Race Equity Virtual Training Series 2025

NACC envisions a future where every child, parent, and family has equitable access to justice and culturally responsive legal representation. Through this series, NACC seeks to advance children’s and parents’ rights, support a diverse community of child welfare lawyers, and advocate for equitable, anti-racist solutions designed by people with lived experience. This series aims to:

• Bridge progressive ideas around race and racism with practical skills and strategies for daily practice, both in and outside of the courtroom.
• Provide actionable tips to identify and interrupt individual, attorney, judicial, and systemic bias; practice through a culturally humble, anti-racist lens; and improve outcomes for youth, parents, and families disproportionately affected by systemic involvement.
• Promote transparent, solution-focused dialogue around race and racism in child welfare.
• Model authentic inclusion of experts with lived experience in race equity training and discussions.

All registration and participation lists will be kept confidential.

Apply for a Scholarship for the Race Equity Virtual Training Series. 

Agenda

This training series will be six 1.5-hour sessions over three days. (View PDF agenda and presenter biographies.)

Wednesday, February 26

10:00 – 11:30am MT

Skin DEEP: The History of Child Welfare by Race

Presenters:

• Shanelle Dupree, JD – Racial Equity Collaborative, Inc.
• Abby Fry – Racial Equity Collaborative, Inc.

The Skin DEEP webinar is for leaders who care deeply about families. You spend your career trying to help families thrive. But you are dissatisfied and see missed connection opportunities, a lack of trust with the clients you serve.  You also sense a general discomfort when discussing diversity within your organization. It also doesn’t help that states are passing confusing laws that make it feel like DEI is illegal. The Skin DEEP curriculum focuses on building cultural connection through shared history. This webinar challenges how we think about race and uses examples in history to connect to the current day work with families centering humanity and equity. Skin DEEP builds a foundation for people to develop “eyes to see” & “ears to hear” whether race equity is absent or present within organizations.

1:00 – 2:30pm MT

The Bearer Remembers: Moral Injury in Child Welfare Professionals

Presenters: 

• Nesta Johnson, JD (she/her) – National Center for Lesbian Rights
• Shomari Ward, JD (he/him) – Youth Represent
• Bla Yang, MSW (she/her) – Prairie Island Indian Community

Moral injury is a form of trauma that arises when people must act in ways which violate their conscience or threaten their core values, causing psychic distress, dissonance, and conflict. Similar to the trajectory of post-traumatic stress, moral injury was first observed in military service members exposed to combat settings and has since been observed in many professions and contexts. In this interactive session, panelists and attendees will explore moral injury in the “child welfare” context and how morally injurious experiences impact minority employee well-being and retention, with a special focus on professionals of color and professionals with disabilities. Participants will leave equipped with strategies for preventing, recognizing, addressing, and healing from moral injury.

Thursday, February 27

10:00 – 11:30am MT

Supporting Immigrant Youth & Families Engaged by the Child Welfare System

Presenter:

• Tiffany Haynes, BS – Aiden Anthony LLC

This session explores practical tools and strategies for supporting immigrant youth and families involved in child welfare. Presenters will address implicit biases, systemic barriers, and the unique cultural and legal challenges these families face. By centering voices with lived experience, this presentation will provide actionable insights and resources to help legal advocates, judges, and multidisciplinary professionals bridge cultural gaps, enhance equitable representation, and work toward anti-racist solutions that uplift immigrant communities.

1:00 – 2:30pm MT

Black Girl Magic: Empowering Dual Status Youth in Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Systems

Presenters:

• Sherri Simmons-Horton, MSW, PhD, AA – University of New Hampshire, Department of Social Work
• Karen Kolivoski, MSW, PhD – Georgetown University – Center for Juvenile Justice Reform

Black dual status girls—those involved in both child welfare and juvenile justice systems—face unique challenges, including compounded racial and gender discrimination. Many overcome these adversities, using their voices to challenge stereotypes. This study presents a conceptual framework that integrates Critical Race Theory and Black feminism to highlight protective factors and point to systemic adversities. Interviews with 6 Black women, currently ages 18–36, reveal 3 key themes: 1) structural and gendered challenges; 2) resilience through resistance and critical awareness; and 3) empowerment, celebrating their strength and voices. Amplifying their voices is essential for shaping policy reform, improving support services, and developing practical strategies to better address their needs.

Friday, February 28

10:00 – 11:30am MT

Race Intelligence™ (RQ)-A Coaching Framework for Brave Conversations about Race

Presenters:

• Jess Sucherman, JD – Colorado Court Improvement Program
• Tara Doxtater – Office of Respondent Parents’ Counsel and Hornbuckle Foundation
• Michelle Davis, LPC – Kempe Center, University of Colorado Anschutz

Coaching has become a transformative tool for personal and professional growth. It works by revealing, challenging, and disrupting mindsets that don’t align with who we want to be. RQ-Race Intelligence Coaching™ is an innovative program that delves deeply into our social conditioning around our relationship with race, helping individuals become more aware, and enabling conscious choice to disrupt these patterns. This session will introduce RQ-Race Intelligence™ coaching, a program designed to guide compassionate, challenging, and disruptive conversations that restore us and our relationships within a racialized world and demonstrate how the Colorado Court Improvement Program is using this program to move these conversations forward and challenge racism in child welfare.
 
1:00 – 2:30pm MT

Dismantling the Master’s House: Resisting with Bravery to Build Anti-Racist Culture

Presenters:

• Corey Best – Mining for Gold
• Sarah Katz, JD – Temple University Beasley School of Law

Audre Lorde famously wrote “For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” But what are the master’s tools in the child welfare system? Is it possible to engage in antiracist advocacy within a structurally racist system? How do we resist enacting and perpetrating racism and build anti-racist culture? No matter our beliefs or experience, white supremacist ideology is always the background condition, embedded in each of us, just as it is embedded in the function and practice of the child welfare system. In solidarity, Corey Best, a Black father with an advantaged analysis of the harms of the child welfare system, and Sarah Katz, a white lawyer, experienced in representing parents in and around the system, will excavate and engage participants in answering these questions.

CLE Information

GENERAL NOTES

• This series has been accredited for CLE in California and Colorado. Keep track of which sessions you attended live and which sessions you viewed on-demand throughout the series. Complete one attendance form for all your live sessions and another for all your on-demand sessions after the series ends. Don’t sign in after each individual session – sign in once after you finish all live sessions (if any) and once after you finish all on-demand sessions (if any). Certificates of attendance will be available in the Course Materials folder after the series ends. Attorneys in the jurisdictions below must sign in for CLE after completion of the live course and/or on-demand viewing as applicable. Most states have a sponsor CLE reporting deadline of 30 days from course conclusion, so sign in as soon as you complete the course. We may not be able to report your credits if you sign in too near or beyond that deadline.

California (60-Minute Hour)

• This participatory activity has been accredited by the State Bar of California for a maximum of 9 hours of Elimination of Bias credit for live and on-demand participation.

Colorado (50-Minute Hour)

• This course is accredited by the Colorado Board of Continuing Legal and Judicial Education for a maximum of 10.8 units of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion credit for live and on-demand participation. Colorado is a self-report state.

All Other Jurisdictions

• Attorneys in all other jurisdictions must seek CLE accreditation individually if desired. Attendees are welcome to fill out the attendance form for personal recordkeeping – you will receive a copy of your attendance form via email after submission – but NACC will not report CLE credits on your behalf and you will need to independently seek accreditation.

CLE Questions? Email [email protected]