Over the next weeks we will continue to share memories and thoughts about IFPS from some of its key players. Charlie Bruner, Executive Director of the Child and Family Policy Center in Des Moines, Iowa shares his personal legacy.
CHARLIE BRUNER: MY PERSONAL LEGACY FROM IFPS
Then a state senator, I remember stumbling into a child welfare workshop at the National Conference of State Legislature’s Annual Conference in New Orleans in the mid-1980s. Charlotte Booth and Peter Forsythe were opting forth on intensive family preservation services and making the case, well before its time, for adopting an “evidenced-based” program to avert foster placements and improve child permanency and well-being.
In addition to the evidence, I also thought IFPS made sense. Crises are points of opportunity for change. There is no greater motivator for change than the love of a child. Change doesn’t just occur through counseling; it involves starting where families are and supporting them in taking new steps for themselves. The common sense from IFPS (“it’s simple but it’s hard” John Mattingly said about an approach that puts faith in people’s ability to change) has undergirded much of my work in “systems building” and “systems reform.”
I have Shelley Smith to thank for my introduction to IFPS at the National Conference of State Legislatures and to my success in bringing it back to Iowa and securing understanding and funding through the legislative process. I might never have latched onto IFPS were it not for the session she moderated in New Orleans.
As I moved to link two dubious careers (politician and academician) and founded the Child and Family Policy Center (CFPC), I connected with the national IFPS team, later the Community Partnerships for Protecting Children crew and then the Family-to-Family group.
While CFPC has not been as active on child protective system work, Iowa itself still finances family preservation services and Community Partnerships as part of its child welfare system, as well as family team meetings and differentiated responses and de-categorization. These may not always have met their most ambitious goals and certainly have not achieved all that the most vulnerable children in society need and deserve – but I know they have made important steps in that direction and benefited a lot of kids. Iowa (and I) have IFPS to thank as getting us started.
My Board recently asked me to reflect on my work over the past quarter century (!) as Director of CFPC to look at what is in store for the future. I don’t know if I got them an answer about the future, but I concluded, after thinking back on the seemingly haphazard set of policy initiatives I have embraced, that they do have a common thread.
It is that we are not investing enough, or in the right places, or in the right ways, to help our most vulnerable children and their families succeed – and we will only do so if we make commensurate investments in evidenced-based advocacy efforts on behalf of those children. IFPS started me along this path of work, or at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
While the accomplishments that the work of everyone involved on behalf of IFPS alone certainly warranted the time and effort and investment – I also think they produced larger gains – in the further careers of all of us who have continued to learn and grow and bring our passion to bear on improving results for kids. I owe a lot of my career’s work on what I learned (or stole) from all of you.
There are few things that would keep me away from this celebration of IFPS’ 40th Anniversary, but I am staffing an effort to reconstitute the Voices for America’s Children advocacy network – and we are having our first retreat at exactly this time (55 members from 45 states). I will be thinking of you as that advocacy group wrestles with becoming a force to support greater, more focused, and better directed public investments in our kids.
Charlie Bruner
Charles Bruner serves as Executive Director of the Child and Family Policy Center in Des Moines, Iowa. He served 12 years as an Iowa state legislator.
Posted by Peg Marckworth