Family and Justice

To improve outcomes in complex problems around child welfare, incarceration, and crime we journey upstream to examine the Family as the institution best able to prevent / help people recover from involvement in the justice and child welfare systems.   
Interviewed:
Department of Children and Family Services Mischa Martin
Chairperson of Parent Counsel and Harding University professor Dr Andrew Baker
Sith District Circuit Judge Shanice Johnson
Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families Executive Director Rich Huddlestone
Pathway to Freedom Executive Director Scott McLean
Dept of Human Service Director of Peer Services Jimmy McGill
Restore Hope Executive Director Paul Chapman
Narrator Charles Newsome
Producer Renie Rule
Producer Ed Lowry

"A change of perspective is worth 80 IQ points." - Alan Kay
Through SmartJustice we explore issues from new perspectives in pursuit of better communities and better outcomes. 

Transcript

00;00;07;03 - 00;00;27;16
Charles Newsom
When Asa Hutchinson became governor of Arkansas in 2015, he faced one of the fastest growing prison populations in the country and a corresponding rise in the number of children going into foster care. He convened a summit titled Restore Hope and invited both government officials and leaders of the nonprofit and faith communities.

00;00;27;23 - 00;01;14;11
Asa Hutchison
Arkansas has an opportunity to lead. We have an opportunity to lead in a way that is a partnership that you have already started, that we can expand on, that really can be an example and be a national leader. I've learned that there are many options to impact children's future and as well as those that are coming back looking for a second chance. The people in this room reflect the people of Arkansas. And that we care. We care. We hope. We desire. We want to serve. It's just a matter of mobilizing that compassion that exists in the hearts of Arkansans.

00;01;14;24 - 00;01;27;24
Charles Newsom
Motivated by the governor's comments an organization that shared the summit's name, Restore Hope Arkansas, took up the challenge to unify the efforts of the government and community through a collective impact model.

00;01;28;09 - 00;01;54;07
Asa Hutchison
Most importantly, we need to look at the future. I want to assure you that I have no desire to convene this Restore Hope Summit and to leave here only with hope. We need to follow that with action. Commitment, measuring sticks, determine how we've done, how we're growing, how many more are joining the effort, what progress we're making.

00;01;55;09 - 00;02;09;18
Charles Newsom
From that challenge, this conversation has emerged, exploring how to effectively address issues of justice for the families of Arkansas. This is Season one episode one of the Smart Justice Podcast.

00;02;10;27 - 00;02;17;11
Paul Chapman
Crime and Punishment are hot topics. Are there solutions different than what we're hearing about at national level?

00;02;17;18 - 00;02;28;14
Andrew Baker
We led the nation and in all the wrong categories, especially when it came to child welfare and recidivism. Like, why are we dead last?

00;02;28;14 - 00;02;32;08
Kirk Lane
Now we're saying illicit fentanyl as the number one drug threat in our state. Backed very closely with methamphetamine.

00;02;32;09 - 00;02;38;28
Misha Martin
If you really want to focus on the kids, stop acting like you're going to use foster care to punish parents.

00;02;39;07 - 00;02;44;20
Paul Chapman
There is a different way to approach justice that has a better return on investment.

00;02;44;22 - 00;02;51;09
Misha Martin
Working with families on the prevention end is more cost effective than placing kids in foster care.

00;02;51;21 - 00;03;00;06
Paul Chapman
That seems to strengthen both law enforcement and courts and tie that together with community resources.

00;03;00;14 - 00;03;07;23
Andrew Baker
Justice has to be served for civil society to exist, but the place of mercy falls in the hands of the people.

00;03;08;05 - 00;03;18;27
Paul Chapman
And then track the impact to communities and better outcomes. And we're calling this approach smart justice.

00;03;18;27 - 00;03;38;11
Ed Lowry
Smart justice is a work of Restore Hope and partner organizations. Restore Hope is a software and services organization that helps communities achieve better outcomes for justice and child welfare efforts. Smart Justice is focused on optimizing the system by improving the relationships among its parts.

00;03;42;02 - 00;04;14;05
Charles Newsom
My name is Charles Newsom. There are beautiful people in my community, but it's been impacted by incarceration, foster care and poverty and drug use. So when I hear about those things, I don't think about statistics. I think about faces I know. I think about real families torn apart. So what does that have to do with a podcast called Smart Justice? And what is this podcast even about? Paul Chapman, executive director of Restore Hope, Arkansas, spoke with the podcast producer, Ed Lowry.

00;04;14;25 - 00;04;23;02
Ed Lowry
Walk me through a little bit about why this podcast, why call it Smart Justice? What's it all about?

00;04;23;07 - 00;04;41;12
Paul Chapman
So this podcast emerged after about a year and a half and a bunch of very smart people from across the state, from all different kind of sectors within child welfare or incarceration or law enforcement or nonprofit service, giving input to this.

00;04;41;12 - 00;04;44;00
Ed Lowry
And we're going to be hearing from a number of those as you said, really smart people that are involved in all of these things throughout the course of the podcast.

00;04;48;20 - 00;04;49;17
Paul Chapman
Right.

00;04;49;17 - 00;05;03;18
Ed Lowry
Kind of the central theme of the first season is family. A lot of folks might not equate justice with family, but so why is that kind of the bedrock issue that it's going to launch this thing?

00;05;04;05 - 00;05;28;08
Paul Chapman
The wisdom of the group came out that the family is the first institution and if the family is not strong, then then all these other... then the government has to step in. Community based organizations like churches have to step in, and it usually is not as good as had the family been intact.

00;05;28;16 - 00;05;33;28
Ed Lowry
So what is the state of family, would you say, as far as in Arkansas, but maybe even more broadly than that?

00;05;33;28 - 00;05;51;19
Paul Chapman
Yeah. You know, I'd say in you know, compared to other states. You know, we're in the bottom 50 percentile in out of wedlock birth rate. We have a pretty high percentage of, like other Delta states, we have a pretty high percentage of of child poverty.

00;05;52;01 - 00;06;00;13
Charles Newsom
Dr. Andrew Baker, Harding University professor and chair of the Parent Council, which provides oversight of legal counsel for Parents in Family Court.

00;06;00;19 - 00;06;37;02
Andrew Baker
Well, I mean, there's no doubt that families are what create communities and communities are what create a state. And if I have an unhealthy family, then likely you're going to have unhealthy communities. And when you have unhealthy communities, you create unhealthy things about your state and, you know, a number of years ago, we led the nation in all the wrong categories, especially when it came to child welfare and recidivism, like, come on, what what's what's the give here? Why? Why are we dead last? I don't find it funny. I find it tragically unfortunate. And to know that in that the people paying the biggest price are kids.

00;06;37;16 - 00;08;03;16
Paul Chapman
In 2016, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, who's very involved in child welfare issues across the nation, they ran a report that showed that 16% of Arkansas children had a incarcerated parent before they were 18. That was the highest percent in the entire nation. Now, the reason why that's important, I think following the data is there's a study called Adverse Childhood Experiences or ACES. There are ten questions on this ACE exam that you can take. And it's pretty simple. You can get this done in a couple of minutes, but according to your score out of ten, if you answered yes to four or more of those questions, then you now become more than 400% more likely to... this predictive, right? They're not certain, but you're 400% more likely to have chronic bronchitis as an adult, you're 1200 percent more likely to attempt suicide. You're going to have more broken bones, more failed relationships, all those predictive things that we're talking about. But one of the questions the very last question is, before you were 18, did you ever have incarcerated parents? And so that'll get you one on the test. If you have six or more on this test, which in some of our programs with folks who are incarcerated, you know, six is about the average. Six or more on that testing mark, 20 years of life expectancy.

00;08;03;23 - 00;08;11;14
Charles Newsom
Pulaski County ten to visit juvenile judge, Shanice Johnson, shares a practical perspective on adverse experiences.

00;08;11;28 - 00;09;08;09
Shanice Johnson
So the types of cases that I see are dependency neglect cases, which are cases that involve foster care system, Department of Human Services. I also handle delinquency cases in which those are cases kids that are accused of crimes are brought before the court. And then we also handle family needs and services cases, which are cases in which any person over the age of ten a child could petition, a parent, a school, anyone with connection to the family, could petition the court to request services. All the families that I see before me have some, at some point in their life, either the parents or the children that are impacted or experience ACES, which are adverse childhood experiences and the significance of ACES is that individuals who experience ACES have a lower life expectancy, engage in more risky behavior, and are... it just... It significantly impacts their decision making and the outcomes that they receive and experience in life.

00;09;08;29 - 00;09;19;06
Charles Newsom
Richard Huddlestone, executive director of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, told us more about where Arkansas stands and obstacles families in crisis face.

00;09;19;07 - 00;11;52;28
Rich Huddlestone
The research is pretty clear that if you had to pick once one statistical indicator that really best predicts the well-being of kids in your state and also their future ability to succeed, its the child poverty rate because the younger that you are when you live in poverty and the longer of your life that you spend in poverty really, really does really does have a profound impact on your ability to succeed later in life. Now, that doesn't mean that if you grow up in poverty, that you can't succeed. Many people do grow up in poverty and end up succeeding. But what it does mean is that you face a lot more challenges and the likelihood of you succeeding in getting out of poverty is lower if you live in child poverty. And over the past decade, while we've seen some fluctuations from year to year in the child poverty number, it always seems to be in the 20% to 25% of Arkansas kids living in poverty. And that tends to be one of the highlights, one of the higher child poverty rates in the country. And we can't seem to break out of that between having one fourth, one fifth of our kids living in poverty. Those numbers I just gave you were for all kids under 18. But if you look at the child poverty rate for kids under five, it always tends to be another 5 to 7 points higher than than the overall child poverty rate. And so basically, you have more more kids who are living in poverty, kind of the youngest point in their lives when I mean, that's the point when they really need those resources to thrive and succeed. And the other thing I would mention is that there are major racial and ethnic disparities in child poverty. Child poverty rates are often significantly higher for children of color. And last year, for example, the child poverty rate for white kids was about 16%. But if you look at the child poverty rates for children of color, it was 27% for Hispanic kids and about 39% for black kids. And so until we take steps as a state to intentionally address these gaps or these disparities in child poverty, we're always going to lag behind as a state because we're going to have large groups of our kids who grow up into adults that that are going to be behind both in their ability to succeed in the workforce, but also in the state's ability to succeed economically. So we really think the child poverty rate is key. So we do a lot of talking about that.

00;11;52;28 - 00;12;18;26
Andrew Baker
We make it a full time job to be poor. Just listen to anyone living in poverty and what they have to do to survive. It's a full time job to survive. Okay, so what does it mean to be faithfully present into that? We want to fix? Our mentality is fix, fix, fix. Sometimes the system allows that to happen. And my experience has been more times than not, it doesn't. It just makes greater obstacles.

00;12;18;28 - 00;12;26;15
Charles Newsom
Issues such as poverty, community connections and family status play into what is called social determinants of health.

00;12;26;18 - 00;12;53;12
Paul Chapman
The largest percentage of my physical health has to do with what we consider social determinants of health. How are my relationships with my family? Do I have friends? You know? Who are my friends? What are they up to? What's my... how's work? You know, am I making enough money or I'm always stressed out. And this toxic stress of worrying about, you know, how I'm going to pay the rent or keep the lights on.

00;12;53;20 - 00;13;00;10
Charles Newsom
Family and relational connections regarding the social determinants of health impact even people navigating incarceration.

00;13;01;02 - 00;15;54;01
Scott McLane
I'm Scott McLane, founder, executive director of Pathway to Freedom, which is a Christ-centered, holistic service program that provides educational values based prerelease and post-release services to prisoners and formerly incarcerated individuals in the criminal justice system. And when I look at the prison system in trying to develop these men and trying to break down that mindset in the criminal deck, the thinking that they go through it has to be broken down. When I think about family even further and what are the positives of being with the family, there's a lot of positive when you talk about a sense of belonging. You talk about the impact that's been made, particularly for males in prison. When the research states, when there's a strong tie to a family, the impact to those in prison or formerly incarcerated individuals, the results of that will deter, we will deter those statistics of returning back to prison quite often. So we can continue to look at that and realize that fact, that family connection really breaks the mold of a lot of things. It gives strength. It gives support. It helps them stay resilient, even in the midst of them being in prison. That's why that support we get a lot of guys that go through the system. I can remember several guys going through, a lot of guys, tons of them and some of the comments when they first land, I haven't heard from my family. Very emotional, but when they have that support, a lot of these men in prison and females in prison can thrive and be productive. Even in the midst of going through prison and resilient when things come against them, they can stay in. They're not going through prison alone, but when they go through prison, they're going through it with their family because the family suffers as a result of the isolation and the separation from them not being there. The other thing is the financial burden that they have to carry because a loved one's in prison that was supposed to be the one supporting them financially. The emotional support that's given. But the thing about it, when they're in prison, they realize and they will say this, I'm not doing this alone. My families with me. And it's hard to see the brokenness that they are because they realize the pressure that they themselves have put on their family, because the absence. But it's great when you see a family connected to that because it causes them to be resilient. It causes them to be productive. It causes them to want to get involved in programs like Pathway to Freedom.

00;15;54;01 - 00;16;01;07
Ed Lowry
For the sake then of this conversation, how how do you define family? How are we defining family in this case?

00;16;01;22 - 00;18;29;11
Paul Chapman
You know, I think we could go with a traditional definition of having mom and dad and children. And there seems to be a good bit of data out that still shows that, you know, children raised in a two parent home have more advantages or have a better probable outcome. And multiple areas and health and achievement and income and and relational connections. But I would say, you know, in Arkansas, America broadly, Arkansas specifically, we have seen a real decline in the two parent family. I think for our purposes, especially when we're talking about foster care and and incarceration, we are trying to have a very broad definition of family as being those important people in which, especially during the formative years that they have belonging and meaning and comfort and stability and and deep relationships with. And that looks quite different now than it may have 50 years ago. And I would say that's how we're attempting to kind of address this is meaningful relationships within a family structure, especially for children, is important for their long term mental health, their physical health, their economic outlooks, their ability to take risks, their ability to have and maintain the types of relationships that we were talking about that lead to happiness and satisfaction and and meaningfulness. And so we should always look in our policies, interactions. We should always look to try to preserve what that means for family. And so, for instance, when Department of Children and Family Services are required to remove a child from a situation, they immediately start looking for kin. So other extended family that the child may go to. And if they can't find anyone or or can't place in that home, they start looking for what they call fictive kin. This would be someone who would be very important to the child. It could be a coach or a teacher or a neighbor who's been watching the child and already has a relationship. So, again, going with the relationship.

00;18;29;23 - 00;18;38;15
Charles Newsom
Paul spoke with Micha Martin, director of the Arkansas Department of Children and Family Services, to discuss the value the Department places on Family Connection.

00;18;39;00 - 00;21;25;11
Misha Martin
Yes, so many people in our community are all about saving the kids. We got to save the kids, but they forget that if you really want to save the kids, you got to save the family because family... kids belong with their families when it's safe and appropriate. And so when we really started looking in the administration at the transformation work that needed to happen in child welfare and started having conversations with people in the community, with our partners, it was very much like, guys, like if we want to do what's right for these kids, we've got to figure out how to keep them safely with their families. And so we had started that work and then all of a sudden comes along. So that was like 2015, 2016. How do we build a child welfare system that just doesn't focus on foster care, but focuses on getting upstream and working with families to keep kids safely with their families? And when I say families, I don't just mean biological parents. Can they go with grandma and they say with you and uncles? And now it's kind of shocking that when I talk about it to people because they're like, Well, obviously you were doing that, but we weren't in pre 2015, 2016. Not only were we not placing kids with relatives as a first placement, we weren't placing kids with relatives when they were... once they were actually in foster care. In fact, only like 17% of kids in foster care were placed with relatives. So we had a lot of work to do then. So we start that work around how do we redesign our programs, how do we look at our funding streams to figure out how we shift some funding upstream? 2017 comes along, we're doing the work and all of a sudden the Congress passes Family First, which was the federal legislation as to how child welfare is funded from the feds. And the basis of Child... of Family First is that you could actually start pulling down some prevention dollars, some funds for prevention services. So that prevention dollars came. But what you had to do was you also had to ensure that you were focusing on your kids in foster care, being with family. So the feds were no longer going to fund basically group homes. You were either in a foster home or you were in some type of treatment setting. Well, we were already doing that work. We at the agency, we had said our kids belong with family. So if they can't safely stay with their family, then we want them with family in foster care, whether that is their bio family, a foster family. And if they cannot maintain in a family setting, they should be getting some treatment.

00;21;25;11 - 00;21;33;01
Charles Newsom
And we consider why healthy are families are important. I want to bring back the quote from Dr. Andrew Baker earlier in this episode.

00;21;33;12 - 00;21;44;10
Asa Hutchison
Well, I mean, there is no doubt that families are what create communities and communities are what create a state. And if I have an unhealthy family, then likely you're going to have unhealthy communities.

00;21;44;20 - 00;21;53;04
Charles Newsom
So can strengthening families really help a community in crisis? Paul shares some history from Restore Hope's work in Fort Smith and Van Buren, Arkansas.

00;21;53;25 - 00;22;46;05
Paul Chapman
What we now know is true is what Martin Luther King said decades ago. And he said Whatever impacts you directly impacts all of us indirectly. When in Fort Smith, the Whirlpool plant closed down and all of those jobs were lost, including all the vendors that were that kind of depended on. And those people stopped spending money in their community. It impacted their community in really awful ways. Free reduced lunch at school went up. I suspect if you went and looked at kind of academic achievement, it plateaued or started to decline as the family started to struggle and descended into crisis, not just because they had good paying jobs, but because you had a lot of people at the plant who had kind of they had meaning in their work.

00;22;46;05 - 00;23;55;27
Paul Chapman
They had spent a long time becoming master at their trade. They had ascended some kind of dominance hierearchy and found their their place and acceptance there. And they've lost all that. In 2017, Fort Smith, Sebastian County had the highest percent of children in foster care anywhere in Arkansas by a wide margin. I would have put them at the time, I'd put them in the top ten worst in the nation. One in 34 children in Sebastian County in 2017 were in foster care. That was 800 kids in a county that only has 130,000 people in it. For reference, Pulaski County, the largest county in Arkansas, has about 400,000 people in it. We only had 525 kids in care at the same time. And so an event like lose the plant moving out that so many people worked at, finding meaning and employment and all those social determinants impacted so many different other aspects of of the community, including incarceration, incarceration went way up, felony counts went way up.

00;23;55;27 - 00;25;24;13
Paul Chapman
So it impacted crime also as people descended into hopelessness. So coming back to the family is when families are strong, crime goes down. Foster care, child welfare issues go down. Issues in school go down and it ends up being this protection, the first protection, especially for children, so that we get out of this cyclical rate of trauma that is leading to, you know, early death, off the chart drug use now. Impact to kids, inpact to jails, impacts the prisons, impact of being able to win new companies coming to our communities. We're going way upstream here, right. If you're if you're standing next to the river and you see a baby in the river, you jump in and you pull the baby out. Right? And then another baby comes. And you eventually you've got to send somebody upstream, find out why the babies are falling in the river. This is it. We are at the family to prevent the babies from falling in the river. We're that far upstream. It impacts everything else. It impacts our schools. You know, if it's chaos at school and high conflict and just survival of kids at school, that's going to impact the staff that you're going to be able to bring on.

00;25;24;21 - 00;25;47;27
Paul Chapman
Right. And so it impacts the morale and your retention of employees. It impacts your your future base of employment. All communities spend a boatload of money on these issues and very few actually have population level change. Those that did did it in the same way. There were five aspects to it. So if you're wanting to have community level change, then you're going to have to get five things right.

00;25;48;19 - 00;26;06;25
Paul Chapman
You can get two, three. And I'm not saying you can't help people, you can help some people, but if you're wanting to have population level change like big 10X kind of impact, then you're going to have to get a coalition together. We call it an alliance together around a common vision and ours is we're going to help 100 families at a time move from crisis to career.

00;26;07;10 - 00;26;42;06
Paul Chapman
You're going to have to define shared measurements. How do you judge your success or failure collectively? And so we bake that into it's really around the social determinants of health, but they're baked into the software system that some friends they became friends in Northwest Arkansas had similar idea, had built a software platform. They gave us the code base, which we've developed very specifically, and that's how we started tracking the data, which takes care of shared measurements and constant communication.

00;26;42;22 - 00;27;00;25
Paul Chapman
And so you've got a judge and you've got attorney ad litem, and you've got DCFS, and you've got the folks that provide the parenting class that's needed and the folks that provide the employment that's needed and the and the housing authority that has the vouchers that might be used to get someone back on their feet so that they can move into permanent housing.

00;27;01;12 - 00;27;45;20
Paul Chapman
And how do you organize all that? The answer is in most places it's not organized. It's a chaotic mess. It'd be like attempting to build a house without the builder just by emailing your plans to a bunch of subcontractors that you picked. And so it's a jacked up mess. And usually the outcomes are not good because the individual who's descended into that level of crisis needs multiple... There's no one agency that can take care of their needs. So there has to be some coordination. You know, part of the five things that are needed, you've got to have a vision, shared measures. You're going to have to have constant communication among the alliance that has a shared vision. You've got to figure out how to partner together.

00;27;45;25 - 00;28;05;20
Paul Chapman
So the alliance in that crisis to career model, you have to have all the services that would actually allow someone to travel on the journey of crisis to career. So having the right folks involved. And then lastly, is and this is why most community collaboratives don't work. It's everyone has a full time job. You have to have a backbone organization.

00;28;05;20 - 00;28;28;19
Paul Chapman
And that's the role that we play. And it took us many years. We did reentry work with then director of ACC, Kevin Murphy, who's a good friend and and a wonderful partner. And we got involved. Dr. Debby followed us over and Crawford County and Van Buren, she and Judge Baker, District Court Judge over there, were doing some neat things.

00;28;29;09 - 00;28;50;08
Paul Chapman
And they called us over and brought us into a partnership for alternative sentencing. And all those things were good, but it was really in the child welfare area that we needed... We were getting our teeth kicked in over there. Like I said, one in 34 kids were in foster care in 2017 there. And so we had this this group of DCFS workers and nonprofits.

00;28;50;15 - 00;29;14;06
Paul Chapman
The CALL was there and and I remember Mayor McGill was there. He was a rep at the time and was about to run for mayor. And we were at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, who from the get go was a wonderful partner. And everybody's frustrated and tired and demoralized. And we just said, you know, can we just try to help 100 families move from crisis to career?

00;29;14;08 - 00;29;32;02
Paul Chapman
If we do that... We're not going to get married. And it's not a Restore Hope program and it has to have a name. Restore Hope is a contributor. We'll play our role. You play your role and you play your role. But it's an initiative that the community owns. And that's when 100 families was born. Just y'all are all frustrated.

00;29;32;02 - 00;29;54;11
Paul Chapman
You're all frustrated with each other. You're all talking about each other. I know because you've told me about him and her and you probably are talking to them about me. Right? It's just a high conflict, demoralizing situation and everyone came together and agreed that it was worth putting up with each other to try to help 100 families.

00;29;54;22 - 00;30;28;06
Misha Martin
Yeah, we we really saw that that change in collaboration in Fort Smith, not only at the local DCFS office, but really the whole community. I was with you when Restore Hope first started the work there and you would go to the meetings. Well, first I would start at the DCFS office where I joke with them that I felt like there was a dark cloud over it because you would just go in the DCFS office office and you would feel the tension and the despair and the frustration and the anger and and it was really just frustration with the work that they were doing.

00;30;28;14 - 00;31;04;12
Misha Martin
They felt very attacked by the community. They felt overwhelmed by the work that they had to do with children and families. And I would leave there and we would go to whatever community meeting we were doing that day. And then you felt that same tension in the community and everybody had big hearts and wanted what was best, but they were all frustrated about what was happening in that community. That really started with Restore Hope's leadership, having open conversations, giving them some tools and pretty quickly like you could just feel a difference.

00;31;04;12 - 00;31;40;20
Misha Martin
Like, I love going to Fort Smith now. It's one I'm I mean, I enjoy going there. I have a great team there. The sun shines bright and they're excited about the work. The community is excited, but they all had to come together and create a shared vision and a shared value. Everybody couldn't stay in their corner and just fight about, You're not doing this, you're not doing that or or be in their corner and be like, I'm the one over here trying to do X, but you're not doing Y. And they had to stop the fighting with each other and create a shared vision and value about what they wanted for their community. And they did that work.

00;31;41;02 - 00;32;06;29
Paul Chapman
By the time we officially launched with 60 clients and this collaborative unit, this group, I can remember the first time we pulled out aggregate data in Fort Smith. I was sitting next to Chief Baker and we said, Here was the situation in housing and employment and in child care and recovery. Here's where the clients were when we met them at intake, and here's where they were a snapshot of just last month.

00;32;07;26 - 00;32;53;22
Paul Chapman
And he went, It's working. You could see the impact on housing and food and then employment. As you're properly sequencing the help that already exists in the community, instead of focusing kind of on inputs, now we're measuring outcomes and it's a very different way of doing things. And and I've got to tell you that that community is so tight and they are continuing to innovate for the good of their community. The way that the community deals with those issues is so different. You can go ask any of the folks in authority, and that's the win because they do that for ten, 15 years. Now you're into a full generation.

00;32;54;04 - 00;33;37;19
Misha Martin
Yeah, and I think we're Fort Smith even is different than sometimes we see in other places where community is coming together sometimes and I see community coming together, it's all the government entities, it's DCFS, it's law enforcement, it's child support, it's, you know, schools, it's all the different government entities that are coming together to try to make a difference. But Fort Smith was indifferent in that. You saw business leaders, you saw churches, you saw nonprofits like it was truly the community, not just the different government entities coming together. And don't get me wrong wrong. You know, I think that there's a lot of people in government with some big hearts that want to make a difference, but to make a community difference, like the community has to come together.

00;33;38;13 - 00;34;24;19
Paul Chapman
So then we launched in Crawford, White and Pulaski, and they all are producing similar outcomes, especially as it relates to like reunification rates, which are almost double. And so so checkmark, it's scalable. Now we're trying to figure out how do you actually get to the 25 most populated counties in Arkansas that cover 75% of all Arkansans? How do we get there? And the answer is not that we keep adding staff to restore hope. About a year ago, we had two groups, one in Texarkana and one in Russellville, saying, We are following what you're doing. It's absolutely needed here in our communities, right, for this kind of collaboration. When are you going to come here? We said you're on the list, but not so.

00;34;25;11 - 00;34;59;25
Paul Chapman
And then they came both of them came back about the same time. They said that's an unacceptable answer. So how about you just teach us how to do this? And so we developed an affiliate program in partnership with the Journey Church in Russellville and the Literacy Council was never in Boone County, and they've got wonderful leaders deeply tied to the community. And we developed an affiliate program where they run 100 families, will support them in training their community members. And and they're going and so that's the way to kind of go forward now.

00;34;59;26 - 00;35;02;17
Ed Lowry
You started with the goal of 100 families, but where did it go?

00;35;03;10 - 00;36;55;17
Paul Chapman
You know, in Fort Smith, last report I looked at last month showed that the alliance in Fort Smith had over 220 families actively in care at this moment. A family on average will stay in this collaborative care or in 100 families program for about eight months. You know, 300, 350 families is the current capacity of Fort Smith to be able to serve in a collaborative way. Now, in partnership with DHS, we were just able to bring some additional resource to that community. So we may hit in the next 12, we may be over four, maybe even reaching to 500 families, being able to be served in that community in a given year. And so some of the outcomes are that if we take in Arkansas, if we take a child into foster care, only 43% of the time that that child go back home, we call it reunification. But for the families that opt into working with the 100 Families Alliance members at the end of March 2020 to the current reunification rate was 84% and it was 89%, if you also included like kin, blood, kin. And so it's wildly good. And and I want to emphasize that this is not a program run by Restore Hope. Restore Hope is one actor in a coalition or we call it an alliance that includes DCFS, judges, attorney ad litems, for the Housing Authority, licensed counselors, food pantries, SNAP benefits, adult ed.

00;36;56;03 - 00;37;15;24
Paul Chapman
You know, it's being able to have all of those folks come and work much more efficiently together. And so not only are they more efficient in that I don't have to worry about if I have an educational program, I don't have to worry about trying to help you find a house. I have partners in the alliance that specialize in that.

00;37;16;12 - 00;37;40;12
Paul Chapman
And so I just need to to talk with them. And most of that's done through the software. Dana Baker over in Searcy, she's a coordinator for White County, and she put together her first annual kind of celebration in which alliance members came, judges and DCFS staff. And and she had a she had three clients who came and shared part of their journey.

00;37;41;05 - 00;38;16;14
Paul Chapman
Each time they mentioned being helped by someone that group stood and three clients told their stories. There were 8 to 12 organizations that were standing at the end of each of those stories. Well, if you want to look at a picture of success, that's it. All the help exists in communities of any size. It's how is it that we help those organizations work together for the benefit of the client and for the effectiveness of our own program?

00;38;16;14 - 00;38;32;06
Ed Lowry
But it's a long, hard road from initial contact with a client to a success story, and that's what we're hoping to cover a little bit in the context of the podcast. So our next episode, we're going to be talking about addiction.

00;38;32;26 - 00;38;39;04
Paul Chapman
We've seen opioid use go off the charts and the deaths from it.

00;38;39;14 - 00;38;39;23
Ed Lowry
Right?

00;38;40;06 - 00;38;52;29
Paul Chapman
And so we need to address substance abuse and addiction. And is there any hope, especially given the potency of the new cocktails that are out there now after that.

00;38;53;12 - 00;38;57;28
Ed Lowry
Rolling into the topic of in the next episode, the topic of incarceration.

00;38;58;18 - 00;39;26;20
Paul Chapman
I think we have a base core belief that incarceration has a direct impact. So the more we incarcerate, the lower the crime rate drops. And I would say that that's not necessarily so. And then recidivism rates at about 50%. So we need to understand that incarceration is an intervention. It is very expensive and it works about half time as far as preventing future crime.

00;39;27;20 - 00;39;32;12
Ed Lowry
Next episode, what about the kids? What's happening with the children in the context of that?

00;39;32;17 - 00;40;23;23
Paul Chapman
So let's just say there is mom and dad and junior in the home and dad's incarcerated. Now, the pressure that that puts on mom and the child, they're probably on government service like that. Right. Impacts also the ability of the child to, you know, succeed and thrive at school. So social determinants of health all go to negative. Right? So predictive outcomes and health and happiness and income. All descend sharply. How do we minimize the impact? Otherwise you're going to see that in 15, 20 years. You're just going to you're going to see it immediately in school. And so I would say, just as a detached financial investment in our communities, that's where we need to be truly focused.

00;40;24;15 - 00;40;36;02
Ed Lowry
That help that they could be provided probably gets into the question of the the following episode, which is the role of trauma in all of this and dissolving families. Wrecking families.

00;40;36;11 - 00;41;46;06
Paul Chapman
Trauma is a way to get outside of your opinion and actually look at predictive analytics of ten events that may occur in a child's life and focus on minimizing those. I think the progression here is good is as we've talked about it is substance abuse and addiction, incarceration, child welfare, the trauma it has. And then lastly, so what's the answer? How do the communities that are actually having a real impact on doing things in this collaborative way? How are they doing it? Yeah. And what are the stories that they're telling and how does it look different to them? In summary, the goal for this series is for us to collectively recognize that the value of the family is preeminent in in these areas and not to try to engage in in policy making and laws and actions that would somehow degrade the importance of the family.

00;41;46;23 - 00;42;15;11
Paul Chapman
Harvard's done this longitudinal study. It's I believe it's the longest one ever run of this type. But it was on happiness. It started in 1938 in the midst of the Depression, and they selected a number of children from kind of the privileged backgrounds and unprivileged backgrounds, and they followed multiple generations. They followed these these children and their families and now grandkids and and their question was, is what really leads to fulfillment or meaning?

00;42;15;11 - 00;43;03;28
Paul Chapman
Or I'd say, you know, we as Americans would say the pursuit of happiness. What what impacts that. And they found that that happiness has to do with the deepness of relationships you have, and how. And especially within your family, if you looked at one of these folks that they were studying at 50 and the biggest determination on how healthy they were going to be at 80 was the quality of their relationships at 50, which is just really surprising. I mean, you should exercise and you should do all those things. But the largest factor of my physical health is a set of circumstances that are have to do with my relationships with work and my relationships with my family and my relationships with my friends.

00;43;04;10 - 00;44;07;21
Paul Chapman
Thirdly, the research that that's out there, and this is a recent book that Arthur Brooks, who's a professor at Harvard in the business school, and he teaches about happiness in Harvard Business. And he he breaks down kind of the Harvard study into faith, and so some belief in something larger than you. Family, for sure. Your joy and your pain, your deepest pain can come from family. Your community. Who you hanging out with what community? What's outlook in your community? And then lastly, some kind of meaningful work, something that you find purpose in that you think that you're good at or contributing at a larger level. And so kind of wrapping all those different aspects up, we can't forget that the first institution is the family and the stronger the family is, the less that these other - incarceration and foster care, the less of that that we'll have.

00;44;08;09 - 00;44;36;20
Paul Chapman
And so how is it that we look at strengthening the family as being very, very important and that we celebrate when that happens, given that we know that long term happiness and long term health all come from these deep, meaningful relationships, especially within family.

00;44;42;14 - 00;44;54;01
Charles Newsom
Thanks for joining us for Smart Justice. Come back next week for a conversation about the wide sweeping impact of addiction on justice and the family. Thanks again.

00;44;58;27 - 00;45;54;29
Ed Lowry
Smart justice is a work of restore hope. Special thanks to this episode's guests Andrew Baker, Rich Huddleston, Scott McClain and Michel Martin. Thanks also to Churches for Life for sponsoring musical credits include H2O by Lee of the Stone, "Through The Looking Glass" by Moments, "Late Rose" by Cody Martin, "Voyages" by Velodrome, "Silver Horizon" by Ariel Red and "A Day Without Rain" by Stephen Keach. All Music is licensed through soundstripe.com. Please consider helping us produce more work like this by becoming a donor at www. smartjustice.org. Thank you again.