Session: Unsettling Child Welfare: Black Epistemologies, Community Care, and Afro-Emancipatory Alternatives (Society for Social Work and Research 31st Annual Conference)

In Canada, there is growing recognition of the need to transform child welfare systems in response to the profound racial disproportionalities and harms experienced by Black children and families. Yet Canada’s provincially regulated child welfare system is marked by uneven recognition of anti‑Black racism, shaping whether racial harm is addressed and the forms through which responses are articulated and resourced across jurisdictions. Although Black communities have long sustained families through practices of collective care, mutual aid, and relational accountability, these practices remain insufficiently documented within child welfare scholarship—particularly from Afro‑emancipatory and Black epistemological perspectives that center Black families and communities as legitimate producers of knowledge about care, harm, and family well‑being. This symposium brings together five papers that examine Black community care as both a response to and departure from dominant child welfare paradigms. Collectively, the papers situate Black models of care within longer histories of racialized governance and collective survival, emphasizing relational accountability, community self‑determination, and ongoing struggles over voice, authority, and responsibility. Drawing on multiple sites of inquiry—including Black parent experiences, community‑led prevention and intervention initiatives, organizational partnerships, and family‑centered decision‑making practices—the papers examine how claims to “alternatives” emerge in practice and the conditions under which they are enabled and constrained.

The first paper examines Black parents’ experiences of child welfare investigations and voluntary services using qualitative interview data. Findings show that child welfare is widely perceived as a system of surveillance and coercive control rather than support, with these perceptions often formed before direct system involvement through family, community, and transnational experiences. Although parents acknowledged that child welfare may be necessary under certain circumstances, voluntary services were widely experienced as coercive, with refusal perceived as heightening surveillance and the risk of child apprehension.

The second paper examines Black families’ experiences of supports accessed through child welfare involvement. While caregivers often relied on child welfare contact to obtain material supports—such as housing assistance, financial support, childcare, transportation, and referrals to community‑based services—access to these resources was frequently experienced as conditional and mediated through professional gatekeeping. Trust and perceived usefulness were shaped by workers’ transparency, cultural responsiveness, and non‑judgmental, strengths‑based approaches.

The third paper analyzes the implementation of a culturally responsive, community‑based wraparound program developed through partnership between a child welfare agency and Black‑led community organization. Using qualitative process‑focused data, the paper identifies organizational conditions—such as sustained investment, internal advocacy, and institutional infrastructure—necessary to integrate Black community‑defined care as a preventive alternative to child welfare intervention.

The fourth paper evaluates a culturally specific family group‑conferencing model for Black families by examining participant experiences of implementation. Findings indicate that families experienced the process as empowering and inclusive, reporting increased voice, clarity, and meaningful participation in decision‑making compared to earlier child welfare encounters.

The fifth paper examines Black parents’ experiences within a Black‑led prevention and intervention initiative addressing overrepresentation in child welfare. Findings highlight the centrality of cultural belonging, community connection, advocacy, and sustained practical support in distinguishing Black‑led models of care from dominant child welfare approaches.