What About the Kids

To improve outcomes in complex problems around child welfare, incarceration, and crime we journey upstream to examine the Family as the institution we should protect and seek to strengthen.
 
Interviewed:
Department of Children and Family Services Mischa Martin
Chairperson of Parent Counsel and Harding University professor Dr Andrew Baker
Tenth District Circuit Court Judge Shanice Johnson
Restore Hope Community Development Manager Karen Phillips
100 Families White Co Coordinator Dana Baker
Restore Hope Sebastian Co Case Mgr Courtnee Harlan
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.

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https://smartjustice.supercast.com

Transcript

00;00;01;17 - 00;00;17;06
Mischa Martin
No kids should be raised by the state. But sadly, we have some kids who are growing up in foster care. Can you imagine being 21? Have no connections. Have been raised and moved place to place and not have a family.

00;00;17;19 - 00;00;39;09
Andrew Baker
And there's the analogy used in the child welfare space that says When a family is on the table, we're going to do all we can to save that family. Just like if it was a human being on an operating table. You don't call it dead until everything you possibly can do has been done.

00;00;39;28 - 00;00;46;22
Charles Newsom
This is Season one, episode four of the Smart Justice Park case. What about the kids?

00;00;48;21 - 00;00;55;04
Paul Chapman
Crime and Punishment are hot topics. Are there solutions different than what we're hearing about the national level?

00;00;55;10 - 00;01;04;24
Andrew Baker
We led the nation in all the wrong categories. Especially when it came to child welfare and recidivism. Like, Why are we dead last?

00;01;04;24 - 00;01;10;04
Kirk Lane
Now we’re saying illicit fentanyl as the number one drug threat in our state, backed very closely with methamphetamine.

00;01;10;04 - 00;01;16;23
Mischa Martin
If you really want to focus on the kids, stop acting like you're going to use foster care to punish parents.

00;01;17;01 - 00;01;22;14
Paul Chapman
There is a different way to approach justice that has better return on investment.

00;01;22;17 - 00;01;29;05
Mischa Martin
Working with families on the prevention side is more cost effective than placing them in foster care.

00;01;29;16 - 00;01;37;29
Paul Chapman
That seems to strengthen both law enforcement and courts and tie that together with community resources.

00;01;38;08 - 00;01;45;16
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;01;45;27 - 00;01;56;06
Paul Chapman
And then track the impact to communities and better outcomes. And we're calling this approach smart justice.

00;01;56;19 - 00;02;15;19
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;02;16;21 - 00;02;36;20
Charles Newsom
When it comes to issues around the justice system, the people impacted the most are often the children. The grown ups in their life have made choices, and the kids pay the price. To understand the systems in place to help children, Paul Chairman spoke with Mischa Martin, head of the Arkansas Department of Children and Family Services.

00;02;38;05 - 00;02;43;15
Paul Chapman
Mischa, what's the goal really of the Department of Children and Family Services?

00;02;44;11 - 00;03;16;27
Mischa Martin
Yeah. So I never want to miss what our actual task is, which is it is our task to keep kids safe. I mean, that is what our mission is, to work with families, serve and support them. But but that comes with the task of keeping kids safe. And so that means that we have to assess the whole family. We have to assess the situation. And sometimes kids have to come into foster care. But in keeping kids safe, we also have to help families get on a good path.

00;03;17;15 - 00;03;23;14
Paul Chapman
The way that a family or a child gets on your radar is usually to a hotline call.

00;03;23;16 - 00;03;23;29
Mischa Martin
That's right.

00;03;24;03 - 00;03;30;02
Paul Chapman
But how many calls do you respond to? And then how does that become a case and what types of cases?

00;03;30;02 - 00;04;37;28
Mischa Martin
The child abuse hotline excepts about about 35,000 calls of child abuse and neglect. So they receive about 60 a year. But in that year, 35 are accepted for some type of either investigation or what we call a differential response. Of that 35,000 calls accepted, DCFS is responsible for 29,000 of them. The other 6000 go over to state police crimes against children. Only a small percentage of those actually get removed and placed in foster care. So many times what we see is that we serve children and really trying to offer services and support to those families to help those families become stable out of crisis, to prevent those children from having to come in foster care. And frankly, we don't just want to prevent foster care. We want to work with families to help them get back on a path of stability, of a strong family, of a stable family, and prevent any type of future, future maltreatment. And many people don't realize that we serve more children in homes across the state than we do in foster care.

00;04;38;26 - 00;04;41;01
Paul Chapman
What roughly what are those numbers.

00;04;41;05 - 00;05;13;15
Mischa Martin
On a given year? We serve about 14,000 children in their homes on what we call protective services cases. So some allegation of abuse or neglect, probably neglect. We then get out there and offer services, whether it's mental health services, parenting, whatever that family is assessed it needs. But about 14,000 children. Where on any given year in foster care, even though we only ever have about 4600 children in foster care over the course of a year, we serve about 7000 children in foster care.

00;05;14;04 - 00;05;18;23
Paul Chapman
What would an example be of when you're required to remove a child?

00;05;19;01 - 00;06;25;10
Mischa Martin
Well, the standard for placing a child in foster care is that the child is in immediate danger. So that is a high burden, like a child has to be in immediate danger for the government to come in and take your child away from you. Right. We believe as a society, that children belong with their families. So, you know, a small percentage of our cases are pretty, pretty awful. Like they're they're extreme physical abuse. Sexual abuse. But really that is only a small portion of our removals. More than 50% of our cases, substance use and neglect is some portion of that. So that might be a small child who is in a home where mom and dad or maybe mom is using meth, heroin, and to the point that they cannot care for that child. The home is in disarray. Child is not being fed. There's no food in the home. So you're seeing an extreme neglectful situation with a parent who's using daily or pretty frequently cannot care for their child. That would be a removal situation.

00;06;25;13 - 00;06;30;17
Paul Chapman
So substance abuse plays a large role in the number of cases that you'll take.

00;06;30;18 - 00;07;15;00
Mischa Martin
Absolutely. Now, we don't remove every child where there’s substance use in the home. I want to be clear about that, because we assess the full situation. Is there another clean caregiver in the home? Is there is the child being fed? Is the parent working? Is there appropriate childcare situation where the kid can be? What is the age of the child? Are we talking about a baby? Are we talking about a 13 year old? Can we get mom into substance abuse treatment if it's if outpatient as needed so that the family can stay together? Can we get grandma involved so that there's a safety plan? We are tasked with protecting children in our communities. We're doing the best that we can do to try and assess the situation and keep a child safe.

00;07;15;13 - 00;07;43;07
Mischa Martin
But sometimes the community thinks, well, you just place a child in foster care, and that's the miracle solution. But foster care comes with with its significant challenges and it causes trauma. Just the removal process, placing a child in foster care causes trauma on that child, which can have long, long lasting effects on that child, their mental health, their outcomes as far as workforce. So, you know, we are doing our best to protect children, but we are not miracle workers.

00;07;43;13 - 00;07;55;00
Paul Chapman
Let's do talk about outcomes. So if a child is taken into foster care, does that have lasting impact on on them as far as outcomes with health and employment and those types of things?

00;07;55;03 - 00;09;14;21
Mischa Martin
Well, absolutely not just the fact that they came in foster care, but, you know, the research shows that kids who suffer trauma and the more trauma they suffer, then that can have lasting impact on their health, their social outcomes. And we have to try and prevent that. Right. So sometimes kids have to come into foster care that that sometimes that is the only way to safely protect a child is to bring them into foster care. But we know that if we have to bring them into foster care, we have to be focused on placing them with people that they know to try and prevent for prevent additional trauma. So that means we need to do everything that we can to place at the safe, appropriate relative or to place with a fictive kin, somebody they know like a teacher, maybe they're a long term person, you know, a lot of our kids have an aunt and uncle who aren't really a auntie and an uncle, but they they know them. They are connected to them. They have been a positive influence in their life. So we try and reduce additional trauma by placing kids with people that they know and that they're connecting with and that are safe for them. And we have made it a mission in the last six years to do that as their first placement. So even though they might be removed, their first placement, once they go with that DHS worker is with somebody that they know and connected with.

00;09;14;21 - 00;09;34;12
Mischa Martin
And today we are placing 40% of kids who come into care with somebody that they know, whether they're relative or fictive kin. When we start, when I started six years ago, it was less than 15%. And so that's one of the ways that we have been trying to work to reduce trauma for kids who have to come into care.

00;09;35;11 - 00;10;28;20
Mischa Martin
You know, pre-pandemic we were I feel like just steamrolling ahead with some some great changes at DCFS that were really making an impact. But some of those big changes were really focusing on prevention initially. And when I say prevention, I mean really offering services and support so that families before crisis. The system had been set up to really focus on foster care. Even through our funding structures. So we were placing all this emphasis on the kids who were already in foster care and not recognizing that we're serving more children in their home than we are in foster care. So we are really on a mission to investing in that front end, trying to work with those families to prevent crisis, get them back on the right path so that we never even had to talk about whether foster care was necessary for them.

00;10;29;03 - 00;11;23;16
Mischa Martin
And so that work continues. We expanded funding for what we call intensive in-home, which is evidence based model for prevention services to those families. And coming up in this next year, we will be statewide. We have statewide implementation of Safe Care, which is an evidence based home visiting model for our younger children. Working with families on the prevention in is more cost effective than placing them in foster care. And we know that kids in stay in foster care two or more years are less likely to receive permanency. So if a kid comes into foster care and does not go with family through guardianship, adoption, if maybe they don't even go to adoptive home within two years, the chances of them going back, like going to some type of permanency, become very bleak.

00;11;23;27 - 00;12;32;15
Mischa Martin
So those kids end up being raised by the state and not just the financial aspect of what it's going to cost the state to raise those kids. Like there's that there's the impact on the social emotional development of a kid. Because as I say this pretty strongly, I mean it government should not be raising kids. Like we are not designed to be parents and we are not good parents. And and there's no amount of program. There's no amount of money that's going to make government a good parent. Like, we should not be raising children. And so when we do, it's really expensive because they need a lot of treatment. They tend to move placement and have placement instability. That's not because we've designed a program that's wrong. It's that government should not be raising children. So we have to, as a society, really invest earlier on to safely prevent, but safely prevent kids from foster care. But we do know that kids are going to need foster care as an intervention. But if we can do everything we can to keep them safe and get families on a strong path, then that's what we should be doing.

00;12;33;10 - 00;13;01;03
Ed Lowry
This has been an area that I know you've been personally involved with for many years, Paul. What is it... I mean, I know and I know that people often think about the safety of children, the vital importance of the safety of children. They're suffering consequences frequently that are created by other people in situations they were born into or that have that have evolved around them, not necessarily of their own creation.

00;13;01;25 - 00;14;00;28
Paul Chapman
You know, it has been a a personal kind of mission of of our family. We've fostered and adopted and and been involved in and serving and volunteering and then professionally for a number of years now. And I'd say, one, it was a journey that I made myself from early on, kind of coming in and thinking of, you know, we just need to help some children. And then realizing that the probably the best way to do that would be to help families. And, and the further upstream you could go before kind of crisis strikes family, then the better it is both socially and fiscally. To sum that up, is it was a mindset or a realization, as I and many others have have gotten involved, that we need to strengthen and preserve families, that most of the time the best place for the child is in their family.

00;14;01;22 - 00;14;47;04
Paul Chapman
Most of the removals have reunification as a goal at a state level. You know, that would be a big mind shift. It's almost like a core belief that needs to be formed is we need to be pro-family here in this state. And that means many different things and specific when a family is in crisis and instead of judging, making things harder, thinking that a set of rules and hurdles and all those things are are going to get people to act right and get their stuff together, that some engagement is needed to increase outcomes, good outcomes, but then also is worth the spend and effort.

00;14;47;25 - 00;14;53;12
Shanice Johnson
I think that reunification is something that should should be looked at if it's appropriate and safe.

00;14;53;16 - 00;14;57;09
Charles Newsom
Pulaski County 10th Division Junvenile Judge Shanice Johnson.

00;14;57;13 - 00;15;28;24
Shanice Johnson
As a as a court. I rely heavily on the stakeholders before me to do that an investigation to work together to ensure that if a child is reunified or placed in that home, that they have the appropriate supports, appropriate monitoring to ensure that the issues that caused them to be before the court are mitigated or eliminated completely so that this parent can parent their child, because ultimately it's best for kids to be with their family, whether or not to be with their parents or some other aunt, uncle, cousin or someone else.

00;15;28;24 - 00;16;08;01
Shanice Johnson
If that's not, provided they are appropriate and safe moving forward because those family connections, I mean family by love, in love, family and love is what I only call individuals not related. That's that's a great and wonderful thing. And when we have but it's like if you can have the biological family be that family to support and then have other people loving on this family and wrapping around. And that's usually for a better outcome if child has a sense of where they come come from of sense of purpose and identity you know and being wanted and loved from from the from the root of where they're from.

00;16;08;21 - 00;16;42;22
Shanice Johnson
And I think this it's important to there's no litmus test. There are exams and test for a lot of professionals for different important jobs and roles that we do. But one of the most important roles that any person can have is being a parent. But there's no litmus test to becoming a parent. You just become one. And so at the point in which the court is involved in the types of cases and dependency, neglect cases or delinquency, it's like at that point they have those parents or something in that family has fallen below just basic standards because there's no one right way to do things and there's always more money or more family support.

00;16;42;22 - 00;17;12;10
Shanice Johnson
There's always going to be someone best. But we're looking at it, can this parent provide the minimum basic necessities of love, care, care and supervision to allow this child to have a chance to flourish? You know, and we're just trying to bring this parent up to that level. You know, we're not going to lower the bar. We're not lowering the bar for reunification. We're bringing them up to the bar of where they should should have been in the first place.

00;17;12;10 - 00;18;05;04
Paul Chapman
In Arkansas, if we remove a child from the family, even if the goal is reunification, only 42% of the times that child will end up back with their family. And so if we take the child into foster care, they are likely not to go back. Now, you could say, well, that's a it's a bad situation, but it's a better situation than they would have been in. But that's not proving out the long term outcomes for a child that spends time in foster care, and especially if they age out of foster care without having some permanent solution while they're there are not good. You can imagine that. I mean, growing up requires a good bit of input from many different people. Your hopefully your your parents, extended family, friends, school teachers, coaches.

00;18;05;04 - 00;20;07;17
Paul Chapman
You know, you've got all these people that are a part of helping someone negotiate childhood to adulthood. And ultimately in adulthood the individual, the family and the community are best if that individual can make good decisions, make adult decisions, they are pursuing some goals that they can maintain healthy relationships, whether it be friendship or marriage or raising their own children. They can work, they provide value to the community and they receive value. They receive a payment for for the value that they're providing. Those are key things that must happen. And trauma with foster care is definitely traumatic on both parents and children. Start to make those things happening as an adult much harder. Here's the cyclical nature of that is trauma in kids that the child becomes an adult. Now is missing tools to be able to make good decisions, recognize opportunities and take advantage of them, produce value, get paid for it, maintain healthy relationships. All those things are are they’re barriers up now and and then they have children and so now now we start to raise children in an environment like that. And so all that is is a long trail to say that what we have seen is that if we can do everything we can to prevent a child from coming into foster care, that's good money spent because removing a child into foster care really needs to be just like incarceration needs to be at the end of our options because it's very expensive and the outcomes aren't aren't usually very good for the individual.

00;20;07;17 - 00;20;15;04
Paul Chapman
Mischa, what do you say to people that think that you may be harming children by helping the family?

00;20;16;29 - 00;21;15;02
Mischa Martin
You know, it's hard for me to it's hard for me to connect on that message because almost every family in this state has been touched by substance abuse. And sometimes I ask those people like, so can you think about somebody in your family who has a substance use issue? And almost everybody can think of that family member? And I say, well, think about if they had kids or do they have kids, where would you want those kids? And, you know, almost universally, when they think about their own family, they say like they want their family member to be clean and they want their nieces, nephews, grandkids to be with their parents. If they can. And I say, okay, but they're like, well, you know, maybe, maybe they've been on drugs for five, ten years and they want treatment and okay, well, if they can't be clean and sober, where do you want those kids to be?

00;21;15;29 - 00;22;08;14
Mischa Martin
And the answer almost universally is with with us, like with me, with my sister, with my mom. That's what we want too, right. Like when people think about their own family and the issues that they have in their families, they want their kids in their family. Well, that's universal. That's across county, that's across city, that's across our state. And so I just really ask people think about if it was your kids. I regularly tell my staff, you get upset when people reach out to me or they call the governor's office and I say, Let me tell you, if my nieces and nephews came into foster care, you can guarantee that I would be at the governor's mansion beating down the door if DCFS would not allow me to see my nieces and nephews or placed with me. And I'm not special.

00;22;08;14 - 00;22;16;23
Mischa Martin
Like, that's true of everybody across this state. Like we value our own families, so we should value other people in their families too.

00;22;17;01 - 00;22;36;27
Paul Chapman
But what about the parents that are struggling with substance abuse or their house is a mess, or they've got and so that the things that I may hear in the community and I know you hear more of them probably in uglier ways, is they don't deserve. That's the message is they don't deserve the help that you would give.

00;22;37;11 - 00;23;01;03
Mischa Martin
Well, if you care about kids and you care about doing what's right for kids, then you will stop the message of punishing parents by using the kids. Kids should not be a ploy to punish parents. Like, if you really want to focus on the kids, stop acting like you're going to use foster care to punish parents because in the end, all you're doing is punishing kids.

00;23;02;00 - 00;23;39;04
Mischa Martin
Kids don't necessarily understand what the substance use is or or what the issues. Kids almost universally kids love their parents. And don't get me wrong, kids get frustrated with their parents. And especially the older they get, they can see what's going on. But, you know, it is super frustrating to me when adults think that foster care should be a punishment tool for parents because while they stand on their soapbox about helping kids, that type of mentality does nothing but hurt kids.

00;23;39;04 - 00;23;51;11
Ed Lowry
So where it's possible, reunification is the goal and the percentage of those cases where reunification is not the goal is actually fairly small. The number of cases where it's just like no way should this parent.

00;23;51;11 - 00;23;51;23
Ed Lowry
That's right.

00;23;51;23 - 00;23;52;28
Ed Lowry
Continue to have this.

00;23;53;00 - 00;23;54;24
Paul Chapman
Most cases reunification is the goal.

00;23;54;25 - 00;24;07;03
Ed Lowry
Yeah but that said, the reunification rates aren't real high. So what does the family face and what are the steps that are being taken to help families get to that point?

00;24;07;03 - 00;25;29;03
Paul Chapman
So if you've fallen into the area of crisis where the state must intervene and remove your children from your care and reunify is the goal, there's always a plan of how to kind of rectify the situation, what are the remedies? Now, that's a set usually of pretty hard things to be able to do, especially if you're in crisis. So, you know, if you're using drugs, you've got to stop that. Of course. Your house may be in squalor and not say it's just it's too dirty, holes in the floor. It's just, you know, you shouldn't live like this with children. And so you have to address your environment. There could be issues around the ability to now start to provide some type of income or food. Many of the clients, when we meet them and they've had their children removed or actually in crisis for food, they're that food insecure. Now, they all qualify for SNAP benefits and so they can start to get food and work their way out of that. But for whatever reason, they've not received that. And oftentimes they're transient. You know, you need someone to almost help you sort out and triage the list of things that need to be addressed and then how to go access them.

00;25;29;03 - 00;25;59;07
Paul Chapman
So you may even know. I know I'm hungry and I know I need a job and I know I need a house, but I don't have any transportation and that'd be nice too. But how is it that I'm going to get from where I am there in addition to the counseling and parenting classes and and visits with my child who I love and court cases and you know how do I manage all that? And so being able to to help someone build a plan and then know how to access those resources is very, very important.

00;25;59;13 - 00;26;18;08
Ed Lowry
There are a number of people who are involved in that help that those folks might need. I know we spoke with Dr. Andrew Baker. Now he's a professor at Harding University here in Arkansas. But he's very involved in this issue of foster care and even specifically advocating for parents?

00;26;18;26 - 00;26;38;18
Paul Chapman
He and his wife have been long foster parents. In 2017, they were foster parents of the year. Andrew serves on the board Sparrow’s Promise in Searcy, which is Child Welfare Agency, and he was governor appointed a number of years ago to what's called the Parent Council.

00;26;39;11 - 00;26;40;20
Charles Newsom
Dr. Andrew Baker.

00;26;41;06 - 00;26;45;12
Andrew Baker
Parent Counsel has oversight of all legal representation for Parents in Family Court.

00;26;46;02 - 00;26;48;17
Paul Chapman
And you and your wife fostered also.

00;26;48;18 - 00;28;02;16
Andrew Baker
We have. So we've been doing foster care for right at ten years. The history for us as a family is the very first group of siblings we had to live in our house, you know, we went to their first staffing, which is where everybody who has a vested interest in that case sits around a table to figure out what's going to be said and where things are at before it goes to court. But about halfway through the conversation, I feel my wife's hand on my knee squeezing really hard. Which that's code language usually for me to be quiet because I have a tendency to talk too much. Problem is I hadn't said anything, but that was Amy's frustration, because she's more or less watching a mom get attacked. Right. And so we finish that staffing and we walk out in the entry area and I watch my wife embrace the mom of the siblings living in my house and say, we're for you and not against you. We want your kids to come home. So that same mother, a few weeks later, my wife agreed to take her to all these places that she had to go to fix, if you want to say that, some issues she had in paying bills and her water bill and... Because DCFS had said, hey, here's your checklist, and the checklist was fair, it wasn't unfair, but here's your checklist.

00;28;03;10 - 00;28;32;24
Andrew Baker
My wife, I'll never forget it took two days to take that mom everywhere she needed to go. And she came home and she was frustrated and I said, Hey, what's wrong? And she said, I have a college degree, I have a car and I have a full tank of gas, and I'm mad about how difficult that was. And she said, and this mom has none of that. And so it's just the realization, like, we want families to succeed. My goal is not your failure. Your failure doesn't make us better.

00;28;33;06 - 00;28;46;10
Paul Chapman
So let me ask you the question this way. If we made it easier, though, to be able to get this type of assistance, wouldn't there be more abuse of the system?

00;28;46;14 - 00;29;28;09
Andrew Baker
Tell me five. Tell me five people who abuse the system. I get that often from people. And my answer is... it comes from Larry James, who wrote the book The Wealth of the Poor. And Larry says in the Wealth of the Poor, tell me five and we can have that conversation. The reality is most people can’t. Like when someone says to me, hey, well, you know, they're just taking advantage of and fill in the blank, get some program, right. And I'm always like, Cool, tell me five. Because my experience has been when someone can tell me five, they will tell you, yeah, but I know 95 who are not and they're working really hard to get out of that hole. All right. Are there people who take advantage of the system? The answer is yes. In every socioeconomic class.

00;29;28;16 - 00;30;09;19
Andrew Baker
I will acknowledge that in a heartbeat. But what I'll push back on is, yeah, but do you really know them? Because my experience in working with people in my community and working with people statewide and trying to help parents get their kids back is by and large, they're not trying to take advantage of a system. They're trying to survive. One big difference. Now, can I tell you five? Yeah, I can give you a few more than five, actually. And they drive me crazy because they do make it harder on everybody else. If you really get involved and connected, you find out really quick, Yeah, there's truth to that. In every socioeconomic class, there's a crook, right? But at the end of the day, most are just trying to survive.

00;30;10;03 - 00;30;51;03
Andrew Baker
So you talk about the mom who is trying to feed her babies and she gets propositioned and she takes the proposition. Why? Because she's got to feed her babies. Do I wish she made that decision? No. Not one bit, do I wish she made that decision. Do I really wish she wasn't in a situation which that was even a possibility? 100%. I wish she wasn't there. But when I meet her incarcerated and find out the story of why she is there, I quickly figure out you were trying to survive. Am I justifying your action? No. But your action makes sense.

00;30;52;00 - 00;30;52;06
Paul Chapman
And.

00;30;52;06 - 00;30;53;17
Andrew Baker
Trying to feed your kid.

00;30;53;17 - 00;30;55;03
Paul Chapman
It just seems like such a mess.

00;30;55;11 - 00;30;57;26
Andrew Baker
It is a mess. So it's a.

00;30;58;11 - 00;31;00;09
Paul Chapman
Is there any good that can come out of that?

00;31;00;09 - 00;31;23;14
Andrew Baker
Sure. You see, when you engage, you start to see good. You start to see. The example again of that first family for us in foster care. It's still battles for them today. All right. Those battles haven't gone away. They're not all of a sudden living out the American dream. But we got a longer rope, right? And we've had longer terms of success.

00;31;23;14 - 00;31;30;23
Paul Chapman
Wouldn't it just be better to place the kids in a stable environment and just be done with it?

00;31;31;17 - 00;31;36;09
Andrew Baker
History. History and research has shown us that not to be true. It sounds good.

00;31;36;11 - 00;31;37;17
Paul Chapman
And in what way?

00;31;38;06 - 00;32;01;09
Andrew Baker
Well, one kid who's lived through trauma finding long term stability, it becomes even a greater challenge because they're going to push at that and challenge that around every corner. All right. Look at the percentage of kids who when they have the chance at 18 to emancipate out of the system, emancipate out. The research shows you can be the most healthy family ever.

00;32;01;09 - 00;32;02;18
Paul Chapman
Yeah. They want to go back.

00;32;02;18 - 00;32;37;17
Andrew Baker
They still want to go home. The research is really, really clear about what kids do when they turn 18 in the foster care system. They emancipate themselves out. And more times than not, research shows they go back to their biological family. People are like, Yeah, but they're so dysfunctional and they're so messed up and they're so... I don't disagree with you. That connection between a biological parent and the child is just a reality, right? And to the best of our ability, we want that relationship to be established. Does that need to happen in every situation? No, no, absolutely not.

00;32;37;20 - 00;32;47;11
Paul Chapman
What percentage do you think you know, would should we seek to maybe split the family up permanently versus.

00;32;47;17 - 00;32;51;17
Andrew Baker
Well, there's some research that’ll show you. About 6% of cases, six.

00;32;51;17 - 00;32;53;03
Paul Chapman
Six. Okay.

00;32;53;03 - 00;33;40;27
Andrew Baker
There's some other research that would say that it's probably in the neighborhood of 23 or 24%. My answer is that means 75% are not dead. Right. And there's an analogy used in the child welfare space that says when a family is on the table, we're going to do all we can to save that family. Just like if it was a human being on an operating table, you don't call it dead until everything you possibly can do has been done. Sometimes we fail to do everything we could do. I've seen it again and again, and we do that in the name of the best interest of the kid. I think people's intention at heart is right, but it's judgmental void of mercy.

00;33;41;02 - 00;34;30;16
Shanice Johnson
Because I read a quote sometime early on when I took the bench, “When someone works hard to change, you should allow someone to show up as as they are.” You know. And so I think that's important in this work that we do, in particular with helping families who are in crisis, that when they work hard to take the steps to benefit from the services, to actively engage, to allow them that opportunity to to demonstrate that they can get it, that they can do it and show up as a new and improved person instead of just continuously judging behind the past mistakes and transgressions. Because we are not we're not the sum total of one mistake, you know, or an event that occurred in our lives. And no one is perfect. But the fact you know, just allowing them to show up as who they are now is important in the work that we do.

00;34;31;16 - 00;35;32;07
Andrew Baker
And I look at the state seal of Arkansas, and if you look at it on the right side of our state seal, it says justice in big, bold letters on a sword. And I tell people often, that's right, because any civil society has to have justice. You take justice out of a civil society, you no longer have a civil society. So there is a place and a need for justice. But on that same state seal, on the other side is an angel holding a sash. And in many places, you see our state seal. You might might see the writing of a word. There's a word there and there's a word there on the official state seal. The word’s mercy. And my take is we've got to make mercy as bold as justice ever dreamed of being if we want to see families to succeed. Now, what you didn't hear me say, take away justice. No. Justice has to be served for civil society to exist. But the place of mercy falls in the hands of the people.

00;35;33;09 - 00;37;43;27
Karen Phillips
Hi, I'm Karen Phillips, and I direct the 100 Families Initiative for Restore Hope. And I also direct operations. I have spent the majority of my career doing social service programs. Majority of the time it was housing. I felt God for several months, maybe even years, calling me to be a foster parent. And so we got in our first set of children. We took in four foster children ages one, two, three and four, all at the same time. It was two different sibling groups. I just I had a real desire to meet the parents and to understand what they were going through and the struggles they had. And so I would take the children to their visits, really got to know them, told them I was in their corner, that, you know, I wanted them to be able to get their children back and I... As those relationships built with those parents, I could just see really, you know, really well that the struggles that they had to overcome were just so great and they needed additional support. So I started looking into ways to help with housing for, for biological parents that were trying to get their children back. There would be families that were ready to get their children back, except they had no place to live. And, and I thought that shouldn't be the case. You know, if they're if they're capable of taking care of their children, then there's got to be a way to provide for that. So thankfully, I was able to work with Restore Hope and started having these meetings in Sebastian County with Paul all around how we can build supports for struggling families. And at one of those very first meetings that I was in attendance that they the 100 families program was written down on a piece of paper and and given the name of 100 families. And from there, we just hit the ground running.

00;37;43;27 - 00;37;48;21
Ed Lowry
Walk me through what is 100 families and how does that play a role into this issue of child welfare?

00;37;48;28 - 00;38;30;06
Paul Chapman
All 100 families is is a group of community providers and agencies coming together, pledging to work for 100 families at a time for crisis to career. And they're going to share data. They're going to use a common platform, software platform to be able to communicate out and assess impact together, and that ultimately we will declare success, not when a case is closed or prevented, but when a family in crisis that we serve collaboratively, we actually starts down a career path that can lead them into living wage job.

00;38;31;13 - 00;38;43;11
Ed Lowry
And it's a daily work for the folks in the field with 100 families. Yes. Interacting with the families, the parents advocating at some level for the parents to help them hit those checkmarks on their list of what DHS is asking of them.

00;38;44;02 - 00;39;54;11
Paul Chapman
That's right. So substance abuse counseling might be needed and probably is needed. And there are good substance abuse counselors there. The individual that needs the help doesn't know who they are. And so and the access may require certain things like insurance or the processing of knowing who has the grant to help an uninsured person while they're gaining insurance so that that can be paid for. And so, yes, that's what the alliance along with some additional added support we call case managers and a coordinator for a community will end up helping. And so if you are in trouble a case manager would know that substance abuse counselors over there and the folks that for the job training are right over here. And, oh, you know, you want to be a truck driver? Well, we can get you on the road to do that. We need to get your driver's license back. You owe a couple of fees and fines on the parking ticket that you had that you didn't show up for. And so they're helping you lay out a plan and execute that plan with the providers that are already there in that community.

00;39;55;20 - 00;41;20;21
Courtney Harlan
My name is Courtney Harlan. I used to be a foster care supervisor with Children and Family Services. I am now the case manager for Restore Hope in conjunction with the Governor's Hundred Families Initiative. When it comes down to it, I feel like the most the biggest the truest barrier is lack of support to the parents. You know, parents love their children, but it's very confusing when you're thrown a case plan that says you need to accomplish these ten things and then we'll talk about getting your kids back. We're telling them they need to get employment and everything. However, we're giving them a case plan that's also going to be taken up like a full time job. And so, you know, not having that true support to help actually like hold their hand to the services and show them what they need to accomplish and get done and to really listen to them in their needs. That is what I believe is like holding a majority of the cases back from being successful. The family service workers are definitely overwhelmed with the high caseload. Their priority is obviously the foster children. They have to take care of them. So if something should arise at their school, you know, they have to stop and deal with that just like a parent would.

00;41;21;00 - 00;42;47;13
Courtney Harlan
And so when things like that come up, whether it's school related or court related, that's where they have to be physically and mentally. You know, when I worked with DCFS, I loved it, but I spent most of my days, you know, figuring out where kids needed to be, where people needed to be, as well as making sure there was placement for these kids. The majority of my time was focusing on placement. Where where is this child going to sleep tonight? And I never really felt like I had too much time to really devote to parents and to be able to explain to them exactly what they needed to. And so that was something I was really missing from my job. And so whenever I came here to restore hope, I get to do just that. I get to work one on one with these clients. These parents, listen to their stories, build that trust with them, and also build their care team with the providers we've connected with. And I can help show them where they need to go. But not just that. But it's more of building their care team and bringing the communities who support them and to surround them and not put them in a position where they're confused or don't understand what they need to do.

00;42;48;05 - 00;44;09;06
Dana Baker
My name is Dana Baker, and I'm the White County 100 families coordinator here in Searcy. Families can be in crisis in a myriad of areas. They can first see us in the courtroom for mental health or substance abuse. But then we realize that they have lived in poverty for years. They have no education, they have no employment, no transportation. They really are just looking for community resources to meet their emergencies every day, whether it's food or shelter. So when we're trying to stabilize a family, we're trying to keep that family unit all together. That's most important to us, is to keep the family all together and find housing, employment, shelter, all of those things so that children can remain in the home with the family, with the parent and not be removed to DCFS. The trauma of families being separated is so great that kids often struggle with that the rest of their lives. So if we can be preemptive and get a family stabilized before DCFS is ever needed, that's fantastic. But if a family has kids that are in foster care and we meet them after the kids have been removed, getting those kids home is absolutely a priority for us.

00;44;09;19 - 00;45;09;12
Dana Baker
The longer they're in care and foster care, the more times they're moved from house to house to house. And the trauma just gets so much greater. The kids need the parents and the parents need the kids. And so if we can get them stabilized quickly, get the kids home, the family to stay together, the trauma on everybody is so much less and the influence on the community is often going to be really important as well. They need wraparound services from churches, schools, civic organizations to keep that family stabilized. Once they're back together. If we can get them off of the street, we can get them clean and sober. The crime that they have been involved in, you know, obviously will stop if they are not using public assistance for food stamps, for housing, for utility assistance, those types of things. Those resources are not drained as quickly to in the community.

00;45;09;12 - 00;45;50;07
Mischa Martin
You know I love visiting 100 Families in white County because that is a place where you can see a family getting wrapped around. You can see how they're working on the education piece, how they're working on the workforce piece, how they're sitting in their office and doing case management of like, how do I get my driver's license back? How do I go take care of my fines? How do I do a medicaid application? I mean, the list goes on and on of like what all they have to do to get back on the right, the right path, even if they got clean. It's like even if you get clean, you've got to get all this other stuff.

00;45;50;07 - 00;46;13;29
Mischa Martin
Health care, criminal fines, you know, the list, education, work force. And so when you walk into 100 families in White County and Dana Baker is there with her case managers and they're doing this every day. So they're figuring out the systems, like they're figuring out which of the 15 forms you have to fill out, and they're figuring out who the connection is at the Social Security office.

00;46;13;29 - 00;46;58;27
Mischa Martin
And so they're doing it and they can really help that family navigate the different systems and and don't hear me say, like, I am not a big families should be on government support forever. But there is a place where government intervention for a short period is the right path to then get them to success. So they no longer need government intervention. But there's that period where you need some of that support to then be able to transition into success without government intervention. And hundred families is doing that and they're doing it not just how do you fill out a form, but that emotional connection, bringing the churches and bringing the community in where they can come and connect with those families as well. It's just it's really awesome.

00;46;59;01 - 00;47;46;12
Paul Chapman
You know, 100 families as we sit right now and August of 22 is in six different counties in Arkansas. We're talking to a few folks out of the state about launching their own. And we have a goal of now making it to the five most populated counties through an affiliate program. We want to find organizations who love their community, want to serve their community as playing kind of this this organizer, backbone or support organization and serving the organizers in the community as they serve clients. What we have found is when the parent chooses to receive that kind of help, then the reunification rates go from 42% to over 70%, sometimes over 80% in different time periods and different communities.

00;47;46;21 - 00;48;30;11
Andrew Baker
I think you look at Restore Hope's success, you can't argue with the fact. The fact is kids have been able to go home and be with their families and their families have been able to sustain that. Again, the belief and the significance of families. But it's a belief in all ships in the harbor rising, not just my ship. All right. And for that to be true, that means all families are rising. So what your community does to invest in those families, what the school system does, you start going down the list. All right. I want to see kids succeed, but part of their success is connected to their connection to their family.

00;48;31;02 - 00;50;31;11
Courtney Harlan
I actually have a very recent client that we've had great success with in working with DCFS out of Polk County. The mom now lives here in Sebastian County, so we've been working in conjunction with them. But this mom, safety wasn't a concern any more from what I learned when I first started working with this one mom. And but what was the concern was housing and making sure the children had a place to sleep. So we focused on what was the real barrier for her getting housing. And it come come to find out it was she owed a collection agency some money from back rent from years ago. And so we were able to sit down and actually negotiate with the collectors. Once we crossed that one barrier with that mom, with the collections agency, you know, we got the housing and that's great now. But if you've ever bought your own home or rented your own home, you have to fill that home. And so it took, you know, the community to support her. We had to get beds, a couch, pots and pans, towels, sheets, everything you would need for a house. And we were just asking for the basic minimum. But, you know, in less than two weeks, we were able to gather those items and those came from like the citizens here in Sebastian County and in Crawford County. We also got items from the Community Rescue Mission, Arkansas Family Alliance contributed, even Children and Family Services helped. Without all those providers as well as citizens of the community. It wouldn’t have been made possible. We would have had housing, but we would have had an empty housing, empty apartment. And sometimes it is just the basic needs that these families need and it takes the community to wrap around them, to support them.

00;50;31;24 - 00;50;40;26
Ed Lowry
And so ultimately, when we are discussing this topic of child welfare, the answers are found in strengthening the family the child's a part of to begin with.

00;50;41;15 - 00;51;17;27
Paul Chapman
That's right. So the agencies and the private institutions that are in a community that whose mission is the family or the children should all serve that family. That's the win is the strength of that family is the ultimate goal. And realizing that the stronger that our families are, then the more that we're preventing bad future things from happening. Crime, school dropout, teenage birth, unwed parents, poverty, and increasing the likelihood of good outcomes both socially and fiscally.

00;51;18;06 - 00;53;40;18
Dana Baker
With 100 families. The thing that makes us so unique is that we are truly a collective impact organization. Everybody is getting to see that everybody's getting to see their response of what all the other agencies are doing, and it makes their job much more successful. If a mom is seeing a mental health therapist for the first time in her life, three weeks later, she has a job. Six weeks later, we find out she's enrolled in college. That is making that therapist feel like what they're doing is so much more powerful and beneficial. And so it kind of brings them back to life in their own career. They're able to say, we are helping, you know, and it doesn't take just one person. It takes all of us working together for that family. They're not in crisis in one area. They may think that they're in crisis in just one area, but they're definitely in crisis. And the majority of the crisis areas that we work with. Currently, we serve just over 300 families here in White County, and those families come from DCFS District Court, Arkansas Community Corrections, Searcy Public Schools, through Jacob's Place, through Friends for Life Crisis Pregnancy Center, through churches, through other nonprofits. They all refer families here. So we're able to make clients where they are first seen in crisis. So we have a client that came to us through DCFS. Her children had been removed. Through working with us and through getting her mental health and substance issues addressed and employment issues address, her children have all been returned home to her. She just graduated with her degree in diesel mechanics and through the partnership we had with ASU, she is enrolled full time in college now to get her associate's degree. She's working here at the 100 Families Resource Center through a partnership with We went through that workforce program. She's actually been given custody of two of her sister's kids through DHS, and she just is really doing really well. And we're really proud of her.

00;53;40;18 - 00;53;55;09
Charles Newsom
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Smart Justice. Join us next time for discussion of the lasting impact of trauma and how children and families can find hope. Thanks again.

00;53;56;21 - 00;54;46;27
Ed Lowry
Special thanks to our guests, Mischa Martin, Judge Shanice Johnson, Dr. Andrew Baker, Courtney Harlan and Dana Baker. And thanks to churches life for sponsoring. Musical credits include “H2O” by Lee of the Stone, “Believe in Me” by Moments, “In Love” by Moments, “Over the Years” by Moments, “Courage to Believe” by Joshua Spacht, and “Time The Healer” by Cloud Wave. Music is licensed through soundstripe.com. Smart Justice is a work of Restore Hope. Please consider helping us produce more work like this by becoming a donor at www.smartjustice.org. Thank you again.