The Shift: Voices of Prevention — A podcast by Prevent Child Abuse America
How do we create a future where every family is safe, supported, and filled with hope? The Shift explores bold, upstream solutions to the public health challenges facing children and families today.
Hosted by Prevent Child Abuse America, each episode features transformative conversations with experts, changemakers, and people with lived experience. Together, we dive into prevention strategies, policy breakthroughs, and the systemic shifts that have the power to change lives.
Part of PCA America’s movement to make family well-being the new normal, The Shift amplifies the voices and ideas shaping a brighter, more hopeful future for all families.
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The Shift: Voices of Prevention — A podcast by Prevent Child Abuse America
Ep. 12: Dr. Clinton Boyd Jr. | PCA America 2023 National Conference Podcast
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Welcome to the official broadcast of PCAA America's National Conference. I'm Nathan Fink, and I'll be your host for the next four days as we embark on this transformative journey and hear from experts in prevention, and together discover innovative family-focused policies, cutting-edge research programs, and practices that help drive the field toward upstream thinking so every child has the opportunity to grow up safe and nurtured. As Prevent Child Abuse America's first in-person meeting of state chapters and home visiting networks, policy and community partners, and other collaborators since 2019, the 2023 conference offers nearly 90 sessions, three keynote speakers, workshops, symposia, and presentations focusing on effective prevention strategies with nationally recognized experts and leaders. So tune in to hear from professionals, advocates, and innovators in child abuse and neglect prevention, because each day is an opportunity to build foundations for our future. Hello, and welcome to the PCA America National Conference Podcast. I'm thrilled to be here with Dr. Clinton Boyd Jr., keynote speaker at PCA America's 2023 Together for Prevention Conference, PCA America's National Board Member, Executive Director of Fathers, Families, and Healthy Communities, and Researcher at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. Dr. Boyd, it's wonderful to have you on the show.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. It's an honor to be with you today.
SPEAKER_00:So among your many focuses of your work, it's removing barriers for parents, caregivers so their children and families can thrive. Now, what kinds of barriers are you seeing in your work time and time again?
SPEAKER_01:Well, thank thank you for the question. And in the context of my work, I focus a great deal on parenting in African American families and specifically thinking about father engagement, right? Um, specifically among African American fathers who may have had some involvement with the criminal legal system. And as they're returning home, they face a variety of barriers that serve as impediments to the desire to be actively engaged in the lives of their children, right? Some of those barriers look like housing insecurity. Some of those barriers deal with economic insecurities, specifically employer-based discrimination, because a lot of these guys have a desire to work in the legal economy, but they often face an uphill battle to do so because employers are less inclined to hire them, not only because of their criminal record, but also because of the stigma associated with them being black men. And so a lot of my work is really geared towards one, shining a spotlight on the many barriers that these men face, but also thinking about ways in which we can take stock of their individual and collective strengths because I truly believe that these guys are more than the worst thing they've ever done. And they are truly assets to their children, families, and community, and they just need to get connected to opportunity structures that will allow them to manifest and showcase their God-given greatness. Yeah. Let's talk about those opportunity structures. Yeah, so at Fathers, Families, and Healthy Communities, we're an organization that was, you know, created to really provide pathways forward for so many men in the community who are looking for ways to have meaningful engagements with their children, right? And so some of that looks like for fathers who may be confronting legal barriers, specifically in the area of child support and custody-related issues. We have partnerships with um legal aid organizations in Chicago where we provide pro bono low-cost legal services to our fathers because many of them are financially unable to cough up the upfront fees associated with, you know, having a lawyer um look at their case and try and advocate for them having legal access to their children, right? So that's one example. Another example is really also connected to providing job training and placement um services to fathers who are in search of work that not provides a minimum wage, but that provides a living wage, that provides a family sustaining wage. And more recently, we've been taking things a step further and thinking about what entrepreneurship programs look like for our guys, many of whom have been involved in street life, um, many of whom have skills and gifts that they've honed, unfortunately, for nefarious and felonious purposes, but helping them to understand that those same skills can be utilized for a righteous purpose and can be utilized in a way that will allow them to make an honest living. And so we've been doing a lot of work in that space as well.
SPEAKER_00:I'm really glad you differentiated between wage and living wage. Oh, yeah. Now, a critical part of all this programming, all this support is obviously the research and learnings that research brings. So to make sure that, you know, we are discovering and emanating solutions that really do progress our population. Right, right. So I I'm curious to know how does your, you know, Vista or viewpoint as a researcher come implementer? How do you view that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, fun that I I really appreciate that question because it allows me to bring the two disparate worlds that I operate in together, right? You know, as a researcher, there has been a tendency within the academy to just think about the work that we do within the research world as being siloed or disconnected from, you know, the everyday experiences of ordinary people. However, the way that I approach the work is think about how we can leverage the science, how we can leverage the data to um really drive solutions that are also informed by the voices of the families and the fathers that we engage through our work. So it's like that mantra, nothing for us without us. Yes. I really bring a community-based participatory research approach to my work because I really view the fathers as co-creators in all of the programs that we're developing at FFHC. And outside of the ones that we're developing, even the programs that we're refining, because FFHC has been around for roughly two decades. I've only been sitting in the seat of executive director for about two years. And so my predecessors had the foresight to know back in the 90s and the early 2000s that we not only need to leverage the research about, you know, what are the best and promising practices for engaging fathers, but how do we also engage the fathers in the process so we get their buy-in and craft solutions to those um socially vexing problems that are really working against them and preventing them from achieving social, economic, and spiritual mobility. Dr. Boyd, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. I really appreciate it. And stay tuned for more interviews from PCA America's National Conference Podcast.