Today we’d like to introduce you to Matthew Stewart.
Hi Matthew, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I was raised in a church that helped shape my values and perspectives on life and helping others. I began focusing on helping children and worked directly with families, later moving into management. That background led to my employment at the Arizona Department of Child Safety. I was there for over 10 years. While at the Department, I reviewed training on culture and was led to look at race data in the Arizona foster care population. I learned that the Black, African-American population was only 4% of the State of Arizona, yet the Black children in foster care was a staggering 16%. At the time, I had been there for many years, but this information was not advertised, and when I learned the magnitude of this inequity, it struck me deeply.
Not only did I grow up in the church, but I am a preacher’s son and grew up in a predominantly black church. My father and Pastor, Dr. Warren H. Stewart Sr., will tell you his motto is “Jesus and Justice.” I grew up hearing him speak about Injustice and how we should be showing love to one another. So this data illustrating that the Black population was vastly overrepresented at a place I had worked for nearly a decade hit me hard. To be honest, I was ashamed not to know about this data. I knew that bias, prejudice, and racism existed, but the picture became clearer.
I began a quest to learn about strategies to solve this over-representation and came across a great leader in the space named Joyce James from Texas. I researched some of her work, contacted the department she used to work in, and then spoke with her directly. Although I believed she could help us here in Arizona at the time, I did not feel I’d have the internal support, so I tried to build it. I found a few individuals within the department I could speak to about these issues and ultimately began a group within the department of child safety focused on African-American disparity and disproportionality. We began discussing experiences of the black community involved with DCS and the data; however, there were no dedicated positions or resources within the department to adequately address the issues. I soon felt it was best to resign because this was my purpose, and if there was no way to move internally, I needed the freedom to move externally. That exit was the birth of my journey in community advocacy.
I connected and reconnected with community members and organizations to share my mission to help deliver families from the injustice of unnecessary child removals: Mr. Roy Dawson, the Exec. Dir. of the Arizona Center for African American Resources (AZCAAR), who I had known for most of my life, was very involved in helping our community, especially in the juvenile justice space. I learned there were ongoing conversations over many years, yet this data did not change. I felt it was time for action, and Mr. Dawson and others began connecting me to families with nowhere to turn for sufficient help to bring their children home or stop them from being removed. The families, these parents needed someone to show up who knew the language, landscape, and levers to help them move mountains. I am happy to say partnering with people like Mr. Dawson, courageous parents, and other community members continues to change the landscape one family at a time. We take what we learn in each instance and apply it to make broader changes to influence Arizona’s culture of serving families. Although we are working on system elements, I believe culture change is much more important than systems change.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
This road has not been smooth, and truthfully it is still not. Sometimes those in positions of authority don’t want to hear from a community advocate with no official title when identifying problems and offering solutions. That is to be expected. I won’t complain about the struggles too much because I never thought helping to deliver families from injustice and working to get children home with their parents would be easy. Doing the right thing should come first, and I am happy to walk alongside families and communities on the hard road to change. At times I felt as if I was the only one in the room willing to speak up about the extent of the issues families faced when they needed help. However, I believe families, our organization, and I now have allies willing to join in working towards the changes our community needs.
Truthfully the biggest challenge is time. There is much I want to help improve in our community, state, nation, and world. I hope I have enough time on this earth to accomplish what I was put here to do. For the things I can’t complete in my lifetime, I hope to pass the rest of the dream on for those after me to fulfill. As so many families need help right now with something so important as making their family whole, a big part of me wants to show up for every one of them. I know it is impossible, so I hope what we do inspires others to support our community one family at a time. We must prioritize setting aside time to consult with government and community organizations, educate on a larger scale, and collectively strategize. This is extremely important to build a larger movement and change how we support families in our community.
Lastly, there is so much immediate need to help families to stay together. I do not want to lose sight of the greater goal. The family home is where children can grow to be and do whatever they were put on this planet for. I hope families, parents, and children are free to pursue that and hope not to lose sight of that greater vision.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Our website is oursb.org. We are a new organization focused on keeping families together. We work to help reunite families separated by the Arizona Department of Child Safety and help families with immediate needs to prevent them from being removed in the first place.
What do you do, what do you specialize in / what are you known for?
People call us when they feel they are being treated unfairly by the Arizona Department of Child Safety. When we get a call from parents, they very often talk about how they are being judged harshly, and someone’s opinion of their family is why children are removed from the home. Our team has many years of experience helping to keep families together within the Department of Child Safety and can help families better understand their situation and can work with them to develop a plan to get their children home. We also receive calls from community organizations that work with these families who believe families need someone else to help advocate for them. Additionally, we are contacted about families in need that may not be yet involved with the Department of Child Safety to help support early on and can prevent family interaction with the Department.
We begin with listening to families and treating them with respect. We truly care about them, want to help, and try to show that. We truly believe families should be together safely, and we help families understand and illustrate that. Our team is composed mostly of former Department of child safety employees who are very knowledgeable in child safety practice.
We are also working to end the overrepresentation of African American children in Foster care and ensure that Black families receive the support they need. We have introduced targeted efforts for the Black community, utilizing community voice to help guide change and connect trusted resource providers to families and each other.
My father says he tries to avoid being prideful. I’m honored that we are the organization people call when families need an ally in something so important as keeping their family together, additionally, due to the knowledge of our work. We are invited to larger tables to help change the culture of how families are being served within the state and country.
Much of our work is helping families deal with the crisis of child removal, especially when that removal may have been unnecessary. Our larger goal is to help our community respond to families’ needs with compassion and understanding. If we can be better neighbors to each other and our families, we will have access to the support they need. We hope this will help return the family to a place where children are safe and loved—where dreams are nurtured, and that invites opportunity.
We hope that readers understand that the vast majority of the children in foster care are not there due to abuse but because a family was in need. Much of the family needs are tied to poverty and lack of access to the appropriate or necessary resources. Yes, some parents and caregivers need help, but some are doing fine and must be left alone. We should work hard to keep children home and help get children home. We must move away from punishing parents and save the children mentality. Many families are dealing with trauma, bias, and racism and could benefit from us coming together to build relationships and trust to work together when issues arise.
I am happy that we have helped children reunite with their parents, which is a good feeling. I have been taught it is dangerous to dwell on your past success, and as great as those feelings are, we are looking for culture change in the child welfare system. We believe the best place for children is safe at home with their families. Parents should never have to suffer losing their children to foster care unnecessarily.
We hope to help highlight the good in parents that often is overlooked. We try to encourage parents and families who are told they’re less than or not good enough. We want people to love themselves no matter what this world tells them and know that human beings do make mistakes and it is ok to ask for help. We hope there is space for families to think about the future and the ability to create an environment for our children to do great things.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
I have been told if your vision doesn’t scare you, it’s not big enough. I am a risk taker and believe if you don’t take any risks in life, how will you do anything great? Taking risks and failing is okay, but you have to try. Also, if you fall, fall forward, learn from your mistakes and keep going. Sometimes we are our own greatest barrier by how much we worry about what could go wrong. If I am told no, I ask myself why not and how can we?
I left a government job with benefits to speak out against injustice. The role of a community advocate may sound nice, but no paycheck is attached to that. Even though this was my calling, I have a family to support, so many might say my choice to resign was a big risk. I didn’t and don’t see it that way. I think about the risk of not fulfilling my purpose in life and not following the voice telling me I was supposed to be doing something else. The risk of allowing life to take me where it wanted instead of knowing my destination and setting out on that path to reach it would be risking a wasted life had I not gone out on a limb.
Contact Info:
- Website: oursb.org
- Instagram: @oursisterourbrother
- Twitter: @ourSBaz
