In our first four episodes, we explored neglect, three of its underlying root causes in the forms of trauma, systemic oppression, and poverty, and their compounding challenges like housing instability, mental illness, and addiction that further overload families with stress, and can lead to child welfare involvement and family separation. Moving forward, we will shift our focus from the challenges that overloaded families experience to the challenges and opportunities that our complex systems, organizations, and communities face as we aspire to reduce family separations for reasons of neglect. To begin this shift, we will explore the child welfare system over a two-part episode, beginning today in part 1 as we look more closely at how the system is designed and functions, how policies, which are often created by those furthest away from the most affected communities, dictate practice and resources, and how we are failing overloaded families by not effectively addressing the underlying root causes of neglect that we explored in our first few episodes.
Today’s episode included the following speakers (in the order they appear):
Opening quote: Julie Woodbury – Family Preservation and Support Manager, Children’s Wisconsin
Host: Luke Waldo
Experts:
0:00 – Julie Woodbury – “It’s not somebody else’s problem, it’s everybody’s problem.”
00:14 – 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.
4:36 – Ashlee Jackson – Addressing mistrust by clarifying child welfare’s role and goals for the families it serves.
5:50 – Jennifer Jones – Racial disparities in child welfare and access to community supports.
6:35 – Theresa Swiechowski – “Parents don’t wake up and say, ‘Man, I just can’t wait to have mental health issues today…to have my car break down today....to be in a system.” Navigating our systems is really hard, and it can lead to people feeling shame, isolation, and shutting down.
8:23 – Dr. Kristi Slack – The experience of being reported to or investigated by the child welfare system can be traumatic. “If there were other ways to help families that didn’t need to be there, then we should pursue those other strategies.”
8:58 – Luke Waldo – How might we divert overloaded families that may not need child welfare intervention to supportive services that keep their families together and help avoid the trauma and mistrust that comes from family separation? Introduction of next speakers that discuss the challenges presented within our policies, practices and resource flows.
9:44 – Jennifer Jones – Considering the complex relationship between race, poverty and neglect, “by putting an actual bigger emphasis on addressing poverty, we should see, without a doubt, a decrease in neglect cases in the U.S.” We spend $33 billion federally on our child welfare system and only 15% of that on prevention programs. Invest more in anti-poverty and prevention community-based resources.
12:55 – Theresa Swiechowski – Introduction to Children’s Northern Wisconsin child welfare programs. Families are in crisis when she first meets them.
14:37 – Ashlee Jackson – Policies change when their impacts are felt closer to home. How might we treat the impacts of trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences like we have treated the opioid crisis?
15:50 – Luke Waldo – How might we change how policymakers and systems leaders see overloaded families, so that they implement policies that strengthen families and keep them together? Introduction of next speakers that discuss our society’s role with our policies, practices and resource flows.
16:47 – Bryan Samuels – Policy impacts practice. Policy changes need to be made to enable the work at the community level. “Shift resources, shift power, and then ultimately, change outcomes.”
18:25 – Dr. Kristi Slack – If you change policies, change outcomes. Cognitive load makes it more difficult for parents to care for their children. What part of that is society’s responsibility? Economic safety net as a child maltreatment prevention strategy.
22:33 – Luke Waldo – It’s striking to hear Dr. Slack talk about the social safety net, a concept that assumes individuals or families will fall, as a set of supports that too often barely gets overloaded families above the meager poverty line. Introduction of next speakers that discuss accessibility of social safety net and the impacts of relationships and power dynamics on mistrust between systems and communities.
23:49 – Dr. Kristi Slack – Accessibility of social safety net programs such as WIC and SNAP. Tax credits and direct cash assistance can have sizable impacts on families. Community response such as Family Resource Centers can divert families from the child welfare system.
25:22 – Bryan Samuels – Child welfare needs partners at the table if progress is going to be made. There is a lot of distrust between child welfare and communities.
25:51 – Dr. Julie Woodbury – The power dynamics between policymakers, business leaders, and families has shifted during the pandemic, and the tables have turned as families’ needs and demands have become more prominent. Leveraging those relationships to change the conversation is at the center of collective impact.
27:12 – Luke Waldo – How we think about and see families will determine how we develop policies, how we serve and support them, and how we share power and community with them.
28:30 – Dr. Kristi Slack – Mandated reporters as sources of support rather than surveillance. Community Response models to provide access to needed resources to overloaded families.
29:59 – Tim Grove – Reporting is subjective and can be impacted by bias. When people are stressed, people may be more likely to lean into their bias. System actors need adequate resources and support to be able to be compassionate and empathic, rather than to lean into their biases.
32:23 – Dr. Julie Woodbury – Model healthy boundaries and support networks with clients, while also doing this with the community so that we can educate everyone to be a protective factor. “It’s not someone else’s problem, it’s everyone’s problem.”
33:58 – Luke Waldo – Introduction of final segment that focuses on those that work in the child welfare system with the intention of being part of a benevolent system, as Tim mentioned earlier, and the many challenges they face. These challenges are often a direct result of our systems’ policies and demands.
35:00 – Bregetta Wilson – System timelines conflict with social timelines – employment, etc. Get to know the family first, as it changes the perspective on who they are.
37:45 – Ashlee Jackson – The services, goals and impact of Family Support program.
39:12 – Hannah Kirk – Educate community on the purpose of child welfare. Community outreach to be more proactive as a system could change relationships and strengthen families.
41:16 – Luke Waldo – 3 Key Takeaways
44:35 – Closing Credits
Join the conversation and connect with us!
Dr. Julie Woodbury 00:02
It's not somebody else's problem. It's everybody's problem.
Luke Waldo 00:14
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.
Luke Waldo 00:37
Hey, everyone, this is Luke Waldo, your host for the 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.
In our first four episodes, we explored neglect, three of its underlying root causes in the forms of trauma, systemic oppression and poverty, and their compounding challenges like housing instability, mental illness and addiction that further overload families with stress, and can lead to child welfare involvement and family separation. Moving forward, we will shift our focus from the challenges that overloaded families experience to the challenges and opportunities that our systems, organizations and communities face as we aspire to reduce family separations for reasons of neglect.
To begin the shift, we will explore the child welfare system over a two part episode, beginning today in part one, as we look more closely at how the system is designed and functions, how policies, which are often created by those farthest away from the most affected communities, dictate practice and resources, and how we are failing overloaded families by not effectively addressing the underlying root causes of neglect that we explored in our first few episodes. It's important that we first define the child welfare system and its organizing principles. According to the Children's Bureau, the federal agency that works with our state and local child welfare agencies, "the system develops programs that focus on preventing child abuse and neglect by strengthening families, protecting children from further maltreatment, reuniting children safely with their families, and finding permanent families for children who cannot safely return home."
Throughout today's episode, we will explore the real challenges that the system faces to prevent child neglect by strengthening families and the systems change that might be possible. At the Institute we often approach system change from a framework developed by FSG and John Kania, Mark Kramer and Peter Senge called The Water of Systems Change. I'm going to open our episode today with an excerpt from their publication as it sets up a clear understanding of the foundation of systems change, which so many of us see as deeply complex, and yet so critical to advancing social justice efforts, such as reducing family separations for reasons of neglect.
It reads "Making big bets to tackle a social problem without first immersing yourself in understanding what is holding the problem in place is a recipe for failure. On the other hand, bringing attention to shifting the power dynamics at play, identifying where people are connected or disconnected from others who must be part of the solution, exposing the mental models that inhibit success and policy change, and investigating the ways in which the organization's internal conditions help or hinder external aspirations. This is the nature of successfully changing systems. This is systems change."
Over the course of this episode, you will hear me frame the conversation through the six drivers of systems change that you just heard mentioned, which are policies, practices and resources, relationships and power dynamics, and mental models. I hope this will help us all better understand how seemingly disconnected issues like trust, our social safety net, and mandated reporting, all of which you'll hear about today are in fact components of interconnected systems drivers, and therefore vital to meaningful systems change.
To begin our conversation, we will explore how mental models, or the deeply held beliefs or biases that impact our behavior, lead to mistrust of our system. You will hear first from Ashlee Jackson from Children's Family Support Program in Milwaukee, who will then be followed by Jennifer Jones of Prevent Child Abuse America. Theresa Swiechowski from Children's Family Support Program in Merrill, Wisconsin, and Dr. Kristi Slack of the University of Wisconsin's School of Social Work. 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.
Ashlee Jackson 04:37
If people believe in the system and understand why we're there and the purpose is to support them, then when we come in, it's like okay, well, we'll help you get you know, whatever it is, access to X, Y and Z. Kids are safe. They're in the home, you know, you just didn't know about this or you know, didn't have the access to it. But we don't even get that far because of the lack of trust. Knowing first of all what we're hearing when we do. I talk about it all the time with my parents in parenting class. You know, like, oh, you know, somebody reported me, you know, and I tried to give them that positive spin. And I'm like, but look, someone cared enough about your child to say, Hey, I think something's wrong. I want to make sure they're okay.
So if we could educate people on what we're here to do, we're not here to you know, the baby snatchers or to take your kids or, you know, put them, especially in the City of Milwaukee, I hear it probably once out of every three new cases, I get that, you know, the way people are coming to take black babies and give them to white families. That's what our goal is still, and that's their mindset around it. And so we really have to work on that. And understand that's not the case. Our goal, especially Family Support is reunification. We don't really work with families unless reunification is on the table, you know, so it's you know, our, my goal is to get your baby back to you.
Jennifer Jones 05:50
It's been well documented through the research that black families are overrepresented in the child welfare system, including both in terms of reports and substantiation for child neglect. And in fact, one recent study found that 53% of all black children experience a child welfare investigation by the age of 18. So a majority of black children in this country have touched the child welfare system in some way by the time they turn 18. But what's interesting is that at the same time, families of color often reside in communications with high concentrations of poverty. So they have limited access to service and supports.
Theresa Swiechowski 06:35
I just want people to know that parents don't wake up and say, and I cannot wait to have mental health issues today. I can't wait to have substance abuse issues. I can't wait for my car to break down, this is going to be great. I'm gonna have a great day, not how it works. You know, none of our parents want to wake up and be in a system. And even that name triggers people right away, like the system and the abuse of it.
I've had many conversations with even just neighbors, you know, knowing what I do. They're like, Oh, I have, so many people abused the system. I said, I always have to pause because it's like, there's no system to abuse. The system is very complicated. It's not easy to use. It's like we talked earlier, it has a lot of gray areas. It's very complicated. So if you have a lack of transportation, a lack of housing, unemployed, have mental health, have substance abuse, you can't just go like, okay, sure you could go Google, but to navigate that system is extremely hard. And a lot of our, a lot of our families shut down because of it. They feel alone, they feel ashamed. They feel frustrated, they feel isolated, and they don't even use the system. You know, I can't say that there isn't some that, that do, you know, and they know it very well. But that's okay, because that's what it's there for. So I wish the general public would be better educated on what that system really looks like for people.
Dr. Kristi Slack 08:23
The system is good about sort of sorting out those reports that don't belong there, which to, you know, to some extent, I think it really is good at doing that. But the experience of being investigated by CPS in and of itself, or just knowing that you were reported can be really, really traumatic for families. And if there were other ways to help families who really didn't need to be there, we should pursue those other strategies for sure.
Luke Waldo 08:58
As you just heard in this first segment, many overloaded families experience mistrust, systemic racism, and trauma from having been investigated by the child welfare system. How might we, as Dr. Slack mentions at the end of the segment, divert overloaded families that may not need child welfare intervention to supportive services that keep their families together, and help avoid the trauma and mistrust that comes from family separation?
In this next segment, we explore how our policies determine how we serve and see overloaded families and how those policies direct our funding and program resources towards treatment rather than prevention. First, you'll hear Jennifer, then Theresa and Ashlee as they discuss the challenges presented within our policies, practices and resource flows.
Jennifer Jones 09:44
Financial hardship remains one of the few preventative factors that is unaddressed in the current policy context. And in fact, intentional public policy decisions would create a different context for communities, families and individuals face. So this quote is one of my favorite quotes in the article, actually written by Megan Feely, Dr. Megan Feely and based on the research showing the complex relationships between race and poverty and neglect, by putting an actual bigger emphasis on addressing poverty, we should, without a doubt, see a decrease in child neglect cases in the US.
I want to, I want to say a couple more things in this idea of of overloaded families and systems. And that is that again, we know that children and families of color are more likely to be impacted by poverty, and to come to the attention of the child welfare system for neglect and other forms of child maltreatment. And we know that 14% of US children are black, they make up 27% of children living below the poverty line. And so the systemic issues of poverty, of racism have structural determinants of health that largely impact people of color, and overload families that are already challenged with, again, these individual ACEs and, and other struggles make it much harder for them to parent, make it much harder for them to provide adequate care and necessary attention to their kids.
They're currently, I think, we spend about $33 billion in public dollars, state and local child welfare agencies spend about $33 billion, and only about 18% of that is spent on prevention. Now, obviously, there's other prevention money that's going into the world, both private, philanthropic, other federal dollars. But the difference there, right $33 billion, 15% of that is spent on prevention. So I want to say the first thing is we need more money, we need more investment in prevention, and then I think we need to support and invest in community based resources. So things like family resource centers, things like home visiting, we also I think, don't think about this enough, but the idea of community action agencies, right. They're created as this anti poverty program. And they should also be considered a prevention strategy. We need to, we need to start spreading the sort of message that economic and concrete supports, anti- poverty work is an actual strategy to prevent child abuse and neglect. And so thinking of other partners that we can partner with and other interventions that we can think about that we may not have thought about before, as prevention efforts, we need to make sure that regardless of where families live, they have access.
Theresa Swiechowski 12:54
So the Northwoods, our Children's Wisconsin covers four counties, our Family Support Program covers three counties. It's a very small program, I'm actually only working part time in it. It's on my wish list to get a lot more of that covered. But for right now, we do, it's kind of very minimal. And we work through social services. So we are specifically, our program is referred from social services specifically. So there's no other way for families to participate in our program. But through social service, open cases, we go in home. I'm an in-home visitor for Family Support. When we enter the house as a home visitor for Family Support, our families are 99.9% in a crisis. It's an open CPS case, their children sometimes are placed out of the home, they might be going through eviction, they might be homeless. So there's usually, I'm coming into a house in crisis.
So that being said, I feel like our program once our trust is built, and we're kind of you know, getting a relationship built is that light at the end of the tunnel, it's removing that hopelessness. Our families are able to say, Oh, we're not alone. That's the biggest impact is just be able to connect them to the things that they need that concrete support, whether you know, it's us temporarily, or all the services that we can hopefully refer them to and connect them to.
Ashlee Jackson 14:37
Because, you know, there's that follow through, we got to hold people accountable. And a lot of times in our country, we don't really care about things until it actually hits home. And an example of that would be like the opioid crisis. We had people dying all over the place and it wasn't a big deal. But with lawmakers and senators and you know, governors, their children and family members have started to be exposed to it. And they were, you know, experiencing things firsthand, then now we're putting into law, you know, that doctors shouldn't be prescribing over this amount or this and you're like, wait a second, like, we've been screaming this forever.
A lot of challenges our families face, we've been screaming, since the first ACEs study was done, we knew these things were here, we know that these things are factors. Clearly, you know, but we're just going to keep having people take these, you know, finding out what their scores are, and not helping to take these numbers off for the next generation and getting us down to a family that doesn't have anymore because we put those two factors in place, and I have worked with them. So there'll be a lot of changes that need to take place, but we can start there.
Luke Waldo 15:50
When I listen to this last segment, I hear particularly from Ashlee's powerful statement about policies changing when tragedies such as the opioid epidemic hit home for policymakers, the power and impact of changing the mental models, the hearts and minds of those that develop our policies. How might we change how policymakers and systems leaders see overloaded families so that they implement policies that strengthen families and keep them together?
As you will hear from Bryan Samuels of Chapin Hall in this next segment, those policies can then empower communities to better direct the resources and services that their overloaded families need. Then Dr. Slack will explore our policies and society's role in reducing the overload that so many families experience. She then describes the social safety net, and the potential of addressing the systemic challenges of economic and concrete supports that Jennifer Jones discussed earlier.
Bryan Samuels 16:48
At the policy level, it really is about engaging both our federal government partners as well as state government partners in the sense that part of the challenge of meeting the needs of families is literally baked into the policy construct that we have around supporting families, and determining those families that are deserving of help and those families that are not. And while it's a really compelling argument to say that people at the community level can solve all problems, realistically speaking, you're asking the people that have the least control of resources and access to make changes in places that are pretty exclusive. So we need to make policy changes.
There are a whole bunch of folks that can advocate for those policy changes in order to be effective. But those policy changes need to be made to enable the work at the community level, right? Because I think in the end, changing the material circumstances of families, giving families the right set of supports, giving them those services in the sequence that they need them in are uniquely community based approach to empowerment, support, and systems change. But it can't happen in a vacuum, it has to happen with a complementary set of changes that have to happen at the policy level, so that those two things can be married together in ways that ultimately shift resources, shift power, and then ultimately, change outcomes.
Dr. Kristi Slack 18:25
You know, so there's been the research showing experimentally that when you manipulate policies, you can see changes in rates of child welfare system involvement. So there are really many pieces of evidence that when you change these different policy levers in the system, you can see even a short term effect. It may not be huge, but if all of our systems were operating in a way that was more accessible, and welcoming to families who are eligible, and families could sustain receiving those benefits over longer periods of time, in these contexts, I think you would probably begin to see an even larger effect over time.
But then there's also the science around sort of cognitive load, you know, and when you're just dealing with so much stress, that it's just harder to manage life, it's harder to be a parent, it's harder to get to work, and and all those things add up, end up creating situations of risk for kids. But is the parent the culpable person in that situation? Or what? What part of that is society responsible for? You know, what part of that, our policies and programs, are responsible for. We tend to put so much onus on the parent to change in some way in our efforts to prevent child maltreatment and less so on the systems and policies.
So TANF, so Temporary Assistance for Needy Families is our cash assistance welfare program in the US. And I think it's also important to know though that that program has declined in use over the years since the passage of welfare reform in the mid 1990s. It really used to be a centerpiece of our economic safety net. And today, it is no longer. And I've done some work on how those programs are packaged differently by families. And they change over time that these packages that families rely on. And so there's a need for assistance with navigating, you know, these various siloed programs to some of the research that was happening after the passage of TANF there were a number of these longitudinal panel studies where cohorts of families on TANF were followed over time to see what happened. And in several of these studies, the families that fared the best in terms of their economic outcomes were the families that combined welfare and work that combined TANF and work because in reality, neither low wage work nor TANF lifted you above even the very meager poverty line. So the families that were able to do both actually had a path to to get above the poverty line and hopefully sustain a trend upward in terms of their income. But that requires, you know, a move away from this measure of success that is just getting families off these roles entirely. You know, why can't we think of it as a resource that some families may need, in addition, you know, to employment or other sources of income for longer periods of time, especially if we know that it creates better outcomes?
All these things are tied, and I've been talking a lot about risk factors, but I also think that when families are economically stable, it also helps bolster their strengths and their protective factors as well. And those, you know, don't tend to get as much attention as some of the risk factors we talk about related to child maltreatment. But you know, I do see models, you know, over the last five or more years becoming more prominent. The CDC Essentials for Childhood and the CSSPs Protective Factors framework mean, there's more attention to focusing on these protective factors, which is also, I think, a good trend.
Luke Waldo 22:34
It's striking to hear Dr. Slack talk about the social safety net, a concept that assumes individuals or families will fall, as a set of supports that too often barely gets overloaded families above the meager poverty line. It's also important to reflect on her comments about cognitive load, which is often overlooked by our systems when considering why families overloaded with stress struggle to access and maintain these concrete economic supports that are vital to providing care for their children.
In this coming segment, we will hear from Dr. Slack as she talks about the accessibility of these economic supports, and their impacts on families' lives. A quick note that Dr. Slack refers to two programs, WIC and SNAP in this segment. WIC is the special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. And SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or more commonly known as food stamps. Then Bryan and Dr. Julie Woodbury explore the systems drivers of relationships and power dynamics, and how bringing more systems, community leaders and families together can address issues of mistrust, by giving voice to those that have long been left out of the conversations that impact their lives. As you're listening, I'd ask that you reflect on how these dynamics play out in your community.
Dr. Kristi Slack 23:49
One sort of litmus test for how welcoming any of these programs are is the take-up rate, right? So if you have a high take-up rate, like it's typically true for the WIC program, and for SNAP, as well for food stamp benefits, it signals that there's perhaps less administrative burden that, you know, families aren't, are more willing to go through that application process and able to, there aren't as many hurdles that are put in place. I often think of WIC as a program that is particularly good at enrolling families in benefits and not sort of, not suffering from this sort of culture of deflection as some of these other systems and programs may be doing.
You know, some programs are much more mechanical, you know, like SNAP where you're, you're just getting like an EBT card where your benefits are loaded each month or every couple of weeks. And so you're, it's not really designed to do that kind of case management work. On the other hand, you know, programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit or the, you know, the childcare tax credit programs that also don't typically deal with families directly. It's just a cash transfer, sometimes have pretty sizable impacts on reducing child maltreatment. And so sometimes it's a question of, maybe families just know what they need. And they need, they just need the resources to get the things they need. And that's the intervention.
Bryan Samuels 25:21
Child welfare needs partners. In order to make community change, child welfare typically needs some kind of public health framework that's larger than reducing abuse and neglect or reducing the number of kids that come into foster care. And often, child welfare and other government agencies need to be able to provide some resources that create the infrastructure that keeps people coming back to the table.
Dr. Julie Woodbury 25:50
It's always been like, you know, the policymakers and the business owners. And although you know, that's where the power has always lied. And now it's, do the parents want to put their kids in childcare? Do they want to go to work? That's where the power is. And that's the families we serve. So that's where we we stepped in and said, Hey, like, we got to do this differently, because we can't continue to be the only solution to every problem in this county, right? So that's why we started the collective impact. So that that's really what started us moving this direction, because we had to come up with a different way to do things.
So, and we kind of took that entire list of things you just said and flipped it upside down. Let's talk about the families that are overloaded. Let's talk about the families that need the childcare so they can go to work, so they can support the families like it's completely reversed thinking than it used to be. So that's the most exciting part of all of this is that we're able to just turn the table. The biggest challenge I think, has been to just leverage the relationships we have, and then have just an even greater number of conversations to change the thinking. I think that's been the greatest challenge.
Luke Waldo 27:13
With Julie's thoughts in mind, we are now going to shift towards the impacts of mental models are the deeply held beliefs and biases that influence and determine how we see and serve overloaded families. Over the course of our first four episodes, we have tried to shine light on the families that are involved with the child welfare system, so that we might see them in the words of Ashlee, Soua, and Theresa from episode 4, as parents that are doing the best they can with what they have, and that above all else, love their children. Because as we've heard already in today's episode, how we think about and see these families will determine how we develop policies, how we serve and support them, and how we share power and community with them.
In this coming segment, Dr. Slack and Tim Grove of WellPoint Care Network, talk about the critical role that mandated reporters play in determining who comes to the attention of the child welfare system, or is diverted to other less intrusive services and supports. Then, Julie brings us back to how our community can serve as a protective factor for children and families. As you're listening, please reflect on how you might support a family in a moment of crisis, and as a helper or mandated reporter, if you are one, what you might need to feel empowered to provide that support.
Dr. Kristi Slack 28:30
The Chapin Hall Center for Children has a new report out that is about systems integration. And there was a sentence in there about mandated reporting, and that we need to sort of rethink mandatory reporting as reporters as sources of support rather than surveillance, you know, how might that happen? Well, one thing I think, that many mandated reporters struggle with is that there's nowhere else to send families that need help, who are, you know, really struggling financially or with more material needs.
You know, if the safety net programs that exist are not giving them that support, and the family is really struggling because of it, many of them resort to calling child protective services because they don't feel there's anywhere else to refer families to. So I think if we had both friendlier safety net programs, and perhaps something like a community response model where families could call themselves and get case management services to help with some of these problems, and I think some fraction of those reports may get diverted by reporters themselves. And then of course, some of it is education around what is, what are the statutory definitions of maltreatment in a given state? That's not always well understood. Although, I think, you know, it's especially if you're, if you're not a professional, if you're a neighbor, somebody who just happens to witness something
Tim Grove 29:59
I think most system experts would argue it's one of the more subjective sort of ways of thinking about maltreatment. And every time I think of subjectivity, I think of bias. And every time I think of bias, so if you're thinking about when do I call, who do I call? What do I call for? When I think of bias, I come back and think about stress and stress sensitization. So for me, the bias connection goes like this: when I'm more anxious, or stressed, sensitized, I'm less likely to combat the bias that may exist in me, by being able to leverage my more executive parts of my brain and say, Wait a minute, maybe I need to rethink this.
Because we've got to find a way to make sure those benevolent systems, giving them the benefit of the doubt that they are designed to be benevolent, and many of the actors are benevolent actors, right, which I believe to be true for the majority, they've got to have the resources. They need to get each individual person at a capacity where in those moments, they can execute sort of using their full brain-body potential, not just to mitigate bias, but to sort of interact with the potential kid at risk, in compassionate, empathic and supporting ways. The truth about the challenge of workforce actors in these systems is starting to get more attention. But I think we're going to hear more and more about that some of its caught up in the great resignation, and sort of people who are saying to heck with it, I'm gonna go get a job doing something way less stressful. We've got to pay attention to that, because overwhelmed system actors, by definition, will not interact with folks in the way we ideally want them to consistently. That's a real problem.
Dr. Julie Woodbury 32:21
I think the first thing we're doing is we, as a staff, are making sure that we're very trauma informed. We work on building relationships, first work on building solid relationships, and then we model healthy boundaries and support networks. So we work on modeling that so that the families can see what a healthy support network looks like. Because a lot of them do not have that, they're isolated, or they're in a network or, you know, friend group or in a, in an unhealthy situation. So we try to model different healthy ways to have supportive networks. So we try to build that, so they can see that.
That's also what we're trying to do from a community level. We're trying to change the way the community is working together. And that includes the VA, system of social services, and the courthouse, and the elected officials, and the business owners, and the caregivers in town, and the churches, and anybody we can find to bring to the table. We're trying to change the way the community works together. So we can educate everyone on how to be a protective factor for children, families, everyone. If we can change the conversation. It's not somebody else's problem. It's everybody's problem.
Luke Waldo 33:58
In our final segment, we will focus on those that work in the child welfare system with the intention of being part of a benevolent system, as Tim mentioned earlier, and the many challenges they face. These challenges are often a direct result of our systems policies and demands.
As you'll hear first from Bregetta Wilson from Wisconsin's Department of Children and Families. We will close with Ashlee and Hannah Kirk from Children's Healthy Start program, as they share the roles of child welfare workers, the goals of their services, and the need for more community outreach to build trust and better outcomes. As mentioned earlier by Bryan Samuels, while you are listening to the segment, I'd like you to think about how these child welfare practices and services might address the underlying root causes that we've discussed in our earlier episodes. If you struggled to find answers to that question, how might we pull some of those system levers like policies and resource flow, for example, to change how we serve overloaded families in our child welfare system?
Bregetta Wilson 35:01
When you think about the workforce, and those who get in this work, and you think about it, it can be very stressful, it can be very taxing, there's not enough resources to necessarily support the family that you may be working with. And so, I always go back to no matter what role I've been in to building relationships. And wow, you think about, you know, when you say a parent's rights are terminated, but that parent has showed up at every single, required, or the majority of the required appointments, and we still terminate their rights because of our own timeline. We have our own timeline to say, this family has to be out by this time. But there are social issues that impede that timeline. Housing, employment, going back to our workforce, really getting to know families, which is what our lived experience partners have said, get to know me first, as a person. That's definitely something we hear often, because then it changes your perspective and how you engage with me. And when something comes up down the line, that may impede the timeline for me getting my children back, because we hold ourselves to certain timelines.
But that looks different for families based off of that case manager's ambiguity, based off of that race of the family, based off a lot of different factors when we look at a parent's rights, who has been terminated, and a parent who is reunified with their children. And so really looking at how do we continue to build these relationships with families and, and give our child welfare professionals the permission to be human?
I always say, we dehumanize ourselves in this work, because it's so systematic. But sometimes a parent just needs to hear, you know, it's gonna be okay. Let me give you a hug, you know, pre-COVID days and even post-COVID days. You know, how can we be humans to people who have just a little bit more challenges than sometimes ourselves? How do we put ourselves in their situation, to really be mindful of other factors that are outside of my control and their control that is influencing their success?
Ashlee Jackson 37:45
The overall goal of the Family Support program is to empower and advocate for our families, to provide the safety and stability and well-being for their children. Services that we provide are Parent-Child Interactions, so that's supervised observation of interactions when there is those instances or reports of child abuse or neglect that are occurring, we're observing for them and making sure kids stay safe. Parenting education. And then we also do provide, you know, home safety controls. We have an in-home service Intensive In-Home services that are provided for families that are kind of on that cusp of there may be neglect that's occurring, or at a high risk for such but they're willing to participate in our program, and have that guidance and support so that the children aren't removed and TPC, temporary physical custody, isn't taken.
I think the greatest impact is that support, that awareness, that knowing that they're not the only families going through these things, as well as education, when it comes to nurturing parenting and understanding that, you know, we always say there's no book on parenting, there's no one book, you know, there's 1000s of books. However, what it is that we can tailor to this family and what they already know and their strengths and build on that. versus, you know, this is what you should be doing. That's what parenting looks like, as it's not the same for all of our families. And I really think that our parenting groups help with that.
Hannah Kirk 39:12
You know, the stigma that comes with CPS, and I think that if we can change the narrative of what CPS does, right, because a lot of our clients think we're coming in we're taking their children, they don't understand why or we're taking them because of X,Y and Z, or we're taking them because of no reason at all. I really think community outreach and making ourselves more available to the community would be beneficial all around for anybody, as the professional, or as the families that we're working with and providing some informal supports that we partner with, right, rather than this child being removed, for in the home, and now we're addressing it, and now we're making those connections.
But maybe setting up a booth at a fair and saying, Hey, like, you have questions about housing, this is what we would have to offer. You have something, you know, in relation to child care. This is, this is what we would prefer to being more proactive, I think, is key. And I think it's been trying over the last two years because of the pandemic. Um, it definitely didn't help any. But I don't think that people be should become discouraged because of that. I mean, we're hopefully coming around the bend. And we're able to get back out there in the community and really make our presence known because I think that if families knew about services, or people they could call on right for X, Y, and Z that they're struggling with, before getting to the point of CPS intervention, I think that we could really be more impactful and lessen the load for these families.
Luke Waldo 41:16
I want to begin my closing today by acknowledging that today's episode was heavy and short on optimism. It was important to first immerse ourselves in understanding what is holding the problem in place before we moved to tackle this social challenge of family separations for reasons of neglect. That said, part two of this episode will offer reasons for optimism as it identifies many current efforts and opportunities for meaningful systems change.
I hope that the conversations today have us all thinking about how our systems drivers are deeply interdependent. Our policies often determine how our programs and services are delivered and funded. Our mental models and power dynamics often determine how we develop our policies. And our relationships often determine how we think about and treat those sitting at our tables. Overloaded families face many challenges in our country, as do the systems that serve them. While complex and often overwhelming, I ask you to consider one of the many challenges that you heard today, and ask yourself how you might become that protective factor that Julie talked about. Then come back next week for part two of this episode to learn more about the opportunities to improve our systems and outcomes for families.
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. This episode left me asking myself, if we all lived Julie's opening statement and treated child neglect as everyone's problem, How might we spend those $33 billion that we dedicate to the child welfare system each year? Would we really wait until a child didn't have what they needed to be safe, healthy and thriving?
2. Our society places a tremendous responsibility on overloaded families who are living with generational trauma, poverty, and oppression to change. However, as we have explored in this podcast, the systems that they rely upon to change can be shaped by harmful and false assumptions, often steeped in racial bias about overloaded families. Those assumptions or mental models are often underlying how we develop the policies and practices that might help those families overcome their challenges.
And 3. There are so many good people working really hard in these systems, from child welfare workers and mandated reporters to community leaders and families themselves. They deserve more support in the form of smarter policies and practices that reduce the economic and stress burden on the families they serve; and that position them to divert families from family separation to opportunities of empowerment and prosperity. These changes will depend on whether we address the power dynamics and mistrust that have served as barriers to this needed progress.
Thank you for joining us for part one of our fifth episode. We hope that you will come back and listen to part two next week as we explore effective strategies and opportunities for systems change. 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 44:35
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 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.