Host: Luke Waldo

Experts:

• Tim Grove – Wellpoint Care Network

:00-:33 – Tim Grove - “If we don’t fundamentally address equity, we can do all the trauma-informed care work we want quite frankly, and it probably is going to be the equivalent of making somebody feel a little bit better at the moment, but they know the world that they are going to step into when they leave the clinician’s office, or when they leave the case manager’s office is going to be full of threat and oppression. So Joy DeGruy says it quite beautifully, “Stop the oppression.”

:42-4:48 – Luke Waldo – Opening and Introduction to Tim Grove

4:53-5:16 - Luke Waldo – What are the biggest challenges facing our workforce today?

5:17-11:09 – Tim Grove – Unpacking the stress of the past 3-4 years has to be in the top 5 list. There was already a developing mental health crisis before the pandemic. If kids are our canary in the coal mine, then it has been clear for a while that. “Trauma is to mental health as smoking is to cancer.” A case manager, a child welfare worker has great exposure to trauma in their work. Families are impacted when they are reassigned to new case managers when their case manager leaves.

• The Age of Trauma (The Age of Syndemics) – Harvard Public Health

11:10-12:09 - Luke – What is moral injury, and how does it impact our workforce?

12:10-17:08 - Tim – Veterans of war have taught us so much about trauma and moral injury. Moral injury occurs when you are in a situation that compels you to complete an action that conflicts with your moral beliefs. In the case of child welfare, it may occur when a case manager has to separate siblings due to a shortage of placements.

• Moral Injury – National Center for PTSD

17:09-19:42 - Luke – How do we understand and approach our workforce’s lived experience, particularly their own adversity, and how do we support and empower our workforce with what we know now?

19:43-25:08 - Tim – What do we mean by lived experience? Developing a shared definition could be a good place to start. How do we leverage different levels of expertise from different experiences?

25:09-27:04 - Luke – How do we identify lived expertise so that they can lean more fully into what they know and are passion about? How does bias contribute to the disproportionality in our child welfare system?

27:05-31:08 - Tim – Trauma can lead to a survival response that leads to bias towards detecting that which causes fear and then avoiding it. If we pair the fear-based bias with race-based biases that exist, we justify our reactions to situations like interpreting a Black father’s loud response to a question as threatening.

31:09-33:20 - Luke – How might the lived experience of our community and workforce inform our child welfare workforce to better support overloaded families and keep them together?

33:21-39:47 - Tim – Parent Partners. We serve 1000 kids, and have 1 Parent Partner. At Wellpoint, we have achieved representation that mirrors the community that we serve. That said, it doesn’t always mean that a Black family is going to be served by a Black case manager. This will require that we have greater cross-cultural understanding.

39:48-41:31 - Luke – How has increased representation in your workforce changed your culture and the outcomes for children and families?

41:32-49:44 – Tim - You can’t talk about trauma-informed care without talking about intergenerational and historical trauma. This pushed me to “do the work”. It struck me when a Black woman came to me during an ACEs workshop to tell me that her community had experience adversity for generations, but nobody paid attention until the adversity was experienced by middle class White people.

• Joy DeGruy

49:45-50:19 – Luke – What are some of the pitfalls that lead to DEI failing?

50:20-54:37 - Tim – When opportunities come up to “stay in the room” to understand and confront the oppression that has occurred, too often people step out.

54:38-55:55 - Luke – What policy, practice and mental model changes need to occur to improve outcomes for our workforce and overloaded families?

55:56-1:01:16 - Tim – To manage caregiver capacity, we need to do less while creating more meaning. 60-hour trauma-informed care deep dive. We are asking more while offering more meaningful opportunities to engage their families. “What are we going to do with the guardians?” The guardians are struggling right now, so we need to make some big decisions on how we allocate our resources.

1:01:17-1:03:25 - Luke – Stay interviews in Family Support. What is giving our workforce meaning?

1:03:26-1:07:38 - Tim – No bullshit. They want authenticity in their workplace, which includes being honest about the reality and complexity of our work.

1:07:39-1:08:16 - Luke – What makes you optimistic about this work?

1:08:17-1:11:33 - Tim – I have many moments of worry, but I am optimistic because humans have always rallied to overcome our shared challenges. Many of the strategies to overcome these challenges will likely come from the communities that have historically been oppressed. We have also found innovative ways to confront challenges throughout our history as we will need to in cases of our mental health and climate crisis.

1:11:34-1:12:23 – Luke – What book or author has shaped your thinking?

1:12:24-1:13:03 – Tim – What Happened to You? – Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey

1:13:04-1:13:21 – Luke – Gratitude

1:13:22-1:14:44 - Luke – 3 Key Takeaways

1:14:45-1:16:12 - Luke – Closing and Gratitude

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