by Chris Hilburn-Trenkle
For those entering the social work profession, there’s often a single moment that sparks a passion that remains lit for the rest of their life.
Ramona Denby-Brinson’s passion was ignited by her own mother’s upbringing.
Denby-Brinson, the dean of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Work, delivered the Carl A. Scott Memorial Lecture at the Council on Social Work Education’s 70th Annual Program Meeting in Kansas City, Mo., on Friday, Oct. 25.
Scott joined the CSWE team in 1968 as a senior consultant on minority groups and was at the forefront of CSWE’s early efforts to foster human diversity in social work education. With funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, Scott developed CSWE’s Minority Fellowship Program, one of the organization’s most highly regarded initiatives. The Carl A. Scott Memorial Fund was later established by the CSWE Board of Directors to maintain the legacy of social justice and equity, and the fund has sponsored the memorial lecture since 1988.
Denby-Brinson, the Kuralt Distinguished Professor of Public Welfare Policy and Administration, is a nationally recognized expert in culturally adapted child welfare services. Her numerous publications include those regarding the well-being and mental health of African American children in the foster care system and kinship care. Denby-Brinson was recently named the president for the Society of Social Work and Research (SSWR), where she will serve a two-year term from 2024–26.
Her speech, “Thank God the Apple Does Not Fall Far From the Tree: It’s Time to Safeguard African American Family Legacies,” focused on the U.S. child welfare system, specifically in relation to kinship care and the experiences of minoritized families and children. Denby-Brinson encouraged the audience with a call to action and an examination of how past practices have influenced social movements. She encouraged listeners to “Think Kin First.”
But before Denby-Brinson could begin describing the current child welfare system and kinship care’s role in it, she needed to introduce the person and the moment that shaped her career.
The Inspiration
Denby-Brinson’s mother was around five years old when her own mother died. Roughly two years later, she and her four siblings (two of them likely under the age of two) lost their father, leaving five children parentless. Denby-Brinson’s mother was the first person she knew who grew up in kinship care, as her mother was sent along with a brother to live with her great uncle and his wife.
Denby-Brinson recalls one day rubbing lotion on her mother’s legs and feeling the cattle branding scars, a reminder of the physical abuse her mother regularly endured at the hands of her great aunt.
“I recall asking my mother how it is she could return as an adult to Louisiana upon receiving news that her uncle had died to retrieve, by then, a very frail and elderly Aunt Ainy and bring her to Nevada, where she lived with my family and was cared for by my mother until the day that she died,” Denby-Brinson said in a video she shared during her lecture.
How could a woman be so loving and caring while also haunted by the trauma of her own upbringing, she wondered.
When she returned to Louisiana to collect her great aunt, Denby-Brinson’s mother found a family Bible that contained birth records, including one of a child with a different name (Betty) who was born on the exact same day as herself.
That child, she was told by her aunt, was her. It was the name her own mother had given her when she was born, yet it was a secret that was kept from her by her great uncle and aunt.
Her mother went to close the Bible when an old photograph fell out, containing a woman looking down at her child. That woman, she was told, was Denby-Brinson’s mother’s mother.
“I remember wishing that the woman in the photo, could, for a moment, just look up so I could see her face,” Denby-Brinson’s mother told Ramona. “I wanted to look into her eyes, because if I could look into her eyes, I could know who I am, where I came from and that perhaps I was loved.”
Denby-Brinson’s mother paused for a moment and then finished, “I feel that I was loved by her. And that she was strong.”
Her mother’s upbringing became a guiding motivation for the social worker’s quest that has spanned more than three decades and seen Denby-Brinson become a leading voice in the field of social work and kinship care. It became her quest to ensure that all children grew up not just loved and safe, but with a sense of their own cultural and spiritual identity.
Looking Forward
To explain the current landscape of the child welfare system, Denby-Brinson first shared the history of the system. From 1875–1962, the child welfare system was organized and privately run by churches and nuns. Starting in 1962, the current system was put in place, mostly government-run and protected by statutes and laws.
Denby-Brinson’s book Kinship Care chronicles the history of the kinship care system in America, particularly regarding the struggle of African American children. Even before the term kinship care was first defined, African American children were represented in the system at disproportionate levels.
Children in kinship care, as opposed to those in foster care, have a higher level of physical, mental and psychological well-being, as well as more of an identification for their culture, religion and family identity, Denby-Brinson shared about her research.
At the same time, challenges remain. Many of the caregivers in the kinship care system are at an advanced age. Adding the responsibilities of taking care of a young child without the financial provisions necessary to do so not only leads to a decline in the caregiver’s health, but correlates to harmful outcomes for the child.
Denby-Brinson invoked The Family First Prevention Services Act, enacted in 2018, as perhaps the first piece of federal legislation that provided increased provisions and support for caregivers across the nation.
Denby-Brinson and her team, including Senior Research Associate Amanda Klein-Cox and Research Associate Angela Tobin, were spurred by that legislation to begin thinking about how kinship care could be built to focus on cultural responsiveness and support minorized populations.
The Kin Carolina team found that kinship liaisons, pairing a relative caregiver with another caregiver further along in their journey of caring for a family member, provided a strong model for establishing cultural responsiveness.
Through the peer-to-peer model, they’ve helped to build protective factors for both the children and caregivers to ensure they are healthy.
“If they [the caregiver] are not healthy physically, financially, spiritually, mentally — we’re not going to get good outcomes with our kids,” Denby-Brinson said.
No doubt in part inspired by her mother and countless children with similar stories, Denby-Brinson mentioned looking ahead to ensure permanency for all children. This involves not just being certain a child is in a stable environment (referred to as legal permanency), but ensuring it is a loving one where the caregivers know the child’s own identity (psychological permanency) and that of their family (cultural permanency). Denby-Brinson shared a video of her team putting these principles into practice in the Midlands of South Carolina.
Denby-Brinson reminded the audience that the future of kinship care involves aligning state and federal policy with research and practice. She told the audience that a new, pending piece of legislation, Protecting America’s Children by Strengthening Families Act (H.R. 9076), would be the most significant policy supporting kinship care to date. It would direct financial provisions and support for kinship care. Advocacy is needed, she shared, because although there was bipartisan support for the legislation this past summer in the Ways and Means committee and the U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass it, it still needs support in the Senate.
Denby-Brinson ended her speech by discussing the concept of social justice in relation to kinship care. Her mission involves a “50/50” approach, where in all 50 states at least 50% of the children removed from a biological parent are then placed with a relative to help move away from the foster care system. Doing so does not discount the valuable role of foster parents, but it helps children to realize better outcomes.
She reminded the audience to think of a culture of kinship care, one that is socially just, value-driven, collaborative and relies on giving strength, provision and support to families and caregivers to help children.
In closing, Denby-Brinson offered a parting request. “I’m in a room of advocates, social justice warriors. If there’s one takeaway when you go back to your states, ‘Think Kin First,’” Denby-Brinson asked of her audience.
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