Safe and Nurtured Recommendations

The Recommendation: Reimagine Social Services and Child Protective Services to Become More Trauma-Informed, Anti-Racist, and Focused on Prevention

The Draft Strategies:

STRATEGY 14.1: Expand the foundation of preventive services in Durham and identify strategies to connect families to services sooner.

STRATEGY 14.2: Embed early childhood development principles into child welfare systems and practice through training and support for individuals who work with infant-toddler cases.

STRATEGY 14.3: Promote a trauma-informed, anti-racist environment for families and staff that 1) acknowledges, mitigates, and repairs harm that has been perpetuated by child welfare systems and 2) supports wellness and anti-racism work for child welfare staff integrated into the whole department.

The Department of Social Services and Child Protective Services are intended to exist to keep children and families safe. The ECAP targets are focused on reducing child maltreatment. North Carolina law defines three types of maltreatment: 1) abuse, 2) neglect, and 3) dependency. Factors that can contribute to child maltreatment include the presence of adults who face substance use disorders, mental illness (notably maternal depression), and domestic violence.(1) To address the root cause, we must address that all of these factors are highly correlated with poverty. Young children are at the highest risk for abuse and neglect, and the impacts of abuse and neglect on young children are particularly severe because of their impact on early brain development.

Many families have traumatic experiences with the agency—not only those whose children are being removed or who have been removed themselves as children (which are inherently traumatic), but also families accessing needed financial support. It is absolutely critical to acknowledge and repair the harm and trauma disproportionately experienced by BIPOC communities in Durham, who are more likely to have interactions with social services.

At the same time, focusing on prevention and “moving upstream” will also help to reduce harm by ensuring families have the resources they need before they ever come into contact with social services. The Family First Prevention and Services Act is an important first step toward greater investment in child maltreatment prevention, support to kin caregivers, and proper placements for children and youth needing temporary foster care. This Durham ECAP recommendation is in line with the recommendations of the National Council on Family Relations to transform child welfare by focusing on prevention, racial equity, and authentic partnership with community agencies and families.(2)

(1) https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18331/new-directions-in-child-abuse-and-neglect-research

(2) https://www.ncfr.org/policy/research-and-policy-briefs/transforming-child-welfare

Community Voices:

• "A social services department that doesn't hate human life" - Durham parent

• “Stop paying social workers to yell at people and just pay people. It's that simple." - Durham parent

• "The narrative around CPS needs to change. Re-education for social workers on supporting families and not just causing child separation." - Durham parent

The Recommendation: Ensure birth through 3rd grade learning environments are trauma-informed, culturally affirming, gender affirming, and focused on social-emotional health

The Strategies:

STRATEGY 15.1: Create systems which support young children’s growth by focusing on the skills, processes and procedures that are needed for reducing stress (adaptive coping), increasing good decision-making, and healthy expression of emotion (effective self-regulation), with attention to trauma and resilience.

STRATEGY 15.2: Train more birth through 8 teachers and school staff to adopt practices, policies, and pedagogy that are anti-racist, gender-affirming, and culturally affirming.

STRATEGY 15.3: Increase the number of culturally responsive support staff in public schools and childcare settings.

Traumatic experiences in early childhood can disrupt a child’s learning. Students may experience trauma from events like divorce in the family, substance abuse in the family, homelessness, domestic violence, illness in the family, poverty, racism, or incarceration in the family, for example. For some children these events may “lead to a trauma response that can lead to a cascade of social, emotional and academic difficulties that can interfere with a child’s ability to learn at school.”(1) Child care facilities, elementary schools and other early learning environments can create “trauma-informed” environments, which recognize the widespread impact of trauma and understand potential paths for recovery; recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma in students and fellow staff; and respond by fully integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, classroom practices, and seeks to actively resist re-traumatization.(2)

Children also do better when they learn in environments where their culture, gender, and other identities they hold are affirmed and celebrated. Simply, a child’s sense of belonging is central to their capacity to learn. Research shows that “institutional biases that are manifested in monocultural, monoracial assumptions and representations in books, materials, testing, and tracking for example can cause repeated and cumulative harm to children’s growth, development and academic achievement."(3)

(1) https://traumasensitiveschools.org/why/.

(2) https://ncsacw.samhsa.gov/userfiles/files/SAMHSA_Trauma.pdf

(3) https://www.pearsonhighered.com/assets/samplechapter/0/1/3/2/0132867540.pdf

Community Voices

• “A lot of lip service to supporting the needs of the whole child without any commitment to that. For example, we’re constantly told to provide social-emotional instruction without a curriculum for that.” - Durham Public Schools K-3 Teacher

• “Many trainings on implicit bias are offered and the teacher's always ask HOW?” - Durham Public Schools K-3 Teacher

• "Most important is that there always be a social worker on staff. They are not there every day all day as well as nurses." - Durham parent

• “[School counselors] get pulled in all different directions. At the K2 and K3 level they come in for one class once a month. There’s not enough time for the children to get one-on-one.” - Durham Public Schools K-3 Teacher

• "Some teachers blame only the African American kids and not the white kids." - Durham parent

• "Teachers trained in how to talk with kids about race and bias" - Durham parent

• "increased inherent bias training for teachers" - Durham parent

• “Not necessarily training as much as embedding implicit bias and identity development in school/district culture so all teams (teachers, admin, etc.) are on the same page with it.” - Durham Public Schools K-3 Teacher

• "Seminars for children that focus on diversity, equity, anti-racism and kindness." - Durham parent