In this episode I had the pleasure of sitting down with two of the authors of a new article published in the Child Welfare League Journal that has got many of us in the child welfare system emphatically nodding our heads, YES.

The game-changing article is titled, “Beyond Human-centered Design: The Promise of Antiracist Community-centered Approaches in Child Welfare Program and Policy Design,” and it was written by two women whose amazing work I came across two years ago and who I have been admiring ever since.

Sonya Soni and Jermeen Sherman are doing the revolutionary work our human services systems so desperately need and they’re doing it across several vital mediums. They’re writing. They’re teaching. And they’re raising academic rigor to challenge the system on all fronts. Their lifelong work has culminated to this very moment, and I am so happy that I had the chance to speak with them.

Beyond Human-Centered Design Additional Resources

Presentations/ documents:

• “Beyond Human-Centered Design: The Promise of Antiracist Community-Centered Approaches in Child Welfare Program and Policy Design” link here: https://www.cwla.org/child-welfare-journal/journal-archive)

• A toolkit of community organizing and community participatory methodologies and best practices that I have found most helpful while working in child welfare and local government

• Presentation on community participatory methods

Resources:

• “Design Justice: Community-led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need” by Sasha Constanza-Chock

• A list of resources and case studies that challenge HCD in child welfare and local government