Edna De Pina is thinking about what public policy looks like when it lands in families’ living rooms.
In her career working in Early Intervention, De Pina would go into homes and carry out Early Intervention’s policy of providing support to parents of young children who have—or are at risk of having—developmental delays.
But the implementation of public policy can be limited by factors like staffing shortages or shortages of language interpreters.
“So what families see is a program that is not providing or is not equipped to provide the services they need,” De Pina says. “As a practitioner, this was difficult, because I myself didn’t feel like I had a voice. I understood that I could contact city representatives or call 311. But I didn’t understand that I could make a difference by giving voices to people who felt unheard.”
Over time, De Pina’s voice and her interest in strengthening family systems grew.
She drew on her childhood in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood where she grew up as the daughter of immigrants from Cape Verde, an experience that taught her about the dynamics of multilingual communities.
“I learned what belonging means for different cultures and communities. It’s taught me to take time to understand others and to build relationships based on trust.”
Today, De Pina is standing at the intersection of practice, policy, advocacy, and research. She’s a PhD student and a teaching fellow at UMass Boston’s Early Childhood Education and Care program with a focus on leadership, policy, and finance. For her dissertation, she is researching cultural responsiveness to assessments: how children may be misdiagnosed because of assessment tools that don’t account for linguistic and cultural differences.
De Pina is also a member of Strategies for Children’s Advocacy Network. And she wants her advocacy work to benefit families.
Advocacy in action
“For me, the best part of the Advocacy Network is being able to network and learning the behind-the-scenes lessons and practices that can lead to a real change in policy,” De Pina says.
“I’ve always had the mindset that problems need to be fixed now. But being in this space has made me realize that even making a dent in a problem can have a ripple effect.”
De Pina says she’s also learning more about building relationships and having conversations about policy.
“It’s about putting what I’d been feeling for years into words. It’s understanding how the services we offer are shaped by funding structures and cost containment.”
And while policy change might move more slowly, De Pina is taking action now. In the fall she testified on Zoom at a State House hearing on Early Intervention, explaining that the Early Intervention program needs a rate increase so it can retain its workforce.
“If you’re coming into the workforce with student loans, you’re not going to pick a job that’s not going to help you pay off those loans, even though the work is very important.”
For her Advocacy Network project, De Pina is focusing on mental health. Her initial instinct was to go big and launch a new initiative. But after talking to Titus DosRemedios and Jaylesse Le Blanc, Strategies for Children’s deputy director and Advocacy Network program assistant, De Pina decided she did not have to recreate the wheel.
Instead, she is joining the Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health workgroup, which is led by MSPCC (the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children).
“I’m thinking about multilingual families, immigrant families, and families who are navigating disability systems. My goal is to support these families by grounding my advocacy in what they’re actually experiencing.
“I want to push for changes that are more sustainable, such as having a diverse workforce, culturally competent service delivery, and a quality of care that is truly family-centered. I want to support more equitable access to early childhood mental health services so that families are stronger and have stronger relationships.”
De Pina will tap her connections at other Boston community health centers to raise awareness among families, possibly through workshops for parents.
De Pina also has her eye on larger questions.
“As advocates, instead of asking how we can work around the system, we have to ask, Why is the system designed this way, and what can we do to help redesign it?“
A vision of what could be
In the future, instead of families feeling the limits of public policy—the lack of funding and access to programs—De Pina wants parents to experience a healthy system that supports their children through early childhood and into school.
She says policymakers should understand more about the importance of early childhood development as well as the impact that funding and policy changes have on families.
“If Early Intervention were fully funded and the workforce was stable and culturally representative of families, for example, then families would feel better supported earlier on. And everything has a ripple effect: stronger families means stronger neighborhoods and communities and a stronger society.”
De Pina sums up her overall theory of change this way: “Advocacy supports change, and change is built on relationships and networking, on staying engaged and understanding the practical small steps you can take to support policy change.”
Next for De Pina? She’s collaborating with colleagues to explore the possibility of opening a center for children and families. She also plans to continue research she’s doing on the Cape Verdean community in Massachusetts to add to the larger research on early childhood mental health.
“After having been in the field for a long time, I want to translate my practice into advocacy. I want to explore how and where we can talk about policymaking and solutions that include families’ voices and their awareness of what services would best serve their communities.”