Juneteenth, otherwise known as Emancipation Day or Freedom Day, is celebrated each year on June 19 in recognition of the day in 1865- two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was delivered - when enslaved African Americans in Texas learned that they were free. Many people recognize Juneteenth as a day for celebration, remembrance, and reflection on this history.
In the child welfare field, we know that while laws and policies may drive change, whether or not these changes are felt in the lives of the children and families we serve is often determined by the professionals they interact with. This is why it is so important for child welfare professionals to be well trained and up to date on the recent Minnesota African American Family Preservation and Child Welfare Disproportionality Act (MAAFPCWDA).
What is MAAFPCWDA?
MAAFPCWDA is state legislation meant to end unnecessary removals of African American and other disproportionately represented children from their families and to improve family stability and reunification outcomes when child welfare intervention occurs. This is done by creating higher standards for how the child welfare system responds to families who have been historically marginalized, including:
- Engaging in Active Efforts, including culturally informed practices, to prevent out-of-home placements and promote reunification of families
- Prioritizing relative and noncustodial parent placement
- Limiting circumstances where termination of parental rights can occur
- Mandating data disaggregation and reporting so disparities and progress are transparent
MAAFPCWDA, codified in Minnesota Statutes Chapter 260.61-260.693, represents a policy shift toward prevention, cultural responsiveness, and equity by focusing on actively keeping families together and supported. It reflects community advocacy, engagement with practitioners, and a legislative commitment to correcting inequitable outcomes and disparities.
Education as liberation
As we know from the lessons of Juneteenth, passing a policy (or making a proclamation) does not automatically equal on-the-ground change. That is why we at the Minnesota Child Welfare Training Academy are committed to preparing the state's child welfare workforce to implement MAAFPCWDA in their day-to-day work with integrity and cultural responsiveness. Along with Public Knowledge, we have developed the course Addressing Disparities and Disproportionality: MAAFPCWDA (CWTA X224). All Minnesota county child protection workers and supervisors will be required to take this course to expand their understanding and knowledge on this topic.
Recent training staff and lived experience experts have remarked:
- “When you see the whole child including their family and culture you then understand how to best serve them.”
- “The curriculum affords an opportunity to thread together how history (the dynamic and iterative events which occur over time, and are not solely located in the past) connects with the present. It offers a lens for understanding the contextual reasons for structural and systemic oppression that have created and perpetuated disparities, and disproportionality. It also allows for us to examine and reflect upon our conditioning and how we, through both conscious and non-conscious mechanisms, are complicit in the process. It invites us to acknowledge, notice, pause, and be with what is arising within us in response to what is, for some of us, unfamiliar and even new information. Practicing being with responses such as discomfort, disappointment, grief, shame, guilt, anger, rage, fosters even deeper access to our humanity and with cultural humility. All of this is in service of coming alongside children, families, and one another in even more authentic and culturally responsive ways to dismantle the patterns of inequity.”
- “This is not about giving every child the same thing, it’s about giving the children and families what they need to succeed.”
Current training dates and offerings can be found in this blog post. More training dates will be added as they are scheduled.