Our Children Have Rights’ Post

Over the last year, We've partnered with the Redlich Horwitz Foundation to develop narrative strategies to transform how communities and the public understand family policing systems. This past weekend, Piper facilitated training on advocacy storytelling with lived experience experts from across New York State working to build a movement to end family criminalization and separation led by parents, guardians, and foster care alumni. These lived-experienced experts are challenging popular narratives about the child welfare systems and families who are targeted by family policing authorities, like the fact that the majority of children are removed from their homes because of conditions that stem from poverty NOT abuse. More than half of Black children will have to endure the trauma of an investigation by a child welfare agency during their childhood. Even Pres. Biden in 2021 acknowledged that too often children are removed from loving, supportive homes because "poverty is too often conflated with neglect." That is why we need more determined, passionate advocates who know firsthand the damaging impact of family policing. We've facilitated our "Advocacy Storytelling" training with advocates, non-profit communications teams, community organizers, social service agencies, school administrators, and a national coalition fighting for affordable childcare. Contact us to bring our training to your organization or network. #storytelling #advocacy #socialchange #narrativechange #childwelfare #familypolicing #familyjustice #CreateForward

These are excellent trainings on helping your regions child welfare serving public and private sectors become KinFirst in their practices of best serving children and families #kinship #kinfirst #childwelfare #fostercare

It takes a village to raise a child, doesn’t it? I think it also takes a village to relinquish one. What I mean is, to the looking-to-adopt folks doing everything they can to build up and complete their families, would you also find ways to build up and help families remain together? To those who feel the Lord leading them to adopt, please don’t neglect the mother praying for a way to not relinquish her child. And even if she isn’t measuring up to your or the state’s or the world’s patterns and regulations, could you still consider that mother significant whose child is being forced out of her arms? In a clinical settings, it’s a strengths-based principle to assume a mother would raise her child if she could; that if she had access to growth-fostering resources and environment, the nightmare of placing her child into an institutionalized child welfare system would remain unfulfilled. What humble servants are there among us who’d contribute to such a village? How many family members does it take to keep a mother and her child intact? Maybe only one, especially if she’s covered with dignity and value and provision from siblings, parents, neighbors, community, state, nation, ancestors, and dare I say the local church whose faith leads them to love the least of us? This isn’t a judgment or condemnation on anyone whose calling is to adopt. It’s a request to lift judgment and condemnation off of mothers whose villages stood by when she called for their help. #birth #support #relinquishment #adoption #adoptee #adoptees #adopteejourney #adopteeawareness #birthparent #birthparentsupport #birthfamily #foreverfamily #adoptionawareness #mentlhealthawarenes #therapyredeemed

States are optimistic about new and growing prevention efforts and eager to provide additional supports for families—including families with infants and toddlers—that truly meet their needs and reduce child maltreatment and child welfare system involvement. With the current emphasis on expansion, this is an ideal time for new and constructive partnerships between child welfare and early childhood agencies to set common goals, leverage new opportunities, and navigate challenges. As states across the country continue to invest in prevention, Child Trends recommends state leaders: 🤝 Reduce silos across and between agencies and their partners. 🤱 Increase supports specifically designed to meet the needs of families with very young children. 🗣 Promote equity in policies and practice, and bring parents with lived expertise into decision-making roles. 📜 Facilitate the use of the federal Family First Act in their overall prevention efforts.

We need more energy, effort, innovation and investment into the areas described by my colleagues in this important article.

The last article in the Star Tribune’s four-part series “In Harm’s Way” takes a closer look at substantial changes taking place in Hennepin County, the state’s largest child protection agency. Equipped with more funding, additional staff and extended training, the county is seeing encouraging results: Reports of repeated maltreatment have dropped to less than 5 percent in 2022. Additional staff have been added to the county’s Parent Support Outreach Program (PSOP), which connects at-risk families with various resources. And more workers have been added to the review team for screening in reports and recommending either Family Assessment (FA) or investigation. Of course, more work needs to be done at Hennepin County and across the state. But these changes underscore the need for increased funding for child protection. “In the end, leadership is so key,” said Judith Meltzer with the Center for the Study of Social Policy, who has worked with states across the nation on child welfare reform. If government officials do not prioritize spending to support families and protect children, she said, “years of hard work just fall aside.” Volunteer to help with our legislative efforts at https://lnkd.in/gZXk6Duf Make a donation to support our work for kids at https://lnkd.in/gbvNnQd6 #safepassagemn #safepassage #childprotection #Hennepincounty #mn #minnesota #startribune #volunteer #give #forkids

THANK YOU JOOYEUN CHANG, DIRECTOR OF CHILD WELL-BEING @ THE DORIS DUKE FOUNDATION! ❤️ Last week JooYeun Chang testified to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance to provide comments on the critical role of the Family First Prevention Services Act in child welfare. https://lnkd.in/ebYyS7-J The Doris Duke Foundation is investing in Opt-in for Families, a three-year, $33 million initiative, seeks to demonstrate that actively connecting families at the earliest signal of need, to direct support for basic needs & coordinated support services using highly trusted community partners is a cost-effective, scalable way to prevent abuse & neglect AND keep families together. Opt-In is an alternative system response that can meet the comprehensive needs of families at risk must be able to attend to not only a family’s service needs through effective engagement strategies & care coordination but must also address the time-sensitive material needs that contribute to maltreatment & foster care placement risk. Providing a framework for the use of material through Family First can help ensure that poverty is not the primary reason a child is entering foster care. #reenvisioningfostercare

The United States Senate Committee on Finance held a hearing highlighting the need to support families and prevent children from entering foster care. At the “The Family First Prevention Services Act: Successes, Roadblocks, and Opportunities for Improvement” hearing witnesses advocated for policies including expanding federal funding that goes further upstream to keep families safe and together, including access to economic and concrete supports like the Child Tax Credit. Watch the full hearing here: https://lnkd.in/eEUysDFQ Make your voice heard! Due date: 5/31/24! Watch the hearing and then let the committee hear your thoughts. Email a statement to Statementsfortherecord@finance.senate.gov. The statement can be up to 10 pages in Word format only, to be added to the formal record for the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Finance hearing on FFPSA. Email subject: FFPSA hearing on May 22nd, 2024 Email body: Brief note that your statement is attached. Include at the top of your statement: Hearing Date: May 22nd, 2024 Title: The Family First Prevention Services Act: Successes, Roadblocks, and Opportunities for Improvement Your name or organization name Street address, City, State, Zip Your email Be respectful, politically correct, and be clear in making your point or telling your story as to why CPS is broken and how they can do a better job at protecting our children and families.

THANK YOU JOOYEUN CHANG, DIRECTOR OF CHILD WELL-BEING @ THE DORIS DUKE FOUNDATION! ❤️ Last week JooYeun Chang testified to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance to provide comments on the critical role of the Family First Prevention Services Act in child welfare. https://lnkd.in/ebYyS7-J The Doris Duke Foundation is investing in Opt-in for Families, a three-year, $33 million initiative, seeks to demonstrate that actively connecting families at the earliest signal of need, to direct support for basic needs & coordinated support services using highly trusted community partners is a cost-effective, scalable way to prevent abuse & neglect AND keep families together. Opt-In is an alternative system response that can meet the comprehensive needs of families at risk must be able to attend to not only a family’s service needs through effective engagement strategies & care coordination but must also address the time-sensitive material needs that contribute to maltreatment & foster care placement risk. Providing a framework for the use of material through Family First can help ensure that poverty is not the primary reason a child is entering foster care. #reenvisioningfostercare

This week we are #KansasStrong, with sixteen teammates representing Cornerstones of Care's Kansas operations attending the Kansas Office of Judicial Administration's inaugural Kansas Child Welfare Summit. Members of our Foster Care Case Management, Placement Stability, Permanency Services, Family Preservation and Outpatient Services teams worked deep in difficult dialogue, unpacked the impacts of child welfare on Kansas youth and families, and created action plans alongside their judicial circuits to build courageous next steps for change. Key take aways for us: 💫 Every child deserves a chance to live safe and well, and when possible, to heal, recover and thrive permanently in the comfort of his/her biological family unit. 👨👩👦 No adult, family or life story is so broken or so far gone that it is not deserving of supportive and restorative help, healing and care. Until we say we've done all we can, we must lead this work with a radical belief that every parent wants what's best for their child, even if today, they don't have the language, the lens and the tools needed to make that happen. 💞 Foster care is not the system designed to heal systemic realities of individual and household brokenness; but it is the means by which children and families who need it most, can find a temporary pathway to immediate safety, foster capacity for help and healing, and with community-based supports, build a viable plan for sustainable resilience and change. 💡 Now is the time to get further upstream. Ask the hard, courageous questions and look at every opportunity possible to prevent children from coming into care; including asking our youth themselves. A continuum of care is best rooted and delivered in a comprehensive, trauma-informed community of supports. A WIDE lens is required to acknowledge and courageously address the historic racism, disenfranchisement and deficit mindset that has suppressed families from living outside of the child welfare system for decades. Now is the time to reframe 'the system' and our role within and throughout it. This system works. Now's the time to reframe and revive how we're utilizing it's tools, state statutes, its funding, and innovative resources to re-imagine effective CARE. Let's get to work. 💛 #AllinCARE #ChildAbusePreventionMonth #NonProfitLeaders