10 minute read
A Discussion with Victor Sims
on the Power of Connection
Victor Sims
Victor Sims is a father, husband, son, brother, social worker, law student, mentor and tireless national advocate for children, young people, parents, families, and the communities they live in. We sat down with Victor recently to explore his perspectives on why relationships, connection and belonging (relational health) are important, particularly for children and families in the foster care system, and the harms of not being connected.
From your perspective Victor, why are connections, relationships and belonging areas that we should focus our attention on in child welfare?
The child welfare system is designed to protect children from abuse and neglect and to support families in crisis. However, the system can be intimidating and difficult to navigate, leaving many families feeling disconnected and unsupported.
Someone who is close to me told me about a time when she lived only a street away from her biological aunts and uncles. Another friend of mine said that they did not know that they even had family. I believe that one way to show love and care towards children who are impacted by the child welfare system is to recognize that from the moment of birth, a child’s connection to their parents begins with the umbilical cord. This physical connection represents the bond between a parent and child that is essential for a child’s growth and development. As the child grows, this connection evolves into a more complex relationship, but the importance of this initial bond cannot be overstated.
Just as the umbilical cord provides essential nutrients to the developing child, so too, the connection between parents and children provides emotional nourishment that is critical for a child’s healthy development. This connection is especially crucial in the context of child welfare, where the safety and well-being of the child may depend on the strength of the bond between the child and their parents.
We must act on the importance of preserving and nurturing these parent-child connections. It isn’t enough to talk about the connection and the bond when we are also talking about termination of parental rights and who is going to adopt the child. I believe that it is important for us to have these same conversations when it comes to the separation of families - that we begin to ask ourselves, who in the community can we lean to for support in order to ensure that the family remains whole.
What has influenced your thinking about connections, relationships and belonging the most?
Going into the system at 3 months old and being adopted at 12, I lost my history. It is no wonder so many people who grow up in foster care say they felt that they lost a little bit of themselves. The fact of the matter is that they did. They lost every fiber and being that was written in their DNA, they lost the people who helped to make their genetic makeup. They lost the hot water cornbread recipe that was theirs to inherit.
I worked with every child not from the perspective that they should have been removed, even when I personally believed it was the best safety decision. I worked with each one of them as if they should have never been removed. I looked for the systems in their family that worked, whether it was something as simple as getting children ready for school, or if it was the practice of making sure that their children always had clothes, or was it the fact that they lived 5 minutes from other family members that could support them.
Let’s talk about that a little more. You became a foster care social worker, supervisor, advocate and national consultant. How did your experience and thinking about connections affect your professional work with families?
One of the hardest things for me to do as a social worker was to leave my trauma at the door. The same system that I grew up in also created resentment for much of the system, created the nature of my advocacy and planted the idea that transformation was necessary. Working in the system, I realized the complex nature of the system. I read through the operating procedures, the state laws and statutes that governed child welfare, and then best practice. I learned that the things that were hard to alter were the statutes and state rules. I had the opportunity as a case manager to help influence change in operating procedures and I could be a case study towards best practice. At the infancy of my career, I began to challenge leaders all around me. I began to speak up and say this just doesn’t make sense. Why did we add on this guard rail? Why did we add this extra red tape? What needs to be done to change it? Who can I speak to in regards to influencing this change? Where did this procedure originate? Many times my leaders in the beginning would say things like, “Victor, it has been that way for as long as I have been here,” “Victor, it helps protect us,” “Victor, we don’t want to lose credibility in front of the judge,” “Victor, have you ever heard of CYA”, or “Victor, it is to prevent us from being on the news.”
Oftentimes, I would just walk away and tell them thank you. I was able to sit down and ask every time, why do we say that our hope was to strengthen families? I was motivated by that, I was encouraged by that, however it seemed that we weren’t focusing on that. We began to focus on our own protections, we began to focus on the pressures of a court system, or we just inundated our workforce, our judicial system and most importantly our families, with phrases such as “we can’t” or telling families, “you need to do more.”
How do you think the power of connections should show up in the work we all do with families?
I learned quickly that I could influence outcomes for families, that I had an unusual power of instilling hope into families and that I could be an advocate for hope. I would debate with counterparts that handled the hard and often unappreciated workers who handle investigations of families. They were tasked with life changing decisions based on interviews, pictures, a video, or a phone call. I remember one of the things that bothered me was when a colleague with a lot of experience told me to work every case in a way that could support a TPR. Make sure that you send referrals out monthly, and that you track the package.
This may seem uncomfortable for many of us, but I recognized something that we all had in common regardless of whether we worked in the houses of the families we served, the courts or the state houses. We all had a connection to people and we all were humans. I began going to court predisposition meetings with the investigators and talking about services that I could offer parents in their home. I asked whether it was necessary for us to separate the family or could we serve them in a different way, such as, could I see the family more often to ensure safety. I talked to policy and procedure makers and said the policy and procedure may have made sense 20 years ago, it may have made sense last year, for all I care it might have made sense an hour ago. In this moment it does not make sense. The same procedures that were meant to safeguard the protection of workers stripped the rights of families from having safeguards and the protection of connection.
I recognized that judges made decisions based on words more often than anything else - that the words I used to characterize a family could have lasting effects on the court’s decisions. I had to remove my own opinions and adjectives and state facts.
What are some of the major lessons learned from exploring the power of connections and the importance of belonging?
Throughout this year, I have been highly interested in learning more about different cultures around the world and have looked to long-standing values from communities and tribes. I have learned that, regardless of environmental factors, geographic location, social status, language spoken, we all share a value. We all believe in connection - religion talks about connection, science talks about connection.
One of the words that I learned a few years ago while helping the Center for the Study of Social Policy develop their Youth Thrive Curriculum, was the word “Ubuntu” from the Nguni People: This is a concept in many African cultures that emphasizes the interconnectedness of all people and the importance of community. The word focuses on the cultural notion that I am what I am because of who we all are. Recently, I learned the phrase “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” which means a person is a person through other people. At that moment I just paused, I began to think, and then I took a breath, inhaling, and then exhaling. I knew I wanted to begin to breathe this thought process more when it came to families - a person is a person through other people. It made sense to me that the children and families served by child welfare felt disoriented in our system of care. It then made sense to me why, when I turned 16, I asked the vital question - who am I? I struggled to find out who I am and, as a matter of fact, I still struggle as an adult, because a part of me is the people I was originally connected with.
That’s an incredible lesson and thanks for sharing it. How would you like to see the child welfare/ foster care system change to support this kind of lesson about connections and relationships better?
When it comes to connection, I am not asking for a transformed system, I am not asking for different jargon to be created to make us feel motivated and create the illusion that we are going somewhere while we are still running on the treadmill. I am asking that we go back in time, back to ideology that dates back before our birth and the birth of parents and grandparents, back to concepts like “It takes a village to raise a child”, or “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu”.
Although I am optimistic, I understand that we cannot do this alone and that it takes a collective. We need to prioritize open and honest communication with families. By working collaboratively with families, child welfare investigators can identify potential safety concerns and develop strategies that are tailored to the specific needs of each family. This means identifying and leveraging family strengths, providing training and support, and fostering ongoing communication and collaboration.
It will take time and effort, but by working together with families and communities, we can create a child welfare system that is more effective, more just, and more compassionate. And that’s a goal that we should all strive to achieve.
