FJI Communications Committee Co-chairs Cathy Krebs and Kathleen Creamer share some overall thoughts on the themes presented during the annual conferences.
By Cathy Krebs & Kathleen Creamer
The ABA Center on Children and the Law (“ABA Center”) recently held their biannual conferences in Tysons Corner, VA. The Access to Justice for Children and Families Conference was held April 5-6, 2022, and the National Conference on Parent Representation was held April 7-8. We were fortunate enough to attend all four days and wanted to share some overall thoughts on the themes presented during these conferences.
Prudence Beidler Carr, Director of the ABA Center, opened the Access to Justice conference by talking about how we are in a pivotal moment of change and how we as lawyers need to give up power and truly listen to those with lived expertise. She shared a quote from the Dalai Lama, “When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.” Two days later, Professor Martin Guggenheim received the Mark Hardin Award for Child Welfare Legal Scholarship and Systems Change at the opening plenary of the National Conference on Parent Representation, and he shared the quote from the psychologist John Bowlby, “If a community values its children, it must cherish their parents” and declared that we need a new approach organized around that principle.
Here were some other themes that were apparent through both conferences. Individual speakers are generally not identified unless we quote from them directly. A full list of the speakers can be found at: National Conferences (americanbar.org)
Power Sharing
Power sharing is not a natural strength for lawyers, and child and parent lawyers are still grappling with what it means to truly power share with those with lived expertise in the child welfare/family policing systems. This was apparent during the conferences as there were some moments of tension around this issue. Authentically engaging will result in some struggle and discomfort. That is okay and can help our field move forward, but requires us to be humble, to truly listen, and to reckon with the way that the narratives we have relied on as a field have driven harm in the lives of the families we serve.
Race Equity
Systemic racism was addressed in many programs during both conferences. Again we were called to reflect on how the child welfare system drives racist results in the lives of Black and brown families, and to reflect on our own roles in upholding and perpetuating racial harm. This means not only thinking critically about our role as attorneys, but also in confronting the ways that child welfare policies like mandated reporting have driven racial harm in communities.
Kinship Care
Another theme of the conferences was kinship care. Sarah Sullivan and Sixto Cancel from Think of Us pointed out that we have a system in which it takes a miracle for young people to develop connections. They encouraged lawyers to ask youth where they want to live (and who they want to be connected to) as soon as they enter care and to continue to ask, and then to do everything we can to make that happen. Another speaker talked about how the reason that kin say no to kinship care is that they do not believe they can be successful. We should be advocating for the supports that kin tell us they need in order to be successful.
Sustainability of this Work
Another theme of the conferences was the sustainability of this work and both conference tracks had discussion groups focused on recruitment and retention of lawyers who serve children and parents. In the program “Let’s Get Grounded: Recognizing Triggers and Self-Care While Doing This Work” audience members were reminded that we need to find ways to metabolize our trauma or it will move into our organizations which can become punitive, directionless, fragmented and judgmental. Instead we need to work in places that provide psychological safety. Another speaker reminded us that the toll and trauma from working in this system is far more burdensome for people of color.
Narratives
Narratives – how we talk about and define our clients and this work- was another theme through both conferences. One speaker noted that people’s experiences are data too.
Cris Freitas reminded the audience that “People, even children, are experts in their own lives,” and that our clients get to define what success in their case will look like.
Names are important, we should be calling people by their names (and spelling and pronouncing them correctly). Terms are important too. For example, Richard Wexler suggests that instead of saying “termination of parental rights”, we can call it “termination of children’s right to their parents and family”.
We can also reframe the narrative of children’s experiences in foster care. For example, Joyce McMillan noted that “Children need stability and that’s the first thing the system takes from them.”
Accountability
One final theme for the conferences was accountability. What does accountability look like in the child welfare/family policing system? How do we hold actors in our system accountable? How do we hold ourselves accountable for the services we offer (or don’t offer) and the quality of the support we provide families? As we reckon with racial injustice and invite the voices of those harmed by our systems to the table, humility and accountability emerged as crucial to changing the way we show up for children and families.
Conclusion
One other important note about these two conferences is the way that they bring us all together to create a community. This is critical as we learn and grow as a field, and to establish supportive connections to help us do this work.