The Government Mechanic

On Season 3 Episode 20, Dr. Kahn’s special guest is Connie Reguli -- a family lawyer and advocate for child welfare reform who has spent 30 years defending families in our family court systems. More than that, Reguli has built a support network for parents threatened by child protective services and brought together resources, guidelines and training videos for parents who suddenly find themselves in family court. See links below in Show Notes.

Episode 20 opens with Dr. Kahn describing a photo of her and Reguli in Des Moines at the Iowa State Capitol on October 20, 2017, talking almost 8 years ago about these very same issues. Dr. Kahn asked what motivated Reguli to turn her attention to the broken child welfare system, especially foster care. Conversation then turned to foster care as a for-profit industry and a US Marshall’s report that 33,000 children go missing from foster care every year. The conversation concluded with comments about lobbying for change in Washington DC and current legislation that would help parents keep their kids out of foster care.

For more information, see:

YouTube channel - Connie Reguli

https://youtube.com/@connieregulifamilyforward?si=39HQPmm4_pN0EC94

YouTube - Family Forward Training and News

https://youtube.com/@connieregulifamilyforward?si=39HQPmm4_pN0EC94

TikTok

https://www.tiktok.com/@familyforward

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/conniereguli/

Facebook personal profile

https://www.facebook.com/connie.reguli

Facebook group Family Forward Project

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1697223540511940

LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/connie-reguli/

X

https://x.com/conniereguli

Pronounces name KAH-nee REG-yuh-lee

Terri La Point

Investigative Journalist, Speaker and Author

Episode 19 is the third in a series about the failures of family law, family court and foster care. The topic is medical kidnapping with investigative journalist, speaker and author Terri LaPoint.

Terri started investigating the child welfare system by looking at medical kidnapping. She had no bias going in, she just wanted to know what was going on. She found the same kind of stories everywhere - innocent parents losing their kids or going to jail. This included losing custody of ill or hospitalized children. In every children’s hospital, child abuse pediatricians, who are not experts in anything, sign off on the state taking custody of the hospitalized child. Once a ward of the state, pediatricians may use opioids, psychotropic drugs or experimental medicines. Further damage happens to this child, who is now a ward of the state, getting placed in a foster care system with where foster parents are not vetted adequately and there are no national standards. 

David Frodsham in Arizona ran child trafficking out of his home with foster children and children he had adopted out of foster care. 

 https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-business-arizona-army-sierra-vista-2dd2790f0b68117f561a46a474421358

Terri closed by describing helpful national and state legislation, such as a Texas law that limits child abuse pediatricians and gives parents the right to a second opinion.

SHOW NOTES

Website:  https://realnewsspark.com. 

Facebook @TerriLaPoint

Book: Voices that will Not be Silenced

https://Realnewsspark.com /book

Order from amazon or from realnewsspark.com for autographed copy

The theme for Episodes 17 to 22 is the failure of the child welfare system in the United States, including the failures of foster care, family law, family court and government policies to take custody of your child. My special guest today for Episode 18 is Baily Templeton -- mother and advocate for family rights and child welfare reform. 

ATTENTION: I warn you, my listeners and viewers, this is heartbreaking stuff and yo may be triggered by this conversation. If you are chaught up in the child welfare and family court system, find your support group – you are not alone - the entire child welfare system is broken and abusive. Find your support group, Start Connie Reguli’s Facebook page Family Forward Project and Rachel Bruno’s website rachelbruno.com  

Season 3 opens with Episode 17 and Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn introducing Rachel Bruno, a courageous mother, author and advocate for parents falsely accused in the child welfare system. The Episode begins with a warning from Dr. Kahn: this interview may trigger emotions related to foster care and family court or images of violence and children separated from their parents. Viewer discretion advised. Please see resources below.

Rachel tells a powerful story about the abuses and violations of family law, foster care and family court when her son was illegally seized in 2015. She concludes with descriptions of 2025 legislative efforts to support parents caught up in child services and family court.

Resources from Rachel Bruno:

Website with resources, her blog and book: https://rachelbruno.com

Non-profit: https://thegiveroflight.org

Facebook and Instagram: @rachelbrunospeaks

Kahn’s Articles:

More Information:

Podcast: The Government Mechanic, wherever you get your podcasts

Website: http://GovMechanic.com

LinkedIn: Lynn Sandra Kahn

YouTube Channel: The Government Mechanic

Episode 16 closes out Season 2. Creator and host Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn and co-host Kathleen Monahan, management consultant and strategic planner, talk about making government more efficient. They start with the graphic labelled Reinventing Government: 1992 to 2000 and then the Reinventing Government: Transformation Roadmap.

The Roadmap is an artist’s drawing of a vision for reinvention, a mission to deliver on the three goals and pathways to rebuild public trust in government (see Episode 14, for reinvention strategic plan and implementation roadmap). Kahn asserts: “We are starting here because we believe in the importance of clearly and visually communicating the essence of government-wide change in policies and organization.”  

The drawing shows the 4 core questions of any transformation: where are we now, where are we going, how will we get there, and what will we measure. Kahn emphasizes “Get a vision statement that is one line, less than a sentence; and a Mission statement describing the true purpose of the agency as one maybe two sentences. It has to fit on a coffee mug!

The graphic includes Goals — what you want to accomplish – and Strategies – the priority actions. Measures are the numbers that tell you whether you accomplished your goals and priorities. What you measure is what you get.

Episode 16 closes out Season 2. Season 3 begins on Tuesday February 4 with a series of 5 episodes on the failures of family law, family court, foster care, medical kidnapping and parental alienation. Episodes 17 to 22 come with a warning: these are heartbreaking stories mostly hidden from view.

In Episode 15, host Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn and co-host Kathleen Monahan talk about how the podcast and YouTube channel started and how it’s going. Then they discuss the 15 most viewed clips with number of views:

·     Top Challenges for Veterans 10K

·     The truth behind dairy prices 6.4 K

·     Ending Veteran Homelessness 5.2 K

·     Understanding Peacebuilding, Peacemaking and Diplomacy 4.2 K

·     DOJ Policy That Works – Transform DOJ 1.6 K

·     Peacemaking - Rhythms of Harmony 1.6 K

·     Policy the Reduces Violence 1.4 K

·     Running for President E1 1.3 K

·     A Theory of Peacemaking 1.2 K

·     Patterns of Balance 1K

·     On the same page 1.4 K

·     Visual Learning and Policy Changes 1.4

·     Town Halls, Citywide Summit, Strategic Plan 1.3

·     Turn Government Waste into Solutions 874

·     Policy that Reduces Violence 744

Next is a cluster about how USDA policies hurt farmers; less that 650 each.

In Episode 14, Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn presents nine different strategic plans and implementation roadmaps, and the areas of reinvention, aviation, justice reform, and regional food processing. Dr. Kahn is the host of The Government Mechanic. 

Episode 13, The 7 Track Plan, describes the strategic plan used by Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn and Kathleen Monahan when they ran as independent candidates for President and Vice President of the United States in 2015 and 2016. The 7 tracks are:

1. Cut one trillion dollars of government waste and invest in local communities

2. Multiple solutions 

3. Transforms all federal agencies 

4. Build Partnerships

5, Communicate honestly

6. Measure the truth

7. Build Peace

In her 1988 book, Peacemaking: A Systems Approach to Conflict Management, Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn talked about the technology, psychology, theory and application of peacemaking skills. Episode, she reviews some key points:  For Technology, she walks listeners through the design of the 1994 Cleveland Summit on Violence. For Psychology, Dr. Kahn describes both individual and group dynamics. While individuals bring their unique history into any group discussion. the dynamic of the group as a system is another level of interactions. Dr. Kahn’s Theory states: people joined together in face-to-face dialogue generate a field of energy with patterns of balance and rhythms of harmony across multiple levels of awareness. For Application, Dr. Kahn returns to the design of the 1994 Cleveland Summit on Violence - theory and psychology are nice, the essential skills set is designing the event and delivering results. 

Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn, organizational psychologist in the federal government for more than 35 years and host of The Government Mechanic. 

Books:

https://www.amazon.com/Peacemaking-Systems-Approach-Conflict-Management/dp/0819167835

You may wonder how a podcast and YouTube channel called The Government Mechanic arrive at Episodes 11 and 12 to talk about the activities of peacebuilding, the psychology of peacemaking, and international diplomacy among countries and peoples in conflict. The answer is that fixing broken Departments and Agencies means leaders in these government departments and agencies get out of their offices and out of their comfort zones and go out into the communities and hold Listening tours and townhall meetings and work with community-based people to come up with shared solutions to any number of problems. Once those conversations start to happen, then the activities of fixing government morph into community peace building. The Episode starts with some definitions and Dr. Kahn introduces 3 video clips from an interview with Ambassador John McDonald from 2010!

Definitions: Peacebuilding is active - it’s a ceasefire, or a gang truce, or a summit on violence.  Peacemaking is internal, it’s psychological, it’s a change of heart, seeing something from another’s view. Diplomacy is another level; diplomacy is international and between cultures and countries. The US Department of State now accepts as true that diplomacy occurs along many different tracks not just government to government.  Diplomacy can happen sports team to sports team or business leaders to government leaders. 

Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn, organizational psychologist in the federal government for more than 35 years and host of The Government Mechanic.