Collaboration and Racial Equity in Domestic Violence and Child Welfare: Exploring the Development and Use of a Racial Equity and Anti-White Supremacy Infused Measure of Collaboration

Domestic violence (DV) in child welfare (CW) presents a compelling justification for this roundtable's dual focus. First, collaboration is because of long-standing tensions in how these two systems define their central client population and purpose. It has been argued that while DV advocates place adult survivors and their safety and well-being at the center of practice, CW focuses on children's safety and well-being. These systems are challenged to use a holistic perspective that acknowledges interconnectedness of adult and children survivors' safety and well-being. Second, a racial equity lens is fundamental to address prominent racial disparities and disproportionalities in CW and the embedded nature of U.S. white supremacy. While efforts have been initiated to explore and improve practice in DV and CW as separate systems, few models exist that fully integrate the intersection of DV and CW (e.g., Greenbook Initiative). Further, models are needed that incorporate racial equity at all levels of DV and CW systems' collective and collaborative work, both at case and system level practice.

This roundtable will engage in a dialogue highlighting the experiences and processes of a DV-CW researcher-practitioner collaboration that arose out of the federally-funded Quality Improvement Center on Domestic Violence in Child Welfare (QIC-DVCW). The QIC-DVCW seeks to develop, implement, and evaluate a collaborative model and just policies to improve the lives of families experiencing DV and involved in the CW system. Presenters comprise four members of the QIC-DVCW's leadership team, representing evaluation, technical assistance, and trainers in the model.

Presenters will share their experiences with developing and using a new collaboration measure and how their process was led by racial equity principles. The first presenter will describe their process for compiling examples of multiple collaboration measures currently in use and jointly reviewing and analyzing measures. The second presenter will illustrate how they paid special attention to domains identified across measures and whether measures incorporated topics of bias, inequities, disparities, etc. The third presenter will share and analyze results of their review process, showing that, despite the presence of relevant collaboration topics such as communication, decision-making, and power sharing, few models existed for explicitly integrating racial equity in the measurement of collaboration. Finally, the fourth presenter will examine how they addressed this omission by applying key themes and recommendations from Tema Okun's work on the Characteristics of White Supremacy (Okun, 2001). The presenter team will share a new 44-item collaboration measure, describing novel features, such as items for capturing domains of: cultural humility, dismantling structural oppression, community engagement, and transparency. Our goal is to create an engaging and meaningful conversation around the principles and processes for researcher-practitioner collaborations and processes that may enable more effective measurement and ultimately more collaborative practices that disrupt racial inequities in DV and CW systems. Discussion with roundtable participants will include how white supremacy shows up in measurement and how social work researchers engage in disrupting whiteness and re-centering racial equity as a strategy for increasing racial justice, and how white researchers can hold themselves accountable in these anti-racism efforts.