We have heard concerns that antiracism training hasn’t reduced the disproportionate representation of Black and Indigenous families in child protection and foster care.
In training, “use it or lose it” means teachings must be applied immediately to convert them into skills. It starts in the classroom with role-plays of courtroom presentations and parent interviews – both included in Minnesota’s Child Welfare Training Academy curriculum.
Back at work, supervisors need to help workers relate what they learned to real situations within a day or two. Then, units must routinely review decisions in light of the training. Finally, quality reviews are needed to spot patterns of bias.
Training will turn into practice when these components are implemented. If a county’s anti-racism training isn’t meeting expectations, we suggest they check first to see if these elements of effective training are being employed.
Listen to a reading of this blog, as well as in-depth commentary from the author, in this week’s podcast.
See the podcast and its notes in narrative form here.
Training is only partly the point.
Change our Drug Laws and vastly improve our Drug outpatient treatment services as done in Portugal. George Floyd’s death is large part because of our drug laws.
Also pay attention to poor literacy training at home from multigenerational illiteracy in many minority families. That illiteracy impacts their child’s school success and also related to drug use / family failure.