New Albany panel addresses child welfare, equity issues

Apr. 27—NEW ALBANY — Kentuckiana experts examined challenges related to equity in the child welfare system at a recent panel conversation.

Panelists spoke Thursday at the Carnegie Center for Art & History for a discussion in a series called A Common Conversation: The Move Forward. Experts addressed racial inequities in the welfare system and preventive solutions needed to support children and families.

F5 Enterprises, LLC and New Hope Services are organizing the conversation series, which was supported through a grant from the Indiana Department of Health's Office of Minority Health.

The series is led by Miguel Hampton, founder of F5 Enterprises, LLC, and Missy Smith, a trainer who works in abuse prevention and program management. Smith moderated Thursday's panel.

Sonja Grey, executive director of Exploited Children's Help Organization (ECHO) in Louisville, said it is important to recognize that "when we're talking about statistics, remember that these are people."

"Today when I look at the numbers for foster care, the higher numbers of kids that are in foster care were African American kids or kids of color, and I was trying to have someone make that make sense to me," she said.

Anita Barbee, professor and director of the Ph.D. program at the University of Louisville's Kent School of Social Work and Family Science, detailed the racial disparities in the child welfare system.

"There's disproportionality of who comes into the system, of who's called on, so Black, Brown families, African American, Latino, Native American, are much more likely to have a call come in, much more likely once the call happens to be substantiated," she said. "[They are] much more likely once there's a substantiation to be placed out among stranger care rather than kinship care, more likely to languish in the system for a long time and less likely to be adopted."

Grey emphasized the need to look at systemic issues leading to these disparities, saying many "Black and Brown families are in poverty not because they want it to be there, but because the system put them there."

She said it is important to understand that "abuse does not equal poverty." She gave an example of a household where a child is sleeping on the floor because the family cannot afford a bed.

"Poverty is just the factor that you do not have all the resources that some others may have, but it does not mean that you're abusing your children," Grey said.

Adria Johnson, president and CEO of Metro United Way, said in her experience, the majority of issues she sees in the child welfare system are related to poverty.

"Yes, there are incidences of children and young people that are victims of physical and sexual abuse, but that is a smaller number, that is the minority,' she said. "The vast majority of children that come into the state's care are due to other factors and a lot of it is rooted in poverty, a lot of it is rooted in family instability, so it really is environmental neglect."

She said there needs to be a conversation about expanding funding and resources to prevent families from facing these situations, including addressing housing needs in communities.

"You've got states that are struggling to adequately resource the supports that communities need, and so it just becomes this vicious cycle," Johnson said. "You've got all of us out here fighting the good fight, continuing to put band-aids on things when there's widescale reform that's needed."

She noted that child welfare is a "thankless field."

"The social workers who do this work — they're very much underappreciated and I would venture to say very much under-compensated," Johnson said. "And so they are working within a system that was designed to work the way it works."

"So I need to be very clear in saying that I believe these workers wake up...with the intent to not do harm," she said. "They are trying to do their best and working on behalf of the family and the child, but they're just limited in the ability to do what they do."

She said there needs to be policy change and advocacy, emphasizing that "you've got to have resources to shift the paradigm."

Barbee sees a need to "reframe the whole system" to provide support for families who may be facing issues such as poverty and/or mental health issues.

She wants to see a change in how abuse and neglect are defined to include the context of people facing poverty and homelessness.

"There needs to be a combing through all that legislation to say what is poverty that needs to be taken care of by the community [versus] what is actual neglect — intentional neglect — as well as physical and sexual abuse," she said.

Grey said child abuse prevention education is a pillar of ECHO's work in the community, and she advocates for prevention education plans inside schools.

She said if kids do not "feel safe and loved, it's gonna be hard to learn, bottom line."

"If you do not feel safe and if you have been abused, how do you expect me to sit in a classroom, pay attention, learn and then regurgitate the information that you are sending to me when I know that at the end of the day, I may not have food, I may get yelled at, I may be beat on," Grey said. "It supersedes everything else when it comes to education."

"The education is very important, but we also must understand that health and safety for children [are] also important and a priority in order for them to be in those spaces to learn."

Family members such as grandparents who step up to care for grandchildren need more support services in the child welfare system, Grey said.

"In the past several years, we've noticed a high percentage of grandparents raising grandkids that may not even have had children in their household for over 10, 15 years," she said. "And now all of a sudden, they have 2 and 3-year-olds, and they're trying to navigate this process of the system and how do I get resources and where do I get resources..."

Johnson discussed the challenges families face related to work and childcare costs, including the "benefits cliff" that people face, or the decrease in benefits when they receive an increase in earnings.

"We push families and individuals toward greater economic prosperity, we push them to the ability to increase their earned income, but when they do, all of these safety net provisions that are very much needed are washed away," she said.

She said it is important to break down the challenges in "common sense language" so people understand the challenges families face, citing an example of a family of four living on less than $2,000 a month.

"So for $1,875 a month for a family of four, I am expected to pay rent, feed my children, pay for a car, keep insurance, cover clothing, cover utilities...," she said.

Johnson questioned how anyone can be expected to live on that income without benefits for childcare, food or healthcare.

"These are real people that we are expecting to live like that — shame on us," she said.

Grey noted the challenges related to the racial wealth gap between Black and White Americans, and she urged for a focus on "meeting people where they are."

"Are we really doing the most humane thing for our citizens in order for them to have an optimal life?" she said. "Are we making it easy for single parents or double parents or whatever to find those resources...and not setting any type of prejudice?"

She said support for families is not always one-size-fits-all.

"We need to be better at being flexible with individuals that we can see that have a motivation — that want to do better — but still need that level of support so we don't let everything else fall through the cracks," she said.