Training spotlight: Police and community partnerships; helping coaches move needle for clients

NeighborWorks America will hold its second Virtual Training Institute Feb. 15-19, presenting a wide curriculum of courses to more than 1,500 participants who serve communities. The training includes webinars and faculty-led courses on subjects like maximizing coaching potential, guerilla urbanism, and building competency in housing counseling. There are networking opportunities and yoga classes. And there are opportunities to discuss mutual problems and solutions. 
 

Following is a look behind two subjects that are important every year, but have heightened importance during this time: William C. Daniels talks about essential police-community partnerships and building relationships, while Christi Baker talks about how coaches can level the playing field for clients.

 

 

When William C. Daniels began teaching a course on police-community partnerships at NeighborWorks America's National Training Institute four years ago, it was to focus on the potential relationship building between law enforcement and communities, particularly communities of color, at a time when minority communities were especially raw. They had witnessed the deaths of Black men and women at the hands of police. The images were everywhere. After the death of George Floyd in Minnesota at the knee of a police officer last May, and after the cries for social justice that followed, tensions heightened, and with them, more awareness of the community building that had to take place.

 

What's happening isn't new, says Daniels, a former law enforcement officer and consultant who specializes in human dynamics, public safety and more. What is new is access to phone cameras and surveillance systems that record what's happening in America – and the social media that's used to share it. "It's not that these things haven't been happening; it's that now they're on display."

 

Daniels will teach his course on Police-Community Partnerships: Building Relationships of Mutual Accountability twice at the Virtual Training Institute. As in his past courses, he will talk to participants about understanding the history of a community and of inequities, and about the need to bring them into the open in order to move forward. "If we don't address longstanding issues of race and class and equity, abuses can go on," he says.

 

He likens it to a crack in a home's foundation that no amount of paint or flooring can permanently hide. "It's going to be exposed," Daniels says. "And we have to go back and correct the original problems."

 

Conversations about police and communities must include conversations about social conditions, he says. So much in a community is integrated.

 

But police and community can come together in partnership. During his class, Daniels offers strategies for building mutual accountability and trust, which he hopes will culminate in increased public safety. "If you don't have a healthy relationship between the governed and the governing, you can see what happens," Daniels says. "We're trying to mitigate the mistrust and promote the understanding of how it got to some of these levels. Without examining what happened in a community, historically, we can't go any further. You have to find out how the trust was breached and if it's reparable. Otherwise, you will only have an arrangement, not a relationship."

 

The class, normally two days but this year, virtually, restructured to 90 minutes, includes a dissection of history. Daniels looks at the roots of modern policing, which varies geographically: the nightwatchman in the North, modeled after police in England; the patrolling of enslaved people in the South. The class looks at the underpinnings that brought us to today. The biggest underpinning, he says, is race.

 

Across the country – and the world – people want the same things, he says. "People want to feel safe. They want to be able to explore their dreams and potential. And they want to recreate; to have fun." Building community partnerships, including partnerships with police, is one of the steps to getting there.

 

He offers these words of advice:

 

 

Using an equity lens has always been important. But this year the need has been heightened even more, by social justice, economic, and health issues, says Christi Baker, a consultant and financial coach who is leading a webinar on the subject for NeighborWorks America's Virtual Training Institute. "Using an Equity Lens in Financial Coaching Approaches" will be offered twice next week. 

 

To Baker, using an equity lens means being intentional about reaching and serving those who have been excluded from financial opportunities historically – and currently – on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender and more. In short, she says, there has been a glaring lack of equity, made clear by wealth and homeownership gaps. This year, the homeownership gap between Black and White households increased, according to NeighborWorks America's Housing and Financial Capability Survey. Only 40% of Blacks own homes, according to the survey, and 44% of Black individuals have delayed steps toward owning a home, delayed looking for information, or delayed moving into a place of their own. This compares to 29% of the overall population.

 

Financially, White households have eight times as much wealth as Black households, and five times as much as Latinx households, according to the Federal Reserve's 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances.  But there's also a gender wealth gap, and a geographic wealth gap between rural and urban areas. Southern rural communities and tribal communities have the lowest levels off upward mobility, according to the Economic Research Service.

 

"The wealth gap is persistent," says Baker, who develops financial coaching programs and curricula. "Even though there have been attempts to reduce it, we are still far from financial equity in our country. It calls for us to be more mindful of who we're serving, what our goals are, and if we're really helping communities to be better off."

 

To compound those inequities, the pandemic, a crisis of both health and economics, has disproportionately affected people of color and women. "What COVID-19 did was expose existing disparities and exacerbate them," Baker says. Following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, more people have been willing to talk openly about disparities, especially racial disparities, she adds.

 

Baker says she traditionally addresses inequities in financial systems and across communities when she teaches financial coaching; this year, she is exploring the subject more fully, talking to participants about how to be deliberate in their programming and services, making sure there's a level playing field and offering opportunities to those who have been excluded in the past.

 

Not everyone has access to the same opportunities, she reminds. "You have to pay attention to both the systemic level as well as the personal. You have to be intentionally inclusive and culturally responsive."

 

As an example, she mentions programs developed specifically for the Native community, addressing Native values and barriers to wealth building, and similar programs for the Latinx and Black communities. She says she hopes participants will leave her class with tangible ideas of how to be more culturally responsive; that they'll be ready to return to their home community to create more equity and more effective programming.

 

Often, when people think of equity, they think of it coming from the top, perhaps even at a policy level, she says. "But there are ways we can make a difference in our programs; we can create more equitable opportunities and be more attuned to the communities we are serving."

Be sure to register for the VTI and for the symposium, Shared Equity Housing: Creating Lasting Affordability and Community Ownership.