Episode # 38: C.A.S.E. Co-Founder & CEO Debbie Riley
Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy.
What does a system misunderstand when it treats all forms of loss as the same?
Policy and practice are quick to label children as “complex” when they’ve had contact with the child welfare system.
It’s worth asking ourselves how much of that complexity we’re creating when we connect them to a mental health system whose response to unique grief is often “it’s just loss.”
Today’s guest has spent her career building an institution with scalable approaches to serving the foreseeable impact that child welfare involvement has on families.
Debbie Riley is the Co-Founder and CEO of the Center for Adoption Support and Education, or C.A.S.E., an institution building the field of adoption competent mental health.
We talked about the structural barriers and opportunities to coordinate mental health and child welfare systems, what role Medicaid can play, and how to design an understanding of ambiguous loss into how we serve children and families in the child welfare system.
This is essential for anyone interested in creating the tactical roadmap from where you are to your future vision for how it could look different.
