From the front lines, Maryland Legal Aid Bureau CINA Chief Attorney Joan Little offered a practitioner's perspective, and Dean Richard Barth of the University of Maryland's School of Social Work gave recommendations for strengthening child welfare laws in Baltimore City. Carmen Amyot Brown spoke about providing effective services to children and families in the child welfare system from her perspective as an administrator for the Maryland Department of Human Resources and senior vice president of the Arrow Ministries, a service provider for foster youth. Gina Wood, Director for Policy and Planning in the Office of the President at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, spoke about the importance of early intervention into the lives of families struggling with social, economic, emotional, and other problems.

   Panelist Gina Wood with moderator and CFCC Senior Fellow Gloria Danziger (photo by A. Green)

Other panelists offered firsthand accounts of the child welfare system.  A mother, Melissa Brandenburg, told about how she had given up her children for adoption because of incarceration and drug abuse, and she urged better treatment services for parents. A grandmother, Pat Owens, related how she had become an effective advocate for the notification of kin before an adoption because her own grandchild had been adopted without her knowing of his existence. Shantel Randolph, now Director of Youth Advocacy with the Maryland Foster Youth Resource Center, spoke from her own experiences as a foster child and as the creator of Foster Youth Inc., a self-advocacy program; she noted the alarming number of youth falling through the cracks and aging out of care into homelessness. Baltimore City Circuit Court Chief Judge Martin Welch, University of Baltimore School of Law Professor Daniel Hatcher, and Baltimore County Department of Social Services Assistant Director Judith Schagrin rounded out the program. Judge Welch drew from his many years of experience in the Juvenile Division of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, and he counseled better coordination and cooperation among partners in the system, as well as cross-system collaboration.  Professor Hatcher decried the severe fiscal problems that have affected child welfare agencies and talked about children's need for money, already allocated in their name, to be used for their transition to adulthood rather than absorbed into states' general funds.  Ms. Schagrin discussed the challenges of a state child welfare system's local departments, and she emphasized that any true reform must start with understanding and addressing workforce issues.

Podcasts of the conference are available by selecting these links, and powerpoints are available, as well.

Thank you to one and all for making this our best-attended Urban Child Symposium.