The Shift: Voices of Prevention — A podcast by Prevent Child Abuse America

Ep. 11: Valerie Frost | PCA America 2023 National Conference Podcast

• Prevent Child Abuse America

Share episode

Subscribe for more episodes

SPEAKER_00:

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 podcast. I'm excited to be here with Valerie Frost of Kentucky Youth Advocates, Resilience Builder, Community Change Maker, and now mother of three children. Valerie, welcome to the show. And thank you for having me. I say now, but you said 19 months.

SPEAKER_01:

But I I do feel like I just gave birth, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00:

It's it's flown by. Yeah, it goes fast. My gosh. So regarding the work that you do, the work that is building healthy communities, um, it's all about creating conditions, right? Where children and families thrive. How do you approach that work?

SPEAKER_01:

Um, well, you talk about conditions for people to thrive. Um, traditionally, it's the child welfare agency and system has been very focused on people and them and like assessing whether somebody is a risk or has risk factors and what's wrong with them, or what could go wrong with them, or what could they do? Um, and so with a lot of the work that I do, it's stepping back and saying, What's going on around people? Um, do they even have the chance to do well? Um, do you do they have what they need to be a person, to be a human being, and to be successful? Um so it's taking it off of people and taking it off of this risk mindset and saying, like, what are the opportunities and what is the quality of life that is offered to someone? Um, so do they have a chance to be successful in the first place?

SPEAKER_00:

Are you finding that your approach or your the conversations you're having with systems? What is the reception like?

SPEAKER_01:

I think at first people were a little confused and they didn't see, they didn't see how their role could shift to being more prevention mindset. Um they thought it was like taking on a second job or getting like a new set of criteria to do, a new checklist to follow. And it's really you're if you are living and working in a community, you're surrounded by people, you're interacting with people. So it's just a different way of when you have someone in front of you, are you thinking about does this person have the opportunity to have what they need and what can I do to facilitate that and support that? So it's the same work, the same people, the same community, and just the way that you are thinking about them and thinking about what you could do or say. So it's not a new job, um, it's not a second set, it's just a shift.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. It's shifting, almost like shifting that family, those caregivers, that child to the center, and then surrounding them with what they might need. But it also does mean that we gotta kind of rethink this a bit and eliminate some things that we have been doing, barriers, practices. Now, are there things out there that you can point to that are like, all right, this clearly isn't working in terms of our practices?

SPEAKER_01:

I think a lot um is language. There's a lot of power in words. Um what you say to somebody to either motivate them or to push them further into hopelessness. I think about that a lot with caseworkers with the child welfare agency. You can have a parent in front of you and tell them, like, you got this, um, I have a cousin that needed some mental health support. It's not a big deal, um, you know, we're gonna walk through this together. And that's a huge difference to someone other than um you need to see a therapist and I'm gonna order you to go do that. And then to sit there and say, well, this parent's not motivated to do this case plan. Um, there's no hope here. We're we're we're not gonna give the kids back. I think the the language is huge for anyone just to have that, like we're working together, I'm not above you. So something to eliminate would really be that like us versus them mentality. Like we're all people, I know we talk a lot um in the child welfare system about families, and it's it's really kind of othering the way that we say families, because it's like those families that have those risks and those problems, um, but then everybody in the room has children themselves. So we're all families, we're all people that have needs. So some people's needs are being met and some aren't. So why aren't some people's being needs being met? And what could the community do to provide those needs?

SPEAKER_00:

Let's walk down that path. What do you think the community can do to provide some of those needs?

SPEAKER_01:

So when we look at people and and like I said, just focusing on them, we're focusing on their capacity and individual risk factors. But when you step back to the community and you look at the community protective factors, that is does this community have high-quality childcare? Does this community have opportunities for meaningful social connection? Does this community even have transportation? Um, I know a lot of conversations about whether people are working or not, but how do you get to work? You know, you have to have a way to get there. You have to have a job to get to in the first place. Um, you have to wear clothes to go to work. You ha your children need to be somewhere while you're working.

SPEAKER_00:

Now, are you through your work with the Kentucky Youth Advocates, are you seeing some daylight? Are you seeing some positive movement in the direction we should be going?

SPEAKER_01:

I believe four years now since I um had my own personal involvement with child welfare agency, um it it impacted me a lot. Um, you know, there there was a time that I I felt pretty hopeless about child welfare and what was going on. I was pretty blindsided um by my report um and my involvement. And um I had always thought, you know, just being someone that lives in the community, I thought, you know, the reports are for people that are abusing their kids. Like that's, you know, they're there to stop, you know, really bad people from doing bad things. And so when I got involved, I was like, oh, I did not know that this was happening. And then you find out that, you know, people are having involvement for all sorts of reasons that may or may not be abuse or neglect or maybe in need, but not severe. Um, I would say over the past few years, um, partnering with the child welfare agency, learning about how to respond to the reports differently, um, working with community partners and partnerships. Um, and also I also facilitate lived experience as well. Um, other people such as myself that have former involvement with the child welfare agency. Being right in the middle of all of those conversations, um, from when I had my experience to now, I I do see a huge change. Um, there's just a lot going on in Kentucky right now. There are a lot of people that are thinking about, you know, how can we do things differently? There are several different plans for how to prevent calls from coming in that don't need to come in in the first place. But then if they do come in, you know, how can we do things differently? Instead of just having this one size fits all, they're all gonna do the exact same thing and not really individualizing for different circumstances what a family needs.

SPEAKER_00:

Valerie, I so appreciate the work you do as a father myself. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00:

And stay tuned for more interviews from PCA America's National Conference Podcast.