Re-storying Us

Elizabeth Wendell, Co-Founder, Pale Blue

Kevin Campbell, Co-Founder, Pale Blue

We are a contradictory species, shaped by our history as homo sapiens, with unique skills that have evolved an amazing superpower. As Dr. Bruce Perry explains, “We have evolved a brain that can connect to other brains and change our collective futures.”1 We have demonstrated through this a remarkable ability to invent and reinvent societies and produce works of art, science, technology, and cultures that have enriched and transformed our lives and the planet. Yet, we have also demonstrated that we are destructive, warlike, violent, oppressive, patriarchal, misogynistic, and exploitative in ways that threaten our collective survival and routinely negatively alter the futures of other humans and the environment.

Dr. Perry’s insight as a neuroscientist about our unique brain and its ability to connect with others to change our future evokes a powerful and hopeful view of human possibility. However, he also recognizes that we have evolved a deeply embedded adaptation that has become a virulent maladaptation threatening the survival of humankind. We persistently favor connecting our brains to other brains within homogeneous groups who actively use this ability to disadvantage others. The tools humans use to construct our social, political, and economic realities are stories about ourselves in relationship to others. The most fundamental and powerful narratives are about safety: safe, unsafe, dangerous, and even ‘beyond redemption’.

Those empowered to create stories about people shape the quality of justice in a nation for better or worse. One institution in America designated to tell stories about people’s lives with well-known transgenerational consequences is the child welfare system.

Binary thinking provides simplistic explanations or concepts, dividing them into two mutually exclusive categories, such as true or false, good or bad, and safe or unsafe. Binary thinking can help people make quick decisions and recognize a scenario’s advantages and disadvantages. However, a binary view lends itself to extensive limitations, including bureaucracy-supported processes with swift, surface-level, power-based decisions that have life-altering consequences. Unfortunately, Western culture and specific bureaucracies such as the U.S. child welfare system have embraced a binary, over-simplified power structure shaped by the stories we tell about the people most affected by our systems. For example, people living without shelter are named “Homeless,” ignoring the complex social, economic, and health conditions that result in deprivation and social alienation. Parents involved with CPS are called “Child Abusers” despite as many as 85% of children in foster care for poverty and health-related neglect. Drug and alcohol use by poor and minority parents is policed by Child Welfare and the Juvenile Court as a parenting test, fueling public outrage and forcible family separation.

The U.S. child welfare system claims responsibility for children’s safety, permanency, and well-being, assuming it is the better parent. As a result, child welfare flattens children’s stories as safe or unsafe and parents as risky, dangerous, or at the very least, suspect. As a nation, we sustain an institution built to respond and police flat, single stories about the usual suspects rather than responding to the complexity of economic insecurity, institutional racism, and other politically determined health and social conditions.

Child welfare is a multidimensional and dynamic phenomenon reduced to simple dichotomies, such as good or bad, stable or unstable, safe or unsafe, and family preservation or termination of parental rights.2 Binary thinking leads to oversimplification, generalization, stereotyping, and bias in decisionmaking and policymaking. It can also prevent critical thinking, creativity, and empathy for diverse perspectives and experiences.

Binary thinking favors the privileged and powerful, obscuring the harm done to disadvantaged persons as necessary or unavoidable. This system of oppression has rapidly become more critically harmful as young people, parents, and relatives have used new technologies to demand their storytelling rights and amplify the evidence of their experience.

Today we face new realities, stories from parents, youth, advocates, and science that objectively challenge the bias and injustice from which we built and sustain our legacy welfare systems. For example, the 2018 Zero Tolerance Policy of the Trump Administration, forcibly separating children from their parents at the border, was roundly repudiated as harmful to children and parents with the likelihood for many of a lifetime of health and mental health consequences.3 Yet, the bodies and brains of children and parents domestically are no different, no less vulnerable to forcible and prolonged family separation and its effects on children and their parents.4 Dr. Dorothy Roberts writes, “The facade of benevolence makes most Americans complacent about a colossal government apparatus that spends billions of dollars annually on surveilling families, breaking them apart, and thrusting children into a foster care system known to cause devastating harms.”5

The devastating harms of family separation on children’s development are profound.8 When children experience separation from their families, they are more likely to suffer from toxic stress, which disrupts the development of sturdy brain architecture and increases the risk of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral problems.9 One of the primary mechanisms through which toxic stress exerts its effects is by dysregulating the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, the primary stress response system in the body.10 Chronic activation of the HPA axis can lead to increased levels of cortisol. This stress hormone and others are linked to various adverse health outcomes, including immunosuppression, inflammation, and metabolic dysregulation.11 Moreover, in the developing brain, excessive cortisol exposure can impair the growth and connectivity of neurons, leading to deficits in learning, memory, and executive function.12 Quite literally, the processes of a body’s supersystem are subjected to such distress that the biology is altered, accelerating the rate of cellular ageing and exponentially increasing the probability of premature chronic disease.

Children with a family separation history are more likely to suffer from poor physical health, including having a higher prevalence of chronic illness, malnutrition, and poor growth and development. Also, the toxic stress from separation can heighten the risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity, and other metabolic disorders later in life.13 Per longitudinal research from Nuffield, 85% of adults who spent time in institutional or foster care report having chronic, incurable conditions by age 49.14 Thus, family separation and placement into foster or residential care are life-changing in one of the most harmful ways possible: ruining health.

The consequences for parents and families are also severe. Families are vital social units that provide support to their members.15 Extended networks are critical in traditional societies, helping child-rearing and group survival.16 However, many families risk being separated due to factors beyond their control, such as political violence, poverty, discrimination, or natural disasters.17 For example, per a 2020 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) report, deportations affecting undocumented immigrant family members and unaccompanied immigrant minors increased by over 100% between 2018 and 2020 in the United States, leaving many families vulnerable to the trauma of forced separation.

JUDGE MICHAEL NASH Director of the Office of Child Safety, Los Angeles County

Similarly, many refugees experience family separation due to war or persecution in their home countries and face challenges with resettlement and reunification in their host countries.18 Thus, national and global attunement to this reality is essential. Awareness also offers a stark display of the binary focus the dominant culture often chooses: Black and brown families in the United States face this reality daily.

Family separation disrupts the social fabric and undermines groups’ collective resilience.19 Families give their members a sense of belonging, identity, and security. Thus, when separated, child and adult members can lose or have reduced access to their social capital and coping resources. Separation and disconnection also affect families’ ability to cope with poverty, discrimination, violence, and illness.

The current binary view of safety lives within “doing-to” bureaucracies: large groups of influential individuals who are definers and decision-makers for other large groups. The binary of safe or unsafe, often in an affluent, white cultural context, limits understanding of a richer view of safety, including health, relational, cultural, and emotional safety. It has been said family separation in the name of safety trades one problem for another. Science demonstrates that adversities in childhood are cumulative and compositional. In other words, subjecting children who experience poverty-related neglect to forcible family separation exponentially increases the burdens of distress, causing deeper disruption within the developing body and brain with serious lifetime health consequences and harm to children’s memory and ability to learn. An argument for an expanded definition and positioning of safety does not ignore its original requirement. Instead, it suggests the world will become more biologically consistent, culturally connected, and relationally based. How is power operating in our discourse about child safety, whose power is operating, and how are communities responding to that power?

Moreover, the new paradigm must be situated within families and catalyzed and supported by systems rather than the inverse. By adopting a more holistic and comprehensive understanding of safety, we can recognize the vital importance of family connections in human development, resilience, and health.

The safety paradigm encourages us to consider immediate threats to children’s well-being, such as abuse, neglect, or exploitation, and the broader social, economic, and cultural factors contributing to family separation and disconnection.21 Addressing these underlying social and political determinants of family separation can help create a more supportive and nurturing environment for all families, promoting greater resilience and well-being at the individual, community, and tribal levels.

The permanency paradox in child welfare refers to the dilemma that occurs when a system allegedly tries to balance the competing goals of protecting children from abuse and neglect and preserving their family ties and cultural identity. The binary, which forces a choice between reunification or termination of parental rights based on the safety dichotomy, harms in several ways. First, it can create a sense of urgency and pressure that may not be conducive to effective decision-making or service delivery. Second, it can overlook the complexity and diversity of family situations and ignore the potential benefits of alternative permanency options, such as reunification, kinship care, and guardianship. Third, it disrupts the biological connection and health building that results from access to parents, family, community, culture, and language.

To address the permanency paradox in child welfare, some researchers and practitioners have advocated for a more flexible and holistic approach that considers each child’s and family’s best interests and respects their rights and preferences.22 This approach involves a collaborative and participatory process that engages all the stakeholders, including children, parents, relatives, foster carers, social workers, judges, and advocates. It also involves a continuum of permanency options that accommodate different needs and circumstances and allows for ongoing contact and support between children, parents, and their families of origin.23 The definition of permanency moves away from a legal definition on a piece of paper and into a family and community-created response to economic, social, and systemic challenges. A culturally responsive, trauma-transformed practice recognizing the underpinnings of historical oppression and generational trauma would create a power shift that welcomes complexity and repositions safety or permanency in the context of families rather than systems.

Challenging the current child welfare system to address the permanency paradox and promote the well-being of children and families is essential.24

Examining family separation is beginning to uncover the realities of individualistic, dominant consumer culture and its economic consequences. According to a report by United Family Advocates, in 2017, “27,871 children in the United States were placed in foster care due to inadequate housing.”25 Quickly, an economic and scarcity conversation is uncovered. Scarcity posits a limited number of resources geared toward supporting the dominant culture rather than a responsibility for sharing resources. This thinking returns the discussion to the hyper-individualized rather than the relational and communal. The scarcity paradigm is an allencompassing concept within Western societies that places a premium on limited resources, driven by the necessity for competition and effective distribution.26 The scarcity paradigm undeniably affects how we view relationships and their importance, leading us to prioritize efficiency, productivity, and obedience over loving caregiving.

One of the primary consequences of the scarcity dichotomy is the tension between slow relationships and fast processes. Bureaucratic systems often emphasize efficiency, productivity, and compliance, which can directly conflict with the slower, more organic process of building and maintaining relationships.27 This tension can result in prioritizing short-term outcomes and procedural requirements over the long-term wellbeing, stability and health of families, further exacerbating the issue of family separation.

An anthropological viewpoint can provide valuable insights into how the lack of resources affects family dynamics and overall well-being. Throughout our collective human journey, extended family support systems have been essential to the fortitude of societies and their constituents. In providing social, economic, and emotional aid to its members28, these networks have instilled a sense of security that helps individuals and whole communities thrive. Subscribing to the idea of scarcity, however, may risk undermining these hugely beneficial affiliations, leading to greater vulnerability and detachment among those with fractured familial ties.

TA-NEHISI COATES

We must redraw our conceptualization of life as relationally nested, complex, and fundamentally symbiotic. Any ideas of help for others that fail to appreciate the extraordinary nature of human capability within a range of relationships exist more for their benefit than for others and is a form of symbiosis called parasitism.

As we strive to create a more humane and just child welfare system, we must rethink the assumptions and practices that have shaped it for hundreds of years. We must move beyond the binary logic of safety versus risk, removal versus reunification, and punishment versus support. Instead, we must prioritize equity, economics, and environment as fundamental to child well-being, recasting prevention as a context of family support rather than a punitive or extractive response deployed at the last minute before children are harmed. We must appreciate parents’ and families’ complexity and diversity and empower them to invent solutions and make decisions, preserving dignity, autonomy, and self-determination. We must remember that slow, relational experiences are the source of our health, healing, and thriving rather than models of service imposed by an industry funding scheme.

Today’s oppressive, dysfunctional, and failing social and health systems have changed little in the 75 years since their beginning. The institutions we constructed during the 3rd industrial revolution and their funding were built on stories about poor people, pregnant and parenting women outside of marriage, and Black, Native, and Hispanic Americans, not by them. We must confront the reality that these institutions were built on dehumanizing, dismembering, and demeaning stories about people. Since then, what we have called reform has primarily been new stories about the disadvantaged and the vulnerable, inventing new ways to hold power and influence over them.

To Re-story America, we must restore storytelling rights to the people who depend on institutions and systems rather than the industries that profit from them.31 A dangerous new chapter in child welfare occurred on February 9th, 2018— the passage of the Family First Prevention Act. Five years later, almost no prevention services of any real meaning have materialized, and the so called group home reforms have had little to no positive impact, but one thing was accomplished. The authority and legitimacy for authoring stories referred to as evidence were entrusted solely to the industry and its adjacent research sub-culture through the popular idea that what Child Welfare needs for reform are evidenced-based models. The result is that the only good child welfare reform is the creation of intervention models done to and for children, youth, and parents by service providers and the government. Unfortunately, very soon after the legislation was enacted, the industry adopted a new tradition of tokenizing parents, young people, and relatives by describing their testimony not as evidence but as lived experience.

Of course, everyone knows that evidence is objective, and experience is subjective; no one knew this better than those pushing for this change for their own political and economic benefit. Attaching the word evidence to proprietary model authors and academics, legitimized by federal and state law, was an intentional form of capture by the industry. Moreover, it resulted in a tremendous institutional advantage having the effect of silencing anything other than the ”experience” of harm reported by those on the receiving end of Child Welfare agencies and their service providers.

Lived experience is, in fact, a compelling form of evidence. In criminal and civil law practice, it is known as cumulative evidence. When many, and in the case of child welfare, tens of thousands of youths and parents, each year for decades report being harmed by similar patterns of conduct, it would be damming evidence in front of a jury, but so far has been of little interest to the industry and most academics.

What if social and health-related laws, policies, and institutions resulted from stories told by Black families, low-income families, Tribes, other marginalized communities, parents with disabilities, mothers, fathers, young people, and relatives? What institutions, if any, would they build? What would those institutions do, how would they work, what would they consider a good outcome? What role would service providers play in that system? What quality of justice would they demand?

The Kempe Center at the University of Colorado and Pale Blue have catalyzed a Together in Truth project supporting communities to come together and tell the truth about child welfare. In Washington, DC, a group of parents convened truth-telling. Their key finding, “every welfare program in the district hammered us. Child welfare just finished us off by taking our Black children and stealing our souls.” These are the brutal consequences of webs of institutions created and operated through stories of power told about people.

Our greatest gift is a brain that can learn to connect to other brains and change our collective futures. We must expand the circle of storytelling until everyone stands within it; only then can we create an equitable society and a healthy planet. A consciousness of this connection is our only hope.

1 Perry, B. D., & Szalavitz, M. (2010). Born for love: Why empathy is essential-and endangered. William Morrow.

² Sullivan, D. J. (2009). The child protection paradox: Principles and practices of public health. SAGE Publications.

3 USCRI, “How the Zero-Tolerance Family Separation Policy Harmed Children and Families,” December 15, 2021, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, https://refugees.org/ policy-brief-how-thezero-tolerance-familyseperation-policy-harmedchildren-and-families/.

4 Roberts, D. (2022, April). Abolish Child Protective Services: Torn Apart. Mother Jones. Retrieved from https:// www.motherjones.com/ crime-justice /2022/04/ abolish-child-protectiveservices-torn-apartdorothy-roberts-bookexcerpt/

5 Ibid

6 See also National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. (2023, May 7). NCCPR Child Welfare Blog. Retrieved May 7, 2023, from http:// www.nccprblog.org

7 Youngmin Yi, Frank Edwards, et al., “State-level variation in the cumulative prevalence of child welfare system contact, 2015-2019,” Children and Youth Services Review 147 (2023).

8 National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, “Young Children Develop in an Environment of Relationships,” Working Paper No. 1 (2004), http://www. developingchild.net.

9 Shonkoff, J. P., & Garner, A. S. (2012). The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress. Pediatrics, 129(1), e232-e246. doi:10.1542/ peds.2011-2663

10 Gunnar, M. R., & Quevedo, K. (2007). The neurobiology of stress and development. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 145-173. doi:10.1146/ annurev.psych.58. 110405.085605

11 McEwen, B. S. (2007). Physiology and neurobiology of stress and adaptation: central role of the brain. Physiological Reviews, 87(3), 873904. doi:10.1152/ physrev.00041.2006

12 Lupien, S. J., McEwen, B. S., Gunnar, M. R., & Heim, C. (2009). Effects of stress throughout the lifespan on the brain, behaviour and cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 434-445. doi:10.1038/ nrn2639

13 Shonkoff, J. P., & Garner, A. S. (2012). The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress. Pediatrics, 129(1), e232-e246. doi: 10.1542/ peds.2011-2663

14 Sacker, A. & Murray, E. (2021). The Long-Term Effects of Family and Childhood Factors on Adult Health, Well-Being and Socioeconomic Outcomes. Presented at the Nuffield Foundation seminar, June 2021. Retrieved from https:// www.nuffieldfoundation. org/wp-content/uploads/ 2021/06/Presentationfrom-Amanda-Sacker-andEmily-Murray.pdf

15 Levine, R. A., Sato, S., Hashimoto, T., & Verma, J. (2016). Love, honor, and solidarity: The global cultural appeal of social bonds. Journal of CrossCultural Psychology, 47(9), 1199-1224. doi: 10.1177/ 0022022116654778

16 Ibid

17 Geronimus, A. T. (2023). Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society. Little, Brown Spark.

18 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (2020). ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Report, Fiscal Year 2020. Retrieved from https:// www.ice.gov/doclib/ about/offices/ero/ pdf/ice-ero-fy2020enforcement-removaloperations-report.pdf

19 Masten, A. S. (2014). Global perspectives on resilience in children and youth. Child development, 85(1), 6-20. doi: 10.1111/ cdev.12205

20 Gilligan, J. (2016). Beyond safety: Embracing a more expansive view of well-being. Child Welfare, 95(1), 9-28. doi: 10.1080/ 03004430.2016.1143038

21 Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard University Press.

22 Connolly, M., & Doolan, M. (2007). The permanency paradox: A commentary on current practice in New Zealand. Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, 32(1), 101-112.

23 Festinger, T., & PrattDannals, J. (2018). The permanency paradox: A longitudinal study of outcomes for foster youth aging out of care. Children and Youth Services Review, 93(1), 1-9.

24 Ibid

25 United Family Advocates. (n.d.). Family Poverty is Not Neglect. Retrieved from https://www. unitedfamilyadvocates.org/ family-poverty-is-not-neglect

26 Ehrenreich, B. (2009). Bright-sided: How positive thinking is undermining America. Metropolitan Books.

27 Mink, G. (2006). Bureaucratic power in the US welfare system: A critical historical overview. Social Policy & Administration, 40(1), 53-71. doi: 10.1111/j.14679515.2006.00487.x

28 Levine, R. A., Levine, S., Schnell-Anzola, B., Rowe, M. L., Dexter, E., LeVine, P., . . . Miller, P. (2016). Child care and culture: Lessons from Africa. Cambridge University Press.

29 “Ta-Nehisi Coates on Entrenched Racist Myths,” YouTube video, uploaded by Politics and Prose, May 12, 2017, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v= d2t4ergKek..

30 David Denborough, “Narrative Therapy: Charter of Story-telling Rights,” [Publication Date], Dulwich Centre, https:// dulwichcentre.com/au/ narrative-therapy-charter-ofstory-telling-rights-by-daviddenborough

31 Coates, T.-N. (2015). Between the World and Me. Spiegel & Grau.