In 2021, the Journal of Public Child Welfare launches a Child Welfare Futures Section, which will feature brief commentaries arguing for short-, mid- and longer-term research-informed strategies designed to contribute to the evolution of the next generation of public child welfare. Our journal responded to this year’s call for racial equity and antiracist practice in child welfare by publishing invited articles to provoke dialogue and spur bold thinking, and we continue to fuel the field’s movement toward positive change with this special section of our journal. These commentaries will offer implementable practice, organization, and system-level approaches aimed at realigning the child welfare system, and other family-supporting service sectors–with the promotion of child safety, permanency, and wellbeing.
Writing about the future may mean addressing new organizational structures, new sets of skills, new forms of information or communication, or, even new ways of thinking. How might this play out in the future? Futures practice is about learning to navigate a VUCA world – a world that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous with a variety of creative tools and methods. Professions evolve for many reasons and under multiple influences. These commentaries may start with accelerating policy and practice changes underway or may begin with ideas that have not yet generated a concrete policy or program expression. The commentary should move us closer to such expressions. For example, Covid-19 has certainly generated many ideas about how to do more of our work virtually – how might we capitalize on that, and the greater (albeit still unequal) access that families have to technology, in the future.
Over the next two years, we will prioritize commentaries articulating inspirational but concrete, research-informed strategies for antiracist practice; integration of financial assistance and other approaches to alleviate material hardship of child welfare involved families; and, efforts to expand non-coercive, non-punitive, and informal strategies for assuring child protection while supporting families.
The Editorial Board invites submissions from practitioners, administrators, policymakers, cross-system/cross-sector partnerships (e.g., interdisciplinary, courts, health and mental health systems and family- and child-supporting agencies), and collaborations of foster care alumni or families and organizations representing them, as well as scholars. Submissions should be limited to approximately 1200 words (not including references) unless accompanied by a strong rationale for additional length. Commentaries about future approaches that build on some evidence of smaller scale efforts that could be taken to scale will be given priority. Demographic analyses of the society of the future are welcome when they also include specific ideas about advancing readiness to address those changes.
Recognizing that the Journal of Public Child Welfare has a mission to disseminate applied research to generate knowledge that readily applies to public child welfare agencies and other systems who jointly serve the child welfare population, the commentaries should draw on evidence about how the field could achieve more equitable and outstanding outcomes for children, youth, and families, but the commentaries need not limit themselves to single research studies or endeavor to provide comprehensive reviews of research.
Submit your commentary to the Journal of Public Child Welfare at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/wpcw and select “Essays” as the type of submission. These commentaries will undergo double blind peer review by a team of members of the editorial board.