Child protection agencies collaborating with grass-root community organizations: partnership or tokenism?

ABSTRACT

Cross-sector collaborations are increasingly being relied upon to improve accessibility of prevention and support services for marginalized communities reported to the child protection system. However, little is known about the feasibility, implementation, and impact of such collaborations. This study begins to address this gap by describing the challenges faced by a child protection agency and community organization who partnered to reduce the overrepresentation of Black children reported to the child protection agency through implementation of a parenting support program. Six semi-structured interviews were conducted with all members of a stakeholder committee, representing both the child protection agency and community organization. Critical race theory (CRT) informed the qualitative approach. Three major themes were identified demonstrating how the child protection agency’s organizational context, lack of socio-political support and organizational culture posed significant implementation challenges for the partnership. These findings raise important considerations for cross-sector collaborations aiming to reduce overrepresentation and racial disparity within child protection systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Cross-sector collaboration
• child protection
• community-based child welfare
• overrepresentation
• black families

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work and preparation of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

Funding is acknowledged from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council and the Fonds de recherche Societé et culture.

Notes on contributors

Alicia Boatswain-Kyte

Alicia Boatswain-Kyte, PhD is an Assistant Professor at the McGill School of Social Work. Her research advocates for transformative social change within our institutions and social policies for Black children and families. Her work seeks to identify innovative solutions to facilitating service accessibility to marginalized populations.

Nico Trocmé

Nico Trocmé, MSW, PhD, RSW, FRSC, is the Director of the School of Social Work and the Philip Fisher Chair in Social Work at McGill University.  He has been leading studies on Canadian provincial and First Nations child welfare services since the early 1990s and has authored over 200 scientific publications based on this research.

Tonino Esposito

Tonino Esposito, PhD is an Associate Professor in Social Work at Université de Montréal. His research focuses on the well-being of maltreated children in out-of-home care and ways of building child welfare agencies capacity to analyze clinical-administrative and population data in order to plan and evaluate their programs and services.

Elizabeth Fast

Elizabeth Fast, PhD (Métis) is an Associate Professor in Applied Human Sciences at Concordia University. Her research focuses on land-based learning and healing among Indigenous youth and she also works on culturally safe interventions in childwelfare systems. Dr. Fast is the Concordia University Research Chair on decolonizing and Indigenous pedagogies.