Community Partnerships for Protecting Children
Community Partnerships for Protecting Children (CPPC) is a community-based approach to strengthening families, keeping children safe, and creating community collaborations. Community Partnerships work to reduce negative childhood experiences, promote responsibility in protecting children, and build safety networks. The CPPC team works with communities to:
- Blend the work and expertise of professionals and community members.
- Bolstering supports for vulnerable families and children.
- Protect children through culture shifts and improvements in child welfare processes, practices and policies.
Currently, forty CPPC local decision-making groups, involving ninety-ninety Iowa counties, guide the implementation of CPPC.
Through a partnership between the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services and Iowa State University, we provide collaborative outreach and capacity building for Community Partnerships and related initiatives. Training opportunities for CPPC networks are held at the local, regional and statewide level, as well as technical assistance to local sites to implement the CPPC Approach. This assistance includes guidance around local planning and reporting, individual orientation for new CPPC coordinators, site visits, trouble shooting, and access to cultural equity resources.
Cultural Equity Alliance
The Cultural Equity Alliance Steering Committee (CEASC) functions in collaboration with the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services to develop recommendations for implementing systemic changes focused on reducing minority and ethnic disproportionality and disparity in the child welfare system. This statewide collaborative includes: HHS (leadership and field staff), service providers, court representatives, Parent Partners, foster care alumni, tribe representatives, immigrant and refugee services, other child welfare partners, domestic violence agencies, juvenile justice, race and ethnic diversity and inclusion advocates. The development of this steering committee is also an effort to meet the federal Program Improvement Plan requirements to promote cultural competency and responsiveness throughout the Department of Health and Human Services.
To learn more or to get involved in CPPC in the state of Iowa, check out https://dhs.iowa.gov/child-welfare/CPPCproviders for more information.
Race: Power of an Illusion (RPI)
Race: Power of an Illusion (RPI) is a full day learning exchange that brings together professionals, volunteers, and community members to have conversations about the intersections of race, equity, and child welfare. Participants are provided with a brave space environment to discuss and consider how race affects our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. RPI is both a guided educational experience and a facilitated discussion that encourages and supports participants' active involvement in the learning exchange. A team of intensively trained facilitators, with a background in child welfare and commitment to eliminating disproportionality in the Iowa child welfare system, lead the learning exchange. The curriculum is designed to assist participants to:
- Engage in “courageous conversations” to challenge and change attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.
- Utilize statistics from relevant data to create a clearer picture of disproportionality and disparity in Iowa.
- Understand how racial/ethnic disparities are manifest across a broad spectrum of child and family well-being indicators.
- Explain how our institutions and courts used public policy and inconsistent logic to define race and give different racial and ethnic groups vastly unequal opportunities and access to life chances.
- Identify how they can contribute to ensuring more racially equitable treatment for children of color in Iowa’s child welfare system.
Understanding Implicit Racial Bias: Rewiring Our Perceptions and Intentions Learning Exchange (UIRB)
Understanding Implicit Racial Bias: Rewiring Our Perceptions and Intentions Learning Exchange (UIRB) is a full day learning exchange that brings together professionals, volunteers, and community members to have conversations about the development and impact of implicit bias – in particular, racial bias. It primarily focuses on interpersonal racism under the umbrella of structural racism. This learning exchange lays a foundation for participants to understand how to begin to acknowledge and understand interpersonal racism and how it affects their lives and the lives of others. By understanding the development and impact of implicit racial bias, micro-aggressions, and how to reduce racial bias, participants can develop personal change plans for how to put their new-found knowledge into practice.
The purpose of UIRB is to build capacity to recognize and reduce implicit bias by providing participants with a courageous environment in which to explore and challenge their own beliefs and attitudes about bias, to practice better ways of talking to one another about micro-aggressions and implicit bias, and to begin to have conversations with one another about how implicit bias affects our attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. Since implicit bias permeates our society, this learning exchange can be beneficial for any person interested in expanding their knowledge and understanding of implicit bias development, impact and interventions.
UIRB is both a guided educational experience which uses a standard curriculum and a facilitated discussion that encourages and supports participants’ active involvement in the learning exchange. A team of intensively-trained facilitators with a background in child and family welfare and a commitment to understanding and reducing implicit bias lead the learning exchange.
Please contact cppciowa@iastate.edu for more information.