by R. Bong Vergara, DSW-C, Jerry Tello, MA, Heriberto Escamilla, PhD, and Leo Lopez, MSW
The Crisis and the Gap
In 2025, one program serving unaccompanied children was forced to reduce legal staff from over 20 to just seven despite the growing need. "Ethically, they can't handle that [high] volume of cases," the program manager explained through tears (Barone, 2025). Federal funding cuts force nonprofits to consider "walking away from the mission of serving noncitizens" while immigrant families self-isolate, paralyzed by fear (Barone, 2025). This child welfare crisis exposes a fundamental gap: overwhelmed mainstream systems cannot provide the healing that separated immigrant families need. Thousands of immigrant children experience "child woundedness" -- physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual injury manifesting as profound disconnection (Escamilla et al., 2023). While conventional Western child welfare services, including legal representation, remain essential, these cannot heal such deep-seated wounds.
The current crisis highlights the value of a new direction in child welfare: community-defined interventions that deliver what formal services never could – cultural connection, spiritual healing, and collective witnessing of pain. Culturally rooted healing transforms an isolating trauma experience into a shared human experience, facilitating processes of healing, positive social transformation, and long-deferred systems change.
This article argues that Community-Defined Evidence Practices (CDEPs), particularly La Cultura Cura (LCC), offer essential healing for separated immigrant families, and California's path in mental health equity provides a route for broader LCC adoption in child welfare systems.
Why CDEPs Are Essential: LCC Addresses Core Woundedness
LCC offers "medicine for child woundedness" through transformational healing philosophy rooted in Indigenous worldview (Escamilla et al., 2023, p. 11). Developed through nearly four decades of community practice, LCC directly addresses what separated immigrant families experience: trauma, disconnection, grief, and loss of cultural identity – dimensions of woundedness that conventional interventions fail to heal.
CDEPs are not supplementary but essential in addressing dimensions that formal systems cannot reach. The healing círculo process creates "sacred space" where participants "speak and listen, connect with others in depth, and begin to heal" (Escamilla et al., 2023, p. 11). For separated families, círculos address spiritual and emotional wounds outside the scope of legal or case management services. While an attorney fights deportation, a círculo provides space to grieve separation. While a caseworker manages logistics, a círculo reconnects children to cultural identity.
Evidence demonstrates LCC's effectiveness. After three days of Circle Keeper training grounded in LCC's four values — respect, trust, dignity, and love — educators showed statistically significant improvements. Comfort in "redirecting participants that digress" increased 27%, reflecting understanding that the "acting-out child is not in need of being controlled or sedated, but is wounded, hurting, and in serious need of care," (Escamilla et al., 2023, p. 16). This shift from behavior management to healing directly applies to separated immigrant children whose behaviors reflect trauma from family rupture. Furthermore, LCC and its círculo process also offer an integrated approach for service providers to heal from vicarious trauma and feelings of isolation in work settings defined by chaos, confusion, and high stress.
While an attorney fights deportation, a círculo provides space to grieve separation. While a caseworker manages logistics, a círculo reconnects children to cultural identity.
For separated families, LCC addresses core needs throughout the separation continuum. During separation, círculos help children maintain cultural connection. Pre-reunification, parallel círculos help families prepare across distance, deepening intergenerational connectedness while soothing stress and intergenerational trauma (Vergara et al., 2022, p. 3). Post-reunification, family círculos provide space for reconnection. The emphasis on "extended kinship networks" providing "welcoming, support, guidance" addresses separated children's need for belonging when biological family is inaccessible (Vergara et al., 2022, p. 3).
How to Implement LCC and Other CDEPs: California's Proven Pathway
Mezzo- and macro-level implementation blueprints exist for child welfare systems. Firstly, we, at National Compadres Network (NCN), developed the Healing-Informed Transformational Learning Environments (HTLE) framework to transfer LCC principles into concrete system changes that establish extended kinship networks, provide círculos for trauma, enable peer support, and train staff in culturally rooted approaches (Vergara et al., 2022).
Secondly, California's Reducing Disparities Project (CRDP) provides an implementation blueprint in multidisciplinary collaboration. Through CRDP, the California Department of Public Health systematically legitimized CDEPs as valid approaches to addressing mental health disparities in communities of color. Rather than requiring Western research frameworks, CRDP recognized that communities possess knowledge about what heals -- knowledge that constitutes legitimate evidence for public systems. The first author is part of this multi-year initiative demonstrating how CDEPs can be systematically integrated into public mental health and social welfare. CRDP has, so far, proven that state agencies can administratively legitimize CDEPs without new legislation.
Child welfare agencies can take inspiration from NCN and California CRDP's pathways: recognize CDEPs as legitimate evidence; provide círculos as core services; train staff to recognize woundedness; enable peer support; and evaluate using community-defined measures alongside conventional metrics. Implementation requires that systems "make manifest systemwide trauma-informed, and healing-centered goals" using culturally rooted approaches (Escamilla et al., 2023, p. 20). Culturally rooted program evaluation must respect local and Indigenous knowledge systems rather than impose "Western themes" that "[reinforce] the supremacy of the Western approach" (Escamilla et al., 2023, p. 20).
Why Now: The 2025 Imperative
The 2025 child welfare landscape makes implementing LCC urgent. When legal programs face staff shortages, separated families often lack representation (Barone, 2025). Yet círculos remain accessible: when a family cannot access an attorney, they can still access a círculo. When policy shifts weekly, cultural practices remain constant. When families are too frightened to leave homes (Barone, 2025), círculos meet people where they are.
CDEPs like LCC demonstrate resilience that federally-funded services cannot match. LCC's model shows sustainability: it operates through community knowledge and scales through training rather than institutional budgets. As one participant expressed: "I feel validated and will walk with more confidence in who I am and in the gifts I can bring to my community" (Escamilla et al., 2023, p. 18). This suggests that community resilience proves more durable when communities use healing practices that they can sustain themselves long-term.
Conclusion
For separated immigrant families experiencing profound disconnection, CDEPS, like LCC, offer essential healing that addresses woundedness which conventional interventions cannot reach. The evidence exists: LCC Circle Keeper training produces measurable transformation. The need for novel CDEPs, like LCC, also exists: separated families require healing that conventional child welfare services cannot provide. Lastly, the implementation pathway exists: NCN’s LCC and California's CRDP transform social welfare systems by legitimizing CDEPs. Therefore, child welfare practitioners and service providers should recognize LCC not as alternative therapy but as essential infrastructure for community-based healing that transforms the isolating experience and trauma of forced separation into shared processes of healing, positive social transformation, and long-deferred systems change.
R. Bong Vergara, DSW-C, is a former co-chair of a coalition for the California Department of Public Health CRDP Phase 1, an invited stakeholder for the CRDP Phase 3 Design Task Force, and a social epidemiologist at the National Compadres Network. Contact: [email protected]
Jerry Tello, MA, is a community leader, healing practitioner and internationally recognized author and voice for healing and justice. Born from a family of Mexican, Texan and Coahuiltecan Indigenous roots and raised in the south central/Compton areas of Los Angeles. Maestro Tello is considered an international expert in the areas of fatherhood, youth development, relationship and community violence prevention and healing, culturally based, trauma informed, healing centered strategies and curricula. He is founder and Director of Training and Capacity Building for the National Compadres Network. Contact:
[email protected]
Heriberto Escamilla Morales, PhD, is a student, practitioner, researcher of indigenous healing practices and traditions, currently, the Director of Evaluation and Research for the National Compadres Network. Contact: [email protected]
Leo Lopez, MSW, is director of Special Projects at the National Compadres Network, with 30 years of culturally grounded leadership supporting children, families and communities, guided by teachings and family. Contact:
[email protected]