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.

Agenda

This training series will be six 1.5-hour sessions over three days.

Wednesday, February 26

12:00 – 1:30pm ET 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.

3:00 – 4:30pm ET The Bearer Remembers: Moral Injury in Child Welfare Professionals

Presenters: TBD

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

12:00 – 1:30pm ET Supporting Immigrant Youth & Families Engaged by the Child Welfare System

Presenter:

Tiffany Haynes – 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.

3:00 – 4:30pm ET 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 Kolivosk , 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

12:00 – 1:30pm ET Race Intelligence™ (RQ)-A Coaching Framework for Brave Conversations about Race

Presenters:

Jess Sucherman, JD – Colorado Court Improvement Program
Tara Doxtater – Office of Respondent Parent 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.
 
3:00 – 4:30pm ET 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.