Resolving Problems Associated with Child Disparities in Minnesota Essay

Multicultural Child Welfare Resources Paper: Child Welfare

The Native American and Latino Hispanic populations in Minnesota experience disparities that come externally from the child welfare system. Some of them include socioeconomic factors such as limited access to healthcare, education, and corrections, historical trauma for the families, discrimination, and prejudice when interacting with others (DHS, 2010).

The disparities experienced have forced child welfare systems to work in assuring that their experiences are fair and equitable especially in cases where children are involved. The Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) is more committed to multicultural child welfare center (MCCWC) development because they are programs that help practitioners and social workers in child welfare services to diversify their purposes in reducing disparities. The information that practitioners and social workers attain from such programs goes a long way in seeing that children have permanency in an attempt to reduce out-of-home care, which is temporary.

Langworthy, Robertson, and Bhakta (2016) showed that the education system of Minnesota is complexly inter-related to child welfare systems, but the inefficiency of such systems has led to the overtaxing of front-line social services and educational professionals who are constantly working with children and their families. From this perspective, it has become very difficult for the professionals to provide their clients with the high service levels. Therefore, it is important to understand and identify the barriers that relate to collaboration efforts that will enable work to happen across systems.

Langworthy, Robertson, and Bhakta reported on findings of focus groups on the collaboration efforts that professionals found useful and this included effective communication practices (2016). Moreover, new professionals in the child welfare systems also suggested practical solutions that would help in minimizing disparities among racial and ethnic communities in Minnesota. Therefore, the underlying question for their study was in re-designing the child welfare system and education systems to promote effective operations in minimizing the menace of disparities. Such information is useful in attaining the intended objective of the study, which is having multicultural child welfare systems center that will be useful in diversifying the efforts of practitioners and social workers in child welfare services. From the findings, it is evident that despite all the obstacles faced by educational professionals and social service personnel, they still work hard in providing children and families with high-quality service. The systems also have rules, regulations, and structures that have hindered the professionals from attaining their intended objective that provides service to children and families. The aspect of data is important in such instances because current data has proven to be absent in the systems and this for professionals means that their hard work does not pay off on attaining high-quality practice.

The idea of incorporating practitioners and social workers has become diverse to the extent of building relationships with other professionals across child welfare systems. This has proven to be useful because such relationships build on professionals providing children and families with effective services. Notably, the community is also involved in this program as they influence the success of the whole system. Leaving out community work from child welfare services will mean that children and families cannot work together in implementing changes in their environments. Therefore, it is vital for communities to be engaged in the multicultural programs that bring a stop to racial disparity issues in Minnesota (Font, Berger & Slack, 2012).

The resources provided have restated the research problem clearly by giving directions on how professionals and social workers in child services can diversify their efforts in helping meeting the clients’ needs. It is evident because they have managed to use MCCWC programs with integrated training for the professionals in solving the problem of disparities in child services (Curry & Barbee, 2011). The research is expected to come up with solutions and strategies for use by professionals and social workers who work with child services in ensuring that children and families from ethnic communities are well catered for regarding enjoying community resources.

Methodology

The research purposes to gain an understanding of Division of Indian Work (DIW) staffs perspective on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the clients they are serving, Native Americans. Before commencing with the research methodology, consent had to be given by the University’s Human Subjects Review Board in an attempt to promote ethics and justification in…