Philip Goldman
On April 29, Boston College School of Social Work (51茶馆SSW) hosted a day of learning and affirmed a strategic partnership with a team from , a global child protection consulting firm. President and Founder Philip Goldman and Senior Associate鈥攁nd former 51茶馆SSW Global Field Advisor鈥擝eth Bradford spoke to 51茶馆SSW faculty, administrators, and other members of the 51茶馆 community about global trends in child protection; the challenges of delivering effective, sustainable care; and how social work practice is becoming a crucial part of those efforts.
Goldman discussed the systemic issues affecting a lack of funding and effective investment for children and families in the international development dialogue. 鈥淔amilies are a defining part of who we are and how we develop as societies. That translates into kinship networks and how communities are formally and informally governed. Families have to be understood if we鈥檙e to be effective.鈥�
However, he says the protection of children and family strengthening have received neither the attention nor funding they need, partly owing to the international development community鈥檚 perception of them being solely the responsibility of human-rights based relief organizations. 鈥淭hese agencies are fragmented and under-resourced,鈥� says Goldman, making progress very difficult to achieve.
Goldman says that view is beginning to change as arguments about the importance of child protection, family strengthening, and human capital are resonating with governments and other stakeholders. Holistic thinking and the skills of social workers, he says, are gaining traction as essential components in developing the expertise necessary for responding to today鈥檚 global demands. 鈥淲e try to think multi-sectorally鈥攕ocial welfare, education, health, justice鈥攁 comprehensive and coordinated response to child protection. Social work, says Goldman, 鈥渋s the best place to develop linkages with other sectors. There are not enough experts in social welfare, child protection, child welfare, and family strengthening. It鈥檚 decades too late, but agencies are starting to understand that their capacities have to be built up.鈥�
Bradford spoke about family-based care and described the initiative, a partnership between Catholic Relief Services, Lumos, and Maestral, which received $15 million as a finalist in the MacArthur Foundation鈥檚 100&Change Competition. (51茶馆SSW Dean Gautam N. Yadama is a member of the initiative鈥檚 advisory board.) The organization is working to shift perceptions, funding, and policies away from the institutional care of children and toward family-based care environments.
Beth Bradford
鈥淔amilies want to care for their children,鈥� said Bradford. 鈥淲e have to get at why they aren鈥檛 getting the internal and external resources they need.
鈥淓ighty to 90 percent of children living in residential institutions have at least one living parent,鈥� she continued. 鈥淭hat goes up to 96 to 97 percent if we look at living relatives. More than 80 years of research shows that care for children outside of families negatively impacts their development. Even with that research, there are many countries around the world where institutions are the primary model of protection and care for children.鈥�
Bradford echoed Goldman鈥檚 assertion that global trends are shifting toward a system-based approach. 鈥淲e鈥檙e seeing more talk about how to best support a whole system, integrating health, education, child protection, family strengthening, and preventing children from entering institutional systems while working to bring them out.鈥�
Following the presentation, Goldman and Bradford took questions from the attendees and opened the conversation to a broader discussion of the challenges in supporting international, family-based care initiatives and opportunities for multi-sector collaboration to affect substantial change.
The day closed with conversations about strengthening and growing the collaboration between Maestral and 51茶馆SSW, first formalized in 2014 with a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which describes a robust partnership that calls for joint research, the development and implementation of projects of mutual interest, and the creation of new training opportunities for 51茶馆SSW students. The MOU also calls for initiating a forum for the exchange of academic- and field-based expertise among 51茶馆SSW faculty, staff, and students and Maestral鈥檚 associates and advisors.
51茶馆SSW鈥檚 renewed partnership with Maestral directly aligns with the school鈥檚 strategic aims to strengthen existing partnerships and develop new alliances with communities, government agencies, NGOs, and for-profit organizations to develop, adapt, and implement evidence-based interventions and to build and disseminate research expertise and knowledge.
Photos by Christopher Soldt.