Child Justice, Caregiver Empowerment, and Community Self-Determination

Abstract

Children’s survival and development depends on relationships with parents and other caregivers, whose capacity to engage in the nurturing activities that support the development of self-regulation, self-agency, and self-esteem in their children can be adversely affected by threats to their own survival and well-being. Caregivers engage most effectively in development-promoting relationships when they feel competent about their caregiving abilities, connected to a community that supports them in this function, to a culture that provides guidance in childrearing practices and to a future for themselves and their children that they feel empowered to influence. This sense of connection can be strengthened by parent-support programs that go beyond the unilateral transmission of parenting “skills” and child-development “knowledge” to reinforce emotional availability, parental sense of competence, social connectedness, and empowerment. However, many systems of care for children and families arise from professional cultures rather than the cultures of those they serve, and often devolve into policies, procedures, practices, and a focus on deficits that are out-of-sync with community needs and strengths. Relational processes designed to re-equilibrate traditional provider-program/participant power imbalances can be used to engage families and communities in transforming systems of care and services to respect and leverage their own values, practices, and strengths.