HOW THE STORY IS TOLD: Part 1 – What is a Title IV-E Roundtable Anyway?

Transcript:

Cassie Gillespie (00:03):

Hi, I’m Cassie Gillespie, and I’ve been the host and a producer of the Social Work Lens since we started in 2020, but we don’t typically include my bio in our episodes. We did think it might be important to say a bit about it for this story though, so that you know a little about the perspective I’m speaking from. So, I’m a licensed social worker, and I used to work in Vermont’s child welfare system. Later after leaving my direct service role, I worked for the Vermont Child Welfare Training Partnership as a trainer and a coach, and that’s where I was working when we started this podcast. Now I actually work as a full-time faculty member in UVM’s department of Social Work. You may not know it, but there have been some pretty big questions guiding this podcast since we started in 2020. Questions like, what is child welfare?

Cassie Gillespie (00:50):

How does it work? When is it not working? And what do the workers, caregivers, and community partners in this system really need to know in order to best serve vulnerable children and their families? But honestly, we could ask even bigger questions like, what is child abuse and neglect? Really, I’m sure we all think we know, but does your definition match the one in statute? And let’s not even start with how our own values and our own personal stories shape what we personally see as abusive or neglectful. What’s good and safe enough for a child? And what should we do when a family can’t provide that? And if we really could determine without bias or prejudice that a child is being abused or neglected, what is the correct response? And what level of risk is severe enough to remove a child? And what really happens to those youth post removal? What is their experience? How do they or don’t they connect back with their families when they age out of the system? What does their relationship with their future children look like? And maybe most importantly, what would families really need to avoid all this in the first place?

Cassie Gillespie (01:59):

I think most people who do child welfare work would tell you that stress, scarcity and trauma are the antecedents to child abuse. And in fact, one of the themes of this podcast that we keep coming back to is that of debunking the idea that people who abuse and neglect their children are evil monsters who don’t love or care about their children. There may be the odd extreme case here and there, but many of the parents involved with the system love their children and are doing their best. And the cases only get more complicated when a family’s best is not safe enough for a child to remain in the home. Right now, in 2024, we have an elaborate and complicated child welfare system that’s been built over decades. It’s shaped by legislation at both the state and federal level. There are other systems like it, for example, the systems built to protect vulnerable adults or to protect animals.

Cassie Gillespie (02:52):

But none is as large or as complex as the American child welfare system. And if I could say, I learned one thing about child welfare in the 16 years I’ve been working in and alongside this system, I would say the standout feature of the bureaucracy that we have built is its complexity and its murkiness to people outside the system. So what we’re bringing you today is a story that we hope will pull back the veil on that system a little bit. And if we can’t answer those big questions that we raised at the top, at least we can explore them a little. So over the next few episodes, we’re gonna tell you a single story, and it’s the story of a national child welfare conference.

Cassie Gillespie (03:37):

Now, if you just rolled your eyes or got tempted to skip this one, don’t go! Hear me out. Conferences are the most interesting places. You have a group of people that come together from all over for a finite period of time, and they usually just have one shared identity. Maybe it’s a hobby, maybe it’s an interest. Oftentimes it’s work related, right? Well, this story that we’re gonna tell you is the story of about 400 people who came together last May in Burlington, Vermont for the national Title IV-E Child Welfare Round Tables. It’s an annual conference, and each year the people who do child welfare and child protection work come together from all over the United States and talk about their work. The focus and what makes it different from any other child welfare conference is that Title four E part, and we’ll delve into that later.

Cassie Gillespie (04:29):

But what you need to know now is that Title four is basically a funding mechanism. So this conference is all about the best practices related to how you can use federal funds to pay for child welfare related activities and how that funding both enables and constraints the way jurisdictions do the work. And so if you’re a little bored here, I get it. I do. But here’s why this matters and is so important. Child welfare work is so complex and controversial and how it is funded has significant impact on the amount of latitude that various jurisdictions have about what they do and how they do it. And that this particular Title IV-E Conference, Vermont did something really unusual. They centered discussions about systems change and structural racism and included controversial topics like the abolition movement in child welfare. And one of the ways they did it was by asking people who’ve been impacted by the system to present workshops, panels, and keynotes. I can’t really underscore enough how unusual this is. And so some people loved it.

Speaker 2 (05:37):

I loved at the beginning of the conference when she was talking about like, it’s just how we’ve always done it. Yeah. And how we get stuck in that and how we are we continue those things because we don’t want to challenge things or think outside the box.

Cassie Gillespie (05:56):

And some people had never heard these terms or explored these ideas before. Before you came to this conference, have you heard the terms like family policing system and abolition used in relation to child welfare?

Cassie Gillespie (06:09):

Never.

Cassie Gillespie (06:10):

And it was really emotional for some people.

Speaker 3 (06:12):

I don’t agree with removing children from families. I mean, obviously there are cases where you have to, but for the most part I don’t think we do. And I think we’re doing it wrong. Yeah. So that’s how I feel about it. It’s hard.

Cassie Gillespie (06:30):

And quite a few folks conveyed that they felt frustrated, maybe even alienated by all of the discussion about the ways the system harms families and the lack of acknowledgement that child abuse is real and child protection is needed.

Conference Participant (06:44):

I have only heard one acknowledgement this week. That that child protection services is needed.

Cassie Gillespie (06:52):

So here we go. We’ll bring you the story over three parts and we’ll tell it through the voices of the conference planners, the speakers, the workers, and other attendees. We’ll start with part one. What is a child welfare Title IV-E Round Table? Produced by me, Cassie Gillespie.

Cassie Gillespie (07:17):

Part one. What is a Child Welfare Title IV-E Round Table. So before we jump into the conference, I wanna give you a little background on that whole Title IV-E thing and how it pertains to child welfare. To do this, I spoke with two of our local experts. Thomas Carlson, the assistant director at the Vermont Child Welfare Training Partnership, and Heather McLean, the Revenue Enhancement Manager for Vermont’s Family Services Division. We’ll start off with Thomas.

Thomas Carlson (07:47):

Yeah. So Title IV-E is an entitlement program. It’s funds through the Social Security Act, and it allows the federal government to reimburse up to 75 or 50% of what you put in to help child welfare. And that’s a broad and narrow term.

Cassie Gillespie (08:06):

And a bit more from Heather.

Heather McLean (08:07):

It’s federal money that goes to states to fund out-of-home care for children in foster care. And there’s a whole eligibility process that is included. And then the other piece is that it’s a need-based program. And so the family that the child is removed from has to be financially eligible for Title IV-E. And the standard that is set for IV-E is the 1996 AFDC standard.

Cassie Gillespie (08:31):

Wow.

Heather McLean (08:31):

And so as you

Cassie Gillespie (08:32):

AFTC stands for

Heather McLean (08:35):

Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which is what TANF Temporary Aid to Needy Families was called in 1996. Okay. And so, as you can imagine, the further we get from 1996, the fewer families are eligible because the dollar is different now.

Cassie Gillespie (08:50):

Yeah.

Heather McLean (08:50):

So like in today’s money, that’s a much smaller amount of money than it was in 1996.

Cassie Gillespie (08:55):

And so that IV-E funding with all of those criteria that you just listed, that’s important because that is it an overstatement to say that’s really what funds child welfare?

Heather McLean (09:05):

So it is a big driver in Vermont of paying for room and board costs for children in foster care. Okay. But then along with those costs, it also pays for administrative costs for our workforce that is overseeing out of home care cases.

Cassie Gillespie (09:22):

Okay.

Heather McLean (09:22):

And so that goes for our workers, but then supervisors, operations, like everybody up the chain gets a piece of those IV-E dollars all the way up to the governor for overseeing a foster, the foster care system. And then there is a training component, which is primarily what this conference is about.

Cassie Gillespie (09:38):

Yeah.

Heather McLean (09:38):

And so the, the government has made rules about what topics are eligible for IV-E funding primarily related to running a foster care system or serving children in the foster care system. So things like impact of trauma or racial justice, things like that are IV-E eligible topics.

Cassie Gillespie (09:58):

But there is also IV-E money that can be used for prevention services to keep kids out of foster care. And in case this wasn’t complicated enough, the landscape is ever changing and there is no one way to use your IV-E money.

Thomas Carlson (10:13):

Different states can do different things or what the state feels at the time. And there’s things going on at the federal level where like all of a sudden, for instance, if you go to the child bureau site, you’ll see new ones. Like the juvenile justice is all of a sudden okay. Where before it was debated about whether it was, and how that works is, you know, they do like a research study case study, they review it, they see, yes, it is applicable, let’s apply it, that type of thing. We’re not really a part of any of making that policy we could be in the future. We just do what they say. And that’s what I’m like making sure that that’s the case. And it goes down from doing a training to a caseworker on say, trauma to saying, let’s, like, how do you administrate maybe opioid addiction or something? And like, nope, that’s treatment. Can’t do that. We are not doing any trainings on that. Super cool. But we can’t, we can’t do it. So that’s things I need to look out for.

Cassie Gillespie (11:10):

And lastly, there’s also a component of the Title IV-E program that provides funding for social work students to get their MSWs. In fact, that’s how I got mine. I applied for and was granted a Title IV-E traineeship. I signed a contract that my schooling would be covered, and then I worked for the Vermont Family Services Division for three years after I graduated to pay it back. Although in truth, this part of the program is also complicated and not terribly well known.

Conference Participant (11:40):

I don’t think that the Title IV program is very well advertised.

Cassie Gillespie (11:45):

Yeah.

Conference Participant (11:45):

Nobody seems to know about it or what it does.

Cassie Gillespie (11:48):

Yeah. Or, you know, we’ve had people in our org in the university that have said, what is that? Is that a real thing? <Laugh>?

Cassie Gillespie (11:56):

So, right, right. Right. Mm-hmm

Cassie Gillespie (11:57):

<Affirmative>. Yeah. So it’s a little covert.

Conference Participant (11:59):

<Laugh>,

Cassie Gillespie (12:00):

But even though it may not be well known or well understood, the IV-E program is very impactful. And the training side of the program is sizable. For example, just here in tiny Vermont, there are currently 19 full-time employees at the Vermont Child Welfare Training partnership, and they provided over 9,500 hours of training and support to Vermont’s child welfare system during the last fiscal year. Additionally, since 1998, there have been over 170 trainees like me that have their social work education paid for in exchange for working for the Vermont Family Services Division. And when you have that many people engaging in and supporting child welfare work, there is a lot of reflection about the system and talk of systems change.

Conference Participant (12:49):

I mean, this is what I’ve always loved about child welfare work, Cassie, is that it’s never, you are never really finished grappling with your job.

Cassie Gillespie (12:59):

Yeah<laugh>,

Conference Participant (12:59):

<Laugh>. You know what I mean? Like.

Cassie Gillespie (13:01):

Yeah.

Conference Participant (13:01):

What am I doing and why am I doing it? And yeah. Is it okay? And, you know, is the whole system okay, how can I make the system better? How can I make this be more fair?

Cassie Gillespie (13:14):

And where am I part of something that might not be fair.

Conference Participant (13:16):

<Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s that’s definitely crossed my mind more than a few times in the last 17 years, <laugh>.

Cassie Gillespie (13:26):

I bet. And when I listened back to the interviews we recorded at this conference, I heard a lot of people talking about changing the system or addressing injustices from their specific location, either personally or professionally.

Conference Participant (13:41):

Yeah. And, and now my relationship to child welfare is really wanting to bring about high level changes to, to the systems that benefit children and youth. Being led by their voices. And that’s kind of what our office.

Cassie Gillespie (13:55):

Is all about?

Conference Participant (13:56):

You know, nothing, nothing about us without us. It’s, it’s, it’s a good concept. It’s hard to implement, even if you have the best intentions

Conference Participant (14:05):

When you think about child welfare in the context of race and racial disparities. Speaking as a black woman, it can be very overwhelming.

Cassie Gillespie (14:16):

Yeah.

Conference Participant (14:17):

Because a lot of times even though I may feel that people outside of my blackness may feel like, oh, here they go whining again, we’re not whining. We’re sounding the alarm. Yeah. That there are so many injustices that we just kind of sweep, not kind of, we sweep under the rug so we don’t have to deal with them that I feel now because the rug has become too high for us to climb over. Yeah.

Cassie Gillespie (14:45):

It’s love to hear. Yeah.

Conference Participant (14:46):

Like, and it stinks and it is like, it’s so evasive now. Like we have to address the situation because as children grow up, who, what legacy are we leaving behind for them?

Cassie Gillespie (14:59):

And I kept coming back to something that Heather McLean, the revenue enhancement manager you heard from earlier said,

Heather McLean (15:05):

I’ve been thinking a lot about we’re right now preparing for a federal audit of our Title IV-E program.

Cassie Gillespie (15:13):

Yeah.

Heather McLean (15:13):

And it is so picky and, and so rules bound. And so I’ve been thinking for a long time, but particularly very acutely in the last little while, about how we can make system changes in an environment that is so rule bound and that our money is so tied up with all of these strings. And so how, where’s the room to push against those things to do things differently. And yesterday we were talking with Kay Casey, who’s a IV-E consultant about Family First. And it’s like, you know, I was thinking, again, there’s so many strings attached to it, and it’s like, of course the federal government has, is doing something that is good.

Cassie Gillespie (15:58):

Yeah.

Heather McLean (15:58):

Like prevention services, that’s a, the direction we have to go, but it is still creating a system that maintains itself.

Cassie Gillespie (16:06):

Yeah.

Heather McLean (16:07):

And so.

Cassie Gillespie (16:07):

System protects the system.

Heather McLean (16:09):

That’s right. And so how do we, what do we do about that?

Cassie Gillespie (16:12):

Now, the idea of the system maintaining itself is not new, but there is one idea in particular related to this that keeps coming up in child welfare spaces, or at least in the spaces critical of child welfare. And that’s the concept of abolition in child welfare. So let’s unpack it a little bit. The abolition movement is really a response to the idea that child welfare causes more harm than good. For example, we’ve known for decades that there’s disproportionality in the number of black, brown and indigenous children who are removed compared to white children, we can see bias creeping in and influencing what we see as abuse and who we see as abusers. Additionally, there is this harder to quantify component that many people who work in the system or have been air quotes served by the system would say is at play. And that is the idea that we’re not doing enough, or some would say anything to address the conditions that actually cause child abuse and neglect, and therefore we are separating families causing trauma and watching what many cases is generational involvement with a system that seeks to protect children but cannot meaningfully change conditions for their families.

Cassie Gillespie (17:26):

And so we’re increasingly seeing a call for abolition in child welfare. And there are many groups out there calling for this, perhaps one of the best known is the upend movement. Upend describes themselves as a collaborative movement that works to abolish the existing child welfare system. And this next part comes directly from their website. They say child welfare is built on a model of surveillance and separation, and is more accurately described as a family policing system. If you’re curious about those concepts, check out Upend. But for our purposes here, to go a little deeper, I asked Dr. Tabitha Moore, a licensed counselor and consultant to talk to us a little about abolitionism and child welfare. Tabitha used to work as a trainer in Vermont, and she also moderated a panel at the conference.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (18:18):

I would say that my understanding of abolition has evolved as I have, and as I’ve spent more time both in my own activism outside of systems and within systems and trying to transform them. And you know, throughout my PhD process, there’s just so many ways to approach abolition. But the, ultimately, when I think about abolition and abolition child welfare, what it is, is really returning to a more community focused solution to the issues that plague our families. And that includes looking at the way that our current systems and institutions operate and how their operation is um number one, it perpetuates the issues related to identity that we’ve been talking about here. But number two, it actually is so dehumanizing.

Cassie Gillespie (19:14):

Yeah.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (19:15):

So abolition is really about humanizing through kind of mutual aid and community resourcing rather than propping up systems and institutions that we know were already just designed to prefer one over all others.

Cassie Gillespie (19:30):

So sometimes when we, when I’m facilitating conversations around abolition, people pose a question like, are you suggesting we burn down the whole system and the whole thing?

Dr. Tabitha Moore (19:39):

Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>.

Cassie Gillespie (19:40):

How do you answer that question when people ask you?

Dr. Tabitha Moore (19:43):

Yeah. Well and I think it’s funny because I think you know this about me. I work a lot with police.

Cassie Gillespie (19:47):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (19:47):

And law enforcement communities, and obviously child welfare. And I would say arguably it’s probably our police community that’s most familiar with the concept of abolitionum.

Cassie Gillespie (19:59):

Related to like the defund the police movement?

Dr. Tabitha Moore (20:03):

Yeah! Or even abolish the police abolish ice. Yeah. There’s straight up abolitionist movements. So there’s, you know I think one of the things that the murder of George Floyd did for this country was to help folks to realize that abolition can look like a number of different things for different people. And for some folks, defunding is a step toward abolition.

Cassie Gillespie (20:24):

Yeah.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (20:25):

But in, in my work, you know, obviously I come across a lot of people who are like, you know you’re one of those black supremacists and you’re just out here to, you know, take down the police. And oftentimes what I say is, do you ever feel like you have duties that you shouldn’t be doing? Do you feel like you’re an expert in mental health or in drug addiction or in homelessness? And they’re like, no, I’m not. Yeah. And I’m like, or neighborly disputes over a fence.

Cassie Gillespie (20:51):

Yeah.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (20:51):

And they’re like, oh my gosh, so many times. You know, and just the, the level of kind of exasperation and kind of release that happens when we just have that conversation, I’m like, wouldn’t it be amazing if we had, you know, healthcare that would, you know, actually serve the people. Right? Rather than bankrupt them.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (21:10):

Imagine if people all had access to food and housing and education. Imagine if we had a thriving and robust mental healthcare system, right. And that education, you weren’t dealing with truance students who couldn’t see themselves in a system. And they’re like, yeah, I could see my, you know, and I’m like, guess what? You’re actually an abolitionist.

Cassie Gillespie (21:27):

No!

Dr. Tabitha Moore (21:27):

And then <laugh> the number of people that go absolutely silent. And they’re like, but, but I believe in police. And I say, yeah, that’s right. Abolition doesn’t mean that there isn’t some sort of a system of operation that does kinda shepherd processes. What it means is that is it’s far, far reduced from what we know it to be now. And it doesn’t look anything like it does now. It’s actually based in community, it’s based in the cultures of the people who are involved in a situation. So like I said, abolition really is about humanizing and making sure that the people who are most affected are the ones that are leading the process rather than systems and institutions and legal frameworks.

Cassie Gillespie (22:11):

And so how would that look specifically in child welfare? I don’t like that question.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (22:17):

Yeah. So what is abolition and child welfare is quite similar, I think. And I, and you know, when I was training with CWTP, I used to say, you know, you are the most dangerous arm in child in, in law enforcement.

Cassie Gillespie (22:29):

Yeah.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (22:30):

To the new you know, the new FSD workers, you know, you like, because if you think about it, taking someone’s child is the ultimate offense.

Cassie Gillespie (22:42):

Yeah.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (22:42):

Like, there’s a reason we talk about the mama bear, right? There’s, you know, so, so you’re the most dangerous arm and you are the <laugh> the least kind of supported, I’d say.

Cassie Gillespie (22:53):

Yeah.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (22:54):

Um so abolition and child welfare, I feel like there’s also a lot of hope for it because we’re already using some of the things, you know the community partnerships and, and and such. But I still think it’s too tethered to the legal system.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (23:09):

So I think that number one, there’s gotta be a reduction in legal processes I think that we need to be using, especially considering here in Vermont, the relationship between involvement with child welfare and drug addiction. You know, we have to be looking at community-based harm reduction. You know, there’s, there’s so many things. And then when it comes to race and abolition and child welfare, even if we were gonna try to do something now with our current framework, I mean, the tools that, that we’re using are inherently racist. So I think, think if we are gonna, you know, step toward abolition, that’s the first thing is changing the tools that we’re using to determine whether or not a person is a fit parent, because it is so culturally biased.

Cassie Gillespie (23:55):

Yeah.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (23:56):

Um I, and I also think that the construct of mandated reporting needs an overhaul.

Cassie Gillespie (24:03):

Yeah.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (24:03):

As well. So if we’re looking at, you know, what abolition would be, it would be much more kind of community centered practices and what folks want in those in those arenas.

Cassie Gillespie (24:15):

Okay. So when you look up the definition of abolition or an abolitionist movement, it’s this idea of ending a system or changing a systemic process. And so when we talk about abolition and child welfare or other adjacent systems, I think there’s always a group of people that say, what do you mean abolition? What do you mean you’re, it’s not changing the whole thing. Doesn’t that mean we’re getting rid of the whole thing, throwing the baby out with the bath bathwater?

Dr. Tabitha Moore (24:40):

Yeah. I think that that’s a very common concern. And I think two things. Number one, we should not conflate abolition and anarchy.

Cassie Gillespie (24:48):

Ooh.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (24:49):

People automatically assume that if you are abolishing the system, that you’re not replacing it with anything. And that’s absolutely antithetical to abolition. What abolition says is we return to kind of grassroots. And it’s really fascinating to me who tends to oppose abolitionist movements because it’s the same people that want less government.

Cassie Gillespie (25:11):

<Laugh>.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (25:11):

So we’re all saying the same thing, but we’re talking about doing it in very different ways.

Cassie Gillespie (25:16):

Yeah.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (25:16):

So I can see why, you know, abolish, you think, you know, it’s, it’s done away with completely, but what what it really is, is just a re-imagining from a liberatory framework, which means that everybody is included, everybody has the right to have their needs met. And it doesn’t mean that we would never take a child out of a home where they were in, you know, in imminent danger.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (25:37):

And like, like I was saying in the beginning, there’s just different approaches to how we create abolition. And some people are like, the incremental approach is never gonna work because the system will just continue to rely on those little kind of nuggets of freedom to ride, to ride on.

Cassie Gillespie (25:53):

Yeah.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (25:54):

Um it’s kinda like after 2020 the number of institutions that like just hired a typically a black woman to come in and try to change all of their racist systems.

Cassie Gillespie (26:03):

Yeah.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (26:04):

And didn’t give them resources. And they’re like, well, why didn’t it work? But they felt really good. The system felt really good about it, about it. Meanwhile, the woman is like, dying. And, and now we’re seeing kind of a retreat from that.

Cassie Gillespie (26:15):

Yeah.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (26:15):

As, as sort of the collective consciousness of, of whiteness recedes back into that place of comfort. So that’s why you see a bunch of different approaches to abolition. And that’s why I do think, I, I think the other thing is, is that we have to pay attention to who’s telling us what abolition is.

Cassie Gillespie (26:31):

Yeah.

Dr. Tabitha Moore (26:32):

And is it the people who are abolitionists, or is it the people who are afraid of abolition? It’s normal whenever you hear abolish, and you’re, especially if you’re part of that system, or you believe in some of the good things that that system has done to hear, you know, an either or sort of response. But you know, as somebody who is an abolitionist who works with law enforcement, who works with child welfare, I’m here to tell you that there’s a different way to do it. And I think that the folks who attended the conference that spoke at the conference also feel the same way.

Cassie Gillespie (27:04):

And when I say we kept hearing echoes of this idea from conference attendees, I mean, we kept hearing this. Here’s another one from Vene Bagot, a field coordinator and assistant lecturer.

Conference Participant (27:18):

I would say I, I drank the Kool-Aid starting off, you know, like,

Cassie Gillespie (27:23):

Tell me what your Kool-Aid.I drink on Kool-Aid . I wonder if you had the same Kool-Aid .

Conference Participant (27:27):

<Laugh> That, you know, the system was the way.

Cassie Gillespie (27:31):

Yeah.

Conference Participant (27:31):

Like CPS is here to make families better to protect you. We’re going to protect you. And like we are the, the people that wear capes and you know, we come in and save children from reckless parents, and that is not the case.

Cassie Gillespie (27:47):

Yeah. Yeah.

Conference Participant (27:48):

So I’m not saying that there aren’t situations where parents do behave recklessly.

Cassie Gillespie (27:54):

Sure.

Conference Participant (27:54):

I’m not saying that at all. But the majority of, you know, the, the lessons that I got about CPS being the, the only way, like I hate I got that.

Cassie Gillespie (28:05):

Yeah.

Conference Participant (28:06):

And so I’ve been in the process of deprogramming and making sure that when I speak about CPS I say, this is what, you know, history has said. This is what it is now. How are you gonna take these two in these two aspects of what you know now and apply it to your own practice?

Cassie Gillespie (28:30):

Yeah.

Conference Participant (28:30):

So I’m not really telling students like that way is wrong. I’m just saying it’s bit and twisted.

Cassie Gillespie (28:36):

Yeah.

Conference Participant (28:37):

And so with that inequity in mind, how are we gonna move forward?

Cassie Gillespie (28:42):

And that’s one of the things that’s always moved me about child welfare this through line that so many people are asking the same question, Vene just did. How are we gonna move forward over and over? Folks are reflecting on their part and trying to creatively problem solve a new way forward and thinking about what each of us can do from our location in the system. Thomas, the assistant director you heard from at the top, summarizes it beautifully.

Thomas Carlson (29:10):

And almost every Corey session, that’s how I felt. I would come out thinking, what can I do?

Cassie Gillespie (29:18):

Mm-Hmm <affirmative>.

Thomas Carlson (29:19):

And in my position, this is what I can do, you know?

Cassie Gillespie (29:22):

Yeah.

Thomas Carlson (29:23):

So this is the one thing I can do. So I’ll look into it.

Cassie Gillespie (29:30):

And so we finally arrive at the conference part of this story. I mean, if you’re sitting with all these questions and the ideas and you’re trying to figure out what’s the one thing you can do? Well, if you work at a training partnership, the one thing you can do is host the National IV-E Roundtables and build your conference around these themes. And so that’s what the Vermont Child Welfare Training Partnership did. They hosted the 2024 National Roundtables in Burlington, Vermont. They presented keynotes, panels and workshops that explored these ideas. And now this conference, it does happen every year. So in 2023, it was in New Orleans, Louisiana, and next year in 2025, it’ll be in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. So it’s not the act of having the conference that was so different, it’s the way they built it. Here’s Jennifer Jorgensen, the director of the Vermont Child Welfare Training Partnership, talking about what they were trying to do.

Jennifer Jorgenson (30:27):

We had a very strong desire to include folks that were impacted by systems in the delivery which I hadn’t. And folks that I know that have attended the Roundtable for years, haven’t experienced in the past. It typically has been a place, at least from my experience, for professors researchers, trainers, to kind of showcase or share research on innovative training, stuff that they’ve done. Right? Things that have worked, or maybe things that they tried and failed and related to IV-E. But this was different, right? Like we, we really wanted it to not just be academics, talking about professionals training but what does that, what what does it look like? Right? So even the inclusion of like mandated reporting to supporting. Right? And cracking open that door. And I know this is like a stream of consciousness. <Laugh>, I have a very clear memory at the conference of being at our welcome reception that first evening.

Jennifer Jorgenson (31:35):

And I was with Corey and I was talking to him and I said, are you bringing out chains tomorrow? <Laugh>?

Cassie Gillespie (31:44):

Yeah.

Jennifer Jorgenson (31:46):

Because I had heard he had a, a large national gathering out west that he had kind of come into his slave song shackled. And I was like, that’s okay if you are, I’m just trying to prepare myself for what it’s gonna look like tomorrow. And he said I’m not gonna be shackled, but yeah, I will, I will be getting the chains out. And I was like, okay, good. Okay. You know, like I was just in my white body. Like, I was just very aware of how folks in the room were gonna have a variety of experience and response to what I think to some of us, Vermonters felt like an ongoing conversation we had been having for years.

Cassie Gillespie (32:22):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Jennifer Jorgenson (32:22):

It’s not what everyone else is doing and how everyone’s talking about it.

Cassie Gillespie (32:26):

And from the earliest planning stages, the Vermont team tried to infuse these ideas into the planning and let folks know that this would be a different type of conference.

Chynah Boise (32:35):

The title and the theme for the national Title four E conference that was held here in Vermont was transforming child welfare, the aims and gains of social movements and the vision and voice of everyday lives. So <laugh>, it’s lengthy. It’s lengthy. Are all of the titles that lengthy, or was this okay?

Jennifer Jorgenson (32:57):

No, <laugh>

Cassie Gillespie (32:59):

And here’s Brenda Solomon, one of our speakers, talking a bit more about that lengthy title. Yeah.

Brenda Solomon (33:04):

Yeah, I remember meeting with Christa Mordoff and Jill Richard and the three of us had a rather lengthy conversation about what to suggest with this title of this conference. And we were laughing about how we were trying to do an awful lot with that title. And in fact, we got a lot of pushback because it was a very long title, but it was good because people did talk about it and had their own thoughts about how they connected to it and that I’ll defend the title. How’s that? <Laugh>?

Cassie Gillespie (33:39):

And back to Jennifer,

Jennifer Jorgenson (33:40):

We couldn’t not have the theme open up space for people to be talking about what we were experiencing here, which was folks had signed up to do work that they thought would help people.

Cassie Gillespie (33:54):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Jennifer Jorgenson (33:54):

Right? And then we’re really struggling with kind of that moral injury or the, the, the disconnect of wanting to be a helper and then starting to like second guess the systems and the unintentional impact of the systems on children and families. Right? So like, we’ve been experiencing that for the last couple of years and it’s been really a big part of our work. And then with what we were doing with Mining for Gold, I mean, we’re kind of pushing, we’re we’re pushing it, right? Like we were opening up some hard conversations and naming some challenging truths, you know, and I was, I was aware of, you know, there were some people from within our state that I was seeing have really emotional reactions and struggling with kind of reconciling what they were hearing and experiencing with their own work and their part.

Cassie Gillespie (34:48):

And so after a year of planning, Vermont hosted almost 400 people from around the United States for a three day conference that included keynotes, panels, and workshops by folks like Rebecca Gaston, the commissioner of a ACYF, Corey B. Best from Mining for Gold, Tabitha Moore, Brenda Solomon, Jill Richard, Dr. James Metz, and a number of panelists who had a variety of experiences with the child welfare system, including some as parents who’ve had their children removed. And as adults who were removed as children. And some activists in the system. And <laugh>, we decided to record as much of it as we could in hopes that we might be able to share some of it with you after. And here’s where I should probably tell you that although we’ve had this podcast going for a couple of years, this is the first time we tried to interview people out in the world and then stitch those interviews together to tell a story.

Cassie Gillespie (35:46):

So I’m Cassie.This is day one of the conference.

Speaker 14 (35:49):

Oh, yeah. We’re just getting sound. Where are y’all coming from?

Conference Participant (35:53):

Mississippi.

Cassie Gillespie (35:55):

Okay. We’re here at day two of the conference, and I’m looking at a map that has push pins in it from all the states that our participants have joined from. So we’ve got folks from Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico. But yeah, it’s been a great turnout. So we’ll see what happens today. Part one was produced by me, Cassie Gillespie, and mixed by Egan Media Productions. Join us next week for Part two, voices from the conference.