Uplifting caregiver voices: Addressing racial disparity and barriers in Minnesota’s child welfare system
Photo above: School of Social Work Associate Professor Jeffrey Waid focuses his research on "upstream solutions" to prevent child abuse and neglect before the harm starts; by Jairus Davis.
Associate Professor Jeffrey Waid interviews caregivers to learn how to prevent child abuse and neglect
In 2025, Jeffrey Waid was one of five University of Minnesota faculty members to win a Social Justice Impact Award from the Research and Innovation Office for his research project “Uplifting Caregivers’ Voice to Strengthen Systems of Prevention for Minnesota’s Children and Families.”
In line with new policies and practices adopted by the Minnesota child welfare system aimed at reducing risk factors associated with child maltreatment, this research seeks to strengthen and expand systems of prevention for families with children before they enter “the system” by understanding the barriers and pressures that destabilized the family in the first place.
“Child welfare systems primarily address issues after the problem has occurred,” Waid, an associate professor in the School of Social Work, explains. “Someone has a concern about abuse and neglect, so they make a referral to child welfare to investigate and respond to that concern. These systems are really costly. They’re limited in effectiveness, and, if you talk to families who’ve been involved with child welfare, many would say they’re harmful.”
Waid says that even in cases of abuse and neglect, the removal of children from their family and placement into foster care is traumatic and difficult for them. That’s why his research is focused on what he calls “upstream solutions” to prevent child abuse and neglect before the harm starts.
Understanding the stressors of at-risk families
The purpose of the uplifting caregiver voice study is to understand the experiences and perspectives of caregivers who interact with public systems like education, health care, mental health, disability services, and child welfare. In other words, to understand what it’s like for families who seek out and engage with social services in Minnesota.
“Minnesota has a long history of racial disparity in child welfare, alternative education, and juvenile justice,” says Waid. “But the state has also made a number of efforts recently to correct this by building new systems like community resource hubs and family resource centers, and increasing the availability of services to meet basic needs, health care, mental health care, and so on.”
Waid explains that addressing disparities through how social services are delivered requires understanding specific needs of different communities in Minnesota. To accomplish this, his research study uses mixed methods, including surveys and interviews, to understand the needs of caregivers and their experiences in communities.
“We want to understand what it’s like to seek out and engage with services,” Waid says. “In the surveys, we asked caregivers about their service needs, the barriers they experience, and indicators of caregiver well-being, like parental self-efficacy and resilience.”
Families in the system explain their needs, concerns, and barriers to care
Waid’s research is still in process, but he was able to provide some early insights into the data and trends that are taking shape from the family responses.
“We just wrapped up the analysis of survey data and we’re in the middle of analyzing the interview data,” Waid says. “From the surveys, caregivers report on average five different types of service needs: medical care, dental, mental health, education, and services to meet basic needs. Service needs sound simple, but they are complex and multi-faceted, and families also faced significant barriers to care.”
These barriers fall into three broad types: family barriers, logistical barriers, and provider barriers.
“The most frequently reported barriers in this study were at the service provider level,” Waid explains. “Things like the service doesn’t exist, or there’s a really long wait list, the referral procedures were really complex, and concerns about provider competence and experiences of marginalization, bias, racism, and discrimination throughout the process.
“A number of parents talked about having to balance being a strong advocate for their child while not being perceived as 'difficult' or 'angry.' Racialized perceptions of parental advocacy affected how families are treated. We need to train providers to interact with people from different backgrounds.”
When families encounter barriers, they have to find workarounds that end up straining other health and service providers.
Long wait lists, complex referral procedures, and providers who don’t return phone calls can push parents to create what Waid calls “cascading pressures.”
“For example, ‘My child is having severe mental health concerns, and I need to get them to care. Because of these wait lists or referral procedures, I can’t get an appointment, so I need to go to the ER and initiate a crisis in order to facilitate the process.’ These dynamics haven’t really been discussed extensively in the literature, so I think uplifting caregiver's voice will make a novel contribution," he says.
Inspired to fix a broken system
Waid found his passion for social work research while working as a family preservation and permanency case worker in the child welfare system.
“I saw firsthand how early intervention can change the developmental trajectory for kids and families," he says. "But I also saw how barriers to care where, whether they were individual, family, community, or structural, could cause families to languish or slide backwards. So I wanted to pursue a PhD to address these issues and help transform the system.”
Waid joined the School of Social Work in 2016 and devotes his research to developing interventions and services to prevent abuse and neglect. “All of my research has a strong dissemination component," he says. "It is important to translate research into actionable insights for families, practitioners, program administrators, and legislators.”
–Marguerite Darlington