- Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm Stephen Henderson.

Black Family Development is celebrating 46 years of providing counseling and support services to children and families here in Detroit.

The agency was created in 1978 by the Detroit Chapter of the National Association of Black Social Workers.

Over the years, it's evolved to meet the needs of the community and its mission to provide safe, nurturing homes, schools, and neighborhoods.

I spoke with the CEO, Kenyatta Stephens, about the agency's history, its longevity, and its future.

Let's start by just talking about Black Family Development and its history.

How did this organization get started?

- Well, thank you Stephen, for asking.

Black Family Development was started in 1978 by Detroit social workers and leaders in human services, who themselves were very keen on the needs of African Americans, particularly Detroiters, in this community, and really sought to develop a comprehensive family counseling agency that specialized in the needs of people of color.

And so as we think about where we've come from now, 46 years later, we still predominantly serve those persons of color, but we serve everybody, and we do so with evidence-based practices, now having grown to over 20 programs, really, again, specializing in counseling and advocacy services for those in need.

- Yeah.

Let's talk about the kinds of things that bring people to Black Family Development and the kinds of services you offer.

It's a very broad range, of course, because there are many challenges that families and people face here in the city.

- Yes, yes, thank you.

You know, we're actually a multi-service organization in the era where a lot of organizations have chosen to specialize in one particular area, whether it's foster care or adoption.

We have chosen to maintain really a no-wrong-door approach for families, because families who come to us are often facing generational hurdles, whether it's meeting basic needs, whether it's situations where across generations, a child or two has been removed because of allegations of child abuse or neglect.

We also are a provider of mental health prevention and treatment.

And that makes us unique because we really recognize that mental health is a challenge happening across this community, across the nation.

But what we find it important to do is to activate our staff amongst 37 schools within Detroit and Wayne County, so that we can be in the place that most families and students recognize as a safety net at school.

And so if we are there providing support to students and to administrators and teachers helping to reduce childhood separations from education environments, we're also building relationships.

And so it's nice to get ahead of some of the mental health challenges that we know are so common amongst our students now, and hopefully do that before the need for treatment, but we're there to provide treatment as well.

So, those are some of the avenues.

Schools, referrals by word of mouth.

And of course, through some of our funders, we work in partnership with Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network, the city of Detroit, and a vast number of others that certainly will make referrals to us for a plethora of needs, from homelessness to juvenile justice, substance abuse, and even the Michigan Department of Corrections.

- Yeah, yeah.

So I wanna talk a little about the emphasis here on family.

Obviously, it's part of your title, but it's also the way that you render the work, this idea of strengthening and building that initial support that people have in their lives and need in their lives in order to thrive.

Talk about why family is so important not just in the Black community, but in every community, and the ways in which your work focuses specifically on building those families.

- Yes, family is the first institution of stability and safety for children.

It is an inbred safety net, and it should be an inbred safety net.

And sometimes, we recognize in circumstances as people are trying to make ends meet, and sometimes risks occur.

And it's not always that safety net, but our intention is to work with whatever that family structure is and how it's represented by each family that comes in is different.

But to really create that safety net so that the children in that household know that there is emotional safety, that there's physical safety, that there's a safety to dream.

Stephen, what we find is that children are so subject to often the circumstances in their environment, and so their ability to dream is predicated on them feeling safe.

And so when families come here to Black Family Development, what we try to do from the moment they walk in and they see a receptionist, Ms. Lolita, or they hear her voice if they're on the phone, that they feel a sense of warmth and invitation because we want this to be a place of hope and healing.

That's the first step.

And then as they begin to work with us and they allow us to partner with them and entrust our services with them to help us together achieve their goals, what we try to do is address, you know, thinking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, basic needs, food, shelter, clothing.

And then from there, really begin to explore: What are their dreams for themselves?

Are they career-related, are they just mental-health-related, or are there dreams for their children?

Even trying to link some of our families with our boys and young men of color work so that they are put on a pathway to think about their own futures and move towards post-secondary attainment.

And so really, it's helping them through a safety net that we try to create with them.

Not for them, but with them, here in the organization.

So that if, as caregivers, as the adult caregivers in the family, they feel a sense of stability, then they are better able to achieve what you or I would want for our own children.

Our families are no different.

We just wanna provide the grounds for them to succeed and sometimes fail because failure is a part of all of our experiences in life, but we wanna do that in partnership together and provide resources in the process.

- Yeah, yeah.

I wanna hear a little about current challenges and how they are different from things in the past.

Of course, the pandemic changed lots of things for lots of people, I would imagine that for your organization, and a lot more things changed or had to change.

But of course, we're four years from that now.

I'm curious about, I guess, the lingering effects of that or challenges that still kind of push you in a different direction.

- Absolutely, that's a great question.

And I think many of us in the nonprofit space are really still accounting the cost, perhaps, is the term to use for what all of this globe, let alone folks in underserved communities, experienced as a result of COVID.

I think one of the major situational changes has been this real emphasis on trying to debunk the stigma of mental health because the increase in suicidality is impacting all communities, all people.

African Americans are no different.

In fact, they've seen, and depending on the research you look at, there's been a seven-time increase in terms of suicidality for African American young people, particularly since the pandemic.

And so when we think about the breadth of our services, over the last four years, we moved from a point of serving about 18,000 individuals now to 28,000 individuals because of the increase in the spread or breadth of our mental health services, truly in partnership with Detroit Public Schools and other schools has really made that happen.

And the need has presented itself such that those partners have asked for other partners to work alongside of them to strengthen and enhance young people and their families.

I think another change that we've seen is an increase in just common basic needs.

We were just blessed to work in partnership with the Detroit Pistons, and Meijer, and Gleaners to support a recent Thanksgiving food giveaway.

And the scope of the increase in inflation has really impacted many of our families.

And so for that reason, we find ourselves consistently looking at ways to partner, to bring other kinds of basic needs, household goods, to bear for our families, just to try to decrease that stressor off of their backs.

- Yeah, yeah.

Okay, well, congratulations on 46 years at Black Family Development- - Thank you, thank you.

and all the work that you guys do here in our community.

- Thank you, thank you.

In celebration of our 46 years, we have an upcoming gala that we wanna make sure your viewers are aware of.

And so for those who might be interested in joining us for this celebration, feel free to take a look at our link that we have available through www.supportbfdi.org/2024gala.

- Thanks for being with us.

- Appreciate your time.