Aliah Wright:
From the National Association of Social Workers, I'm your host Aliah 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 Lesli 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, Lesli.
Lesli Suggs:
Thank you for having me.
Aliah Wright:
Tell us first about why you became a social worker.
Lesli Suggs:
I had always had a strong sense 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. Throughout my college experience, I thought, "Well, I actually don't want to go sing opera in Paris, so what am I going to do?" I had volunteered for Habitat for Humanity, 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. It felt right. I did some internships working with young kids and knew I found what I wanted to do.
Aliah Wright:
What's it like to lead an agency that's been around in various forms since 1799?
Lesli Suggs:
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 Little 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 has been so much a part of my thinking about what it means to be a social worker.
Aliah Wright:
How has the agency changed since its beginnings?
Lesli Suggs:
It has changed mightily. So The Home for Little 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 work has evolved over time. Historically, child welfare, if you go back 20, 30 years has really served to protect children. To 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. 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.
Aliah Wright:
Let's chat about the home's permanency initiative and what that seeks to do.
Lesli Suggs:
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, where it 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. 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. Housing, help with jobs, help with their education, all those things that, of course, any young person needs. We saw how challenging their lives are.
Kids who age out of care, that means that child welfare has failed them. So, as we looked to 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.
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 the child, we are thinking about their permanency plan. Who is the adult and 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?
Aliah Wright:
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?
Lesli Suggs:
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. If you can imagine, life during the pandemic where families have experienced financial stress, for some folks for the very first time without income, not sure how they're going to feed their kids, not able to pay their rent. The economic stress of the pandemic is overwhelming by itself, and then you lay on top of that children home, not in school, not in afterschool 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, 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. 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 a home.
I can only imagine what that is like for children, and also for families. There's been a lot of attempts to 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.
Aliah Wright:
So, have you seen that the pandemic has led to even more calls for assistance?
Lesli Suggs:
Yes and no. 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. Although we were working with kids in a remote telehealth environment, referrals to us almost stopped, 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.
Aliah Wright:
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.
Lesli Suggs:
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. 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 foster parents, we need folks who say, "Yeah, I think this is the right thing to do. I've always wanted to help a child," and will be so critical to helping children who, oh my goodness, can you imagine just the trauma and the need. We always need more homes, and certainly in this moment in this time, that is true.
Aliah Wright:
Listeners, we'll be right back.
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Aliah Wright:
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?
Lesli Suggs:
I think for social workers, we always have our clinical hat, our helping hat on, and then we have our advocacy hat on. That's one of the things I love about social work, right, is that it's broad in that way. 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 certainly now more than ever, I think sometimes it's hard for families to ask for help.
Then the other piece is the advocacy. 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 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-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 wellbeing, which includes their behavioral health, mental health needs.
Aliah Wright:
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?
Lesli Suggs:
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 and 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, 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.
Aliah Wright:
Finally, what do you think the biggest challenge will be moving forward?
Lesli Suggs:
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 sured up, housing, food, income, so that families can live safely and support their children. 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, making sure that those kids get re-engaged 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.
Aliah Wright:
Ms. Suggs, thank you so much for joining us. Listeners, you can find details about The Home for Little Wanderers in the show notes on our website.
Lesli Suggs:
Thank you for having me.
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