SSW Presenter Calls for Youth-Led Culture of Care

When Chauncey Strong, MSW took the stage at the opening of the 2024 SWAN/IL Summer Statewide Meeting, he issued a challenge to everyone in the room. “Whatever you believe will be right,” he said, “because you work to the level of your belief.” Once a child in foster care himself, Chauncey shared about his lived experiences in his presentation, A Youth Welfare Approach: Engaging Youth Voice in Permanency Planning, to illustrate the importance of each person examining their beliefs, shifting their lens from child welfare to youth welfare, and implementing a piece of what they learn that day to improve the system.

Chauncey, the Executive Director of Strong Training and Consulting, LLC, posed a few questions to engage each person around their personal practice in working with children and youth. For example:

• What do you believe about the youth we serve?
• Do you believe they deserve a family?
• Do you believe youth should have a voice in permanency planning?
• Do you believe kids (and parents) can change?
• Do you believe relatives can be a resource?

While the answers might seem obvious, internalizing the questions to reveal and confront individual biases and beliefs is one step toward creating a culture of care and problem solving. This is a culture that also supports recognizing youth voice and empowering young people to make decisions about their own lives.

A youth welfare lens is one that is proactive, youth-driven, normalcy-focused, and future-focused. Chauncey reminded the audience that youth won’t be on their caseloads forever. “They move on with their lives,” he cautioned. “They need to have a proactive role in their plan.” Youth will decide who they want to have a relationship with, and if they choose their family, that is their right. He also emphasized that a shift from protection-focused to normalcy-focused acknowledges that “the needs of a five-year-old are different from the needs of a fifteen-year-old.” Understanding that providing Independent Living services and preparing for adulthood are not separate and different from permanency planning but complement one another.

To that end, Chauncey defined youth engagement as the intentional, authentic and sustained involvement of youth and young adults in planning and decision making regarding their lives. “Nothing about us without us” is an origin statement of the disability rights movement that applies well to child welfare. It acknowledges that we cannot do this work effectively without the voices of children, youth and young adults.

Chauncey closed with a story from his own experiences. “I learned that it’s hard to have peace when you don’t have all your pieces,” he said. He described not wanting to find his family as a child. He had made up a story in his head that his family didn’t want him or love him, and he chose to focus on the adoptive family who cared for him. He was led to find his family of origin later for medical reasons and discovered there were ten family members, including his mother, waiting to know him. “I learned from my biological mom that she had a breakdown when she was 19,” he said. “I never needed to question her love.”