Building a Smaller, Fairer, and Better Child Welfare System, with Christine James-Brown

Season 4, Episode 17

“Building a Smaller, Fairer, and Better Child Welfare System,” with Christine James-Brown

[music begins]

[intro]

Hi, I’m Teresa Huizar, your host of One in Ten. In today’s episode, “Building a Smaller, Fairer, and Better Child Welfare System,” I speak with Christine James-Brown, the president and CEO of Child Welfare League of America [CWLA].

Now over the last several years, we’ve become more and more aware of the challenges and—let’s face it—the inadequacies of the child welfare system. Disproportionality is real—the way in which families of color can be caught up in the system at rates that truly boggle the mind. And how about worker shortages, which are also real and tax those still on the front line. And more than ever, the CPS [child protective services] system has become the system of last resort for families failed by every other system. But what are we going to do about it?

Now some have suggested just essentially turning a blind eye, going on the same as we always have done. And still others want to abolish it. Throw out everything; have no CPS system at all. But what if we instead took a much harder task and a much more difficult road and reimagined and reformed it instead?

How do we address racial inequities within the system? How do we add youth voices and those with lived experience in a meaningful way into program planning? And how do we learn from the data what works and eliminate practices that clearly don’t?

Curious to learn more? Then lean into this wide-ranging conversation with one of the foremost experts on child welfare. I know you’ll be as interested as I was. Please take a listen.

 

[1:51] Teresa Huizar:
Hi, Chris. Welcome to One in Ten.

Christine James-Brown:
Oh, thanks for having me.

Teresa Huizar: So now I remember sitting with you, maybe even over a glass of wine and hearing about how you came into child welfare, but since our listeners weren’t there having glass of wine with us, maybe I’ll let you tell us all: How did you come to this?

Christine James-Brown:
My career for most of my life was with the United Way. And I was head of the United Way International and headed the United Way in Greater Philadelphia area. And throughout that career, I had a kind of focus on children and families and communities, and it always seemed to me that that needed to be my primary focus.

So I went to United Way global actually to facilitate a merger with the United Way of America. And once that was finalized, I was fortunate enough to be recruited to come to the Child Welfare League of America. Not because I had deep understanding of child welfare, which I did not at the time, but the organization was going through some organizational issues and I had run large not-for-profits for a long time.

So I think it was that combined with my passion for children and families that both resulted in my wanting to come and my being successful in getting the position.

[3:07] Teresa Huizar:
Well, and we’re so glad you did on all counts. So one of the things that you and I started kind of chatting back and forth about by email, which is what brings us to this conversation, was really that one of the critical issues that child welfare is dealing with overall is minority overrepresentation in child welfare.

And so for those of our listeners who might not know as much about this as you do, and as we do now, just how big a problem is this?

Christine James-Brown:
So I think it’s a big problem in child welfare, but I think, as I think you and I have chatted about, it’s a big problem in our country.

Teresa Huizar:
Yes, that’s right.

Christine James-Brown:
And what we need to understand as it relates to child welfare is that we’re kind of the place where children and families end up when other systems fail them.

And so the context in which child welfare works is one where we see a lot of inequities: In education. In employment. In health care. And all of these things can drive families into situations where they can neglect their children. Mental health issues can develop. So it’s the context in which child welfare is working that has resulted in a significant percentage of children of color—in particular, Black children—are overrepresented in child welfare, as they are overrepresented in the worst parts of the health care system, the worst parts of education. So it shouldn’t be a surprise to us.

It was pretty jarring to me when I started here, Teresa—and I don’t remember if we talked about this. As an African American woman, when the child welfare system started to be talked about as being racist and “defund child welfare,” it was pretty jarring.

Because I had felt that we were trying as a system to get better. And we were always kind of treading water. You know, sometimes we would reduce the number of children in care for a while, and then it would creep back up. And we were looking too narrowly, I think, at our own system alone, without understanding all the things in a larger world that we need to work on as a system. That were creating a greater number of children of color coming into our system.

So let’s take an example of Louisiana and [Hurricane] Katrina, and we saw right on TV the disproportionate impact of that storm on children and families of color. Many of those families that were already teetering ended up not being able to do what they needed to do for their children.

So of course you were going to see more children coming into that system of color. So I think what we need to do in child welfare, is better understand the context in which our children and families are living.

But then we need to understand that the same racism that is in our country is in our system.

You can’t live in this country and not have some impact on how you think about people of color, how you think about, perhaps, single moms. Or moms with multiple children. So that implicit bias that we walk around with—every one of us—is in our system. And we happen to be working with people where we need to really check that bias.

The nature of the work we do—I mean, we are very crucial to families on both sides. You know, we’re crucial in terms of what we can do for them. And we’re crucial in terms of the harm we can do. So if any system needs to be very, very careful about our bias, it’s our system.

[6:45] Teresa Huizar:
It’s so interesting in what you’re saying, because you are touching on two things that I think are important. And often in conversation, only one gets talked about.

Christine James-Brown:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
One is the rolling up of disparities that exist in society, and all of that pools within the child welfare system.

Christine James-Brown:
Right.

Teresa Huizar:
And, you know, the breakdowns in every one of those systems result in kids winding up in care. But then there’s this piece of it that really is about racism.

And so how do we bring those discussions in a holistic way together? Because I think often the people that are talking about one aspect of that are not talking about the other. Or if they’re working on one aspect of that, they’re not necessarily working on the other.

I’m wondering, you know, this has been talked about for a while.

Christine James-Brown:
Yes.

Teresa Huizar:
It’s not like the first conversations around this cropped up two years ago or three years ago now. What do you think—I mean, to me, it feels like there are more people than ever working on this issue.

Christine James-Brown:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
Which, you know, I see as positive. What do you see as sort of the galvanizing reason that so many people are actively working on it today?

Christine James-Brown:
I think it was a convergence of the pandemic and the issues around racism with the police murders. I think all those things came together right in front of us, right on national TV. So we could see it and feel it. So I think that that’s kind of what galvanized everyone to have to start thinking about it.

I also think that part of the problem with all of this is our fear of how we’re thought about—

Teresa Huizar:
Hmm.

Christine James-Brown:
—as people and as a system, which sometimes gets in the way of the clarity that we need to really work on this issue. I think if we feel that people think we’re racist and that makes us angry, we’re not going to be able to really work on the problem with the kind of clarity that we need.

And the issue of race is so emotional. You know, it’s so difficult for people to grapple with. And when you add to that the complexity of the child welfare system, the fact that on the one hand, we want to make sure that children get to stay with their family so we can reduce the trauma that can come from removing them.

But on the other hand, we want to make sure that children are safe and that they’re saved the trauma of not being removed if they’re in an abusive situation. So how do you manage those two things, and how do you do it with the young workforce that we have? You know, the undertrained, underpaid, underrecognized workforce that right now is under fire, right, from all sides.

And so, first of all, I think we need to listen more to communities and to families about what they want to see. I’ve been amazed by how much we’ve changed as we’ve started to do more of that as an organization. And me as a person, that was—it was less for me because my background is anthropology. So the way I approach everything is listening to people, working with people, being a part of it. But I think child welfare and my organization and people around me who bring that same kind of interest are doing more of it. And it’s really changed how we look at things, right? But even that what you hear from youth is different from what you hear from the parents.

Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm.

Christine James-Brown:
And so you’ve got to measure all of that and weigh all of that. And I also think that—and I’d love your thoughts on this, Teresa. I think child welfare always wants the silver bullet. We always want to do the one thing that we think is going to do the greatest good. So we either want to reduce foster care, or we want to increase this or do that, or start this new program.

The diversity of needs that families have means we need to do everything.

Teresa Huizar:
Sure.

Christine James-Brown:
We can talk about prevention and being a more prevention-focused system, as we should be. But there’s going to be a lot of people who need treatment and care.

And think about how we think about hospitals. Do we say, “OK. It’s all going to be about prevention. You know, Blue Cross wants us to be focused on prevention. Let’s shut down all the emergency rooms.” Right?

I can remember working on housing issues and homeless issues and people saying, “OK, now that we’re going to think about it in a different way, we shouldn’t have any more shelters.” But what happens in the middle of the night when there’s a fire, right? And people need a shelter for some amount of time. So somehow we’ve got to be able to think about the full range of needs that people have and try to address them at the same time we’re dealing with the issues of equity and the changing demands of equity.

I mean, think about it. The Latino population is growing, in this country, increasingly diverse because they’re coming from different countries. So there’s no Latino population. You know, it’s all different countries. But within the African American community, the same thing is happening. I mean, when I walk out my door, I’m in Virginia. There are as many people that look like me that are from a different country as those that look like me that are from the U.S., right? So I have people from Ghana and, you know, all over the place, and they have different cultural needs and interests. So when we and child welfare are thinking about disproportionality and all, we’ve got to be really careful to understand how we’re going to work within these big buckets of groups that we’re dealing with.

[Cross-talk]

Christine James-Brown:
So we’ve got a lot we’ve got to figure out.

[12:16] Teresa Huizar:
[Laughter.] You’re not going anywhere for a long time, I think. It’s job security.

One of the things I was thinking as you were talking is, you know, as you say there’s a lot that has to happen. But what do you think are kind of the key ingredients when a community is thinking about, “How do we make this shift?” or a state is thinking about, “Look, we can set defensiveness aside for a moment, right? And see that our system is not all that we want it to be.”

Christine James-Brown:
Right.

Teresa Huizar:
“And we want to make some improvements.” You know, where do you start with that?

Christine James-Brown:
So I think we need to start by looking at what we’re doing for families to keep them strong. You know, what has the state done around SNAP, you know, food program? What has the state done around earned income tax credits?

Not what the feds have done, but within the states you can do things—

Teresa Huizar:
Yes.

Christine James-Brown:
—and make those programs reach more or do more for people. Or be more readily available. So we’ve had to look carefully at what we have in our communities and in our state to support families. I think that’s number one. If we give families more support that will lead us far forward.

But that in and of itself is not enough. There’s also the need to pay attention to safety. Right? So that means that everybody in the community needs to be paying attention to that. I’m not talking about through a surveillance lens. I’m talking about through a protective factors lens, right? So if you are a neighbor and you see that the single mom next door has a new baby and that baby’s sick, you need to pay more attention to that mom and offer that mom more support. We need to be paying attention to what’s happening to our families and people in our community.

And the same thing with schools. You know, if you see that a school is struggling, what can you do as someone in that community to help that school to be part of the community in a whole different way?

So I think we’ve got to all recognize that child welfare is different from the welfare of children. A system cannot take care of the welfare of children. We as citizens and as a community need to do that. Child welfare has its role to play, and I’m not going to minimize it. And its role is primarily around safety of children, and I think of leveraging what communities can do to both keep family and children safe, but also to support families.

And there’s a lot we can do.

[14:44] Teresa Huizar:
How did we kind of lose the idea that civic mindedness was important? Because you know, it is critical. You know, child abuse is a community problem, and in many ways a community failure.

Christine James-Brown:
So I don’t want to go too far off. Right. But I think there’s something about social connections—

Teresa Huizar:
Yes.

Christine James-Brown:
—that have been disrupted in society now. You know, it used to be, you sat out in the front porch, you knew all of your neighbors. And when I walked to school—I’m old enough. I’m older than you, Teresa. So when I walked to school, everybody in the neighborhood was paying attention to me. And if I didn’t do what I was supposed to do, I was going to get reported back to my mom, and my mom was going to take it out on me, not on the person who reported. So you had that social capital in communities that is different now for lots of reasons. The way housing now is designed and all these other things.

Somehow we have to bring that back, the sense of connection in your community. Because that’s the foundation in which you can really make sure you keep children safe. Right? You can’t be afraid to tell your next-door neighbor that you saw their child do something they shouldn’t be doing, or that was dangerous.

And it’s fearful now to say that. I mean, I will admit that I am still trying to practice, you know, social capital and all of that. And I told a neighbor that their two children were driving up and down the driveway, playing chicken with the traffic. And I was the one who they literally told off—

Teresa Huizar:
Oh, dear.

Christine James-Brown:
—for getting in their business. And that’s not unusual, right? So somehow we’ve got to get back to that’s OK. You know, I didn’t say it in a nasty way. I just said, “I don’t want to see the children hit by the car.” So we need to bring that back.

And there’s some artificial ways. There’s this book called Bowling Alone that I love. And I think I’ve told you about—

Teresa Huizar:
Yes.

Christine James-Brown:
—that talks about artificial ways to get people, to reinvent social capital, you know, to start having dinner parties together and to start to bowl in leagues again and not just go out and go bowling alone. It sounds like it’s not connected to child welfare, but it’s part of what we need to do to build the foundation that we need in this country so our system can do the little piece that we need to do, which is the protection. That’s what we were put in place to do.

[16:52] Teresa Huizar:
Well, it seems to me it would have less work to do if we did more of the other, because. You know, 70% of cases are neglect.

Christine James-Brown:
Right.

Teresa Huizar:
Well, what is neglect?

Christine James-Brown:
Right.

Teresa Huizar:
You know, neglect is the absence of a whole host of things that you would want to see.

Christine James-Brown:
Exactly.

Teresa Huizar:
And in many cases, if the community was rallying around families, those things would be in place.

Christine James-Brown:
Exactly.

Teresa Huizar:
There would be adequate food. And there would be adequate health care. And there would be someone to babysit when mom has to go to work unexpectedly. Or, you know, all of those things. So I think it’s one of those things where, on the one hand child welfare is completely bogged down in neglect cases, and those numbers have largely remained unchanged.

Christine James-Brown:
Right.

Teresa Huizar:
It’s not like there’s been a great neglect solution that has, you know, arisen. But we’re missing an opportunity maybe to keep kids from ever going into that system as well.

Christine James-Brown:
There’s a connection, as you know, between neglect and poverty.

Teresa Huizar:
Yes, that’s right.

Christine James-Brown:
Now, not totally, but there is a huge connection between the two. It’s different for older youth. You know, it looks different for older youth.

I think a major resource we don’t have in child welfare is information.

Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm.

Christine James-Brown:
Information that allow us to understand what practices do or do not work. How we can understand different types of population.

So we don’t have the time, but we also don’t have the information to be able to respond to different needs in a different way. So we kind of gloss over things and try to deal with families in buckets, you know: the neglect bucket, the this bucket, the that bucket. So I think it’s all a reflection of a disgraceful and chronic history of neglect of families in this country.

Teresa Huizar:
Hmm.

Christine James-Brown:
We don’t have strong family policies. We don’t have people rushing to understand that every—almost everything that happens now in this country, the impact of the changes in the climate, all these things are doing things to disrupt families and their ability to raise their kids.

But do we talk about it? We don’t. So I think that we should always have this kind of screen in our heads, which I carry around all the time. Every time something happens, I’m thinking, “OK, what’s going to be the impact on the family, and therefore the children?” Right?

[19:05] Teresa Huizar: Well, and what is interesting about that, Chris, is that if we are chronically neglecting families overall, which of the families we’re most neglecting? And are those families then showing up in our neglect stats—

Christine James-Brown:
Of course.

Teresa Huizar:
—of our child welfare system. Right? So, I mean, to your point. These things are all connected—

Christine James-Brown:
They’re connected.

Teresa Huizar:
—together. So you alluded to it earlier in the conversation, but I want to press on it for a moment. I think some people have gotten very frustrated with the system, the child welfare system as a whole.

Christine James-Brown:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
And so there’s a kind of a range of reactions to that. For some it’s, you know, we’re going to reform the system we have. They’re making every effort to do so: Track those changes, try to implement better things in the future. And then there’s the other end of the spectrum, which is sort of abolish CPS. You know, that basically the critique is that the system itself was designed from the foundation to punish families of color, essentially. And that we just need to throw the system out and start all over again, trying to build a better and different system.

And then there’s everything on that continuum.

Christine James-Brown:
Everything in between, right?

Teresa Huizar:
Everything in between.

Christine James-Brown:
Right.

Teresa Huizar:
I’m wondering, you know, sort of, where do you fall on the continuum?

Christine James-Brown:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
What do you think would be beneficial?

Christine James-Brown:
So I think that we need to rebuild the system. I don’t think we should abolish it.

I don’t think in this country—I mean, I think about mental health all the time, and when we decided we needed to abolish the deep mental health system, you know?

Teresa Huizar:
Yes. Yes.

Christine James-Brown:
Then what happened? Because we didn’t have anything to replace it.

Teresa Huizar:
That’s right.

Christine James-Brown:
So we had people mentally ill on the street. And then when we got sick of them on the street, we put them in jail, you know, we criminalized being homeless.

And that’s a fear. You know, on the one hand, it would be easier to say, “OK, let’s start all over again.” But I don’t think we can do that. I don’t think we can afford or take the risk to do that. Because too many children could be hurt. The unintended consequences of doing that I think are—for even one child—are terrible.

So I think what we need to do is be thoughtful about how we transform the system to being what it needs to be. And I personally don’t think we should become a prevention system. I think we should be a strong partner and inform with prevention-type groups like yours. I think that you do what you do well.

We should be partnering with you more. And, um, we should not be trying to say we’re now going to become the prevention system. Because parents aren’t going to want to come to child welfare for prevention. Right?

Teresa Huizar:
So true.

Christine James-Brown:
But what we do, we can do well if we had the time and weren’t distracted and stretched. So let’s work on the real problems that we have, of which there are many, with the people who have the greatest challenges. And I think we can uniquely do that. I don’t think that anyone else can reinvent child welfare. I mean, for CWLA we have a hundred years of knowledge of what works, what doesn’t work, and all these other things. Right?

I think we need to rely on that, bring in new people, bring in the families, bring in youth, and say, “OK, how do we reform? How do we take what we have now?” And I think it’s a system that should be operated in partnership with families and partnership with communities, and where everyone should do what they do best.

And we’re not good at prevention. That wasn’t what we were put in place to be. But you know what? I understand the workers in child welfare, excited about the prevention thing, because wouldn’t you rather do that than deal with the most—

Teresa Huizar:
Oh, my goodness gracious.

Christine James-Brown:
—horrible situations that they have to deal with on a day-to-day basis?

Teresa Huizar:
Yes. Yes.

Christine James-Brown:
And that’s what doesn’t get told. You know, you have horrendous things happening to children, not a lot of them, but I mean, horrendous things that are happening to children that every once in a while pop onto the news. But these are every day at a different level occurrences that someone needs to be taking care of.

We can’t say, “Oh, well, let’s just stop having a system to take care of that.” It’s got to be a better system.

[23:08] Teresa Huizar:
I am so glad you said that because one of my own bones to pick is when people describe child welfare work in very generic kinds of ways. And you’re like, well, clearly you don’t know what an actual child abuse case looks like.

Because you know, if you did, if you actually read one of these case files, what actually it takes to get screened in. These are not simple things.

Christine James-Brown:
Right.

Teresa Huizar:
These are not easily fixed situations. They’re often situations that have gotten completely and totally out of hand in ways that are going to be challenging to turn around. Which isn’t to say that we should ever give up on a family or not invest ourselves in that.

But it’s also not like on TV, you know.

Christine James-Brown:
It’s intergenerational.

Teresa Huizar:
Right.

Christine James-Brown:
It’s trauma—

Teresa Huizar:
Yes.

Christine James-Brown:
—that these families have experienced. It’s all these things and, you know trauma very well.

Teresa Huizar:
Yes.

Christine James-Brown:
I know you did a trauma lens, right? And we can’t escape that. The amount of trauma that has occurred in these families generation after generation makes it much more difficult to deal with some of the concerns that they have, right?

So, my only place of upset is a lack of understanding of the need to understand the complexity.

Teresa Huizar:
Yes.

Christine James-Brown:
And that you can do both. It’s always an “and” system, an “and/and” system, not a “either/or” system. Right? You have to have, for example, as much as I would never want to see a child raised in a residential setting, you need some.

Teresa Huizar:
That is true.

Christine James-Brown:
You need some for some children, you know? We can’t just say, “Oh, that’s not good. So let’s just get rid of it.” It’s not good. So let’s reform it, but let’s make sure there’s enough available for those children who need it. And for the older children in our system who want it, they don’t want to go to a foster home, often.

Teresa Huizar:
That’s true.

Christine James-Brown:
They’d rather be in a group home. So, you know, I think we need to figure that all out and not try to make it one size fits all.

[24:56] Teresa Huizar:
I’m wondering, because your membership is large and varied, you know? So there have to be some interesting strategies people have been trying, or some innovations where you’re like, “You know what? I’d like to see others really try that.”

Christine James-Brown:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
What are you seeing that excites you?

Christine James-Brown:
There’s some great work going on across the country. I happen to be part of a group of organizations in New England that are doing some things. And I think a couple of things that they’re doing that I just think it’s remarkable, they have really engaged and involved parents and young people. When you go to their planning meetings, it’s not a token, you know, person with lived experience. It may be 60% of the room.

[Cross-talk]

And that has changed the conversation. It’s put pressure on everyone to think differently and more clearly. So that’s one of the things they’re doing.

And they’ve taken that into the organizations where you have parent partners that are actually working in the organizations on a regular basis. They go out often on the first CPS visit.

Teresa Huizar:
Oh, interesting.

Christine James-Brown:
You know, to give some more comfort to the parent, right? That’s a terrifying thing to happen—

Teresa Huizar:
Of course.

Christine James-Brown:
—whether you did something or not. Right. So that I think is really, really an important thing happening.

The other thing is the fact that so many are looking at, as you said, neglect. In Pennsylvania, they’re looking carefully at neglect. In, probably there are four or five states that are doing it in particular.

Some of them are dividing or trying to make a division so that when a family comes, if the neglect is driven by poverty, they don’t even touch the child welfare system. And they go on a different track where they try to address the, you know, address the tangible needs that they have. Chapin Hall is doing a lot of research on the—

Teresa Huizar:
Interesting.

Christine James-Brown:
—positive impact of that. Even that though, I mean, I think it’s exciting and I’m supportive of it, but I worry a little bit about, do we have enough time at that first point of contact to decide that it really is poverty?

Teresa Huizar:
Oh, that’s interesting.

Christine James-Brown:
Right? Maybe it is, you know, you never know what the real presenting issue is, right.

Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm, you’re saying, too, it could be too early to know.

Christine James-Brown:
It could be too early to know, or poverty could be either masking or the result of some other issue.

So I just think, I applaud them for doing it. I want to see more research. And that’s the other thing I think, you know, we’ve been working on a lot along with Casey Family Programs and William T. Grant Foundation to put together a national research agenda for child welfare. So that’s the other thing. I think if we don’t get more research and more data, and if that data isn’t developed in partnership with the communities and with agencies, I don’t think we’re going to get far enough.

We’ve got to learn more. Look at how far health care has moved forward. It’s not gone far enough. It’s got its equity issues too, but look how far it’s gone forward, just because it has more information and data.

[27:44] Teresa Huizar:
It’s so true.

So I want to ask you to fast-forward into the future a little bit.

Christine James-Brown:
OK.

Teresa Huizar:
Imagine the child welfare system 20 years from now. So—

Christine James-Brown:
All right.

Teresa Huizar:
—not hugely far into the future, but far enough that maybe some positive change has happened. If it happened in a way that were to reduce disparities and have more equity in the system and those sorts of things, what would you expect to see?

How would we know we were there?

Christine James-Brown:
So I think it would be smaller. It’d be a much smaller system. I think the staff composition would be different. We’d have a lot more staff who had deep understanding of the kinds of issues that families are dealing with. I think it would be co-located and it would be similar to aging where you have this responsibility to have these regular community input sessions to find out what’s needed. I think that should become like something that’s done on a regular basis.

So those would be the major things, that it would really be embedded in the community. The workers would look different. A lot of the workers would come from the communities. Not from somewhere else. They would come from and live in and be part of the communities. And that has a whole set of problems.

I’ve been working with our rural committee, and they talk about how can you have a case and then bump into the mom in the food store all the time.

Teresa Huizar:
Yeah.

Christine James-Brown:
Right. So you have to work those kinds of things out. But I think it would be … it would be in and of the community, smaller and more informed by information, data, research.

[29:17] Teresa Huizar:
You know, I love that. And I was just thinking, I grew up in a small community where somebody definitely would’ve bumped into someone in the store. And I’ll tell you something interesting about that is, you can’t “other” somebody—

Christine James-Brown:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
—that you bump into all the time.

Christine James-Brown:
Exactly.

Teresa Huizar:
It’s an interesting thing about the way it changes the nature of these types of relationships, too.

Christine James-Brown:
Right.

Teresa Huizar:
So I’m just wondering, you know, you work on policy all the time, just like we do here at NCA [National Children’s Alliance]. What are your own policy recommendations to move us to this place?

Christine James-Brown:
I do think a major one would be to make sure that there’s a very robust social services net for families.

I think that we should significantly expand things like SNAP and child allowances and things like that for families. I wouldn’t mind a special earned income tax program that’s better designed to really get to the right families when they need it, and where the money is distributed in a way that would most work for them.

There’s lots of research about that and how it should be done. So really the safety, you know, would be a major area of focus. And it has been for us, but we’re increasing it. I do think, working to get some kind of opportunity to bring the research into child welfare, just like they have these special opportunities for diseases and everything else. This is a horrible disease of abuse and neglect. So we should be, as a nation, putting a lot more money into research than we have.

And I think we need to think about what kind of policies—and it’s one of the things we’re grappling with right now—would support a stronger workforce. It’s not only increasing the salaries; there are other things that you need to do, I think, to enhance the workforce in child welfare.

So workforce policies, strengthening families, and getting more research into the system would be some of the things I’d want to see for the system itself to be better.

[31:25] Teresa Huizar:
You know, when we think about what’s going on with public policy, sometimes those things can take a while. While we’re busily advocating for them, we can’t just give up. There are things we need to be doing. So talk a little bit about to child welfare professionals themselves, while we’re advocating for the policy change what should we be doing to reduce disparities and increase equity in the system?

Christine James-Brown:
Yeah, I think we first have to be confronted with what’s going on. I think everyone has to have their moment of confrontation. I think that people get used to how they do certain things and don’t understand where it is advancing inequities.

I think that we as child welfare workers need to be out in the community doing almost a community healing type approach so we can hear from the communities what they think about us. And so they can hear from us the problems that we think we have.

So I think that there’s almost got to be some similar to what they’re doing in the context of Native American communities.

Teresa Huizar:
Mm.

Christine James-Brown:
I think we need to be doing something here. And I’ve been working to encourage some funding for that, so that every child welfare agency, we’re talking about trust and need to build trust.

So the first thing you need to do is go out and say, “I’m sorry, and let’s talk about what we did and why, and how we can change.” And then you can start to build trust. Teresa, I think that’s absolutely at the core of a lot of this and will help the workers.

The workers need to understand, based on a different perspective, they have to see that parents are essential for children. They always go back to them no matter what. That they have gifts they can bring; no matter how terrible a situation is, the parents have some kind of gifts or their relatives have some gifts that they can bring. And, as you said, we have to see them not as other.

That’s difficult for me to understand why child welfare workers don’t see that, because they’re not high paid, you know? They could very well be in a similar situation. So I think just really helping people see it. And I think a lot have this year, I think a lot of what’s happened this year has really helped people see things better and with more clarity.

I talk to people—sometimes even myself having to be more careful about the clarity of what I do and do not see. Right? Because we all have this perspective that we bring from our backgrounds and our experiences. Right. So I think it’s getting out there, listening. I mean, of course an anthropologist would say that, right?

Teresa Huizar:
[Laughter.] Right.

Christine James-Brown:
I think we’ve got to get out there with the community, listen to the community, listen to the families, and listen to each other. We have talked now about, in my organization, Child Welfare League of America, we talk about frontline workers as people with lived experience too.

There’s a lot of focus on. Let’s hear from people with lived experience. Who has more experience in this field than, you know, the workers? So we have to listen to them as well as the families and the children to see: What are they seeing? What do they experience? When do they get frustrated, when they don’t want to bring a family in but they can’t find anything else to do?

[34:37] Teresa Huizar: So true. So true. And I think that you’re raising a good point. I think the thing is, when a problem comes to your attention fully and you’re fully present thinking about it, you can’t unsee it anymore.

Christine James-Brown:
Right.

Teresa Huizar:
And I think that’s what’s happened for so many.

Christine James-Brown:
Right.

[Cross-talk]

Teresa Huizar:
In the last couple of years.

Christine James-Brown:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
Yeah. It’s a good thing to be stretched in this way. And to, you know, start really looking at our practices. You know, NCA is in the process of doing the same as every other institution is I think, and I think that this is really important work, not to just assume that all the things that we do with good intention have actual good effects.

Christine James-Brown:
Right.

Teresa Huizar:
Because those two things are not the same, you know?

Christine James-Brown:
Yeah. There’s the effect. And then there’s the unintentional—

Teresa Huizar:
Exactly.

Christine James-Brown:
—impacts the things that we do sometimes, you know.

[35:24] Teresa Huizar:
So true. So true. Chris, what have I not asked you that I should have? Or what else do you want to make sure that we talk about before you go?

Christine James-Brown:
Well, I think it’s important to think about, without sounding defensive, what’s happening to workers now.

The workers who went into child welfare because they’re social workers, they wanted to be social workers. They wanted to do good for families. And then they get caught up in the craziness of child welfare, the forms they have to fill out, the things that they need to do that take them away from families.

And then on top of it, they’ve been demonized. So we’re losing workers across this country because we’re pointing to them as the reason that families are failing.

And I’ve always thought no matter what happened in a community, the first thing you want to ask when there’s a situation that involves child welfare, is: Did the worker do what they should have done? The second thing is: Who didn’t do what they should have done?

Teresa Huizar:
Mm.

Christine James-Brown:
You know, what neighbor didn’t report? And I think we should be asking ourselves that not to point the blame, right, but to understand better how this whole business of safety should be working in communities. So I think the workers and understanding them and what they’re going through right now is critically important.

[36:42] Teresa Huizar:
One of the things that happens in our country is when something goes wrong in a case, and we immediately sort of target the case worker and their supervisor. We don’t ever really learn anything—

Christine James-Brown:
No.

Teresa Huizar:
—it seems to me, because we’re so, you know, quick to go, “Well, they must have done something wrong. Let’s get rid of them.”

Christine James-Brown:
Right.

Teresa Huizar:
And then we repeat the next, you know, mistake over and over again. And I wonder, you know, it’s not a perfect analogy, but I almost wonder if something like a truth and reconciliation commission on some of these where it’s like, you admit that there are things that could have been done differently. And you’re not going to be horribly punished—

Christine James-Brown:
Right.

Teresa Huizar:
—for admitting the truth about the quality of case work you were able to do, or what happened with this family or something that you missed. So that we can actually learn something from it.

Christine James-Brown:
Right.

Teresa Huizar:
Because while people are trying to hide what happened or hide mistakes, who does that serve?

You know, no one.

Christine James-Brown:
I agree a thousand percent, a thousand percent, that that’s what we need to be doing. We need to be—and that’s why data and information is so important.

Teresa Huizar:
Yes.

Christine James-Brown:
We need to be able to look and understand what happened. You know, and I think this business, this cycle we’re in of blaming. So something happens in a foster home. Everybody blames the foster care system, and they stop putting children into the foster care system. That happens all the time, big newspaper article, blah, blah, blah, and foster care. And then the system—just because it’s human—it shifts and puts fewer children in foster care. Until something happens in a birth family home, and then it shifts again, you know?

So I think that’s like a real obvious example of our just not wanting to get to the bottom of what really happened and look instead to who we can blame and walk away from. Right.

So, I don’t know how we get there, I think particularly in this environment now of how we are treating each other in this country. But we sure better try hard to try to find a kinder way to expose mistakes, learn from them, and then move forward.

Now, a mistake that’s driven by malice or something like that is one thing, you know, or laziness. But a mistake that’s a mistake, we need to figure out how to help the person not make it again.

[music starts]

[38:57] Teresa Huizar:
You know, I think your anthropology background was absolutely perfect for what you do, Chris. I just, I could talk to you for another hour, but you and I, I know both have places to be and other things that we have to do. But I just want to thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and experience with our listeners, who I know will benefit from it.

Christine James-Brown:
Thank you for having me. I just love talking with you. So, thanks.

[outro]

[39:20] Teresa Huizar:
Thanks for listening to One in Ten. If you like this episode, please share it with a colleague or a friend. And for more information about this episode or any other, please visit our podcast website at OneInTenPodcast.org.

[music fades out]