Episode:
Guest:
00:00:00
Pryce
A Deeper Look at how Community Participatory Action Research Includes Parent and Youth Voices to Improve Child Welfare Dr. SeanteĂŠ Campbell and Ms. Tiffany Csonka
Welcome to the second season of the Florida Institute for Child Welfare Podcast. I am Jessica Pryce, your host. In this season, we are focused on reimagining child welfare through technology and innovation. We will hear from visionary leaders on how they are working intentionally and collaboratively to enhance and innovate child welfare. Today on the Florida Institute for Child Welfare Podcast, we are talking about racial equity work in Broward County. Today we have Dr. SeanteĂŠ Campbell and Tiffany Csonka, and they'll be walking us through their involvement with Community Participatory Action Research, also known as CPAR. It will explain how they have been incorporating the voices of parents with lived experience and allowing community members to become "coresearchers" within child welfare. Let's learn more. Hi Tiffany and Dr. Campbell, how are you? We're glad to have you with us today.
00:00:58
00:01:14
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Campbell
Hi, how are you, Jessica? Hope you're doing well.
Pryce
Yes, I'm good. I wanted to start by asking both of you, and we can start with you, Dr. Campbell, how you became involved in the work that you're doing in Broward County?
Campbell
Ok, so my job, basically, it centers around a lot of numbers and data and that kind of crunching. And I spent a lot of time just analyzing the viability of my organization, funding
government programs that are structured to strengthen the families within Broward County. But this is a thing, in the back of my mind, as I was always doing my work, I always wondered why is it that, despite the existence, you know, of countless, well-intentioned ethical organizations just like the one that I worked for, you know, why so many problems continue to endure in the child welfare system? And why, as we all know, despite, you know, the fact that some might not necessarily want to outright admit it, the child welfare system remains so broken in so many ways that are fixable? So, in my effort to understand why the child welfare system has so many fractures, I got involved with CPAR work.
00:02:21
Pryce
Got it. And I love what you said about the fact that, you know, there are some parts of our system that appear to be broken, but that doesn't mean they're not fixable. And I think a lot of people stop at, "It's a broken system. It's a broken system," but I'm excited to kind of talk about today how you all are working on fixing some of those areas. So, Tiffany, how about you? Can you tell the listeners how you got involved with this work?
00:02:32
Csonka
Sure, and good morning. So, I honestly wanted to amplify the parents' voices. And I was involved with the child welfare system a couple years ago, but I success- I successfully reunited with my kids, and I experienced good, and I experienced the not-so-good. And then I had the opportunity to be invited to be a part of the CPAR project, and I honestly was like super overwhelmed and kind of scared. But I wanted to be there, and I honestly think that systems need to take that chance and just breathe a little bit and just open ears, listen to these families, understand their race and their culture, and how they identify as a family. So, for me, the parent with lived experience are honestly like the missing part because sometimes we have this system put in place that is supposed to be doing so well, and the parents' voices get lost.
00:03:44
Pryce
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And as you know, there are so many people around the country that are-are saying that. "How do we incorporate the family voice? How do we bring folks that have lived experience into our system to inform our practice?" So again, just- I'm very excited to talk to you and- and Dr. Campbell about the-the CPAR work. Because I know that it will help not just Florida, but other areas that are always asking me and our Institute, you know,
"How are we doing in Florida with incorporating the family voice?" So, this next question that I have is related to what exactly Community Participatory Action Research is; I know some folks are not familiar with that. Dr. Campbell, would you explain what it entails?
00:04:27
Campbell
Certainly, so CPAR what it does really, the functionality, is to provide a practical framework that allows people that come from very different worlds to basically build trust with each other. For the purpose of, you know, the project or the research that Tiffany and I were working on, CPAR allowed us to create trust between everyone that was involved in the child welfare system but at different levels. Essentially, what we're doing in CPAR is we're conducting research alongside the same people who you would otherwise be in the field reporting about or analyzing in your office with qualitative or quantitative data. CPAR allows you to, instead of just being stuck behind your computer, you really do go out into the field, and you begin to speak to those community members, and you begin to gain their perspective on, you know, what happened to them that landed them in the child welfare system. CPAR, essentially, what it does is it allows for everyday folks, everyday people, to become researchers themselves. More importantly, in my opinion, what C- what CPAR did for me, what it did for Tiffany and all those that were on my research team, is it provided a platform for everyday people to become decision-makers for future policies and procedures that impact people just like them, people with those similar struggles and those same challenges. Overall, I'd say that you know, CPAR, that whole process, it transforms the parents and youth that are involved in the child welfare system into just being what we call "coresearchers." That's how CPAR's so different from other research approaches. Our focus in CPAR is not at all to just provide disadvantaged persons with a resource or two to get them going for the foreseeable future. That's not all we aim for in CPAR. Instead, what we do is we utilize the experiences of those persons to rebuild a fractured system.
00:06:18
Pryce
Wow, thank you so much for explaining that so clearly. I think that folks that are listening have a better idea of what CPAR is. Tiffany, did you want to add anything? Just wanted to give you the opportunity.
00:06:29
Csonka
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I would like to add that it was also a safe spot. It was a place where parents' voices were honestly heard. And parents were empowered through this process. I think we got supported regardless of our experience or our family situations, or wherever that person was in their child welfare journey. So, for me, it was a big eye-opener.
00:06:58
Campbell
And just to piggyback on what Tiffany mentioned, you know, something that I love about the CPAR process because just to be clear, you know, we went through a three-day training together— that's the systems partners as well as the parents and youth that would be involved in the research—we had to go through a three-day training together where we literally sat together for, I mean, Tiffany would have to correct me, but it'd have to be something between like 8 and 10 hours, just in a room together. We ate all our meals together. We literally broke bread together. We shared stories. Some were angry, some cried, but what it does is it was an incredible equalizer because when we were sitting in that room together getting training, learning what CPAR was because none of us knew going into it, none of us were experts except for the folks that were training us. So, it put us all on- on very equal ground, and that made it much more easier to come together at the end of the day. No one was the boss of anyone else. So, CPAR is the-the great equalizer once you're willing to embark on that form of research.
00:07:54
Pryce
I’m really am glad you added that, Dr. Campbell, because I know folks may be listening to this podcast and wondering, "How do we get started?" And, you know, "How do we do trainings?" And it's-it's nice to hear the process you all had with the training. May I ask a follow-up question about the training? I know you said you spend a lot of time together breaking bread, and-and really, it sounded like you were building a lot of rapport, and-and crossing cultures, and understanding each other. Who was in that training? Are these the families that you're working with? I'm assuming it was you and Tiffany. Just curious about the makeup of the training?
00:08:27
Campbell
So essentially, it was two trainers that we had that are well-versed in CPAR. They work in New York City. And then the rest of us, we existed on a-on a spectrum of the child welfare system. I would-I would look at it as three groups of people that were in that three-day training, originally. It was those who work in the child welfare system in some capacity, anything from Broward County Sheriff's officers to researchers like myself in the child welfare system to directors like my supervisor that were there to child advocates were also there, so that was the one set. And the second set were parents who had experienced their children being removed from their care, and some were subsequently reunited with their children. And some, later on, we found out, which I'll expound on later, ended up having to place their children for adoption. And then, the third group, what I consider to be our most important group, were the youths that had aged out of the foster care system. But those are the three groups, and what we marveled on was that all those groups who were wary of each other in one way or another, the-the systems workers, it would be assumed that we would look at the parents like, "What's the matter with you? Why didn't
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you just follow the rules and be a good mom or a good dad? Why did you allow your kids to be taken away?" For us to be in the same room with the people that we were-we were wary of the parents that were wary of, or maybe even skeptical of, and then, for those same parents who, to use- for lack of a better term, were victims of the child welfare system to be willing to sit with the folks that had essentially taken their kids away. And most importantly, we all, you know, we're able to sit together and break out into two different groups and-and-and essentially find a way to develop research questions, mostly addressing, "What's wrong with your side of the child welfare system?" So, it's super cool. It's really good.
00:10:18
Pryce
Yeah, it sounds incredible. I get a question from folks a lot, and they ask, you know, "How does the child welfare system even approach race equity? How do they, in for lack of a better word, make amends?" And-and I often say they should talk to parents, and they should tell parents in a very transparent way, "We don't always get it right, and we are trying to rebuild our system in a way that doesn't harm families." And that's why I wanted to add that because what you're saying is so true. You're in a room with people who have brought some level of harm to your family, and these parents were still willing to sit in there and-and try to work together to bring about change. And that lends itself to our next question about the parents, and I'm curious if you both could comment on the VIP group and what you learn from them?
00:11:09
Campbell
VIP, what it stands for is the Very Important Parents group. And our VIP research team, it consists of or consisted of different child welfare professionals and parents that had a variety of lived experiences within the child welfare system. And what I mean by that is a lot of it, just like Tiffany mentioned before, the different parts of our lives intersected with what we did for a living. So, for example, I had several team members that were on my research team, and one was- she's a manager for the Children Services Council of Broward County, where we work, but she was also, at one point, a foster parent and saw, you know, what her foster kids went through and also experienced what it was like to be a foster parent. A lot of it was helplessness, and then she went on to become an adoptive parent. So, you know, in just her experience in the child welfare system, she had worn three different hats just in her lifetime. So, a lot of the experiences did intersect. But insofar as specifically VIP, you know, again, we're the Very Important Parents research team, and it consisted of just several different people that we had managers, a director, one employee that worked as a child advocate, another that was a child protective supervisor. We had a supervisor from the Broward Sheriff's Office, one from an
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organization called Kids in Distress. We had even a Master of Social Work graduate student who we just looked to as like the future of child welfare and how much things are going to improve, so she was always our beacon, you know, of hope definitely. And thenand then, most importantly, we had two parents who had actually gone through and surmounted the experience of having their child or children removed from their home, and then, subsequently, experiences of the success-successful reunification with their children. So together, that made up the Very Important Parents research team.
00:13:00
Csonka
For me, what I learned with the VIP, I was part of that because, obviously, I was a parent that went through the child welfare system, I learned that we all had different journeys, but we had similarities throughout the journey. And I also learned that we were all willing to honestly make systemic change and try to make a better system. The most thing that came up for me, because I honestly went through the same process, was the dehumanizing process that a lot of parents felt—the aloneness, the non-supporting that I felt. But also felt the- like the light at the end of the tunnel because I've seen so many people, system professionals, that were honestly there with open ears, open hearts and, you know, were very supportive towards us and listening and trying to make a difference with us. So, I-I it was an eye-opener, and it was also a healing process for myself.
00:14:08
Pryce
Thank you so much for explaining the VIP group that is so innovative, in my opinion. I- I hope that we continue to see VIP groups, you know, come up around the state of Florida. Can I also ask kind of what was the most profound types of things that you learn from this VIP group?
00:14:24
Campbell
So I would say, oddly enough, that my most profound experience came before our research even started. How the CPAR training went was that after our three-day training, you had to decide which group you felt like your skills and/or your life experiences, and what you did for the- for a living would most relate to, "Did you want to be a part of, what we called the time, the 'Youth team,' or the 'Parents team?'" And I just decided to join the Parents team just to see something different because I've been a Broward County school educator for ten years, and I was like, "I know what it's like from the youth perspective, let me see what happens with parents." You know, and I'm really glad I did go ahead and choose that team. But there was a former member of our team; she ended up dropping out relatively early, unfortunately, because she was just having a plethora of personal problems that she couldn't surmount. I'll just refer to her, to protect her identity, as Katie. And what I noticed about Katie during our three-day training was that she was often slumped over on the desk, whereas the rest of us were kind of perked up and listening. She was often
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very lethargic. She looked often like she had tears in her eyes, like she was just on the brink of just what looked to be the worst possible breakdown. All of the system's partners, all the people that worked in the child welfare system that were in the room for those three days, I would periodically notice that she would look at each of us like she frankly wanted to kill us. No joking aside, she was looking at us as though, you know-you know, she-she wanted to hurt us, or that we had hurt her in some way. And I went through literally three days of, you know, watching her watch me, and kind of the death stare thing and kind of thinking, "Do I know her? What it-what had happened?" And finally, on the third day, I'm thinking to myself, "Well, there's nothing to lose in just asking her," you know, "Katie, what's wrong?" And I, I certainly did walk up to her when we had a couple hours left on that last day, and I and I asked her if anything was wrong, and she stunned me by saying, you know, "Two days before this training began, I had to place my daughter up for adoption, and I had to do that because I didn't- because I didn't know what resources were out there. And now for the last three days, that had to be sitting in this room with all of you, and some of you are managers, and some of you were directors, and some of you are chiefs, and all of you are at this high level in the child welfare system, but none of you could help me, and I didn't know where to look for you. And I didn't even know that any of these resources that everyone is talking about to me for the last three days, I didn't know they even existed." And she looked at me and asked me a question that will haunt me for the rest of my life. She looked at me and said, "Where were you?" And to this day, it brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it, because for the first time in my life, I usually can riff something, but I could come up with nothing. And the chief of my department was in the same training, and when we-when, you know, Katie did decide to open up to all of us and-and-and explain what had been going on and I noticed, similarly, none of us had an-an answer for her as to where we were or why we weren't there or how she could have contacted us. The thing that we-that we did walk away with, though, was understanding that we needed to do something about the struggling parents in Broward County. We needed to make sure that people were aware of resources that were available to them long before their backs were against the wall in the way that Katie's was that forced her to make that awful decision that no parent should have to make. Katie's-Katie's story, you know, Katie's experiences, are essentially what gave birth to VIP. If it wasn't for Katie telling me what had happened to her, we would have never formed that group. We would have never understood the importance of parents having resources available to them. So, for me, that was the most pivotal moment of the CPAR and VIP process.
00:17:58
Pryce
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Wow, thank you so much for sharing that story about Katie, and I really appreciate her
bravery. I sure-I'm sure that wasn't easy for her to talk about, and I'm sure it wasn't easy for you all to-to hear. I'd love to hear more about Katie and-and, specifically, what that experience birthed, like what happened next after you had that experience with her? So yeah, I was sitting here thinking, as you were just talking, the idea that the ART team, they’re people. You all are people that are doing that first review of the case and then giving it to caseworkers.
00:18:19
Campbell
So, after Katie shared with us her journey and what happened with her, I believe it was an infant daughter, we sat down as a group. By then, we had formed who would be in the youth research team and who would be in the parent research team, and very quickly, our brilliant Tiffany came up with the name the Very Important Parents, because, you know, after listening to Katie's story, realized that we wanted parents to feel empowered and feel important and feel like they had agency in their experience, even if their children had been removed from their home. So then, our central research question as a team became, "How can we, as in the child welfare system, best develop and implement parent prevention services to help families in need thrive so that they don't ever enter the child welfare system?" So, what we did after that was VIP successfully managed to interview a very diverse group of nine parents— all their children were removed by Child Protective Services investigators. Subsequently, after completing our interviews, we found that parents who enter the system, they feel largely unaware of what it takes to successfully re- reunify with their children. The child welfare system really does believe that once the parents enter in the system that they arm those parents with whatever it is that they need to make the parents feel like they'll-they'll be able to reunify with their children, or at least have their children permanently placed in a safe environment. But there's a gap between reality and that understanding on the part of the child welfare system because, as I mentioned earlier, what we found in our interviews was that parents were basically telling us, "We don't know what to do to get back our children. They're telling us to do 'x,' but we are doing 'y,' and no one is telling us how to go ahead and-and-and get on the road to completing 'x.'" So, the parents felt very unaware. They felt very confused and, oftentimes, as sad as it sounds, they felt deliberately misled a lot of the times. Our research in VIP also revealed that parents feel alone and without support or resources, both before and after their dependency cases are closed. We also found that parents have very-very minimal communication with their caseworkers, and they're given very little time to process crucial decisions while they're in court. The parents often compared it to a feeling-of feeling like a gun was being held to your head, and you had to make a split decision about something that would affect your life for the rest of your life in maybe a couple of minutes. And a lot of very legal terms that are- that laypeople are
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not familiar with are being thrown at them left, right, and center, yet they're being asked to, "Decide, decide, decide right now!" And it was very, very dehumanizing for them. Another finding that we had was that our-our parents feel prematurely judged by the child welfare system professionals regarding their mental health issues. Several of our interviewees and participants said that the moment that they mentioned that they had any sort of a mental illness, whether it was something like mild depression, must have something like schizophrenia, that the-the police that would be in the room would be making derogatory comments about them, calling them "crazy" to their faces, calling them "cuckoo," and that they often felt like having a mental health issue put them at a deficit. That-that right away, because of that mental health issue, they felt like the child welfare system wanted to put them on a path of having their children adopted rather than being-being reunified with their children. So, it put them at a huge disadvantage from their perspective, that's the parents.
00:21:40
Pryce
Thank you so much for sharing that. Again, I know that I'm a broken record, but how would our system have known this without asking the parents, you know, their perspectives and how our work has impacted them? So, I'm-I'm glad to know that our system is listening in Broward County, and I believe they're listening in other areas as well. But I think it's just an innovative, creative way that Broward County is bringing this important information in. So, Tiffany, we'd love to hear from you and-and how that experience impacted you with Katie?
00:22:11
Csonka
Well, it impacted me in, obviously, in a sad way, but I felt alone, and I felt those same feelings that she felt. So, I kind of connected with her as well because going through this process, I honestly feel like, regardless of what the situation is, parents are not broken. They may need support, but that really honestly starts when we start valuing these parents as human beings. And when you don't feel like you're getting valued or you don't have that support and you're trying to jump through these fire rings to get your child back to prove that you are that-that right parent for your own child, that does a lot of like a mix- mixed emotions. And I, honestly, could say that doing this work will start making changes where parents won't feel alone like Katie did. And it did impact me because Ilike I almost quit during the process. But I, honestly, had that-that strong will that I said, "I'm not going to get beaten by the system. I'm going to get my kids back."
00:23:33
Campbell
Yeah, and I just want to add just really quickly. This is something that Tiffany and I talked about, you know, what our research, you know, most clearly revealed to me was the
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importance of workers within the child welfare system humanizing parents that are on the other side, because Tiffany is 100% right. Before I began this process with CPAR, I was crunching numbers and looking at ID numbers for all these parents that were going through struggles, but I never- I didn't until the CPAR process, have that empathy for parents, which is odd because I'm a naturally empathetic person. But there's a certain level of judgment in the child welfare system when it comes to parents. You automatically think the parent had to have done something wrong. You don't think for a moment there might have been a misunderstanding. There might have been a bad day. And we certainly don't think, "This could happen to me." And that's something that I certainly learned that, you know, that a lot of the things that happened to these parents that bring them into the child welfare system, whether you were a lawyer, whether you dig ditches for a living, it could happen to you. So, because it could happen to you, that humanizing aspect is very important.
00:24:37
Pryce
I shared this on another podcast, and I'll share it again because I think it's pertinent. I think that our system, you know, in many ways, are hyper-focused on the child. And I think that they should be priority, of course, but we really need to have a better grasp on family well-being and also understanding that parents are people as well. So, I have a colleague that researches the developmental stages of parenthood. And I think often in our system we look at parents as if they have fully developed, that they have no more learning to do, that they-they cannot make a mistake. And when she teaches about this topic, this colleague of mine, she talks about when a parent births a child, you know, how they change and how they continue to develop, and she has a line that says, "With the birth of a child, there's a birth of a mother." And it's so profound to me because, again, I used to do this work. I was an investigator, and when I met with parents, I didn't always think about the fact that they're on their own developmental journey as well. And I-I think what you just said, I agree with. That we are trained to look at parents as if they have done something wrong, and we have to find out who did it and why and-and blame and often shame parents after, you know, they've had an acute crisis, or something has-has happened with them. So again, I-I would love for our system to becontinue to be focused on kids but also understand that parents are also developing.
00:25:59
Campbell
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And if I may, I-I just wanted to say that, you know, that's what is so amazing about the CPAR, just-just process that it's the community element. You know that the 'C' in CPAR does stand for "community." It's the community element of CPAR that makes this form of research so distinguishable from other forms of research. You know, when it comes to researching child welfare and all the issues that we have in the system. There is nothing wrong with, you know, academics and scholars and professionals in their respective fields, you know, sitting in a room and trying to come up with ways that we can all save the world.
But I just want to say that there does come a point where the subjects that you're trying to quote-unquote "save," those subjects, those people, those humans, those parents, they should have some agency in their own rescue. You know, in CPAR, we say, "No research should be done about us without us," and I do think that going forward, when people are researching different aspects of a community, it should be required that they pull in persons from that community to get their perspective. And that's the crux of how we've applied CPAR to our child welfare research projects here in Broward County.
00:27:05
Pryce
Absolutely, and I think that this can be across the board, regarding even other areas of research, and I'm-I'm hopeful that this will impact, for the years to come, how we approach research. As someone who is an academician, I definitely am taking it to heart. So, I know that we have talked about parents during this segment, but I'd love to also hear about a program that I heard is called YLAP. Could you all tell us what that stands for and the work that you've done with them?
00:27:33
Campbell
So YLAP is amazing. YLAP is the counterpart of the-the Very Important Parents research team that I was overseeing. YLAP would be the youth - youth portion of that. YLAP stood for Youth Leaders in Action Project, and the reason I'm saying "stood" and not "stand" is because they've retired that name, and they've transitioned to becoming YSO, which stands for Youth System Organizers of Broward. So, forgive me because you'll hear me referring to the group by both names. So, in 2019, under the guidance of my colleague Karl Dassie, YLAP conducted three different focus groups. And from those three different focus groups, you know, one had two with seventeen Transition Independent Living or TIL youths, and another was with eight child advocates and case managers. What YLAP found was that for youths, there is this lack of normalcy in the life cycle process of being in the child welfare system because the system, this child welfare system that so many of us defend, it made them feel like they were different from everyone else. Another- another YSO finding was that youths in foster care often feel like there is an inconsistency in the kind of administration of the child welfare system. As a result of this, because the youths are involved in that system, particularly those that are in the group homes or the foster homes that have multiple children, those inconsistencies in how youths are treated are really glaring to them. And it's those inconsistencies make them feel completely disrespected, and at a very early age, quite dejected. Another key finding of the YSO group was that, you know, having an adult that was truly caring, I mean, authentically caring about them, an adult that the youth felt like they could trust and really confide in, that it was very critical to the success of the youth, ultimate- ultimately.
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00:29:19
Pryce
Wow, that is really amazing to hear how involved the youth were in collecting that data and contributing to those findings. Whatever happened with those findings?
00:29:30
Campbell
They took their findings to the seven systems professionals that essent- that essentially oversee all of the child welfare system for South Florida, you know, and definitely here in Broward County. And found that there were a variety of reactions to their findings. You know, some of the leaders had the kind of reaction where they felt like, "Oh my gosh, we have to solve this problem right-right now." And this, for the youths that we're doing and conducting this research, kind of reinforced their feeling of the- of-of adults, in general, having a lack of empathy where they kind of just superficially decide, "We need to solve these problems," but never really do anything about it. And then there were other systems professionals within the seven that reacted with more of a, you know, "I-I hear where you're coming from, and your voice really does matter." And there was a gen- a real, genuine empathy there and for the youths that were conducting this research-this research. This reinforced the idea for those youths that, especially whether they're just coming into or just out of foster care, that they need to have supportive, caring, hearing adults around them. There were also a few of the systems professionals that expressed sympathy and empathy. But to be perfectly honest, they were more concerned with showing that their agency or the child welfare system, in general, was checking off all the boxes in that sort of compliance nature of the system. So, there was a plethora of reactions, some favorable and some not so favorable. But what was most important for those youths was being able to just gain an audience with people that have that kind of power. It gave them agency, the same that I spoke of with the parents in my research group. It gave them a voice. It allowed them to go on to do a lot of the work that I will talk about shortly.
00:31:11
Pryce
Amazing, amazing. And I-I talk a lot about sharing power and how our system has to continue to dare to share power. And this is a profound display of how, you know, you were able to share power with the youth and how we empower them to advocate for themselves and-and going to these leaders and these systems changemakers, we hope. Are they still engaged around this topic, Dr. Campbell?
00:31:21
Campbell
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Oh yes, very much. So, since the conclusion of their research, YSO, they've been sustained by the organize- organization that I work for, the Children Services Council of Broward, or CSC as we call it. And YSO is now also working with a group called Group Victory. And Group Victory has two consultants that are experts on advocacy and organizing in the
child welfare system here in Broward County. So, YSO has been given appointments and opportunities to serve on five different child welfare system leadership boards. So, I just want to take a moment to-to explain, you know, what exactly that means. So, we're not talking about, you know, professional 30-year-olds that are, you know, working on these child welfare system leadership boards, we're talking about people that are, maybe, you know, one year into college. I believe that one of the YSO members is not yet 20, but the- what's important is that because of his experience in the foster care system, he has a voice, and he's-he's now been given the platform to share his experiences to make the changes so that more children that are in the child in the foster care system don't have to go through the same abuses that he detailed that he went through to us when we were all in the CPAR training together. So YSO is really killing it. They're doing a lot for the system. They're making huge changes. And that is, again, the beauty of CPAR because when Tiffany and I and all the members of my research team, and all the members of the YSO research team, first entered into our pretty little training room more than a year ago, we never thought that we'd be able to affect and impact the changes that have been made, but here we are. It's stunning, and it's humbling, and I hope the journey continues.
00:33:14
Pryce
Absolutely. And I'm sitting here, so glad that our Institute was able to play a part in-in this work. So, I know you just mentioned you hope the work continues. I'd love to kind of wrap up our session today with, you know, what are those next steps for the Children Services Council, for the CPAR work? And love to hear from you as well, Tiffany, about, you know, what are the next steps for you and your involvement in the work?
00:33:39
Csonka
Well, I am a part of the Family Engagement Advisory Board here in Broward. And we have different system professionals working with us, and we continue to do work through race equity lens. I'm also part of the Birth Parent National Network. And I'm also part of the 100-day collaboration. So that's nationwide work. So, through the 100-day collaboration, they are focusing on several different aspects, "How to prevent deeper child welfare involvement?" And that is basically it for right now, that I'm doing.
00:34:24
Pryce
Thank you so much. And, Dr. Campbell, and your continued work with this topic? How might we see you show up?
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00:34:31
Campbell
So CPAR, in general, is going to remain one of the core functionalities of the response that my organization, the Children's Services Council of Broward County, has to different areas in our community that have been historically impacted by systemic racial trauma. You know, our intention here at CSC is to use CPAR as an avenue for community members to come in and to be a vital part of research projects that can identify what services CSC can provide in the long run. That's essentially phase one of our next steps for continuing our community effort. The second phase of our continuing CPAR is to eventually recruit outside organizations to fund grassroots community responses to the problems that will unearth themselves, ultimately, through research that's uncovered by the different CPARs that CSC will continue to keep generating and funding. The Children Services Council of Broward County we're aiming to establish mental and behavioral systems care in direct response to the systemic racial trauma that has always been an unfortunate fixture right here in Broward County. So, you know, overall, our plan at CSC is to continue implementing CPAR just about wherever we can. We are constantly evaluating different opportunities that establish CPAR with other systems and populations, and we even have plans to begin a CPAR that's centered on the experiences and the challenges of the Hispanic residents of Broward County. I have to be transparent and admit that because of all the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic that we're currently going through, that that hinders our CPAR response because, as I indicated earlier, CPAR is about community. And when you have to stay 6 feet apart, that's not so effective. So right now, our efforts are kind of stunted, but nothing lasts forever, and nor will the pandemic. So, once, you know, we get to a place where we can once again come together as a community, we will be doing so. Because Cbecause CSC, my organization, has found that, you know, CPAR is an incredibly valuable strategy that brings people together and that creates equity within our community. So, you know, we want to definitely continue to employ that strategy and that structure.
00:36:40
Pryce
I really appreciate hearing about what's next for CPAR and what's next for this work, especially as the listeners try to contend with, like you said earlier, that racial trauma that has been impacting disenfranchised families for so long. So, it's exciting to know that this work is happening in Broward. I so appreciate today's podcast and its focus on not only including the parent and child voice but working alongside them as partners. Thank you both for being with us, Tiffany and Dr. Campbell.
00:37:12
Pryce
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I want to give a huge thanks to our guests, and we are so appreciative of their commitment to improving our child welfare system. If you want to learn more about this topic or contact these speakers, please visit www.ficw.fsu.edu. Stay safe and well.