Black Led Models of Community Care: Parent Experiences In Afro Emancipatory Prevention and Intervention

Background and Purpose: Growing recognition of the overrepresentation of Black youth in Canadian child welfare systems has generated increased investment in services aimed at mitigating child maltreatment. However, much of this work remains anchored in child‑welfare frameworks that privilege surveillance, professional authority, and institutional definitions of care. Less attention has been paid to Black community‑led prevention and intervention initiatives that operate from distinct knowledge frameworks and approaches to care. Grounded in traditions of collective survival, mutual aid, and relational accountability, these initiatives constitute Afro‑emancipatory alternatives that unsettle dominant child welfare paradigms. This paper examines Black parents’ experiences within a Black community‑led prevention and intervention model, with particular attention to how community care is understood, enacted, and experienced differently from mainstream child welfare services.

Methods: This study employs a secondary qualitative data analysis of interview data originally collected through a program evaluation of Strengthening Families, a community‑based intervention developed to address the overrepresentation of Black youth in Quebec’s child welfare system. Guided by Critical Race Theory and Black epistemological perspectives, the analysis centers Black parents’ knowledge and interpretations of care, support, and system engagement. Data were drawn from semi‑structured interviews with eleven Black parents who participated in parenting education, community access support, and crisis intervention components of the program.

Results: Four key themes emerged: (1) cultural belonging and identity affirmation; (2) connection and community building; (3) advocacy and support for navigating systems marked by racial harm; and (4) sustained, practical forms of empowerment. Collectively, these themes demonstrate how Black‑led community care foregrounds relational trust, cultural safety, and material support, while resisting deficit‑based and surveillance‑oriented approaches that often characterize child welfare involvement.

Conclusions and Implications: Findings highlight Black community‑led prevention initiatives as Afro‑emancipatory sites of care that challenge dominant child welfare logics by re‑locating authority, expertise, and accountability within community relationships. By foregrounding cultural safety, advocacy, and sustained material and relational support, these initiatives demonstrate how community care operates not merely as service provision, but as a political and epistemic practice grounded in Black ways of knowing and collective responsibility. The study underscores the need for greater investment in Black‑led, community‑rooted services and points to the importance of policy approaches that decentralize authority and redistribute resources to community organizations that are already engaging in this work effectively.