The Child Welfare Development Services (CWDS) program is hosting the third annual Anti-Racism Summit Series with Southern California region public child welfare agencies in attendance.
The creation of the Anti-Racism Summit began as an internal opportunity to look within the walls of our organization and ask – How are we showing up for our counties in anti-racism work? The Anti-Racism Summit continues to evolve throughout the years to meet the needs of Southern counties’ public child welfare staff.
This year, the three-series summit will bring together Social Workers, Social Work Supervisors, Managers, Deputy Directors, and Directors from Southern region public child welfare agencies, specifically those who participate in or lead diversity, equity and inclusion, and policy efforts in their counties. The purpose is to share ideas, strategies, challenges, and successes in alignment with dismantling racism and bias in public child welfare agencies.
The Anti-Racism Summit Series will provide a space to hear from a national expert, share information across counties, review promising strategies to build anti-racist behaviors and address systemic racism, and plan how to move this work forward in their counties. With this format, the hope is that each county will send the same representatives to each event so they can return to their teams and continue the work before joining the next event. Having the same county representatives at each summit will allow participants to take information back to their county, engage, and plan with their team to do anti-racist work, and bring updates back to the following summit.
Reach out to your Southern California county’s staff development office to register for the second and third parts of the series held on March 29 and May 02, 2023.
Here are what past participants have shared about the summit and their experiences:
“The materials were well developed. The presentation was well organized and the facilitators were well prepared and presented well. We appreciated the environment was set for safe discussion, sharing, and exchange of ideas/issues with other colleagues.”
“I am committed to sharing the information learned as well as to continue asking questions regarding strategy and accountability around decreasing structural racism and cultural & Implicit bias from Interview Panels to training unit models to policies and practices.”
“I plan on speaking to leadership and relaying information. I will advocate for more county representatives to attend or provide us with a space/time for us to summarize what we learned and suggestions for concrete steps toward racial equity.”
“We developed ideas about how to address structural racism in our county. I appreciate the structure and balance between information shared by facilitators and the opportunity for sharing thoughts and current efforts across counties.”