15th Annual Brieland Visiting Scholar Lecture

Presented by: Darcey Merritt, PhD, MSW, Associate Professor, NYU Silver School of Social Work
4/6/2022
2:00-3:30 CST

This event is open to all.

Register to attend Zoom webinar

1.5 CEU’s available for LPC/LCPC/LSW/LCSW

This lecture addresses social injustices and systemic racism inherent within the child welfare system, inclusive of a discussion that provides nuance to the narrative about child neglect, race, and poverty-related to the social impacts on Black families. There is a salient and warranted distrust of social service systems among those with histories of structural oppression, discrimination, and racism. The distrust is based on histories of social and economic disenfranchisement, and racially disproportional Child Welfare System (CWS) oversight, thus impacting viable parental choices and behaviors. The lived experiences and voices of CWS-impacted Black moms is an overlooked or unacknowledged evidence base useful to all baseline primary prevention efforts. This lecture furthers the conversation by centering the lived experiences of stigmatizing oversight with acknowledgment of structurally racist system-level barriers to parenting and highlighting ways in which families have agency in determining what works for them.

About the presenter:

Darcey Merritt is an Associate Professor at NYU Silver and is a faculty fellow for the McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research. She has extensive experience as a practitioner in the private and public child welfare systems, and as a researcher with interests including child maltreatment prevention; maltreatment type definitional issues; neighborhood structural impact on maltreatment; and the lived experiences of those served by public child welfare systems. Dr. Merritt is internationally recognized for her expertise in child welfare and she has presented research and provided guidance on child protective services design and supports for vulnerable families in China, Abu Dhabi, and across the United States.