outcomes for individuals, we must improve the communities and conditions in which those individuals work and live. How might we, as Tim shared, heal our communities so that individual healing is not met with the same combat that hurt them in the first place? More specifically, how might we, as Brian discussed, create community pathways that are led by the community and supported by system timelines, policies and resources, so that trust can be built and sustained?
In this next segment, Dr. Julie Woodbury, Bryan and Tim offer some strategies to challenge our mental models that might provide some answers to those questions.
Dr. Julie Woodbury 12:01
Typically, I asked, I just asked questions, what do you think the biggest problem is, with whatever the topic is, in the community. I just asked them, what they think the biggest issues are, what are the top three issues? And then ask them how they think we could move the needle, you know, on a scale of one to five, one being the worst five being the best. Where do you think we sit for child abuse and neglect issues? And if they say three, and then I say, Well, how do you, How do you think we can get it to a four? And then they throw out a solution. I'll be like, Wow, that's really interesting.
And if it's a different conversation, and we're talking about, you know, parenting, for example, and it's, you know, the parents today are X,Y, and Z, are awful, and I asked, like, what do you do differently than your parents did to make you a better parent now? And they usually give me some thing, whatever that might have been. I say, well, so how do you know that they're not doing one thing differently than their parents did? What does that say about their childhood? And that really, it gives them a different perspective as to how to look at the parenting piece through a very different lens. Like we judge others on their behaviors, and ourselves on our intentions. It's a very different view, when you think about if we just assume everybody's doing the best they possibly can, it's a very different picture.
Bryan Samuels 13:23
There are basically five components to thinking about that community change, right. So one is really around transformation and systems transformation through putting communities in the lead, right. And so that's about changing one's framework and understanding of community as this unique place, where specific knowledge about families and traditions and resources come together. Right? That it's about that transformational process is about giving people voice, creating space for them to take action, for them to learn the skills and competencies they need to be an effective leader. So transformation is a really critical component of trying to shift this paradigm and move towards community empowerment.
But there's also a need to change the way we think about communities and think about families, right? That in a social service or human service system, we tend to think about families as individuals who have problems that need to be solved, right? Not people that have strengths and assets that are required in order to leverage, right, and so part of what folks have to do as they move towards a community framework is really recognize that there are assets that already exist in the community that that community process is about working through and identifying all of those nuggets of useful information about how to make change happen.
Tim Grove 14:56
I think if I channel what I've learned from some of the scholars and colleagues of of color who talk about benevolent systems, one of the arguments that would be made is if your intentions are benevolent, but you're not addressing bias and your outcomes, therefore, are non benevolent, how do we characterize the system? So I mean, I know we're preaching to the choir on this, at least I hope, bias is a really good place for people to start in the equity journey and start to learn about it and unpack it. So you truly can give benevolence when that's your intention. Yeah, and I think there's evidence of some of that happening already. There's certainly evidence of people in the employment support space trying to leverage stress, resilience, adversity, trauma conversations to increase worker retention outcomes, right.
So I get excited and think, Hey, if you're willing to come along on this trauma journey, that's great. But will you come the whole way? Will you then talk about historical trauma with us? Will you then talk about equity with us? Because then I start to think, Well, if we can live in a community where most folks are willing to go the distance, and sort of fully appreciate not just stress, adversity, resilience and trauma, but historical, intergenerational trauma, and the importance of equity, we can do some stuff. We can maybe for everybody, not just for a select few, create the community we want people to live in.
Luke Waldo 16:48
I have been thinking often about Julie's statement that we judge others on their behaviors and ourselves on our intentions, and how powerful the act of flipping that dynamic would be in building empathy for others. I promised to do my best to bring attention to the small details, so I hope that a brief reflection on Julie's wisdom shows that I'm trying. Then Bryan and Tim followed with a reminder that while we often are immersed in the struggles of families, we should not only never lose sight of their many strengths and aspirations, but also celebrate and be guided by them in our service and relationships.
In this next segment, we will explore how our mental models influence our relationships, and the power dynamics that serve as a barrier when unequal, but also as a tremendous opportunity when shared. First, Bregetta Wilson talks about leveling the playing field by giving families real opportunities for ownership in their lives. Then Bryan and Hannah Kirk discuss how our child welfare systems can share power and give individuals and communities leadership and ownership over their transformation. And Bregetta finishes the segment by challenging the power dynamic that shows up in court, and how consistency and language can build trust when employed with compassion, or create a sense of othering and isolation when it's not.
Bregetta Wilson 18:12
I think that it's important that we hold our systems accountable. Also realize that like, systems, like people make up systems, people. So it's not like it's this is the system and then we all go there. No, we make up the system, the people who work for the system. When we are hearing stories, and hearing real lived experience situations or getting complaints about things that we know we've heard more than once, and we are consciously not doing what we can in our seats to make a change, then that's where we face some of those challenges around being willing to move the needle.
You know, one of my colleagues who I worked with at Children's, he used to always say, How do we create an even playing field for families? You know, and what would that look like for everyone to have equal opportunity? What would that be like? If we can all just sit here and imagine that.
Bryan Samuels 19:25
There are a number of examples of this work. There was work done by the California Endowment, where they stood up community based initiatives in 10 communities around the state and did the kind of trust building activity, did the kind of long term investment activity, did the kind of engagement of policymakers. They did all of the work necessary to talk about the kinds of changes that most people want to see through this community level work, but they weren't equally successful across all 10 of those communities. So I would argue that the California Endowment's work is really a great example of trying to engage and partner with communities. But if you go to one single of one of those 10 communities, you won't see all of the elements of what it takes to really make meaningful change. But if you look at the totality of their experience, then you get a much richer picture, and you get a more sophisticated understanding of how change really happens.
Hannah Kirk 20:36
Our role and responsibility is to work with both biological families and foster families. Because a majority of our clients are entering out of home care, we are working with both families equally. And so once a family or a child is removed from the home and comes into care, our responsibility is then to provide services, both formal and informal for our clients to build up that strength. And to not just have them rely on formal supports, not just rely on their case manager or a psychologist or somebody like that. But a lot of our families don't have informal supports or stable supports that they can rely on. And so helping them build that community is essential. And that's one of our responsibilities. Our ultimate goal is always reunification. If a child is separated from his or her family, we always want to try to get that child home.
Bregetta Wilson 21:36
You know, one of the things some of our partners will say, around lived experience is the consistency of a child welfare professional to consistently show up and say the same thing that you would say to me, in front of the court. You know, we hear We got to court, and they didn't say that, they didn't tell me these things, or that was something totally different than what I shared with them. So how do we encourage or support child welfare professionals to be consistent, and to be accountable to the families versus being accountable to the courts? Because the court system is another level of oppression in some ways. It's another level of fear, another level of insecurities walking into a courtroom with families, you know, we've heard families don't feel like they have a voice in the courtroom, how do we create that space?
And one of the things that, you know, just to give you a little story, I like stories, I've recently became a member of the Wisconsin Children's Commission on Courts, which is a council that meets like twice or three times a year. And I attended my first meeting on behalf of lived experience. And there was different judges from you know, all across the state there. And we were talking about language. We were talking about how do we talk about families in the courtroom. And I made a comment. And I said, instead of saying, the parents or the youth, they have a name, we see that there on that paper that is in front of us. Why do we have to use that language in a space where we're addressing others by name? But we're terrorizing, almost, a family in a courtroom space by saying the parent or the youth, a word that can be a lot friendlier and welcoming is the family because that's what really matters. That's why we're in court to begin with, because of the family unit and what's happening. And so I said that, and one of the judges says to me, I didn't even think about it that way. I didn't even. Oh, wow, it was almost like her aha moment. It takes more of these conversations to bring these things to others' perspective so that they can see how they in their seat that they sit in can encourage and support families in a way that is more helping than hurting.
Luke Waldo 24:24
If we have listened to these many different approaches that encourage us to challenge our own biases, power imbalances and inequities that breed mistrust, and reflected on how we might approach our own mental models power dynamics and relationships differently, we may see openings to alternative or innovative approaches to our child welfare policies, practices and resource flows. Changing population level outcomes, as Tim Jennifer and Brian mentioned at the beginning of this episode, requires policies, practices and resources to address the underlying root causes that we've discussed.
In this coming segment, we will hear from Bryan, Dr. Slack, Jennifer Jones and Bregetta as they offer some concrete examples of current policies such as the Family First Prevention Services Act, prevention models such as Home Visiting and Family Resource Centers and concrete economic supports for families through our social safety net, and homeownership to address the underlying root causes of poverty, systemic oppression, and trauma. As you're listening to them speak, search for those invisible or mundane details that often get hidden behind the policies or funding, but can serve as those connections or belief systems that we've learned are just as important.
Bryan Samuels 25:39
Thinking through Community Pathways is really one of the innovations that has emerged out of the Family First Prevention Services Act. This idea that, that you need multiple pathways toward support, right, the recognition that all families need support at different times in life. And you need to be able to provide multiple pathways in order for them to get the help that they need, right? If you reserve help only through one vehicle, you limit the likelihood of meeting the needs of families. So conceptually, Family First has put forward this idea that you need to begin to look at multiple ways in which people can get the help that they need. However, it's a really great idea that communities need to be able to pick up and run with, right, so we can kind of cobble together prior experiences to begin to outline what steps you might need to take to create these pathways. But it's really a big idea, more so than it is an evidence based strategy, right. And so what's exciting is that there's enough flexibility in Family First, that one could imagine these new community pathways, right.
So Home Visiting would be one example of a community pathway to accessing services that don't require the child welfare system as involvement, but also isn't the solution for all families, right. But it's one community pathway towards help. You could imagine a Family Resource Center, sometimes those Family Resource Centers are connected to schools, as another pathway, Family Resource Centers where families can go during the day to sit together and have a cup of coffee to talk about the challenges that their kids are facing to find out about available community resources. Having a Family Support Program, a Family Resource Center in a community could become another pathway towards getting the assistance that you need before you need a child welfare intervention.
So it's a big idea. I think you can give examples of those pathways. But I think it's a space where there's a lot of creativity going to be available for communities to really begin to identify what are the pathways that are most likely to achieve these positive outcomes. And how do we as a community bring them together?
Dr. Kristi Slack 28:14
You know, usually when a family's deflected from CPS, they may get a phone number, or you know, to call, but there's no systematic outreach done or, or services offered to that population, even though they constitute 80% of the families who have any contact with child welfare. So it's a moment in time, you know, where you may want to do some outreach. But I also think if you had, you know, a program like Community Response that families just were aware of, and could ask for help. This may be like Family Resource Center's kind of thing, you know, if they can build into their model, a more rigorous approach to helping families with their economic situations, you know, just these community based voluntary agencies and programs that families know to go to when there's economic crisis or something that can be solved just by linking to existing programs that are out there and maybe, you know, helping them function better.
Jennifer Jones 29:13
We do as well know, on the other hand, that states that have limited, implemented time limits of less than five years that families can actually receive assistance through TANF, which is the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families federal program, those states actually saw a 33% increase in neglect. And there are plenty of advocates like ourselves and researchers that argue that the reason child neglect has not decreased in our country is actually due to failures at the policy level and the system's level to recognize and implement these economic and concrete supports as a strategy to prevent child maltreatment.
Bregetta Wilson 29:57
What we hear that one of the main struggles that our families face outside of sometimes mental health and substance abuse is housing. The book Evicted, written here in Milwaukee, it talks about how a lot of women, African American women who had children, either in care or, you know, they had spouses or partners that were incarcerated struggle with the eviction, of being able to have stable housing.
And recently, Milwaukee was just recognized for having the lowest homelessness rate. And I asked myself, well, that's, is that because we change how we define homelessness? Because now, when we look at homelessness, it's more so if you're out on the street, but it doesn't mean Oh, you're sleeping on your cousin's couch, or you're sleeping on your uncle's couch, or you're sleeping in your car, that definition of homelessness is not the same way, we sometimes put silver lining on things to just satisfy sometimes our sense of self efficacy, without really challenging ourselves to really lean into how do we really end homelessness.
How do we really create not just in homelessness, but economic stability and generational wealth for those who have been oppressed for so long? What would it look like if we would have said, Okay, if you're currently experiencing homelessness, or if you're currently looking for a house, how can we work with those people to put them in a home that they can own, because then that increases their sense of self efficacy and their desire to want to maintain that home? If you give someone it's like, if you buy something at the store that you really value, you're gonna take care of it. If we give our families opportunities to purchase homes, they're gonna probably take better care of it than they would have renting. And if we teach them, if we create the social supports around them, you know, we have wraparound services, and we have all these fancy words that we use. But are you really doing that when you think about systems and thinking about addressing poverty from some of that from that perspective?
Luke Waldo 32:21
In this final segment, we will hear more from Dr. Kristi Slack and Bryan as they talk about the complexity of systems integration and collaboration. While you are listening, ask yourself, how might we bring the many systems that can strengthen families together without creating more burden or stress on the families they intend to serve? How might we develop a child and family well-being system that seeks to keep families together and strengthen their communities and potential for growth and prosperity?
Dr. Kristi Slack 32:53
This goes in waves. So I was just talking to a colleague about this newest wave of sort of advocating for more systems integration, both external to child welfare, and including child welfare systems. And she was kind of joking that she's been around long enough that this has come up about five times over the course of her her career. But it's getting renewed attention today with a couple of frameworks that are out there, around systems synergy or systems integration or cross systems collaboration.
And on the one hand, I think that the systems that are supposed to offer and provide and help with economic stability, definitely need better coordination. I have reservations about completely integrating a child welfare system with those other systems that comprise our economic safety net, just because our economic safety net also isn't perfect. And there are some, you know, some potential worries or caveats about sharing information across those systems with child welfare. And what that would do to increase sort of information about families and disproportionately so as well as potential increased surveillance of families in ways that might heighten their risk of being noticed and reported to child welfare.
But I certainly think we could think at least about families who come to the attention of child welfare who are experiencing a moment of crisis and extreme need. Perhaps there's a way to prioritize receiving benefits and supports from some of these other systems. Instead of just, you know, giving families a phone number or, you know, in the worst case scenario, which we still do with some of our benefit programs. You take away that stream of benefits while a family and you know parents and kids are separated and kids are in foster care, which can just destabilize a family further and make it more difficult to reunify kids. So because these other siloed systems often don't talk to each other, or with the child welfare system, there's lots of unintended consequences happening all over the place. And there needs to be sort of a bigger bird's eye view of how we reconcile those problems in a way that is more supportive, you know, to families who come to the attention of child welfare, and more supportive in the hopes that it prevents that from happening.
Bryan Samuels 35:40
There are a couple of critical elements to that kind of more integrated approach to state and local agencies delivering services. One is people need to be looking at the actual policies that keep agencies separated, right, that the tendency is to assume that there's greater room for collaboration than the policy sometimes allows, right? So if you're going to be thoughtful and deliberate about building a strategy, understanding the underlying policies that are the barriers to integration is one really, really important step.
So I remember when I worked in the federal government, in child welfare, I knew I wanted to move towards this well being framework that delivers more effective programs and services to families that are involved in a child welfare system. And I thought I understood the role that Medicaid played in delivering those services. So I thought that I could advocate for using Medicaid to do what I wanted Medicaid to do. But in order to move that kind of approach forward, I needed to go talk to Medicaid. And the more I talked to Medicaid, the more I understood why they weren't delivering the services that I wanted them to deliver, right, in part because Medicaid, as an organization doesn't see itself as as an entity that deliver services. When you look at their policy framework, what you learn is that Medicaid purpose is to provide the resources, the financial resources to states to then determine how to deliver service. So I was assuming that Medicaid could do something for me that once I understood the underlying policy, it became clear to me that Medicaid alone couldn't do what I needed them to do.
Having said that, sitting with Medicaid and understanding their policies also meant that I had to describe the policies that existed in child welfare. And so they gained new insights into the scope of my authority as the leader of child welfare. And it was both of us sitting at the table together talking about the policies that relate to one another, that allowed us to figure out ways around the policies or gave us creative insights that we wouldn't have had if we weren't at the table together talking about the capacity that each agency has. So this idea of community integration of service delivery requires government agencies to really look at the policies that they have in front of them, and really figure out how to move closer to one another. So that kind of integration can happen. So that's one thing that I would argue.
The second thing that I would argue is money. And money takes time, right, which is that if you're going to create these integrated approaches, folks need more flexible money. And that means being purposeful around building budgets at the state and local level, that create more flexible funds. If you don't have flexibility, sometimes you don't have the glue you need to bring those agency services together. But there are a lot of good examples of people who have braided funding, who also had some funds that just keep the glue of a strategy together.
And then the third of this complicated approach that I've just described, the third element of that is time. This is really hard work. The work we were doing with Medicaid we did over a four year period of time. And I thought we only scratched the surface of what was possible. So states, states and local government have to really commit time to these more integrated efforts than they're often prepared to dedicate. But without time, you can't figure out and understand the policies that are keeping you apart from one another, and you can't figure out the best way to use money to glue things together. So time is the third critical element to creating these more integrated systems at the state and local level, which then facilitate better service delivery at the local level.
Luke Waldo 40:09
Today's episode was intended to provide a framework along with some concrete examples of how we might move our child welfare system towards a child and family well-being system. It is not, of course, pretending to have all the answers or solutions. I hope that it has at the very least provided an initial framework along with some inspiration as to how each of us has the power to influence systems change to the seemingly small acts of compassion, and challenging our own biases.
However, it is through those mundane or invisible details where real change begins, especially in a system and society where historical inequities and trauma have deep roots that persist today. How might we challenge those inequities in our policies and practices within our own organizations? How might we share power leadership and decision making with those that we serve? And how might we learn from the policies and practices that have allowed families to fall or be separated before we actively supported them? In the final episodes of this series, we will explore those questions further in hopes that we can provide a blueprint towards our goal of reducing family separations for reasons of neglect.
But before we go today, as always, I wanted to highlight three key takeaways to reflect on as we move into our next episodes.
1. If we truly confront our biases, if we challenge ourselves to see others for their intentions, and aspirations, rather than their darkest moments, we set a foundation for personal and even systems change.
2. The child welfare system and those that work in it need support to be able to do what they came to do for families, build strong relationships, so that they can empower them to be their best selves. That support needs to come from policies and practices that prioritize trust, not timelines, as Bregetta, Tim and Bryan all discussed today.
3. If the child welfare system should be committing its policies, practices and resources to accomplishing what Tim and Jennifer stated powerfully in our opening to healing and empowering communities, so that children and families are no longer exposed to the traumas, the combat that they have had to endure and survive because of our systemic failures, we will have accomplished meaningful, life changing systems change.
Thank you for joining us for the sixth episode. We hope that you will come back and listen to our seventh episode next week as we explore how prevention programs and strategies can support overloaded families and reduce family separations for reasons of neglect. 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. To learn more about the experts that you heard today, visit the show notes, which is where you will also find links to sources or information that were mentioned in today's episode. Thank you again for joining us. See you next week.
Luke Waldo 43:10
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 gave to this project. I'm also grateful to Gabe McGaughey, our Co-Director here at the Institute for Child and Family Well-Being who contributed to the ideas behind this podcast and interviewed some of our experts. 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.