A Letter from Our Director
I am writing this letter on the one year anniversary of the death of George Floyd, who was murdered by Minneapolis Police Department Officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020 by placing his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. The murder of another Black man by law enforcement sparked protests that lasted throughout the rest of 2020 and in many places continued until Chauvin was found guilty of all charges against him on April 20, 2021.
The murder of George Floyd and the resulting protests and discourse that followed shined a bright spotlight on the systemic racism that exists in America and impacts every aspect of daily life for Black Americans. Many difficult and sometimes contentious conversations have been initiated around dinner tables, workplace gathering spots, and in political arenas. Although conversation is needed, education and action must follow.
I am very pleased to share that the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion issued a “Call to Action to Address Racism and Social Injustice Research Program” with a request for proposals (RFP) that prioritized research on systemic racial inequities and injustices. The CFRC submitted three proposals in response to this RFP, one of which was selected to move forward to the final competition.
Earlier this month, the School of Social Work (SSW) released the first issue of its new Real World Impact Research Newsletter. The inaugural issue highlighted the research being done at the SSW that focuses on social injustice, and included work done by the CFRC on racial disproportionality in the child welfare system. That report is available on our publications website and will be updated to include new data in the next few months. In addition to our ongoing work that examines racial disproportionality, I have had exciting discussions with individuals from the Shriver Center on Poverty Law, Voices for Illinois Children, and the Illinois Collaboration on Youth regarding potential collaborative projects aimed at examining systemic racism in the child welfare system. The CFRC is dedicated to using our expertise to confront one of the most important issues facing child welfare today. I hope that you will join us.
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Tamara Fuller, Ph.D
Director, Children and Family Research Center
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CFRC welcomes
Kirsten Havig to the team!
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Dr. Kirsten Havig comes to CFRC from her position as Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Wyoming, bringing a wealth of practice experience as well as her scholarly background to the Center. After receiving her MSW degree at the University of South Carolina, her social work practice involved work in the family court as a deputy juvenile officer and investigator, in youth residential care, and in the child advocacy center setting doing everything from clinical therapy to policy advocacy. With those experiences as a foundation, Kirsten made the leap into academia, receiving her Ph.D. in 2010 from the University of Missouri with a dissertation focused on social worker strategies for the promotion of social and economic justice in practice.
From 2009-2011 she served as Title VI-E Child Welfare Clinical Professor with the University of Missouri School of Social Work, providing both university teaching as well as training and support for the state. Kirsten was then appointed to the faculty of the Division of Social Work in the College of Health Sciences at UW in 2016 as Assistant Professor and was later promoted to a tenured position as Associate Professor.
Her teaching and research have focused on trauma, resilience, and post-traumatic growth; social welfare policy and practice; the sexual trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of children; and child welfare training and evaluation.
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She is thrilled to have the opportunity to engage in child and family-related research in Illinois and to contribute to the work of the CFRC. Originally from Columbia, MO, Kirsten looks forward to being back in the Midwest and hopes to get involved in the local C-U and UIUC communities. She and her dogs can be found frequently in the garden, undertaking creative home improvement projects, and spending time enjoying nature.
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Dr. Ted Cross interviews Karla Steckler Tye of
Children's Advocacy Centers of Mississippi
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Child Advocacy Studies (CAST) is an innovative national program which was implemented in colleges and universities across Mississippi. The objective is to train graduate and undergraduate students across different professions to learn and recognize the signs of child abuse and neglect and how to protect children.
Dr. Ted Cross and Dr. Yu-Ling Chiu at the Children and Family Research Center have been conducting an evaluation of the program for 2 years now. As the evaluation project is wrapping up, we asked the Executive Director of Children's Advocacy Centers of Mississippi, Karla Steckler Tye, to explain the history, vision and future of the CAST program.
Below are some highlights of the interview. To view the complete interview click on the video link here.
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To see more information about the Children's Advocacy Centers of Mississippi and the CAST program, click on the links below:
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When you envisioned the CAST program, you thought large. You decided on a statewide program. A program that was going to influence undergraduate and graduate education throughout the state of Mississippi. What motivated you to aim for a statewide change?
There was a team that saw this from the very beginning. The Child Advocacy Centers want to move upstream to ensure true systemic changes...And so this is an area where we felt it was essential to go to the beginning of the process—to reach more professionals at the earliest avenue to respond to children...Teachers weren’t being trained to recognize abuse, much less how to respond when a child makes an outcry...Attorneys weren’t learning how to prosecute a case until they were actually being hired at a district attorney’s office. A physician may not be trained on the intentional injury versus non-intentional injuries. And, so profession after profession have far too long been learning on the job when a child’s life is literally hanging in the balance.
So that’s why we asked the Mississippi institutions of higher learning to join with us in implementing Child Advocacy Studies...So these students are collaboratively learning from the onset how to work collaboratively for what is in the best interests of children.
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"We knew by implementing CAST we could impact systemic change and we had the right people at the table to move that vision forward."
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What did it take to get CAST off the ground?
We were fortunate that the Children’s Advocacy Centers had a strong partnership with the office of the Attorney General and Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services. So this allowed us to join our efforts with the three agencies and go to colleges and universities and share the challenges we were seeing in this state from each of our agencies' perspectives...We knew by implementing CAST we could impact systemic change and we had the right people at the table to move that vision forward.
So as a multi-agency partnership we reached out to the institutions of higher learning and asked if they could join us to help create a better-prepared workforce.
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How is the Children and Family Research Center’s program evaluation contributing to the development of CAST?
There is not a lot of research on CAST. So we felt that as a state who had taken this different approach that it was imperative we contribute to the evaluation of the model, especially since we wholeheartedly believe that the statewide approach is transformational to the system...We are now at the end of the 2-year evaluation project looking at the efficacy of the model and the results are confirming what we suspected all along—those students who are taking the CAST courses are better prepared to identify child abuse and neglect...Bottom line, we are creating a generation of professionals that are better prepared to identify and respond to child abuse victims.
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"Bottom line, we are creating a generation of professionals that are better prepared to identify and respond to child abuse victims." |
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Where do you see the CAST program in Mississippi schools in the future?
Nationally I hope to see the statewide model spread to every state. Child abuse is obviously a very complex issue. Our children deserve the leaders in our field pushing to improve how they respond to these cases. CAST is one way that institutions of higher learning can help us reach that goal.
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The CFRC busy season
As the fiscal year comes to an end in June, many of the CFRC projects have annual reports due to stakeholders very soon. CFRC researchers are busy putting finishing touches on these annual reports now. Keep checking CFRC’s publication page for updates on the reports to be released in the next few months, such as:
- Illinois’ Child Endangerment Risk Assessment Protocol (CERAP)
- Child Death Review in Illinois
- Conscience Community Network
- Monitoring Report of the BH Consent Decree
- Illinois’ Child Protection Training Academy’s Simulation Training
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CFRC Data Center Outcome Charts
For our readers who provide services in child welfare, we would like to remind you of the Data Center on the Children and Family Research Center’s website.
Did you know?
- No registration, login or password is necessary
- Child welfare outcomes can be examined by race/ethnicity, age, and gender
- Data is available at the county level by request – just send an email to danzap@illinois.edu
- All data tables are updated quarterly
- Data is downloadable in multiple formats
We encourage you to take a look at this tool and bookmark this resource on your browser.
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2021 CQI Conference
The planning for the 2021 CQI Conference is well underway! The conference is
October 6 & 7, 2021 and will be held virtually. This year’s conference will focus on community engagement and equity and how CQI can make a positive impact in these areas.
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Follow the School of Social Work on Twitter @UofISocialWork or like the School on Facebook.
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