New "Perspective" essay posted... Read here.

Greetings,

We have posted a new essay on the IFCWB web site. This newest essay is entitled "Affirming Every Child’s Existence: Child Welfare Beyond Child Protection and Intervention." It is the fourth essay in the "Perspectives On Our Work" essay series.

For your convenience I have provided the text of the essay below. I am also providing a link so you can read more of the Perspectives series.

Please share your comments and feedback and we can talk more about it.

Thanks...


Affirming Every Child’s Existence: Child Welfare Beyond Child Protection and Intervention

Greetings, and thank you for reading this issue of our ongoing analysis and commentary publication.
Several months ago (October 9, 2006) I wrote an essay about the importance of permanency for children in foster care. One of the points I tried to make in that essay was that all children deserve to have their existence recognized in a positive, loving and affirming way by someone else somewhere in this world.

In that essay I reflected upon my experience growing up adopted. I reflected on the significance of the small things that many of us take for granted, such as going back home as an adult and seeing my childhood pictures hanging up on the wall and in photo albums in my parents’ house. As an adult, I continue to know that my reality matters to someone else in this world… that someone else in this world acknowledges and celebrates my very existence.

In that essay much of the tone and perspective was written in the context of permanency; more specifically my experience growing up adopted. In this essay I would like to reflect on this same dynamic, but broaden it to all children and families… not only children that were adopted, or families and children involved in this nation’s child protection and foster care systems.

As I have stated previously, everyone, at the most fundamental level, needs to know that their existence is acknowledged, affirmed and celebrated by someone else in this world.

There are many things that many of us take for granted as adults. Having meaningful relationships with other individuals is one of those things. We know that many children with foster care experience throughout this country, through no fault of their own, go through the rest of their lives without being able to effectively develop and sustain such relationships. This is but one relationship dynamic that frequently results from growing up in less stable, less supportive and less nurturing environments.

This experience is shared by many children and adults that have no foster care experience at all. Not all families that “stay together” necessarily provide the most nurturing and supportive environments.

When I refer to family and child well-being I am talking about more than just the well-being of families and children caught up in this nation’s child protection and foster care systems. I am talking about the well-being of all children, families and communities. We cannot assume that all children that grow up without child welfare system intervention in fact enjoy the benefits of a healthy, nurturing and affirming family environment. Most of us need not look very far to see this.

One of our collective challenges is to ensure that all children grow up in a supportive, nurturing and healthy environment. What institutional mechanisms do we have in place to support and enhance the developmental experiences of this large number of families and their children, especially poor and African American? All of us can play a role in making this a reality, including public child welfare systems throughout the country.

Indeed, no single person, organization or institution can do everything; however, every one of us can do something. And I suspect that many of us can do more than we are currently.

Public child welfare systems also have a role to play. Granted, this would mean a broadening of the mission and purpose of many of this nation’s public child welfare agencies/systems, but it is very much possible and necessary.
Public child welfare agencies throughout this country were created in the spirit of “saving children” from what “professionals” deemed (and still deem) to be unsafe home environments and unfit parents. The challenge of child welfare in this country has often been discussed within the context of how to most effectively and efficiently “protect” children from abusive and neglectful parents. Child welfare systems have not generally allocated substantial resources to support the development and strengthening of families not seen as needing emergency intervention. Nor has this even been a significant component of most public agencies’ broader mission and purpose.

Many public child welfare systems searching for ways to reduce racial disproportionality and racially disparate outcomes in their respective child welfare systems (to their credit) are beginning to explore these very dynamics within their respective child welfare systems. They are finding that diverting many families to appropriate community-based services and programs, before CPS intervention is deemed necessary, significantly improves the outcomes and well-being of the families and communities involved.

Indeed this speaks to a different role for most public child welfare systems. It requires public child welfare agencies to become more familiar with the strengths, assets and resources available within communities. It requires the public child welfare agency to develop partnerships with many of the community organizations, community leaders and community organizers they have up until now been less familiar with.

Moreover, it speaks to the need for greater flexibility by child welfare agencies (and human service systems more broadly) in deciding how to allocate resources to most effectively respond to the real needs of children and families… before a crisis emerges.

Public child welfare systems moving in this direction should be commended for their efforts, as well as encouraged to continue expanding these efforts. Other child welfare systems should be encouraged to move in this direction. Child welfare systems can not do it alone. Nor are they likely to sustain such efforts without the continuous oversight and pressure from the broader community and committed community-based organizations.

The challenge confronting us is clear. The sense of urgency is also clear to those of us close to this work. Let our collective action tell the story of our community’s determination and commitment to our families. Let our determination and collective action affirm the right of our children to exist and develop to their fullest potential. We can do this!

Note: If you know of any community-based programs or public agencies in your community that are doing exemplary work, please share that information with us. We would love to hear about it and share it with others via the Institute’s website.

What are your thoughts?

Welcome to our new Blog Spot!

Greetings!

Welcome to the Institute's new home in the blog world... the blogosphere.

We appreciate your visit and look forward to sharing information and exchanging ideas with you here in the near future.

Talk with you soon!

Oronde