St. David's Center for Child and Family Development
Report date
April 2019
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
Stakeholder Engagement: Instrumental to the progress the Minnesota Quality Parenting Initiative (QPI-MN) has achieved to date has been the active engagement of a diverse group of stakeholders whose perspectives have created new understanding across the system, an authentic sense of respect, and a fierce commitment to change. Stakeholders include foster parents and youth, former foster youth, birth parents, kinship caregivers, guardians, judges, county attorneys, child-serving nonprofits, legislators, and members of tribal groups, faith communities, and advocacy groups. Eight workgroups were formed to address system practices that do not align with the values stakeholders defined and agreed to uphold. Current action workgroups include foster parents, foster youth under 21, and birth parents, in addition to dozens of state, county, nonprofit and private agency stakeholders from across the system. Workgroups are focused on 1) Strategic Leadership and Communication; 2) Kinship Support; 3) Youth Voice; 4) Foster Parent Voice; and 5) Birth-Foster Family Connections, currently focused on transitions for children, and specifically, reunification.
Child-Centered System Assessment: At the center of all the action workgroups is the vision of strong birth parent/foster parent relationships, in order to better support the child’s wellbeing. Stakeholders recognize that foster parents are not only a historically untapped resource for birth parents (at no charge to taxpayers), their investment as foster parents is in the child's wellbeing and that means supporting the birth parents in their role. After engaging in a thorough assessment process for the first 3-6 months of the Initiative, stakeholders in four action workgroups created practice guides and templates for their own communities and counties across the state. For example, QPI-MN’s Information Sharing Workgroup created a practice guide that included the type of information agencies and foster parents needed to know in order to ensure basic information about the child was shared. A practice guide was also built by the Comfort Call Workgroup around the concept of establishing a warm connection between the foster parent and birth parent, to create a tone and openness around shared parenting and to honor the birth parent for who they are in the child's life.
Laying the Foundation for Recruitment and Retention of Foster Parents of Color:
1) Diverse Perspectives in Strategy and Decision-Making: We have been intentional in our outreach to ensure at least 50% of the foster parents, foster youth and birth parents participating in this system change process represent diverse cultural communities. Over two-thirds (68%) of the stakeholders we registered for the National Youth Law Center QPI Conference in New Orleans last year (17 of the 25) represented diverse cultural communities.
2) Racial Equity Leadership: Gregory and Barbara VanLeer and Curtis and Darlene Bell, foster parents for over 40 years collectively, have joined forces to use their understanding of the child welfare system, their experiences in providing kinship and foster care, and their relationships within their own cultural community to define their approaches and begin to take action in raising awareness. Bells are aimed at addressing the myths of foster parenting and putting a mentorship/support model in place, while VanLeers are engaging at the community level, asserting foster care is the responsibility of the community and naming ways to get involved.
1) Diverse Perspectives in Strategy and Decision-Making: We have been intentional in our outreach to ensure at least 50% of the foster parents, foster youth and birth parents participating in this system change process represent diverse cultural communities. Over two-thirds (68%) of the stakeholders we registered for the National Youth Law Center QPI Conference in New Orleans last year (17 of the 25) represented diverse cultural communities.
2) Racial Equity Leadership: Gregory and Barbara VanLeer and Curtis and Darlene Bell, foster parents for over 40 years collectively, have joined forces to use their understanding of the child welfare system, their experiences in providing kinship and foster care, and their relationships within their own cultural community to define their approaches and begin to take action in raising awareness. Bells are aimed at addressing the myths of foster parenting and putting a mentorship/support model in place, while VanLeers are engaging at the community level, asserting foster care is the responsibility of the community and naming ways to get involved.
Key lessons learned
Though there is a palpable desire for change, those who have space to think about it are in system leadership, private foster care agencies, or the actual families affected. The harder place to shift is the day to day work of our county employees, who have a high volume of cases and little room to imagine how families' experiences could be different. We know the direction is right, given we leaned into the voices of foster and birth families, but without attention from workers and their supervisors, we have less traction toward real, sustained change.
Counties are exploring QPI and potential shifts in practice, though. The Minnesota Association of County Social Service Administrators convened to learn about and discuss QPI at the time of the Youth Law Center's last visit to Minnesota. There is now agreement that there can be no absolutes in participation, but a continuum from being open to inquiry about QPI, to observation, to one shift in practice, to fully bought in. We have learned that readiness for shifting culture varies across the state, that culture shift requires more psychological bandwidth than financial resources, and that we must stay present as readiness develops.
Counties are exploring QPI and potential shifts in practice, though. The Minnesota Association of County Social Service Administrators convened to learn about and discuss QPI at the time of the Youth Law Center's last visit to Minnesota. There is now agreement that there can be no absolutes in participation, but a continuum from being open to inquiry about QPI, to observation, to one shift in practice, to fully bought in. We have learned that readiness for shifting culture varies across the state, that culture shift requires more psychological bandwidth than financial resources, and that we must stay present as readiness develops.
Reflections on inclusive, collaborative or resourceful problem-solving
The QPI process requires inclusion to be successful. From the Youth Law Center’s perspective, this is one of the strengths to our statewide Initiative’s success to date. We actively sought the perspectives of foster parents, foster youth and birth parents, and asked for their leadership in defining quality caregiving and reflecting on what stands in the way of the child’s wellbeing remaining at the center of all decision-making. The Youth Voice and Foster Parent Voice Workgroups grew out of the realization that they are at the direction-setting table, they are informing change in the system, and they have more to say. Although slower to engage but gaining momentum over this past year, the Youth Voice Workgroup has begun identifying and tackling the real issues they experience in placement. They are discussing a potential youth-led training for foster parents and are seeking resources and technical expertise to build a communication platform that would highlight their successes, increase community awareness about their experiences, and serve as a place to store important documents. That is just one example of the results of including the voices of those most affected.
Other key elements of Community Innovation
In addition to inclusivity, collaboration and resourcefulness, another key element in our community innovation process has been opportunities for foster parents, foster youth, and birth parents to have their voices heard on a national level. Two QPI-MN foster youth participated on a panel at the 2018 Youth Law Center's National QPI Conference, four foster parents are participating on a panel presentation at the 2019 National Conference, two foster parents spoke at the 2018 Birth Parent National Network Conference, and one foster parent participated on a panel at the American Bar Association Conference in Virginia last month. There has been something universally motivating for all our stakeholders when members of the QPI-MN Initiative are sought out and recognized for their clarity, wisdom, and drive toward system change.
And lastly, our state's foster parents, foster youth and birth parents are deeply frustrated with the child welfare system in our state and, in particular, current practices that disregard child wellbeing and undermine the importance of their perspective. The raw power and unity of their voice has been a force propelling this process.
And lastly, our state's foster parents, foster youth and birth parents are deeply frustrated with the child welfare system in our state and, in particular, current practices that disregard child wellbeing and undermine the importance of their perspective. The raw power and unity of their voice has been a force propelling this process.
Understanding the problem
We are in the process of aligning a system around quality caregiving that is defined by the people most affected: foster youth, birth parents and foster parents. Two examples:
1) QPI has provided a platform for system stakeholders, county and state leaders, and the public (to some degree) to see that foster parents can act as a bridge within and strong support for the family. They are in the process of dispelling the myth foster parents are judgmental of birth parents, against reunification, and 'in it' for self-serving reasons.
2) Leaning into the collective voice of foster parents, foster youth and increasingly birth parents has led to more clarity in the shifts that are necessary, do not take more time, but make a significant difference to the child's wellbeing. For example, in discussing the timing of comfort calls to parents, foster youth shared with Steering Committee that 40 minutes does not feel long to those working in the system, but for them, those first 40 minutes at the shelter were a lifetime in wanting to have known someone spoke with their parents to let them know their children were safe.
The kind of clarity we are gaining leads directly to innovation.
1) QPI has provided a platform for system stakeholders, county and state leaders, and the public (to some degree) to see that foster parents can act as a bridge within and strong support for the family. They are in the process of dispelling the myth foster parents are judgmental of birth parents, against reunification, and 'in it' for self-serving reasons.
2) Leaning into the collective voice of foster parents, foster youth and increasingly birth parents has led to more clarity in the shifts that are necessary, do not take more time, but make a significant difference to the child's wellbeing. For example, in discussing the timing of comfort calls to parents, foster youth shared with Steering Committee that 40 minutes does not feel long to those working in the system, but for them, those first 40 minutes at the shelter were a lifetime in wanting to have known someone spoke with their parents to let them know their children were safe.
The kind of clarity we are gaining leads directly to innovation.
If you could do it all over again...
Pay attention across all cultural communities to make room for listening to perspectives, understanding root problems, and imagining solutions together. The two communities with disproportionate rates of child protection involvement are African American and indigenous. If we could go back to the start, we would have centralized leadership in seeking active engagement across all communities and established a pace to ensure true collective voice. We would have given more time to cultivate relationships earlier and in a different manner with tribal nations. Because of the pace post-Launch, with passionate, focused engagement of the diverse stakeholders who participated, we missed opportunities to engage voices within tribal communities so deeply and traumatically impacted by experiences with the child welfare system. It will be more difficult to gain their trust, yet both formal and informal Initiative leaders have heard and taken in the perspective of native stakeholders saying, 'You found a solution, but you didn’t walk alongside us in identifying and understanding the problem from our perspective.' Had we known our pace would have excluded a community, we would have slowed down.
One last thought
It seems important to share an observation noted by both the Youth Law Center as well as stakeholders within the QPI-MN Initiative. Without funding for process facilitation and consultation, stipends to engage stakeholders in direction-setting and solution-designing work, and a project leader, the Initiative simply would not be as deep and far into the work of system transformation as it is today. This is a diverse group, not used to working collaboratively, that has valued external expertise in the process, the honoring of people's time and perspective, and centralized coordination. Without any one of those components, the tendency could be to revert to old ways of working. With the current level of activity in the workgroups, the importance of connecting authentically with tribal nations, the launch of offering Fostering Relationships to build connections between foster and birth parents, the need to be responsive to prospective partners, and the expectation that more counties will find their starting place on the continuum of buy-in, St. David's Center and the founding partners will be seeking public and philanthropic grant support to continue the work of the Initiative.