Description

This storyboard highlights the collaborative practices and experiences of practitioners and researchers in a segment of a federally funded demonstration project which involved an Institutional Analysis (IA) study on racial disparities in child welfare. This IA was initiated to address the racial disparities in a specific Midwestern county to provide more just and equitable services to African American families involved with the foster care system.

This storyboard presents the process used to develop a guiding covenant for the IA work. In brief, African American community stakeholders expressed their mistrust of the child welfare agency and the idea of a study to address racial disparities due to a long history of research that developed recommendations but did not result in changes. In acknowledging these realities, the project team responded by collaboratively developing a covenant through an iterative feedback and revision process. The covenant sought to unify the advisory group in the complex commitment and goal of dismantling racism in child welfare. Moreover, using an anti-racist framework, it focused squarely on identifying the structures and policies that perpetuate racial disparities and holding individuals and institutions accountable for actionable change.

Please contact crts@ku.edu for an accessible version of this presentation.

Suggested Citation

Wright, K., McCall, S., Akin, B. A. (2021, May 3-6). Pursuing Equity and Justice in Implementation: Learning from the Collective Process of Addressing Racial Disparities in Child Welfare. Global Implementation Conference 2021, Addressing Equity in Implementation: Building Research, Practice, and Policy Across the Globe, Denver, Colorado (Virtual Conference) (Refereed).