Today’s guest is Clare Anderson, a policy expert and passionate advocate for using evidence to drive upstream investments to prevent child welfare involvement. Claire is a Senior Policy Fellow at Chapin Hall, and she’s spent years organizing data to help us understand the impact of economic policy on families — and what puts them at risk.

Clare helps connect the dots between the economic shocks that families experience between economic policy and child welfare involvement. Clare shares the preponderance of evidence from 40 years of research that simply validates what families have been saying all along: invest in public benefits like SNAP, Medicaid, and child care if you truly want to dramatically reduce family separation and foster care placements.

But this conversation is about more than the data. Underlying Clare’s message is a worldview centered on creativity, compassion, and imagination. Clare’s work reminds us that systems don’t change just because of evidence; they change when people decide to act differently. And she invites us to think about what it means to meet families not at the moment of crisis, but at the moment of opportunity.

Check Out Community In-Site's Blog!! You can go to the website to listen to episodes, read the blog, access information and resources, and subscribe to the email newsletter. Podcasts Archive - Thriving Families

Here are some additional resources Clare would like to share with you.

• Access to Medicaid and Healthcare Promotes Child Safety – Chapin Hall
• Expanded Child Tax Credit as a Key Anti-Poverty & Child Welfare Prevention Strategy – Chapin Hall
• Access to Food Assistance Programs Increases Child Safety – Chapin Hall
• Disrupting the Link Between Poverty and Child Welfare Involvement through Policy, Practice – Chapin Hall
• A Key Connection: Economic Stability and Family Well-being – Chapin Hall

We appreciate you spreading awareness by sharing this episode with your friends, family, and colleagues who care about family well-being.

Please email us if you want to connect with the creative team or find out how to engage with the family well-being movement. comminsite@gmail.com

Valerie sits down with Mashai Small—a former army sergeant, a mother, and member of the African National Women’s Organization leadership team. She’s also an organizer, abolitionist, and one of the leaders of the Black Mother’s March happening in Washington, DC on May 11th.

Part of the family well-being movement is the abolitionist perspective, which holds that the path to justice requires dismantling the parts of systems that harm and oppress people. And that we have to invest in communities to liberate families.

Mashai shares her journey from being an impacted parent to an organizer and activist fighting for the rights of families. She discusses the personal and community-based motivations behind her activism, including the systemic issues of racial inequity. Mashai shares what it means to organize in this space, the significance of the upcoming Black Mothers March, and the fight to keep Black families together. Through her work, Mashai offers powerful lessons on how Black parents can advocate for themselves and their families while pushing for a more just and equitable child welfare system.

NEW!! Community In-Site now has a Blog!! You can go to the website to listen to episodes, read the blog, access information and resources, and subscribe to the email newsletter. Podcasts Archive - Thriving Families

Here are some additional resources Mashai would like to share with you.

• Home | African National Women's Organization
• Home | Black Mothers March
• The Soul Koach | Linktree

We appreciate you spreading awareness by sharing this episode with your friends, family, and colleagues who care about family well-being.

Please email us if you want to connect with the creative team or find out how to engage with the family well-being movement. comminsite@gmail.com

Valerie sits down with David Lujan who is the former Director of the Arizona Department of Child Safety (DCS) and currently serves as the Executive Director of the Arizona School for the Arts. They discuss his pivotal role in significantly reducing the number of children in care in Arizona. In 2017, there were nearly 19,000 kids in foster care in Arizona. During David’s time at DCS, he oversaw a dramatic decrease in the foster care population, from 13,000 to under 8,000 children. This change was made possible through a strategic shift in case worker mindset, a focus on prevention, community-based services, and keeping children safely with their families. David shares his insights on how Arizona began prioritizing family preservation, including early intervention programs that provided parents with resources and support to address challenges before they escalated to removal.

David also reflects on the challenges he faced in transforming a system that had been designed primarily for intervention into one that prioritized preventing family separation. He explains how collaboration across state agencies, communities, and nonprofit organizations was key to creating lasting change. Tune in to hear about David’s leadership, the lessons learned through this transformative process, and how these strategies could serve as a model for other states striving to create a more family-centered child welfare system.

NEW!! Community In-Site now has a Blog!! You can go to the website to listen to episodes, read the blog, access information and resources, and subscribe to the email newsletter. Community In-Site Blog - Thriving Families

Here are some additional resources Heather would like to share with you.

• A drastic decrease in the number of children in foster care | The Arizona Way
• DCS reaches milestone in safely reducing the number of children in care | Arizona Department of Child Safety

We appreciate you spreading awareness by sharing this episode with your friends, family, and colleagues who care about family well-being.

Please email us if you want to connect with the creative team or find out how to engage with the family well-being movement. comminsite@gmail.com