Community In-Site

A lot of conversations in child welfare and human services begin with reform. How do we reduce harm? How do we address disparities? How do we improve policies, practices, training, accountability, and outcomes?

Samantha Mellerson and Tshaka Barrows, Co-Executive Directors of the Haywood Burns Institute, bring decades of experience working with communities and systems to address racial and ethnic disparities, build community power, and imagine more just conditions for children, families, and communities.

In this episode of Community In-Site, host Valerie Frost talks with Sam and Tshaka about a harder question: what if reform is necessary, but still not enough?

Together, they explore radical imagination, structural well-being, and what it takes to build beyond the systems we already know. They discuss why harm reduction remains urgent, while also challenging listeners to think beyond short-term fixes and incremental improvements.

Valerie, Sam, and Tshaka also talk about creating new infrastructure, making room for healthy disagreement, moving from ideas into practice, and imagining conditions where families and communities have what they need to thrive.

This conversation asks a central question for the family well-being movement: are we only trying to make existing systems better, or are we also creating the conditions to build something we have not seen yet?

Community In-Site is now on YouTube. You can go to the website to listen to episodes, access information and resources, and subscribe to the email newsletter. Podcasts Archive - Thriving Families

Here are some resources that Sam and Tshaka want to share with you.

• Publication: Samantha Mellerson, "Race, Culture, Belonging & Well-Being," published in the 2023 Winter Edition of the Family Justice Journal
• Video: Youth Justice Reimagined | A Story of Community, Innovation, & Collaboration
• Case Study | Structural Well-Being in Ramsey County, MN NEW: RAMSEY COUNTY SWB CASE STUDY

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. [email protected] 

This episode of Community In-Site is a re-release with Melody Webb, founder and CEO of Mother’s Outreach Network and lead of the MotherUp pilot.

Direct cash support for parents can sound both simple and provocative. Research shows that neglect is the most common reason families become involved with child welfare, and it is often tied to economic hardship, which is why direct cash support has become part of prevention conversations. Some would say that giving families money, with no strings attached, is exactly what prevention should look like, while others raise questions about responsibility, trust, and accountability. 

In this conversation, host Valerie Frost speaks with Melody Webb about MotherUp, the first known guaranteed income pilot for families involved in the child welfare system. Melody walks through how the pilot works, why it focuses on Black mothers facing economic stress and heightened system surveillance, and how direct cash support can help parents gain financial stability, plan for the future, deepen relationships with their children, and avoid deeper system involvement. 

We are revisiting this episode as Mother’s Outreach Network prepares to host the Mother Up Guaranteed Income Pilot Research Project National Convening on November 6, 2026, at the University of Baltimore School of Law’s Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children and the Courts, co-hosted with CFCC. The convening will bring together researchers, advocates, funders, and mothers with lived experience to advance guaranteed income and family justice. 

This conversation doesn’t offer a simple answer. Instead, it invites listeners to look more closely at the assumptions we bring to parenting, poverty, and prevention, and to consider whether distrust of families has quietly shaped the systems meant to support them.

Community In-Site is now on YouTube. You can go to the website to listen to episodes, access information and resources, and subscribe to the email newsletter. https://thrivingfamiliessaferchildren.org/

Here are some resources that Melody wants to share with you.

• Registration is open at bit.ly/MotherUpConvening 
• Mother’s Outreach Network 
• Building a Guaranteed Income to End the “Child Welfare” System
• Standing with Moms Film - Mother's Outreach Network

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. [email protected] 

Diapers may seem like a small need, but for families raising babies, diaper insecurity can affect 

child care, work, parental stress, health, social connection, and the choices families are forced to make every day. In recognition of National Diaper Need Awareness Week, September 14-20, 2026, this episode asks what becomes possible when family well-being policy begins with the needs families are already naming before those needs become crises.

In this episode of Community In-Site, host Valerie Frost speaks with Dr. Megan V. Smith, Chief of Innovation & Impact at the National Diaper Bank Network, about diaper need, the Super Bundle, and why immediate material support can be an entry point to something much larger: maternal well-being, direct cash support, economic security, and long-term opportunity through baby bonds.

Together, Valerie and Dr. Smith explore why upstream prevention has to become concrete, what it means to meet today’s needs while planning for tomorrow’s growth, and how family-centered policies can move forward even when they run into old debates about work, dependency, deservingness, personal responsibility, and the role of government.

Community In-Site is now on YouTube. You can go to the website to listen to episodes, access information and resources, and subscribe to the email newsletter. https://thrivingfamiliessaferchildren.org/

Here are some resources that Dr. Smith wants to share with you.

• Index - National Diaper Bank Network
• The NDBN Diaper Check 2026 - National Diaper Bank Network
• Urban Institute Partnership - National Diaper Bank Network
• Superbundle

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. [email protected] 

When substance use is involved during pregnancy, the instinct to protect a baby can quickly lead to testing, reporting, child welfare involvement, and possible separation. But what if pregnancy is also one of the most important opportunities we have to help a parent recover, stabilize, and safely care for their child?

In this episode of Community In-Site, host Valerie Frost speaks with Dr. Sharon Ostfeld-Johns, who is dual board certified in internal medicine and pediatrics and is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics and Internal Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Ostfeld-Johns appears in this episode in her personal capacity and not as a representative of any organization.

Dr. Ostfeld-Johns has worked to rethink how hospitals respond when babies are born substance exposed, including reducing unnecessary newborn toxicology testing and developing more compassionate Family Care Plans. Her work raises a central question: can systems respond seriously to risk without automatically treating substance exposure as evidence that a parent and baby should be separated?

Together, Valerie and Dr. Ostfeld-Johns explore why pregnancy can be such an important window for treatment and support, how stigma and fear can push parents away from care, what compassionate Family Care Plans look like in practice, and how CAPTA notifications, child welfare reports, and hospital decision-making can become conflated.

The conversation asks whether infant safety and family preservation have to be competing goals, or whether a more coordinated and evidence-informed response can give babies and parents a better chance to remain together safely.

Community In-Site is now on YouTube. You can go to the website to listen to episodes, access information and resources, and subscribe to the email newsletter. Podcasts Archive - Thriving Families

Here are some resources that Dr. Otsfeld-Johns wants to share with you.

• Sharon Ostfeld-Johns, MD, IBCLC | Yale School of Medicine
• Why Some Doctors Are Pushing to End Routine Drug Testing During Childbirth - Reveal
• Folder - Google Drive

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. [email protected] 

Getting into college and succeeding in college are two very different things.

Young people with foster care experience have gained greater access to college through tuition assistance, scholarships, and enrollment support. But if access alone were enough, completion rates would look very different.

In this episode of Community In-Site, host Valerie Frost talks with Livingstone College Vice President Nailah McDowell and student RaMaj Parker about what changes when an institution asks a different question: not simply whether students are ready for college, but whether the college is ready for its students.

Livingstone spent nearly a year preparing before welcoming its cohort, looking beyond tuition and academics to belonging, relationships, trust, and the kinds of support that rarely appear on a financial-aid form. Nailah shares what it takes to design that kind of institutional response, while RaMaj offers his own perspective on what support, trust, and belonging look like in practice.

Together, Valerie, RaMaj, and Nailah explore whether real opportunity requires more than opening the door, and what it would look like for institutions to take responsibility for creating the conditions students need to stay, grow, and succeed.

Community In-Site is now on YouTube. You can go to the website to listen to episodes, access information and resources, and subscribe to the email newsletter. Podcasts Archive - Thriving Families

Here are some resources that Nailah and RaMaj wanted to share with you.

• Livingstone College | Excellence – The Livingstone Way
• HBCU looking to offer foster care students HOPE (and money) - HBCU Gameday
• A Model HBCU Program Nurtures Students Who Have Experienced Foster Care - The Annie E. Casey Foundation

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. [email protected] 

What happens when a public-systems leader with more than 30 years of experience is asked to move from a sweeping vision for reform to the realities families experience when they seek help?

In this episode of Community In-Site, host Valerie Frost speaks with Tennessee Department of Human Services Commissioner Clarence Carter, author of Our Net Has Holes in It. Carter argues that America does not lack programs, funding, or the desire to help. It lacks a coherent design for helping people move from crisis toward lasting stability, dignity, and agency.

Commissioner Carter offers a blueprint for redesigning public support around outcomes rather than transactions. But a blueprint is only as useful as our ability to translate it into daily practice, relationships, and decisions that families can actually experience.

Together, Valerie and Commissioner Carter explore what it takes to move beyond what exists on paper, how leaders can connect policy intention to implementation, and whether systems can help families move from surviving to thriving and flourishing while preserving what matters most: their dignity, agency, and ability to define when support has truly worked.

Community In-Site is now on YouTube. You can go to the website to listen to episodes, access information and resources, and subscribe to the email newsletter. Podcasts Archive - Thriving Families

Here is a link to Commissioner Carter's new book.

• Our Net Has Holes In It: Carter, Clarence H: 9798895761267: Amazon.com: Books

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. [email protected] 

Prevention is one of the most common words in child welfare and family well-being conversations. But what are we actually trying to prevent?

Are we trying to prevent foster care entry, family crisis, poverty, surveillance, or are we trying to build the conditions families need to thrive?

In this episode of Community In-Site, host Valerie Frost speaks with Zach Laris, founder of Bolder Horizons and author of Child Welfare Wonk, about the Family First Prevention Services Act, federal financing, evidence standards, implementation, and the limits of the current prevention frame.

Family First was meant to help move child welfare upstream by allowing federal dollars to be used for prevention services. But early data raises bigger questions about what prevention is designed to do, what states are incentivized to build, and whether a child welfare financing policy can carry the weight of a much larger family well-being vision.

Together, Valerie and Zach explore whether Family First has exposed an implementation problem, a policy design problem, or something deeper: a vision problem.

This conversation sits in the tension between policy possibility and family reality. Policy can create flexibility on paper, but families experience systems through implementation, trust, culture, and whether help feels safe enough to use.

So the question is not only whether Family First is working. It is whether prevention is big enough for the family well-being vision we keep placing on it.

Community In-Site is now on YouTube. You can go to the website to listen to episodes, access information and resources, and subscribe to the email newsletter. Podcasts Archive - Thriving Families

Here are a few resources that Zach wanted to share with you.

• Weekly Wonk: Family First, Light on Families
• Being an Architect in a Firefighter Era - by Zach Laris
• WonkCast: People Power Policy | Zach Laris | Substack
• Child Welfare Wonk | Zach Laris | Substack

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. [email protected] 

Family well-being is often discussed in terms of concrete resources and services. But what happens when family support is built from the cornerstone of community, culture, creativity, healing, and relationships? What if reimagined what’s possible for a family resource center. 

In this episode of Community In-Site, host Valerie Frost speaks with William and Camille, founders of School of Hip Hop in Phoenix, Arizona. They use hip hop culture to engage young people and families in ways they believe traditional systems often miss. Through music, dance, visual art, mentorship, and business education kids and their parents get the benefits of a typical family resource center plus so much.  

Drawing from their own lived experience with child welfare involvement, they reflect on why culturally grounded spaces matter, what it means to create community-centered support, and how relationships can become a form of prevention and healing.

Their work eventually became connected to Arizona’s broader Family Resource Center movement through partnerships focused on prevention and community support. And while School of Hip Hop is not a traditional Family Resource Center, this conversation raises a broader question many communities are working through right now:

If family well-being is truly about helping families thrive, what kinds of spaces actually help families feel safe enough to ask for help before a crisis happens?

Community In-Site is now on YouTube. You can go to the website to listen to episodes, access information and resources, and subscribe to the email newsletter. Podcasts Archive - Thriving Families

Here are a few resources that William and Camille wanted to share with you.

• School of HipHop
• Find Your Village 
• WALKTHEPLANK.mp4 - Google Drive
• School of HipHop Radio #Shorts - YouTube
• Phoenix School of HipHop’s Afro Grooves fundraiser lights up Arizona

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. [email protected] 

Today’s episode is a re-release of the recording with Carol Mitchell from Season Two on June 19, 2025. This is a great episode for both Father’s Day and Juneteenth. 

In this episode, Valerie sits down with Carol Mitchell, a seasoned attorney, social justice advocate, and founder of the Institute for Black Justice (IBJ). With over 20 years of public sector leadership experience, Carol is dedicated to transforming how systems recognize and support Black fathers as essential caregivers and partners in family well-being.

Based in Washington State, IBJ is committed to uplifting Black families by addressing systemic bias and promoting policies that center Black fathers’ dignity and leadership within family and community life. For example, the BABAS Program empowers dads to successfully navigate systemic challenges, achieve reunification with their children, and build healthy, enduring parent-child relationships.

This episode explores the often-overlooked role of fathers, especially Black fathers, in caregiving and systems change. Carol and Valerie discuss the historical and cultural pressures shaping fatherhood, and why naming and centering fathers in child welfare and family support systems is critical for true justice and healing. 

Tune in to hear powerful stories from Carol’s advocacy work and discover practical ways child welfare leaders and others can shift their approach to engage fathers authentically and respectfully.

Community In-Site is now on YouTube. You can go to the website to listen to episodes, access information and resources, and subscribe to the email newsletter. Podcasts Archive - Thriving Families

Here are a few resources that Carol wanted to share with you.

• Institute for Black Justice - Social Justice, Family Advocacy
• Carol Mitchell, M.A., J.D. | LinkedIn
• Facebook

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. [email protected] 

AI is here and how it impacts our work and lives is only going to speed up. As AI becomes ubiquitous in child welfare and family well-being systems, an important question emerges: who is shaping the use of these tools, and whose experiences are reflected in their design?

In this episode of Community In-Site, host Valerie Frost speaks with Derrick Stephens, a lived-experience leader and technology builder working on AI-informed tools for human services, about the opportunities and risks AI presents for families and young people. Drawing from both his lived experience and his work developing technology solutions, Derrick discusses why community involvement and co-design are essential if AI is going to support families rather than reinforce existing problems.

He also shares the story behind Pathway Navigator, a tool designed with and for young people to help them navigate resources, organize next steps, and build toward long-term stability. The conversation explores how technology can support immediate needs while also creating pathways to employment, financial security, and opportunity.

This conversation invites listeners to think more critically about how AI is already shaping the future of child welfare and family well-being, and what it will take to ensure communities help design that future rather than simply experience its consequences.

Community In-Site is now on YouTube. You can go to the website to listen to episodes, access information and resources, and subscribe to the email newsletter. Podcasts Archive - Thriving Families

Here are a few resources that Derrick wanted to share with you.

• AIEYU - Where Technology and Humanity Converge
• Cardinality.ai | Cardinality.ai's Train & Hire Program: Empowering Veterans for Success in Tech
• Leading with Intelligence: A CEO’s Roadmap to AI Readiness & Co-design

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. [email protected]