Over the past 30 years, we have seen a 60% decline in physical and sexual abuse of children across the United States. At the same time, we have only seen a 10% decline in child neglect. We have also seen poverty remain stubbornly persistent while learning that 85% of families investigated by the Child Protective Services live at or below 200% of the federal poverty line. As we have learned over these years about the positive impacts of social connections on our well-being and ability to manage stress and crises, we have also seen social isolation grow across our country. These realities have motivated us over the past three years of our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative and the first two seasons of this podcast series to build a shared understanding of neglect, its underlying roots causes, and the social and systemic critical pathways we may take to advance promising solutions. This year and this season of the podcast, we confront these complex realities where, too often, overloaded families are expected to beat the odds that have been stacked against them; and we explore how we might change the conditions so that we improve the odds for children and families to thrive. To do that, we must ask, how might we transform our systems, create a prevention ecosystem, and center families as the experts they are and the changemakers they should be? And why now?
Over the past 30 years, we have seen a 60% decline in physical and sexual abuse of children across the United States. At the same time, we have only seen a 10% decline in child neglect. We have also seen poverty remain stubbornly persistent while learning that 85% of families investigated by the Child Protective Services live at or below 200% of the federal poverty line. As we have learned over these years about the positive impacts of social connections on our well-being and ability to manage stress and crises, we have also seen social isolation grow across our country.
These realities have motivated us over the past three years of our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative and the first two seasons of this podcast series to build a shared understanding of neglect, its underlying roots causes, and the social and systemic critical pathways we may take to advance promising solutions.
This year and this season of the podcast, we confront these complex realities where, too often, overloaded families are expected to beat the odds that have been stacked against them; and we explore how we might change the conditions so that we improve the odds for children and families to thrive.
To do that, we must ask, how might we transform our systems, create a prevention ecosystem, and center families as the experts they are and the changemakers they should be?
And why now?
Today’s episode included the following speakers (in the order they appear):
Host: Luke Waldo
Experts:
:00–2:33 - Luke Waldo
Over the past 30 years, we have seen a 60% decline in physical and sexual abuse of children across the United States. At the same time, we have only seen a 10% decline in child neglect. We have also seen poverty remain stubbornly persistent while learning that 85% of families investigated by the Child Protective Services live at or below 200% of the federal poverty line. As we have learned over these years about the positive impacts of social connections on our well-being and ability to manage stress and crises, we have also seen social isolation grow across our country.
These realities have motivated us over the past three years of our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative and the first two seasons of this podcast series to build a shared understanding of neglect, its underlying roots causes, and the social and systemic critical pathways we may take to advance promising solutions.
This year and this season of the podcast, we confront these complex realities where, too often, overloaded families are expected to beat the odds that have been stacked against them; and we explore how we might change the conditions so that we improve the odds for children and families to thrive.
To do that, we must ask, how might we transform our systems, create a prevention ecosystem, and center families as the experts they are and the changemakers they should be?
And why now?
2:34-7:29 – Jennifer Jones
In 2022, over 3 million children were investigated for child maltreatment. There is great disproportionality for Black children as 50% will be investigated in their childhood by the child welfare system. We invest too little in prevention.
We know that child welfare reform is happening across the country to provide better outcomes for children and families already in the system or entering today. But we also know that we have to move further upstream.
We also know that social connectedness and Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) are essential to long-term well-being. So we don’t want to just prevent bad things from happening, we want to promote PCEs.
We need to address the context within which children and families live rather than just focusing on the individual challenges. We need to address the systemic issues.
7:30-8:27 – Kate Luster
“In Rock County, about 22% of our families in in involved in child welfare services are Black African-American families, whereas only 7% of our county population is represented by Black families. And so we have overrepresentation at sort of every step of every level of decision making within the child welfare continuum, reports to access screened-in reports, investigations, separations, and out of home placements, et cetera. So we know we are we're not alone in that. Those are statistics that show up ah across the state and across the country. And we feel committed to prioritizing addressing those disparities in our work moving forward.”
8:28-10:06 - Allison Thompson
One in eight Americans live in poverty. And even with a full-time job, most families working minimum wage jobs still can't meet their basic needs. In fact, across many US cities, a parent of two children making the minimum wage would need to work between two to four minimum wage jobs just to make ends meet without benefits. And even with benefits, a parent working a full-time minimum wage job with two children typically experiences a $3,000 to $5,000 gap each month between their basic cost of living and their income and benefits.
To make matters worse, nearly half of all families with annual incomes of less than $25,000 a year also experience pretty significant income volatility, which means that their income each month is prone to both rapid and unpredictable change.
Each month, families are often forced to make hard decisions to survive, decisions about paying utility bills or purchasing more costly, healthy foods. paying co-pays for their own medication versus paying their rent. And the bottom line is that neither the labor market nor the social safety net in the US is sufficient to keep families out of poverty. More is needed.
10:07-10:30 – Samantha Copus
“It’s the child welfare system, not the parent welfare system. Who’s going to be looking after these parents who are looking out for their children?”
10:31-11:11 - Allison Thompson
Increasingly, we also know that economic and material hardship are significant predictors of child welfare involvement. This shows up as neglect often in the child welfare system. penalizing families for not having the means or resources necessary to make up for these market failures or government shortcomings. This type of neglect suggests that addressing inadequate economic resources should be one of the core set of tools for families when aiming to prevent child welfare involvement and out-of-home placement. So guaranteed income has emerged as an evidence-informed strategy to alleviate some of the burden that families bear as a result of the market failures and safety net shortcomings.”
11:13-12:18 - Blake Roberts Crall
“And I really believe that our social safety net in this country plays a huge, huge role in helping to ensure financial security for our families and their well-being. So that's a really important part of our social infrastructure that we need, um and it does it does a lot for families and for children. And at the same time, there's still so much more to do because there are families that are still struggling. We know that people are not able to make ends meet.
And I think that there's an opportunity to look at our social safety net and figure out ways that we can make it better, make it more accessible, more inclusive, and provide more resources to families. It seems pretty crazy to me that you can be working in this country full time or working more than full time and still not be able to pay all of your bills and still to be struggling financially. The term working poor, we hear that a lot. That's literally people are working, but still under that poverty line. So for me, there's a lot of opportunity to be doing something different and really to think about how can we build systems of care and well-being for everyone. And I think guaranteed income or basic income is one possible tool that we can add in our toolbox.”
12:19-13:16 - Jennifer Jones
The Theory of Change shifts to building and aligning a prevention ecosystem to create the conditions so all children and families can thrive. We want them to have what they need, when they need it, in the places where they need it.
13:17-14:34 – Bryan Samuels
People come upon good ideas, they spend as much time as they can, but then often have to move on. After George Floyd’s murder, there was a moment where real change was demanded around equity for our communities. So Chapin Hall began focusing on how authentic systems transformation through community engagement occurs.
14:36-15:30 - Luke Waldo
Why is the authentic integration of Lived Experience into our systems and organizations’ decision-making and power-sharing needed today?
15:32-15:46 - Anthony Barrows
“I’ve been on the inside of these systems. I’ve seen how they can positively transform people’s lives when they work and chew up and spit out people when they don’t work.”
15:47-15:55 - Samantha Copus
“The single most frustrating thing is screaming and feeling like no one can hear you.”
15:57-16:58 – Marlo Nash
The current transactional state of Lived Experience in our systems practices. We need to move away from this, and yet there isn’t a guidebook or crystal-clear path.
16:59-17:41 - Laura Radel
“But there is a lot of excitement in many of the groups around the expansion of authentic engagement. I think that was a key theme that was coming out. However, folks are struggling within their organizations about making a true culture shift, and moving from a rallying cry to real action, more upstream in our processes and activities, and moving from storytelling and commenting mostly on the back end and on tentative decisions that our organizations have already started to make instead of engaging folks early and often, and with true power-sharing from the beginning.”
17:42-18:43 – Jaclyn Gilstrap
How do we address the harm when it happens, not if it happens? How do we do this for real, for real? People with lived experience confront many barriers, so how do we address this?
18:44-19:27 – Norma Hatfield
True collaboration requires that we work together from the beginning of a process all the way until we are done building something together. House metaphor.
19:28-19:54 – Andry Sweet
Co-creation requires that we really listen.
19:55-20:48
Dean Ramona Denby-Brinson – Lived experience is a way of knowing. Moving away from the transactional nature of these relationships. We want the same for our families – health, happiness, and hope.
20:49-21:04 - Anthony Barrows
Who isn’t being listened to in your work?
21:05-21:36 - Marlo Nash
People with lived experience are willing to share their stories, often traumatic, but also their expertise to make changes that will improve outcomes for children and families now and for future generations.
21:39-21:54 - Luke Waldo – Closing and Gratitude
21:56-23:00 Luke Waldo - 3 Key Takeaways
23:07-24:30 - Luke Waldo – Closing Credits
Join the conversation and connect with us!
Luke Waldo 00:00
Welcome to season 3 of Overloaded: Understanding Neglect, where we explore how we might change the conditions that overload families with stress, so that families can thrive and children grow up with a strong foundation built on positive childhood experiences.
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.
As you heard in this season’s trailer, over the past 30 years, we have seen a 60% decline in physical and sexual abuse of children across the United States. At the same time, we have only seen a 10% decline in child neglect. We have also seen poverty remain stubbornly persistent while learning that 85% of families investigated by the Child Protective Services live at or below 200% of the federal poverty line. As we have learned over these years about the positive impacts of social connections on our well-being and ability to manage stress and crises, we have also seen social isolation grow across our country.
These realities have motivated us over the past three years of our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative and the first two seasons of this podcast series to build a shared understanding of neglect, its underlying roots causes, and the social and systemic critical pathways we may take to advance promising solutions.
This year and this season of the podcast, we confront these complex realities where, too often, overloaded families are expected to beat the odds that have been stacked against them; and we explore how we might change the conditions so that we improve the odds for children and families to thrive.
To do that, we must ask, how might we transform our systems, create a prevention ecosystem, and center families as the experts they are and the changemakers they should be?
And why now?
In this opening episode, you will hear answers to those questions from each of the guests that you will hear this season.
In this opening segment, you will hear from Jennifer Jones, Kate Luster, Allison Thompson, Samantha Copus, Blake Roberts Crall, and Bryan Samuels.
Jennifer Jones 02:34
in 2022 over 3 million children were investigated for child abuse or neglect in this country, and of those children, over 550,000 were considered victims of child abuse and neglect, and 74% of those were for neglect. So we know that almost 40% of all children in this country are subjected to a child welfare investigation for white kids, it's 28% and for black kids, it's significantly higher at 53% so over half of black children in this country experience a child welfare investigation before they are 18. Families lacking income and resources for basic needs are often referred to the child welfare system for neglect, and we know that this disproportionately impacts black and indigenous families.
So all of this combined, right? We know that too many families are being subjected to harmful investigations. We know that too many families are being separated due to a range of things that could be addressed earlier, like poverty, there's great disproportionality, especially for black children and families, and overall, there is too little investment in prevention in this country.
And so we know that child welfare system reform work is happening, right? It's happening all over the country. It remains critical to ensure better outcomes for families and young people who are already in the system and who are entering every day. But we also know that the broad set of factors that are impacting families, again, many of which are tied to poverty that they must be addressed sooner.
So we also know that loving, insecure relationships, feeling a sense of belonging, participating in community traditions, all of these positive childhood experiences are critical for long term health and well-being and and some of the research that I've done, and others continue to do, and I continue to do that the more positive childhood experiences you have, the less likely you are to experience negative outcomes in adulthood, even despite having adverse childhood experiences or a high ACEs score.
So we don't only want to prevent the bad things from happening, we need to promote and grow the good things. So child abuse and neglect is solvable and preventable. If we support families before they are in crisis, we can prevent child abuse and neglect. If we are willing to address the social determinants of health, like poverty and systemic racism, however, historically in our country and in our prevention field, what we have consistently overlooked are these systemic issues that are inherent in people's lives, like I mentioned, poverty, racism, lack of affordable and safe housing.
So as a result, for decades, our interventions and policy responses have really been directed towards individual behaviors, and they don't address these systemic issues that we know are contributing to generations of trauma in this country. So it's essential, and it's imperative that if we're going to make any movement or move the needle on any of these outcomes, to change these cycles of intergenerational trauma, that we not only have to address these individual traumas and adversities that people have experienced, but it is essential and critical that we're addressing the context in which people live and the systems that they interact with.
So all of all of these things we know, right? And this is why we believe, at Prevent Child Abuse America, that now is the time for a bold and innovative approach to prevention in this country. This is why PCA America's theory of change for primary prevention in the US is so needed right now in our history.
So our theory of change represents a new comprehensive approach to guide primary prevention practice, to guide the broader field, and to change the way we function and support the well-being of children and families. This shift allows us to move again from this individual level interventions that help children and families, quote, beat the odds right, to building an aligned and comprehensive primary prevention ecosystem in this country that can actually change the odds for current and future generations.
Kate Luster 07:31
In Rock County, about about 22% of our families involved in child welfare services are black African American families, whereas only 7% of our county population is represented by black families. And so we have over representation at sort of every step of every level of decision making within the child welfare continuum, reports to access, screened in reports, investigations, separations and so out of home, placements, etc. So we we know we are we're not alone in that, those are statistics that show up across the state and across the country, and we feel committed to prioritizing addressing those disparities in our our in our work moving forward.
Dr. Allison Thompson 08:28
One in eight Americans live in poverty, and even with a full time job, most families working minimum wage jobs still can't meet their basic needs. In fact, across many US cities, a parent of two children making the minimum wage would need to work between two to four minimum wage jobs just to make ends meet, without benefits and even with benefits, a parent working a full-time minimum wage job with two children typically experiences a 3 to $5,000 gap each month between their basic cost of living and their income and benefits.
To make matters worse, nearly half of all families with annual incomes of less than $25,000 a year also experience pretty significant income volatility, which means that their income each month is prone to both rapid and unpredictable change. This might be because families are working hourly waged jobs or doing gig work with unpredictable hours, or it could be that their jobs do not provide paid time off, leading to decreased income when parents’ children get sick. But this income volatility puts families in really tough positions each month. Families are often forced to make hard decisions to survive, decisions about paying utility bills or purchasing more costly healthy foods, paying co pays for their own medication versus paying their rent. And the bottom line is that neither the labor market and. The social safety net in the US is sufficient to keep families out of poverty. More is needed.
Samantha Copus 10:06
Parenting in general can be so isolating, you become someone different, your life circumstances change. When you think of the parents that are impacted by these systems and once they're in this system. I mean, it's the child welfare system, right? It's not the parent welfare system. Who's looking out for these parents that are going to be looking out for these children.
Dr. Allison Thompson 10:30
Increasingly, we also know that economic and material hardship are significant predictors of child welfare involvement. This shows up as neglect, often in the child welfare system penalizing families for not having the means or resources necessary to make up for these market failures or government shortcomings. This type of neglect suggests that addressing inadequate economic resources should be one of the core set of tools for families when aiming to prevent child welfare involvement and out of home placement. So guaranteed income has emerged as an evidence informed strategy to alleviate some of the burden that families bear as a result of the market failures and safety net shortcomings.
Blake Roberts Crall 11:14
Our social safety net in this country plays a huge, huge role in helping to ensure financial security for families and their well-being. So that's a really important part of our social infrastructure that we we need, and it does, it does a lot for families and for children, and at the same time, there's still so much more to do, because there are families that are still struggling. We know that people are not able to make ends meet, and I think that there's an opportunity to look at our social safety net and figure out ways that we can make it better, make it more accessible, more inclusive, and provide more resources to families. So for me, there's a lot of opportunity to be doing something different, and really to think about, how can we build systems of care and well-being for everyone? And I think guaranteed income, or basic income, is one possible tool that we can add in our toolbox.
Jennifer Jones 12:20
Primary prevention is about creating the conditions for all children and families and communities to thrive. It's addressing the social determinants of health. We don't just want to prevent kids and families from coming to the attention of our nation's child welfare system. We want to reach them before they are in crisis, so they have what they need when they need it in the communities in which they live. We want to ensure that all children and families are living a purposeful and happy life with hope for the future. We believe that we need a drastically different approach to supporting families, ensuring what they need to be happy, healthy and economically secure. We must change how our society values and cares for all children and families, and in doing this, we will write the next chapter of primary prevention in this country,
Bryan Samuels 13:16
There are these waves of insight that occur. People come upon an idea, they noodle on it, they do some work on it, they make some progress on it, and then they move on to the next idea. But give them a little bit of time, and they'll come back to this good idea, and they'll do a little bit more work on it, and then go away. And it felt like to me that during the pandemic, during the uprise related to George Floyd understanding the kind of the social unrest that existed in the country, that this was going to be another instance where we return to the question of, how can we make services more effective and efficient? How can we make them more equitable?
And so the work that Chapin Hall did in this space was really motivated out of a sense that there was a window of opportunity to contribute to the growth and change and direction for the country, and to bring some unique insight into specifically how systems go about changing themselves in order to respond to the needs of a diverse population of families that they serve.
Luke Waldo 14:38
In this second segment, you will hear many different perspectives as to why the authentic integration of Lived Experience into our systems and organizations’ decision-making and power-sharing is needed today. Two of our synthesizers from the Wicked Problems convening will share the many themes that were discussed across groups throughout that inspiring day.
You will hear from Anthony Barrows from the Network of Intersectional Professionals; Marlo Nash from Children’s Home Society of America, Laura Radel from the US Department of Health and Human Services; Jaclyn Gilstrap from A Visual Approach; Norma Hatfield from Generations United; Andry Sweet from Children's Home Society of Florida; and Dean Ramona Denby-Brinson from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Work.
Anthony Barrows 15:33
You name the system, I've probably been on the inside of it, and I've seen how those systems can positively transform people's lives when they work well, and how they can chew people up and spit them out when they don't.
Samantha Copus 15:46
Parents aren't wrong about how they feel when they're in the system, and the single most frustrating piece can be like feeling like you're screaming and no one can hear you.
Marlo Nash 15:57
A lot of well-intentioned folks invite someone with lived expertise to open a conference or meeting and tell a story that you know effectively pulls people into the conversation and touches people's hearts, but then that often that person is, you know, not invited to stay for the whole convening. And so you've, you've, you've extracted this story from them and made a very transactional situation. Often they are not even paid. So I think sometimes there's a conference where the speaker, the keynote speaker, might be getting several $1,000 and the lived expert who comes to open the meeting gets a $25 gift card, if at all, and and I think that's the kind of that transactional, kind of extractive approach we're really trying to move away from, and we recognize that it's not crystal clear how to do that. There's no guidebook.
Laura Radel 16:58
There's a real excitement around the expansion of authentic engagement, I think that was a key theme that was coming out. However, folks are struggling within their organizations about making a true culture shift and moving from a rallying cry to real action more upstream in our processes and activities and moving from storytelling and commenting mostly on the back end, on tentative decisions that organizations have already started to make, instead of engaging folks early and often and with true power sharing from the beginning.
Jaclyn Gilstrap 17:42
How do we address the harm when it happens, not if it happens, when? How do we address that and move through it? How do we do this for real, for real? Like we love talking about it, we're good talking about it, but how do we actually do it for real? Change, action, transparency, accountability, fair payment. It's not just going to be one or two, it's going to be many, and not only strategies, but voices. We really need to listen deeply, even when it's stuff we don't want to hear. Sometimes the stuff that people have to share is going to be hard for us, and we need to listen and act, acknowledging that the people with lived experience that are a part of this work are experiencing lots of red tape, lots of other barriers to their participation. Folks with accessibility needs are are experiencing barriers to participation. So how do we plan for those, those needs that are both visible and invisible?
Norma Hatfield 18:44
Before you start something, you need to have that involvement, that engagement, and it needs to be a partnership, you know. You want to build me a house, you need to make sure I really need one. And where do I need one? And then what does that look like? How do I use it? And what happens, oftentimes, is somebody decides to go on and build that foundation and frame it all out, and then when they ask my opinion, they may find out that they've got to go drop some walls, and they've got to go change everything, and they don't want to do that. So then it doesn't get used the way it really should be used. So I just look at the collaboration as a partnership that should start at the very beginning of the concept stage and then continue until you're done
Andry Sweet 19:29
Building houses and cookies, those, those mental models really do describe, I think, what we are trying to achieve right that that it's part of the design process is part it's not coming in after the fact and reflecting on what the system should be after it's already built. It's really co creating it together, you know, and honoring that and really listening, really listening,
Ramona Denby-Brinson 19:53
Lived experience is a way of knowing and we should recognize it for what it is. It's one of the most powerful ways that we know and that we can serve our families and our communities. And I'm just encouraged how we have all agreed that we're going to move away from this very transactional approach that we have with our children and families, and we have to show up in very different ways. And first and foremost, we show up with respect, and we show up with elevating the expertise and recognizing the importance and that the outcomes that we hope for our children and families, those with lived experience, are no different than the outcomes we want for all of our families, health, we want strength, we want happiness, and in that respect, we are truly all the same.
Anthony Barrows 20:48
What are those forms of diversity that matter in your context? What are those experiential categories, especially that affective diversity, that might be important to tap into, and really who isn't being heard already when it comes to lived experience in your work?
Marlo Nash 21:06
People with lived expertise are willing to be in this work and say, Hey, not only can we tell you our stories, but we can also be in this work to help you better understand how to partner with us so that our full scope of who we are, not just our story, our traumatic story, but also our interest in helping make a change happen and seeing our story lead to new outcomes that matter for people today and future generations.
Luke Waldo 21:39
I would like to begin this season by expressing my profound gratitude to all this season's guests for sharing their time and expertise with me and you. But more importantly, I am deeply grateful for their commitment to improving the lives of children and families across our state and country.
I hope that this season's opening episode and insight have you thinking more about why now is the time to transform our systems, build a primary prevention ecosystem, and center communities and families in power and change making to improve the conditions for overloaded families and prevent family separations for reasons of neglect.
As always, I wanted to highlight three key takeaways to reflect on as we move into our next episodes.
Thank you for joining us for today’s episode. We hope that you will come back and listen next week as we continue to explore how we might change the conditions that overload families with stress, so that families can thrive and children grow up with positive childhood experiences.
If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share with friends, family and colleagues. Also, leave us a rating or comment so that we can see your reaction and reach more people.
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.
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.