Exploring Tribal Child Welfare Coaching

Transcript:

Brenda

Welcome to B-Connected, a Butler Institute podcast series. My name is Brenda Lockwood, and I'm your host for today's episode. Our conversation today explores the topic of tribal child welfare coaching. We’ll discuss the definition of coaching, the benefits of coaching in child welfare, and how coaching helps prepare leaders and supervisors for difficult conversations with staff. We’ll also delve into the importance of relationships and connections in native communities and how coaching is adapted for working with tribal child welfare organizations. My guests today are Sommer Purdom and Taryn Anquoe. Sommer is a citizen of Cherokee Nation, a program associate and trained professional coach at the Butler Institute, and Taryn is a citizen of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma a program associate and certified coach at the Butler Institute. Welcome. Let’s get started.

So, let's begin by talking broadly about what is coaching, Taryn.

Taryn

Thank you so much for having me. I am very excited to be here. Let's look at the definition of coaching. That's always a good start, especially whenever we have these coaching conversations. And what we want to highlight here is that coaching is a process by which the coach creates this structured, focused interaction with learners and also uses appropriate techniques, tools, and other strategies to promote the desirable and sustainable change for the benefit of the learner. Some of the things to highlight here is that there are two forms of coaching. There's the formal coaching, and then there's the informal coaching. The formal coaching that is where it's that contracted process with your learner. That's where the coach and the learner can set clear goals, schedule meetings, and also decide on an end date. The informal coaching most often occurs outside of a formal model. Usually it's done spontaneously. You know, it can be a link between 5 minutes or 45 minutes. And this commonly occurs with staff members, coworkers, and direct reports.

Brenda

Great. Thank you for that. It's a nice description or definition of coaching. It really highlights how it's different from things like mentoring or consulting or even training. So, let's talk about “why coaching?” in child welfare. And Sommer, I believe you have some experience to this. What are the benefits of coaching in child welfare?

Sommer

Yes, thank you. There are several benefits to coaching in child welfare. What we see from research and statistics is that with the difficulty level of child welfare, if staff don't feel adequately trained or supported within their role, they find that continues to lower retention within state and tribal child welfare agencies. So, coaching is a way that helps. It's just an added tool that they could put in their toolbelt that helps them feel supported, helps them to see a sense of their own value within the agency, and gives them a purpose.

And, just overall, there's more experience. They feel like they've been trained appropriately within the job role that they've been hired to do. You know, coaching is so fluid. What we say in our coaching world is dancing in the moment. You may start working with someone in coaching and think that you're working on specific organizational issues, and they may come into a session and bring something totally new that's not what you anticipated the sessions to be about. And so, it's just a fluid process that allows them to come in and really just talk to somebody about their role within the agency and what they're trying to do, their own personal goals, their own values within the agency. It's an intentional process that is set up to help them to be successful. As a coach and in coaching, we believe that our coachees, those people that come to us, they are whole as they enter into this space. They are creative, resourceful, and whole, and we are just helping to guide them and to help them see those skills and that value that they may not readily recognize or use consistently.

In doing that, we hope that that helps them to get into that habit of being able to more readily access those tools, those skills that they already have that they don't always utilize, and it becomes a behavior for them. It becomes easier. It becomes natural to really just pull on those, you know, those leadership skills, those decision-making and critical thinking skills that we work on within that coaching relationship.

Brenda

I love how it sounds very employee centered or staff centered. Individual, individualized. And Taryn, I saw you nodding your head and smiling a lot as Sommer was sharing. Would you add anything to that about the benefits of coaching in child welfare?

Taryn

Yes. Thank you for asking. As Sommer was also sharing, it kinda brought to my mind how these are all skills that child welfare professionals already have. You know, when you come in and you learn about coaching, nine times out of 10, you're going to see that these are skills that you already do—being present, reflective, listening, clarifying, asking some of those open-ended questions. These are all tools that we do and coaching allows us to be intentional and to follow a formal process. If you want to just be in the moment and have it be a conversation, there's that informal process. So, I love how Sommer brought out you can have those incremental moments. Sometimes I think as practitioners, we want to have a certain flow or want to have it be a certain way, especially whenever we're learning a new tool like coaching, right? This is where we can give ourselves permission to where it doesn't have to be a set amount of time. It can be 5 minutes; it can be 45 minutes. It's all based on what your coachee or what your learner needs at that moment. So, there's less pressure from us because we don't have to be the experts within that conversation. We can just help our coachees to guide themselves within that conversation.

Brenda

Interesting. Sommer was talking about how coaching can help with retention and helps build worker resilience or practitioner resilience. I'm wondering about supervisors and leaders, too, when it comes to coaching because they play such an important role in retention of staff. How does coaching help prepare leaders or supervisors for difficult conversations with staff? Taryn.

Taryn

The first thing that comes to mind is that within coaching, when you enter into that relationship, the first things that you develop are trust and you develop a connection with your coachee or with your staff member at this point. So, whenever you have that trust, when you have that relationship, that rapport, sometimes those difficult discussions can be things like feedback, giving your worker feedback, or maybe processing new information for your worker that might affect their job. So, whenever you have that relationship, you are more able and confident to enter into that conversation and deliver some of those hard messages.

Brenda

Let's focus a little bit more specifically on coaching. In tribal child welfare communities and tribal child welfare agencies. Coaching, it sounds like it's really a lot about relationship and how does that show up in Native communities? This idea of relationship, Sommer.

Sommer

One thing that we as tribal members…we talk a lot about being within our tribes and connected to those other tribes as well. There's a lot of interconnectedness. We're not only connected to those people that are close to us, that are like us, but those people that are citizens of other tribes, connected to our land, connected to the outside world. So, when we look at coaching, Taryn mentioned the importance of relationships, and that is a big concept when we're looking at coaching within tribal child welfare is developing those relationships. And a lot of times we see in tribal child welfare and in within child welfare, in general, the people that have entered into the work within child welfare. They've experienced trauma, or they've come from some sort of traumatic background that either drives them to want to change a system or do something different or do something better.

But then, we also have those people that have experienced personal trauma, like our tribal citizens, you know, our removals, in the way that we have been treated in the history and that collective trauma that they bring to that coaching relationship. So, we look at not only just that trauma combined with just the hard work that we do and the experiences and the interactions that we have with those around us; we continually compile and build that trauma that we come from into that work that we do. And so coaching allows us to coach in a trauma-informed way that we focus on where our coachees have come from and what they're bringing to us.

We mentioned that they are creative, resourceful, and hold they are whole when they come to us. In that wholeness, what are they bringing us? What are they bringing to us. And identifying those strengths that they bring to us within our tribal child welfare communities, that's what our tribal citizens bring to us. That's what our Indigenous people bring to us, that interconnectedness and that community and that value placed on family and where we come from but also that ability to build those relationships and looking at that resiliency that they come to us with.

You mentioned resiliency within welfare, and that's what we see a lot of times within tribal child welfare—there's a lot of resiliency that they bring to the work that they do. We, as a coach, help identify that. We help say, “Hey, did you realize that you consistently bring these important facts to life? It shows me that you really value these certain things.” Or, “Do you realize that stories, the experiences that you've shared with me, have shown a tremendous amount of drive and resiliency? And a lot of times they don't identify that in them themselves.” But as coaches, we are able to pull that out in that relationship that we establish and identify that and to help continue to build on that as a strength instead of something that may hold us back if we weren't in that coaching relationship.

Brenda

Really interesting. Taryn, again, I see you because we have the benefit of cameras as we're recording this. And I'm wondering, you're nodding. What else would you add? Why is this so important in Native communities?

Taryn

I love initially how we're having this conversation about coaching and we're bringing out these relationships and what Sommer just shared about, using those tools, having those conversations, and also building resiliency, especially when we talk about trauma-informed care. So, what was forming in the back of my mind was how as Native people, we have that coaching culture already embedded inside of us because we come from a culture of mentors, we look to our elders, we pass on these lifelong lessons, you know, to build us and to grow us and to nurture us all together.

Coaching, whenever we talk about how it builds resiliency, what was coming to mind is that coaching really does help keep us interconnected. So many times in some of my coaching conversations, it's always been centered around going back to who are you connected to, who are your supports, who can you reach out to? Who is someone that you feel like has walked before you and has been successful, that you admired, that you could possibly reach out to? As coaches, we are always wanting to give the work back to our learners or to our coachees. But then at the same time, we are able to walk side by side, and I think that just beautifully models our mentorship or our coaching culture as an Indigenous community.

Brenda

Thank you for that. I’m wondering, and this is a question for both of you. What are the differences? What’s different about coaching in a tribal setting or a tribal community or tribal organization versus a nontribal organization? What do you think, Sommer?

Sommer

I've had the privilege of coaching in both. When we look at differences, we have to think about those similarities as well. We talk about similarities, we see that people come into child welfare for similar reasons. But some of the major differences that I see when I've been in that coaching relationship, and Taryn put this beautifully, is the ability to form those relationships within coaching with our tribal communities.

We are naturally about being connected as tribal people and naturally about relationships. So, when someone comes into that space wanting to build on that, we naturally gravitate towards that. It always seems in our tribal communities that those relationships tend to be based on so much more than just as a coach. Outside of our relationship that we've developed as a coach, we still have that relationship and that connectedness as Indigenous people. When I think about coaching in the tribal community, it tends to expand more when you're coaching within your tribal communities because the relationship goes so much deeper when you have that common shared background but we also come from the same people if that makes sense.

Brenda

Yeah, Taryn, would you add anything to that about differences between coaching in tribal or nontribal settings?

Taryn

Yeah, I have also primarily worked with nontribal agencies. I think also Sommer would agree too that we also have nontribal people working in tribal agencies that we just want to acknowledge. You may even be tribal child welfare but not necessarily for your tribe. You may be working for another tribe, and, therefore, you're learning different cultures and different values, and placement preferences can be different.

So, the thing that I think I just want to acknowledge in this conversation is that some of the main differences, too, can be the systems, because whenever you're talking about coaching in state tribal welfare, sometimes a coaching conversation can be around discipline or it's more disciplinary. You're coaching to bring them up to par, or your worker is being identified as needing to amp up case management. So, coaching can seem more disciplinary. I've seen that, too, sometimes in my practice. But then whenever we think about coaching within tribal communities, we really want to hone in on that relationship, both parties, state or tribal agencies. There's still a system there.

I think some of the things that I've seen is that with tribal communities, there's more of a permission to have that relationship. There's more of a permission to dance in the moment like Sommer had brought up, and I think whenever you look at the two and you think about the systems that they're in, that can also be some of the major differences in coaching.

Brenda

Yeah. Interesting. That makes me wonder if you're currently doing coaching in a nontribal setting. What are some ways that coaching is adapted for working within a tribal child welfare organization? Sommer.

Sommer

Well, you know, I mentioned when I look at differences between coaching in tribal and nontribal child welfare agencies. When we coach within Indigenous communities, we talk about the way that everything impacts a child and family within the community, and we talk about in tribal communities that the overall supervision method: We call that the eagle’s view. They see everything there above all. We talk about how when you're up here at this level, you can look down and see what's going on on the earth, what's going on in the land, what's going on, not just in this specific area. We try to tie that to supervision and work within tribal child welfare, taking that step back and looking at it from that higher point where we see how one decision, one practice, one something that may be implemented can affect not only just that specific space but ripple out can end up affecting that child and family.

When we’re in coaching, we talk about the being and doing of coaching, and within the state child welfare systems, it's a lot of the doing. There's a lot of practice. There's a system in place; everything is followed and it always comes back to practice or policy. When we look at coaching within our tribal child welfare communities, we look at that more, that being of coaching. When you’re able to just be.  Everything that you do within that work is the being, and it's based upon who you are as Indigenous people and where you come from and those values that you rely on to guide the work that you do.

When I say work, I say work as in not just child welfare work but also as in the moving through this world, moving through each day, the work in building relationships, the work in trying to leave things better than you found them. You know, just overall relying on those values as Indigenous people that drive us to do this daily walk that we do not only in child welfare in the work that we do, but also in general in who we are as Indigenous people.

Brenda

Wow, there's so much there. Taryn, would you add anything about how coaching could be adapted for tribal child welfare communities?

Taryn

Yes, this is where I would just like to personally share that coach approach that impacted me as a child welfare worker whenever I worked in permanency, Just the way that Sommer had beautifully highlighted that process. I would just like to offer an add in this story that I have. So, it was during the time when I was with my supervisor and she had that eagle’s eye view, right? Because as supervisors, you are able to look at a case or look at a family or the situation and take a step back and help assess and analyze, right?

So, this was during a time when me and my supervisor were just processing cases. It was a monthly meeting that we were both having. To me, I was just venting, but then I was also just expressing some of the challenges or the hurdles that I was facing with the family I was working with. I was going over all these things. I was sharing all these ideas that I had. I'm sharing all my failures. This isn’t working out. This is what I'm thinking, you know, and I was really in my head feeling mixed up because I just absolutely did not know what to do. At that moment, I was looking towards my supervisor. I was like, “Please tell me what I need to do. Please tell me, because I am all out of ideas at this point.” And I'll always remember the moment when my supervisor took a coach approach. Instead of giving me the answer, she instead offered an open-ended question. She asked, “Taryn, how much of the parents’ work are you doing?”

Brenda

Wow, powerful.

Taryn

That question opened up so many different avenues for me because I realized that I was operating from secondary traumatic stress. I had just had my baby. I was just overexerting myself because I was imposing my beliefs onto this family. There was just so much going on there. When she asked that one question and I realized I needed to take a step back, I needed help. I realized that this may not be a case that I can work right now. But that one question changed the trajectory of the way that I practiced, because with every family that I worked with after that, I asked myself continuously: How much of the work am I doing more than this dad or more than this mom? So, it's about taking that eagle’s eye view, right? But it's asking those questions that can allow your workers at that time to process, to take a step back, to pause. I think whenever we talk about coaching and tribal child welfare, that is just one of the many ways that it can be adapted.

Brenda

That is really powerful. Thank you for sharing that. It sounds like an example of how coaching can help with retention and resilience. Specifically, in this example, your resilience at a time when you really needed that. Sommer, I saw you were off mute. Were you wanting to share something more?

Sommer

Taryn made me think of sharing her personal story. I always share that I was raised in the child welfare system. So, for me, this work is personal. I want to make a system better for our children and families. That has always been one of the guiding factors in doing the work that I have done for years. I always try to tell this story.

It's hard if you are not part of a tribal child welfare community. It's hard to really understand that connection and that sense of belonging if you've not experienced it. I wasn't raised knowing that I was a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. That was something that was kept from me because it made the court process easier. But as an adult, when I found out that there was this possibility that I was a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, I researched that and went through the process of obtaining my tribal citizenship. For people that don't know, and even for me, as an adult, that had processed a lot of what had occurred as a child, I still didn't understand that that piece of me missing was that part of belonging and connection. For me, it came when I got my card in the mail. When that card came in the mail that said, “You are a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. This is your tribal roll number. This is where you belong. These are the people that you are connected to” It was in that moment that I realized that I was a part of something bigger.

I had gone through this work and years of not knowing that I wasn't truly connected or belonging somewhere in that importance of what that meant to me until I got that in the mail. At that moment, I belonged somewhere, and I was connected to someone. I was connected to people that were like me, people that supported me, people that were there. If you don't come from that, it's hard to understand. So, that is a huge difference when we talk about connectedness and relationships within our tribal communities. That is what we're talking about, keeping them connected to who they are as tribal people and giving them that greater sense of “you're connected here, but there's so much more surrounding you. There's so many more people surrounding you and the work that you do.”

Brenda

Wow. Again, a powerful thank you for sharing that. And really, to me, a story that really highlights the significance and how relationship and connection really form the foundation and the roots for this type of connection through coaching in this work.

Well, I want to thank you both for sharing your personal stories, for sharing your wisdom with us, for the podcast today, and just for this conversation in general. I look forward to hearing more about it again in the future.

Taryn

Thank you for having us, Brenda.

Sommer

Thank you, Brenda.

Brenda

Thank you, Sommer and Taryn, for sharing your insights and your experience with us and for this interesting discussion. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next podcast in our series.