On this week’s episode we talk to Naomi Goldstein, who for nearly two decades led the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation at the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). We discussed the way that the federal government decides what to research and how it gets the job done. And why she thinks the Trump administration’s recent decision to decentralize research at ACF is a mistake. 

Naomi Goldstein was the deputy assistant secretary for planning, research, and evaluation at the Administration for Children and Families. She is currently a nurse at MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital. 

Reading Room

Restructuring on the Horizon for ACF’s Research Branch

https://imprintnews.org/youth-services-insider/restructuring-on-the-horizon-for-acfs-research-branch/271096

Happy Birthday OPRE!

https://acf.gov/archive/opre/blog/2024/08/birthday2024

On this week’s episode we talk to Marsha Levick, co-founder of the Juvenile Law Center, who stepped down last year after serving for decades as the organization’s chief legal officer. We discussed the origins of the center and how it survived, how to write a good amicus brief, the Kids for Cash scandal and more. 

Marsha Levick is a co-founder and former chief legal officer for the Juvenile Law Center. She is currently the Phyllis W. Beck Visiting Chair in Law at Temple Law School.

InnerViews is trying something new. In this special episode, we bring you the audio from Youth Voices Rising’s powerful webinar, Love Shouldn’t Hurt. Panelists with lived child welfare experience reflect on how trauma, housing instability, and system involvement can shape beliefs about love and safety. This honest conversation explores survival-based relationships, healing, and what it takes to build emotionally safe connections. Listener discretion advised.

On this Headlines edition of The Imprint Weekly Podcast, we start with a discussion of three medication-assisted treatments for substance use that the Trump administration has cleared for federal child welfare funding.

Also discussed on this episode: new national data on abuse and neglect investigations, Georgia’s budget woes, and two alarming indicators of the workforce crisis in youth justice. 

Reading Room

Top Trump Health Officials Announce New Funding for Opioid Addiction Treatment To Prevent Foster Care Removals 

https://imprintnews.org/top-stories/top-trump-health-officials-announce-new-funding-for-opioid-addiction-treatment-to-prevent-foster-care-removals/270780

Rolling Out the Welcome Mat for Prevention

https://imprintnews.org/uncategorized/rolling-out-the-welcome-mat-for-prevention/270728

Maltreatment Reports, Victims and Fatalities All Down in 2024

https://imprintnews.org/youth-services-insider/maltreatment-reports-victims-and-fatalities-all-down-in-2024/270409

Child Maltreatment 2024

https://acf.gov/sites/default/files/documents/cb/cm2024.pdf

Georgia Child Welfare Cuts Called ‘Unacceptable,’ House Proposes Budget to Relieve Foster Care Deficit 

https://imprintnews.org/top-stories/georgia-child-welfare-cuts-called-unacceptable-house-proposes-budget-to-relieve-foster-care-deficit/270856

‘Where I Felt Loved:’ Renovated Housing Complex Supports Georgia Foster Youth Transitioning to Independence

https://imprintnews.org/foster-care/where-i-felt-loved-renovated-housing-complex-supports-georgia-foster-youth-transitioning-to-independence/270632

Beshear Wants More Juvenile Detention Centers. KY Can’t Staff Existing Ones

https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article314389699.html

‘Worse Than Rikers’: Lawsuit Claims Abusive Use of Solitary Confinement in New York’s Juvenile Lockups

https://imprintnews.org/top-stories/ny-official-responds-to-reports-of-abusive-conditions-in-youth-detention-facilities/270814

On this week’s episode we talk to Don Wells, the Chief Empowerment Officer at Just In Time, which is a San Diego based organization working to support and mentor older foster youth on their path to adulthood. 

President Trump signed an executive order on foster care at the end of 2025 which instructed his Department of Health and Human Services on some priorities for federal policy around improved data and evaluation, more support for older foster youth, and more efforts to include faith-based persons and organizations in child welfare services.

The Imprint recently published an op-ed from Wells, who felt that the president’s order misses the mark on what is needed from the federal government to better support foster youth. He joined the podcast to speak further about his views on the Trump order, about what Just in Time does on the community level to help foster youth, and more. 

Don Wells is the Chief Empowerment Officer at Just In Time. He is a recent recipient of the Casey Excellence for Children Leadership Award

Reading Room

Don Wells of Just in Time for Foster Youth Honored with Casey Excellence for Children Leadership Award
https://www.thevistapress.com/don-wells-of-just-in-time-for-foster-youth-honored-with-casey-excellence-for-children-leadership-award/

Just in Time for Foster Youth

https://jitfosteryouth.org/

With New Executive Order, Trump Thrusts Foster Care Into National Spotlight

https://imprintnews.org/top-stories/with-new-executive-order-trump-thrusts-foster-care-into-national-spotlight/268739

Fostering the Future for American Children and Families

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/11/fostering-the-future-for-american-children-and-families/

In this restorative Season 3 premiere of InnerViews, host Ivory Bennett reunites with Dr. Alison Davis for a soulful conversation on renewal, emotional safety, and intentional becoming. Together, they reflect on the lessons of the past season, explore what no longer serves them, and name what deserves to be carried forward. This episode invites listeners to pause, breathe, and consider how healing, boundaries, and self-compassion can shape the life they’re building next.

Last week, the Baltimore Sun’s Jean Marbella reported on a lawsuit filed on behalf of youth in the state’s foster care system who had been left in hospital wards with no plan for a return to the community. 

While the lawsuit focuses on events in the past two years, this has been a problem for far longer than that in Maryland. In 2022, we were joined by Erin Dorrien and Carrie Etheridge to discuss this exact issue of kids getting stuck in the hospital well after anyone thinks they need to be there.

Dorrien and Etheridge explained exactly how and why this had become such a challenge in Maryland’s child welfare system, and what they were hoping the legislature could do to improve the situation. Today we are re-releasing that interview. 

Erin Dorrien is an associate principal at Health Management Associates. At the time this interview was recorded, she was vice president of policy for the Maryland Hospital Association. Carrie Etheridge is the director of social work at Sheppard Pratt.

Original release date: May 2, 2022

Reading Room

144 Maryland Foster Children Were Stuck in Hospitals, Sometimes for Months, after Doctors Cleared Them

https://www.baltimoresun.com/2026/01/15/foster-care-hospitals-children/

Maryland H.B. 406: Children in Out-Of-Home Placements
https://bit.ly/3P1Xp6y

Stranded in the ER: Can California Change its Treatment of Kids in Crisis?
https://bit.ly/3B41pMu

In our first podcast of 2026, we discuss new data on the administration’s goal of A Home for Every Child, a new leader for the U.S. Children’s Bureau, Trump’s freezing of safety net funds in five states, and more. 

Reading Room

Why We Are Putting the PIP on a PIP 

https://imprintnews.org/opinion/why-we-are-putting-the-pip-on-a-pip/269784

How States Stack Up on Trump’s “A Home for Every Child” Agenda

https://bit.ly/4qmHcLo

Trump Administration Issues Deadline Demands Before Releasing Children’s Aid 

https://bit.ly/4sDYV2u

Alex Adams Seeks Names in Hasty Push For Personal Data of Minnesota Social Service and Foster Care Recipients

https://bit.ly/4jIUgbC

Trump Administration Cancels Several DEI-Related Child Welfare Grants

https://bit.ly/3Nt2SH3

Feds Asks 39 States To Stop Taking Foster Kids’ Benefits

https://bit.ly/4qjraC5

President Trump Has Made His Pick for the Federal Children’s Bureau

https://bit.ly/4sDYFjO

Foster Care and Child Maltreatment Mortality Rates in the US

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2843235

SOHO Forum: Should CPS intervene more?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0462gYjkbc

The Other Trump Child Welfare Doctrine Issued This Month

https://imprintnews.org/subscriber-content/the-other-trump-child-welfare-doctrine-issued-this-month/268999

Candice Broce Faces Lawmakers About Georgia’s Child Welfare Budget Crisis

https://bit.ly/4jIs7kW

New York Governor Signs Law to End Anonymous Reporting of Child Maltreatment

https://imprintnews.org/child-welfare-2/new-york-governor-signs-law-to-end-anonymous-reporting-of-child-maltreatment/269804

The Number of Children in Los Angeles County Foster Care Has Plunged. The Imprint Set Out To Discover Why

https://bit.ly/456MbqZ

How An Indigenous Mom’s Adoption Journey Inspired Her Nonprofit

https://imprintnews.org/top-stories/three-precious-miracles-arizona-nonprofit/269711

Crisis Confidential: Things We Learned So You Don’t Have To

https://imprintnews.org/opinion/crisis-confidentialthings-learned/269818

As always, we were fortunate to have some amazing guests join us this year on The Imprint Weekly Podcast. In this episode we feature clips of 12 great interviews from 2025. 

If you enjoy this podcast, or the great work our reporters do at The Imprint and
Fostering Families Today, and the work that our Youth Voices Rising team does,
please consider making a donation. And if you do so this month, during
Newsmatch, your donation will get doubled!

Fostering Media Connections is very lucky to have some terrific philanthropic supporters, advertisers and sponsors, and subscribers to our business and policy section that help make this organization go. But we really cannot do it without donors like you who read our stuff, listen to our podcasts and attend our online
events. 

There are tons of really great nonprofit, independent news outlets to support out there, and we hope you consider us one of them. To give today it’s easy! Visit www.imprintnews.org/donate.

Liz Ryan, former administrator, U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

Linda Spears, CEO, Child Welfare League of America

Kelley Fong, assistant professor of sociology, University of California, Irvine

Amy Harfeld, national policy director and senior staff attorney, Children's
Advocacy Institute

Sacha Klein, associate professor, Michigan State University School of Social Work

Alex Briscoe, co-founder, Public Works Alliance

Brandon Nichols, director, Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services

Barissa Ford, director of community outreach and engagement, Youth In Need

Claudia Rowe, editorial writer, Seattle Times, author of Wards of the State

Gretchen Sisson, qualitative sociologist, University of California, San Francisco,
author of Relinquished

Vinny Schiraldi, visiting fellow, Pinkerton Foundation

Alex Adams, assistant secretary for family support, Administration for Children and Families

We will post our annual “Best of The Imprint Weekly Podcast” show next, but this is the last new episode of 2025. Frequent guest Marina Nitze, a child welfare and tech expert, joined to discuss the flurry of federal activity on child welfare since the end of the federal shutdown. 

Marina Nitze is a crisis engineer helping organizations solve mission-critical challenges, with a particular focus on improving America’s child welfare system. She’s co-author of Crisis Engineering and Hack Your Bureaucracy, and helps organize the Child Welfare Playbook.

Reading Room

White House Watch

https://imprintnews.org/special-series/white-house-watch

Kinship Licensing, with Marina Nitze

https://imprintnews.org/podcast/headlines-kinship-licensing-marina-nitze

The Child Welfare Playbook, with Marina Nitze

https://imprintnews.org/podcast/child-welfare-playbook-marina-nitze