“Healing is Not an Individual Journey”

California’s child welfare workforce is predominantly comprised of passionate and committed individuals driven by a deep desire to change their communities for the better. Tasked with intervening in complex and distressing cases of abuse and neglect, however, these dedicated workers often experience compassion fatigue, secondary trauma and burnout as a part of their deep connection to the profession.

Tackling this critical challenge is no small feat. But from April 17-18, more than 250 child welfare students, practitioners and advocates attended the 2025 California Title IV-E Summit in the hopes of doing just that.

The annual conference, which this year convened in Long Beach, provides California’s current Title IV-E funded BSW and MSW students with a unique opportunity to connect with their peers and learn from experts in the field, all while tackling some of the deepest issues in current practice.

Rose Chahla is the senior project officer for the Title IV-E Education Program with Human Services at UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education.

“One of the things that makes the Summit so unique is that it’s almost entirely student-led and student-focused,” said Chahla. “From programming sessions to registering guests on arrival, IV-E students are front-and-center throughout.”

This year, participants came together around the theme, “Healing Together: The Road to Building Collaboration, Sustainability and Well-Being in Child Welfare.” Across four breakout sessions and two plenary addresses, participants discussed strategies for enhancing personal well-being, explored how histories of racial trauma shape interactions with the child welfare system, and considered how practitioners might not only avoid burnout but actively promote healing through their professional practice.

“That our current cohort of IV-E students is taking these questions of burnout and fatigue so seriously tells me that California’s next generation of child welfare workers are in it for the long haul,” noted Chahla. “They want to build durable, sustainable careers in this challenging but vital profession.”

Brandon Mouat, a Title IV-E student at Sacramento State who helped to organize this year’s conference, strikes a similar chord.

When we build bridges to support and care for one another, we are better able to provide robust, ongoing care to our clients.

-Brandon Mouat, Title IV-E Student, Sacramento State 

“Social workers must take on the challenging but essential task of fostering collaboration, healing and shared purpose across agencies and systems,” he stated. “Children deserve to grow up in safe, nurturing environments. Meeting that standard requires deep partnership with families, communities, and organizations. When we build bridges to support and care for one another, we are better able to provide robust, ongoing care to our clients.”

While concepts such as burnout, healing and self-care have become common talking points in popular and business culture worldwide, these ideas took on a new urgency at the Summit.

“Healing is not an individual journey,” stated UCLA IV-E student Bre’Aujanae Moore in her plenary-opening remarks. “It happens in relationships, through shared knowledge, and within the systems we build together.”

Moore’s insights were on full display throughout the Summit. Developed collaboratively as a space where dedicated professionals and enthusiastic learners could imagine new strategies for well-being together, this year’s event provided a hopeful and reachable horizon for a child welfare system in which collective healing, rather than individual struggle and burnout, could be the norm.

If you missed out on the 2025 Summit Livestream, you can watch the two plenary sessions on our UC Davis Human Services YouTube Channel.

• Playing Out of the Box: Healing Childhood Trauma with Christine Mark-Griffin
• Thriving Together: Strategies to Navigate Burnout and Enhance Well-Being with Avni Panchal

To learn more about how the Title IV-E Education Program is supporting the next generation of public child welfare workers in California, please visit our program website.