NASW Social Work Talks - EP71: Child Welfare and the Coronavirus Pandemic

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

Our guest is Lesli Suggs, LICSW, President and CEO of The Home for Little Wanderers, a Boston-based organization that helps build stable lives and hopeful futures for children who are abused, neglected or at-risk. Visit the show notes page for resources.

From the National Association of Social Workers, I'm your host, Aaliyah Wright, and this is Social Work Talks. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode on child welfare amidst the pandemic. Today we're speaking to Leslie Suggs, LICSW, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Home for Little Wanderers in New England. She is the first social worker and child welfare expert in a generation to lead the agency. Welcome, Leslie. Thank you for having me. Tell us first about why you became a social worker.

I had always had a strong sense of kind of social justice, and I was a music major, actually. I went to undergrad on a voice scholarship, and I was supposed to be the musician in the family. You know, throughout my college experience, I felt like, I knew I thought, well, I'm not, I actually, I don't, I actually don't want to go sing opera in Paris. So what am I, what am I going to do? And I had volunteered for Habitat for Humanity. I'd done a lot of, I was always involved in community service, had some role models that were social workers.

And so I changed my major in undergrad and got my undergrad in social work. You know, it just felt, it felt right. I did some internships working with young kids and knew I had found what I wanted to do. What's it like to lead an agency that's been around in various forms since 1799? You know, first of all, it is an honor and a privilege to lead such a historic organization, the oldest child welfare organization in the country. I've grown up professionally here in Massachusetts.

I moved to Massachusetts after I completed my undergraduate degree. I moved from Texas and immediately started working with high-risk kids and families and worked for three other organizations before I came to the Home for the Wanderers in various roles. Always knew of the home. I knew of its history. I knew its legacy. I knew the high quality of the work and respected the folks who worked in that organization. So then to come into that organization and then become the CEO is, again, a real privilege. One of the things that's so amazing about the home is the advocacy work that we do. And that brings a certain element that I know is so important as a social worker, and it has been so much a part of my thinking

about what it means to be a social worker. How has the agency changed since its beginnings? It has changed mightily. So, you know, the Home for the Wanderers really started as an orphanage. Like many child welfare organizations that have had that kind of history, it started as an orphanage in Boston taking care of children who were homeless. That, you know, work has evolved over time. And, you know, historically, child welfare, if you go back 20, 30 years, has really served to protect children, you know, to bring children, remove children from families who just cannot take care of them and then raise them, provide the treatment and stability that they need and then raise them themselves and launch them into adulthood if they're not able to find permanent families.

That work has shifted, and our work has shifted at the home. We understand that child welfare does not do a good job of raising children and that children need to grow up in safe and loving families. And so our work has really shifted in that way. There are kids who need to come into care without question when families can't take care of them. But our services now are really anchored around investing in families so we can keep kids home. And then when that's not possible, providing the care that kids need and then working mightily hard to find, again, safe and loving families for kids to grow up because that's really where they need to grow up. Let's chat about the HOME's permanency initiative and what that seeks to do. So our permanency initiative is something I'm super proud of.

Before I became the CEO of the home, I was the vice president of program operations and had been just paying attention to how the work of child welfare, the needs of children had been changing. And we started shifting our work to think about how can we do a better job of finding kids' families? The home had a portfolio of programs, a history of working with children who had aged out of care with that family. And that term, aged out of care, if you can imagine what that even means, it means that you are no longer eligible for services in child welfare, and we didn't find family for you. So we've always operated those programs and saw the great need that young people have when we haven't been able to find families. You know, housing, help with jobs, help with our education, all those things that, of course, any young person needs. And we saw how challenging their lives are. You know, kids who age out of care, that means that child welfare has failed them.

So as we looked at kind of that range of services and decided to really put our efforts in reducing the number of kids that age out of care without family, we said, well, how are we going to contribute to this solution? That meant that we needed to really take a look at some of our own internal practices around creating permanency for kids. You know, we looked at best practices out there in the field and all the emerging literature and incorporated that work into our organization so that in addition to being trauma informed and treating children's trauma, we are from the very beginning that we start working with child. We are thinking about their permanency plan. Who is the adult? Who is the family that is going to care for this child, love this child, have their back? And how do we contribute to that work? So we've been hearing from social workers that once the pandemic ends, there may be a huge surge of children in need. What's life like for families who are stressed, not just from what's going on around us, but inside their very own homes? I am right there with the experts out there who really fear there will be a surge of kids who will need our services and come into care post-pandemic. You know, if you can imagine life during the pandemic where families have experienced financial stress, some folks for the very first time, you know, without income, not sure how they're going to feed their kids, not sure how they're going to, you know, not able to pay their rent.

The stress of the economic stress of the pandemic is overwhelming by itself. And then you, you know, lay on top of that children home, not in school, not in after school programs, not doing the normal things that kids do out in the community and the stress of learning at home remotely with new technology, sometimes not resources to that technology. That level of stress on families in a relatively high functioning, you know, well-resourced family is overwhelming. Families that are already stressed or perhaps have struggled with issues of poverty, struggled with their own mental health challenges, perhaps substance abuse challenges. All of that has increased over the pandemic. And without, you know, and with a harder time accessing services because those natural places where kids and families are visible to the community just didn't exist because everyone's been social isolating in the home. I can only imagine, you know, what that is like for children and also for families. There's been a lot of attempts to, you know, ensure that families know where they can get resources and to do that kind of outreach.

And yet we know that in this kind of environment, sometimes families and kids are just not able to get what they need. So have you seen that the pandemic has led to even more calls for assistance? Yes and no. You know, when the pandemic first started, we actually saw a dramatic decrease in the number of referrals that we would get for behavioral health services. We have clinicians that are embedded in public schools who actually provide treatment to kids in schools. And although we were working with kids in a remote telehealth environment, referrals to us almost stopped, you know, dramatically decreased. over time, we actually then saw the opposite, that as families became increasingly overwhelmed and worried about their kids, teachers worried about kids, we started to see those referrals

increase. We know the need is there. We know that there are kids that need help and need services. The number of kids who are coming into child welfare, those numbers are low as well. Caseloads are at an all-time low here in Massachusetts, at least in recent years. And we know that that's a function of kids, again, just not being visible. They're not in the usual places where they are seen by teachers, coaches, daycare providers, and we expect that that will change. And so because you expect that will change, I want you to speak a little bit about the shortage of foster parents and why that may be of concern. You know, we know that there'll be more kids who come into care. And when that happens, we will need foster parents. Fostering children is an incredible thing to do. You know, it's it's it's people are really opening up their homes and their hearts to take care of very vulnerable children who have experienced trauma.

Just being removed from their home is traumatic. And we need more. We need more foster parents. We need we need folks who say, yeah, you know, I think this is the right thing to do. I've always wanted to help a child and will be so critical to this, to helping children who, you know, oh, my goodness. Can you imagine, you know, there's just the trauma of and the need. We always need more homes. And I and and certainly in this moment, in this time, that is true. Listeners, we'll be right back. NASW Press is the leading scholarly press in the social sciences. Our publications reach faculty, practitioners, agencies, and researchers in social work and related disciplines.

Visit naswpress.org for scholarly books, reference works, brochures, and periodicals. And we're back. Clearly, this is unprecedented. What can social workers who are working in child welfare take to heart as they try to navigate the pandemic while helping children in need? You know, I think for social workers, you know, we always have our clinical hat, our helping hat on, and then we have our advocacy hat on. And that's one of the things I love about social work, right, is that it's broad in that way. You know, paying attention, doing the important work, holding that close, understanding how to listen and look, listen to children, look for the things that you need to look for, know that your job, your role is important. It's important to the life of a child, important to the life of a family, and that our job is to support and listen and help.

And to ask the right questions, because, you know, certainly now more than ever, I think sometimes it's hard for families to ask for help. And then the other piece is the advocacy, you know, the advocacy to give visibility to our community about who these children are, who these families are, and why these critical services matter. advocacy with your local delegation, your legislatures to say, you know, don't forget about children in the pandemic. I mean, there's just so many needs. There's so many economic drivers. There's business needs. There's health, real health. This is a public health crisis. There's real health needs out there. Well, there's also social and emotional and behavioral health needs. And we need to ensure that our state leaders and that our legislators understand those needs and prioritize children, prioritize their health and well-being, which includes their

behavioral health, mental health needs. Why do you think it's so important for government officials to support kids and families and prioritize mental health, especially for Black and brown children who may be suffering the consequences of unaddressed trauma? First of all, these are children and children who deserve every opportunity to just be kids, to live a happy, safe, healthy life with friends, with high quality education, with all the resources that they need. They are the future human capital of this great nation. As we look at how the pandemic has impacted communities, we know that communities of color have felt the impact of the pandemic the most, the socioeconomic impact of the pandemic. Poverty is one of the number one

drivers of kids that come into child welfare. Then you add on top of that the disproportionate number of kids of color that enter the child welfare system. And then you layer a pandemic on top of that. We must pay attention to that demographic in a meaningful way, in an intentional way. The socioeconomic impact of the pandemic, I just think, cannot be underestimated. And then you layer on top of that the educational loss, you know, the loss of time in school over this past year, and you just start to sort of pile on these challenges in a way that require we really lean in to mitigate the impact of this pandemic. Finally, what do you think the biggest challenge will be moving forward?

The biggest challenge I think of helping kids and vulnerable children and families is ensuring that kind of basic needs, those basic needs of families and kids are shored up, housing, food, income, so that families can live safely and support their children. And then it's the behavioral health, mental health needs that children will be facing. I'm in three different conversations, sort of task force, if you will, that are looking at the impact of children's mental health just in school and what that's going to be like for children. The mental health crisis, kids experiencing anxiety, depression, kids that we haven't seen in school, kids that have sort of disappeared and did not engage in remote learning. You know, making sure that those kids get reengaged in school. That is critical to ensuring that we provide some stability for kids and that kids can thrive. That will be the work over this next year and beyond. Ms. Suds, thank you so much for joining us

and listeners, you can find details about The Home for Little Wanderers in the show notes on our website Thank you for having me You have been listening to NASW Social Work Talks a production of the National Association of Social Workers We encourage you to visit NASW's website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth

and development of our members to create and maintain professional standards and to advance sound social policies. You can learn more at www.socialworkers.org. And don't forget to subscribe to NASW Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next episode.