ICFW Newsletter, Summer 2024

The mission of the Institute for Child and Family Well-Being is to improve the lives of children and families with complex challenges by implementing effective programs, conducting cutting-edge research, engaging communities, and promoting systems change.

The Institute for Child and Family Well-Being is a collaboration between Children’s Wisconsin and the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The shared values and strengths of this academic-community partnership are reflected in the Institute’s three core service areas: Program Design and Implementation, Research and Evaluation, and Community Engagement and Systems Change.

In This Issue:


Meet the ICFW

Meet Our New Predoctoral Fellow

Photo of Jane eun (Janie) Park

The ICFW continues to support a predoctoral fellowship training program that provides mentorship and funding to doctoral students whose research can be applied to promote better and more equitable outcomes for children and families.

We are proud to announce our newest predoctoral fellow Jae eun (Janie) Park. Her research broadly focuses on identifying the risk and protective factors that influence vulnerability or resilience in children and mothers exposed to violence. Her overarching goal is to contribute to the development and implementation of culturally sensitive interventions that improve parenting, mental health, and child development outcomes.

Janie holds a master’s degree in Behavioral Health from Tulane University and is currently pursuing her doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology at the University of Notre Dame.

Learn more about the ICFW Predoctoral Fellowship.


Meet our new MSW Interns

Ashley Ross is currently in the MSW program at UW- Milwaukee. Her areas of interest are in community-based social work and services related to children, families, and trauma informed care. She is excited to get involved with SFTCCC as well as the Overloaded: Understanding Neglect podcast hosted by the ICFW. Through her internship at ICFW, she hopes to learn more about the gaps in the community and initiatives that ICFW are working on to close these gaps.

Ashley also works part time at Rogers Behavioral Health where she has worked for the last 5 years. She has a BSW, and with her MSW she hopes to work in a macro setting to advocate for clients in her community who are in need of mental health services.


Jessica Thomas is currently studying for her MSW at Louisiana State University, Geaux Tigers! She has a mixed bag of experience through her previous studies, receiving her first degree, a BBA in Marketing from Boise State University, and later receiving her teaching license in elementary education.

Jessica is currently an academic interventionist whose interactions with her students sparked her interest in social work, specifically social-emotional development, mental health, and education reform. As a mother of a 10- and 14-year-old and a teacher for students who struggle academically, Jessica has witnessed and understands the importance of healthy and supportive environments for adequate child development. She is excited to be working with the ICFW on their initiatives to support Wisconsin’s families in overcoming adversity due to failing systems and policies, and is also most excited to be involved in their work that directly impacts the health and well-being of Wisconsin’s youth.


Photo of Annie Van Hoof

Annie Van Hoof is currently studying for her MSW at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee with a focus on macro level work. Her main areas of interest focus on advocacy for current and future social workers and investing in building the workforce to be able to provide better servicing to the community. Annie is also interested in helping to find preventative ways to alleviate families having ongoing involvement in the child welfare system who might not need it.

Annie currently works as an Options Counselor for Wraparound Milwaukee and has been in this role for just over 3 years. She previously attended UW-Milwaukee where she received her bachelor’s degree in Social Work. Since then she has been working in multiple direct service roles in juvenile justice, child welfare, and crisis stabilization. 


Program Design and Implementation

The Institute develops, implements and disseminates validated prevention and intervention strategies that are accessible in real-world settings.

Translational Design Workshop

By Megan Frederick-Usoh

Welcome to the Institute for Child and Family Well-being (ICFW) online Translational Design Workshop!

Do you have a longstanding problem facing the families in your community? Is your agency or organization seeking innovative ways to influence the narrative surrounding child welfare, poverty or other systemic issues in your community? If so, this workshop is for you!

This workshop will strengthen your ability to translate the latest science and evidence into innovative solutions, work across sectors to identify points of convergence and foster the community collaboration essential for widespread implementation. It will ultimately serve as a structured space to connect, ideate and tackle challenging problems together to produce solutions that will uplift families and your community.

Learning Environment:

The Translational Design workshop consists of two 3-week training periods and is structured to meet the needs of busy schedules. At your own pace, you will complete weekly activities and exercises that are focused on creating tangible opportunities for knowledge application. Each workshop is customized to meet the needs of the attendees, with relevant activities that promote thinking about your “big question” and help you prototype solutions.

Each weekly session will be supplemented with instructor-led practice sessions, where you can ask questions and build a community of practice with your peers. Teamwork is encouraged and teams can be as large as four people.

As a result of this workshops, innovators will be able to:

  • Brainstorm and design solutions to longstanding challenges
  • Engage content and context experts in the design and improvement processes
  • Build a Community of Practice which can serve as a learning collaborative and supportive capacity-builder
  • Identify and frame the challenges concerning complex issues that have been standing in the way of program-and client level success
  • Move your program or current research more quickly into practice (a new program, service, curriculum, tool, etc.)

Registration fee: $400 for a team of up to four people. Scholarships available!

If you are interested in learning more about the workshop or registering for this upcoming cohort, contact Megan Frederick-Usoh at mfrederick-usoh@childrenswi.org or Luke Waldo at lwaldo@childrenswi.org.


Research and Evaluation

The Institute accelerates the process of translating knowledge into direct practices, programs and policies that promote health and well-being, and provides analytic, data management and grant-writing support.

Recent ICFW Publications

Romain Dagenhardt, D., Sharif, S., Belasco, E., & Topitzes, J. (2024). Examining the strengths and challenges of a Smart Reentry Program: Lessons learned. Journal of Social Service Research.

Berger, L., Topitzes, J. & Di Paolo, M. (2024). Training master of social work students in brief intervention for unhealthy alcohol use: Results of a validated adherence assessment. Substance Use & Addition Journal, 45(2).


Community Engagement & Systems Change

The Institute develops community-university partnerships to promote systems change that increases the accessibility of evidence-based and evidence-informed practices.

Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities Initiative – Reimagining Mandated Reporting

By Leah Cerwin

The Institute for Child and Family Well-Being (ICFW) hosts learning sessions involving various invested parties to address the challenges of mandated reporting training and laws in meeting the needs of overloaded families. People from various counties across the state have come together to address how family separations resulting from neglect are frequently linked to poverty. The practice of mandated reporting can create surveillance and trauma for these families without offering the necessary support and resources.

The Mandated Reporting Reform workgroup, comprising members from Dane, Walworth, Waukesha, Rock, Brown, and Milwaukee Counties, has identified common themes in the experiences of mandated reporters. They have also highlighted opportunities for fostering connections to drive positive change.

Over the past many months, we have hosted presentations from medical social workers, school social workers, and child welfare trainers who have shared their lived experience with mandated reporting in medical and school settings as well as with systemic racism and bias.

In the coming months, we will be identifying the gaps in perspectives that exist within our network before transitioning into some initial scenario planning that may lead to new proposed actions and solutions to the challenges presented by mandated reporting’s current state. Now is a great time to consider joining the conversation and network to share your experience and learn from changemakers from across our state and systems.

If you are interested in joining us, please email Leah Cerwin at lcerwin@childrenswi.org or Luke Waldo at lwaldo@childrenswi.org.

Join our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities’ Critical Pathways journey here.


Milwaukee Independent Column Featuring Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities Initiative

By Luke Waldo

Beginning in January of this year, I was given the honor to share the work that we are doing in Milwaukee and across our state with our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative through a monthly column in the Milwaukee Independent. Read my latest columns below.

May’s column: Why Mandated Reporting is not Supporting Children and Families in Wisconsin

June’s column: Why Reimagining the Workforce Across Wisconsin Will Better Support Overloaded Families

August column: The Promise of a Guaranteed Income for the Economic Stability of Milwaukee Families


Recent and Upcoming Events

The Institute provides training, consultation and technical assistance to help human service agencies implement and replicate best practices. If you are interested in training or technical assistance, please complete our speaker request form.

Upcoming Event

Recent Events

Milwaukee Independent Column

Beginning in January of this year, Luke Waldo was given the honor to share the work that we are doing in Milwaukee and across our state with our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative through a monthly column in the Milwaukee Independent.

The Milwaukee Independent is an award-winning and advertising-free daily news magazine that advocates for inclusive social understanding in Milwaukee by publishing positive news content that covers a wide range of topics as a catalyst for community development. With a heavy emphasis on photojournalism and analytical reporting to fulfill this mission, our editorial staff is focused to being translators and storytellers more than traditional news correspondents.


ICFW Newsletter, Spring 2024

The mission of the Institute for Child and Family Well-Being is to improve the lives of children and families with complex challenges by implementing effective programs, conducting cutting-edge research, engaging communities, and promoting systems change.

The Institute for Child and Family Well-Being is a collaboration between Children’s Wisconsin and the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The shared values and strengths of this academic-community partnership are reflected in the Institute’s three core service areas: Program Design and Implementation, Research and Evaluation, and Community Engagement and Systems Change.

In This Issue:


Program Design and Implementation

The Institute develops, implements and disseminates validated prevention and intervention strategies that are accessible in real-world settings.

Translational Design Workshop

By Megan Frederick-Usoh

The Institute for Child and Family Well-being warmly welcomes the April 2024 cohort of Translational Design (TD). This workshop brings together human-centered design and evidence-based practice to develop innovative, sustainable solutions that support children and families.

Our current cohort is a unique representation of the child and family servicing field, including participants from Healthy Start and family preservation programs as well as leadership in residential treatment for youth. By harnessing the strengths of human-centered design, translational research, and strategic co-creation, this diverse cohort is poised to make significant strides toward developing sustainable solutions that will empower our communities.

Translational Design Workshop at a glance

TD prioritizes human-centered, system-responsive solutions that foster resilience in our -communities. By bridging cutting-edge research with practical interventions, TD seeks to mitigate the unique challenges faced by children, families, and service providers. The design follows a three phase process:

  1. Shared Understanding: Participants establish a unified perspective on the issues at hand. A common understanding of challenges creates a clear target for efficient solutions.
  2. Co-Creation: By engaging both professionals and those with lived experiences, participants will design and test innovative solutions that can be effectively implemented within their systems.
  3. Capacity-Building: The cohort will gain the tools and knowledge necessary for sustained implementation, including program materials, training, and coaching.

Stay tuned for the inspiring innovations that will emerge from this cohort. If you are interested in learning more about the TD workshop or registering for future cohorts, contact Megan Frederick-Usoh at mfrederick-usoh@childrenswi.org or Luke Waldo at lwaldo@childrenswi.org.


Research and Evaluation

The Institute accelerates the process of translating knowledge into direct practices, programs and policies that promote health and well-being, and provides analytic, data management and grant-writing support.

New Project Enhancing School-Centered Mental Health Services

By Allison Amphlett

This project is designed to strengthen and evaluate Lutheran Social Services (LSS) of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan’s School-Centered Mental Health (SCMH) model, which combines traditional school-based counseling with in-home support provided by a family coach. Through screening, referral, and service coordination, family coaches address social determinants of health and enhance family stability, reinforcing the impact of school-based clinical services on children’s mental health and well-being.

With funding from the Wisconsin Partnership Program at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, the ICFW UWM and LSS teams will collaborate on a multi-method evaluation gathering data from students, families, and program staff to support continuous improvement and refinement of the program model in anticipation of future dissemination and implementation research.


Community Engagement & Systems Change

The Institute develops community-university partnerships to promote systems change that increases the accessibility of evidence-based and evidence-informed practices.

Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities (SFTCCC) Initiative Progress and Updates

By Gabe McGaughey

We began our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities (SFTCCC) journey in 2022 with the belief that bringing people together, sharing ideas, and building relationships can drive systems and policy changes to prevent family separation due to neglect. The past six months have been especially energizing as we continue to connect with passionate changemakers, learning from many along the way. We’re building a shared understanding around key issues in our critical pathways, striving to strengthen local capacity, elevating local efforts, highlighting innovative ideas, and fostering strong relationships. Here are some highlights since our last newsletter:

Neglect is a Local Challenge

We convened roundtables across the state to understand how neglect manifests in different communities. Neglect is closely tied to local issues such as poverty, and the unique interests and resources in each community make it a distinctly local challenge. While common issues exist, challenges like ‘inadequate safe and affordable housing’ vary significantly from Milwaukee to Black River Falls.

Together for Children Conference

In April, during Strengthening Families Month, the Institute for Child and Family Well-Being (ICFW) facilitated a seminar at the Together for Children Conference titled “Empowering Communities: Innovative Strategies for Preventing and Responding to Child Neglect.” The seminar focused on collaborative and innovative approaches to address child neglect. It highlighted the critical role of partnerships, particularly with public organizations like Wisconsin’s Department of Children and Families (DCF) and local county programs, in fostering systemic changes and supporting stressed families. The event emphasized the importance of community engagement, shared learning, and co-designed solutions to prevent family separations due to neglect.

Mandated Reporting Shift

Ongoing discussions in our Basecamp forum and monthly Zoom meetings have focused on rethinking mandated reporting in our state. How can we encourage those making referrals to reconsider the role of Child Protection? Insights from medical social workers on reporting in their settings have been particularly valuable. Upcoming discussions will delve deeper into this topic. See Leah Cerwin’s article below for more information on this effort.

Season 2 of Our Podcast Wraps

Season 2 of “Overloaded: Understanding Neglect” has concluded, delving deeper into the systemic issues contributing to child neglect. The season explored the interplay between societal structures and individual circumstances, featuring experts, including social workers, policymakers, and families. The episodes discussed innovative strategies to prevent neglect and strengthen community support systems, emphasizing collaborative solutions and community engagement to create lasting change for vulnerable families.

The road to accomplishing our goal is long, and we understood this from the start. What keeps us optimistic is the positive response from people connecting around issues and efforts to move upstream. As we learn more about what works and what still needs to happen, we move closer to writing a new narrative about neglect prevention in Wisconsin. If you’re interested in joining the conversation, join our Basecamp community here or through the QR code.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities (SFTCCC) Initiative

Q1: What is SFTCCC?

A1: The Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities (SFTCCC) initiative, launched in 2022, aims to prevent family separation due to neglect by fostering collaborations and building relationships across various sectors.

Q2: How does SFTCCC address child neglect?

A2: SFTCCC tackles child neglect by promoting partnerships, shared learning, and innovative strategies tailored to local community challenges, such as poverty and inadequate housing.

Q3: What are the recent updates from SFTCCC?

A3: Recent highlights include roundtables on local neglect challenges, a seminar at the Together for Children Conference, ongoing discussions about mandated reporting, and the conclusion of Season 2 of the podcast “Overloaded: Understanding Neglect.”

Q4: Why is child neglect a local challenge?

A4: Neglect is a local challenge because its causes and solutions vary widely between communities, requiring tailored, community-specific approaches.

Q5: What was discussed at the Together for Children Conference?

A5: The seminar focused on innovative strategies to prevent child neglect, emphasizing partnership, local dynamics, and storytelling to create conditions for change.

Q6: What are the discussions on mandated reporting about?

A6: The discussions aim to rethink when to refer to CPS, encouraging better support for families and more effective referral practices with community partners.

Q7: What themes were covered in Season 2 of the podcast?

A7: Season 2 explored systemic issues contributing to neglect, featuring experts discussing collaborative solutions and community engagement with policy, practice, and lived experience experts.


Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities Initiative: Reimagining Mandated Reporting in the Community Collaboration Pathway

By Leah Cerwin

The Institute for Child and Family Well-Being (ICFW) hosts learning sessions involving various invested parties to address the shortcomings and challenges of mandated reporting training and laws in meeting the needs of Milwaukee families.

Individuals from various counties across the state have come together to address how family separations resulting from neglect are frequently linked to poverty. The practice of mandated reporting can create surveillance and trauma for these families without offering the necessary support and resources.

The Reimagining Mandated Reporting workgroup, comprising members from Dane, Walworth, Waukesha, Rock, Brown, and Milwaukee counties, has identified common themes in the experiences of mandated reporters. They have also highlighted opportunities for fostering connections to drive positive change.

These themes have included improving mandated reporter training, collaborating across systems, addressing gaps in community resources, and incorporating parent voice.

The ICFW is currently hosting Inquiry Based Learning Sessions, in which guest speakers from identified sectors attend to discuss what mandated reporting looks like in their area of practice. April speakers included those in medical settings, and future topics and speakers are being identified by the group for subsequent sessions.

Join our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities’ Critical Pathways journey here.


Join the Conversation: Moving Towards a More Inclusive and Innovative Workforce

By Megan Frederick-Usoh

In a political paradigm that is marked by rapid social and economic shifts, the conversation around workforce inclusion and innovation has never been more urgent. As such, we have asked ourselves, stakeholders and those with lived experience many challenging questions.

Most recently, in a conversation with our partners, we asked, “How might we leverage preexisting systems to diversify, support and expand our workforce?” This question is loaded with opportunity and offers many routes for advancement and points for exploration. As one of many actionable solutions, we conducted a deep dive into the role of paraprofessionals in the workforce and proposed the following innovation.

Support the expanded role of paraprofessionals in prevention efforts by prioritizing evidence-based interventions suitable for them in the IV-E Clearinghouse, offering technical assistance, disseminating best practices for their deployment, and providing training for adapting these interventions for paraprofessional delivery.


Lack of accessibility to child and family health interventions is ubiquitous. However, with the expansion of the paraprofessional workforce, we can at a minimum, increase opportunities for peer support, shorten waitlist for drug treatment and mitigate workforce shortages.

Paraprofessionals possess experiential knowledge that injects a sense of connectivity and specificity into the intervention, attributes that are often absent in the professional healthcare workforce. With over 40% of paraprofessionals identifying as nonwhite[1], they bring essential racial and ethnic diversity to the field. This diversity enhances the workforce’s ability to implement interventions that are culturally and contextually appropriate, thereby bridging gaps in person centered service delivery to the families they serve.

Paraprofessionals as peer support are informed and empathetic, and uniquely positioned to form meaningful connections and foster supportive environments that can enhance mental health outcomes.[2] As drug addiction counselors, they increase accessibility and affordability of necessary treatments. According to Goldstrom et al (2006), mutual support groups and self-help organizations “run by and for mental health consumers” are more numerous, thereby shortening waitlist and increasing the timeliness of access to mental health services. 

By providing essential services locally, at a lower cost and in greater numbers, paraprofessionals fill workforce gaps in rural areas, strengthen community ties and enhance sustainability of interventions in underserved service areas.[3]

As a part of our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative, we seek to build a shared understanding around family separations due to reasons of neglect. Our ongoing dialogue aims to explore and implement actionable solutions to challenges facing overloaded families in local communities as well as address overarching systemic issues. 

By engaging those with lived experience, industry experts and various stakeholders such as yourselves, we can co-create solutions that lead to a more inclusive and innovative workforce. Your input is invaluable and we want to hear from you.

Are there other ways workforce initiatives could help families prevent neglect?

Join us on Basecamp here to share your thoughts on our proposed innovation and/or the question above. Together, let’s shape a workforce that is not only equipped to handle the challenges of today but is also empowered to innovate for tomorrow.


[1] Zippia (2024). Education paraprofessional demographics and statistics in the US.

[2] Bryan, A. E., & Arkowitz, H. (2015). Meta-analysis of the effects of peer-administered psychosocial interventions on symptoms of depression. American journal of community psychology55, 455-471.

[3] Bryan & Arkowitz, Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Peer Administered Psychosocial Interventions on Symptoms of Depression


Milwaukee Independent Column Featuring Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities Initiative

By Luke Waldo

Beginning in January of this year, I was given the honor to share the work that we are doing in Milwaukee and across our state with our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative through a monthly column in the Milwaukee Independent. Read the latest columns below.

January’s column:  Why the Root Causes of Child Neglect Have Overloaded Families in Milwaukee and Across the State

February’s column: How the Weight of Poverty and Systemic Failures are Overloading Families

April’s column: A Journey through India and its Lessons of Social Connectedness for Milwaukee

May’s column: Why Mandated Reporting is not Supporting Children and Families in Wisconsin


Recent and Upcoming Events

The Institute provides training, consultation and technical assistance to help human service agencies implement and replicate best practices. If you are interested in training or technical assistance, please complete our speaker request form.

Upcoming Events

  • Reimagining Mandated Reporting – Overloaded: Understanding Neglect Podcast Event – May 14th
  • Community Collaboration Critical Pathway Meeting – Mandated Reporting in Medical Settings – May 31st
  • Transforming Narratives on Child Neglect: A Workshop on Framing, Storytelling, and AI – June 26th

Recent Events

2023 Year in Review

his past year we celebrated the introduction of new projects and phases that seek to strengthen families and the systems that support them such as our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiativeHope and Healing for Children Who Experience Family Violenceand Addressing Unresolved Trauma: JobsWork MKE. As we reflect on the potential of our new initiatives and projects, we recognize and honor the enormous value of the relationships that we have developed over these years that make possible the advancing of our mission to promote the well-being of all children and families by addressing barriers that result in unequal access to the best available care and solutions. As we enter new phases in our projects and work, we will continue to deepen and strengthen those relationships, learn from our partners’ research and lived experience, and aspire to translate what we learn into prevention and intervention strategies that make a real difference in people’s lives. The list of agencies and stakeholders who deserve our gratitude is too long to acknowledge here, but we invite you to check out our project pages where you will find many of our key partners.

As we begin 2024 – our eighth year as the Institute – our aim is to strengthen these alliances and forge new community connections that are necessary to disseminate effective strategies and produce lasting systems and community change. So take a moment to review what we learned and accomplished in 2023, and check out our newsletter, social media, webpage, and SFTCCC signup to learn more about what we are doing and how you can join us.


Meet the New ICFW Team Members

We welcomed new team members and roles to the Institute this year. Learn more about them here.

 Masters of Social Work Interns

  • Andrea Bailey
  • Jo Cabrera
  • Jill Finnel
  • Joe Moreno
  • Sylvia Onyeiwu

Research Assistants

  • Theresa Beaumier
  • Sara Chopp
  • Xiyao Liu

Predoctoral Fellow

  • Daniela Kaiser
Kaiser

ICFW Enters New Phase of SFTCCC Initiative and Second Season of Overloaded Podcast

We are excited to announce the four Critical Pathways of the Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities (SFTCCC) initiative and our Overloaded: Understanding Neglect podcast.

Critical Pathways are specific problem/priority spaces that are focal points for elevating or designing specific and actionable system-level solutions. Over the course of our first year, we hosted many community roundtables and information gather sessions. We have analyzed the data that we have collected through these community events along with the emerging research in the field to develop our four Critical Pathways.

  1. Economic Stability
  2. Social Connectedness
  3. Community Collaboration
  4. Workforce Inclusion and Innovation

In season 2 of Overloaded: Understanding Neglectwe will be exploring these complex issues through our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities’ four Critical Pathways, our roadmaps for discovering and developing innovative solutions to the wicked problems that overload families.

Subscribe and listen wherever you find your podcasts or at this link here.


ICFW Dissemination in 2023: New Journal Articles and Webinars

Translational Design Workshop graphic

Projects and Partnerships


Memorable 2023 Events and Upcoming Events

The Institute provides training, consultation and technical assistance to help human service agencies implement and replicate best practices. If you are interested in training or technical assistance, please complete our speaker request form.

Upcoming Events:

Uniting Housing and Child Welfare: Pathways to Progress

November 16, 2023

Housing provides a foundation for health, well-being, and prosperity for children, families, and communities. However, many families experiencing having a child separated from their family into foster care experiencing high rates of housing instability. These hurdles, such as limited affordable housing, absentee landlords, eviction, economic and racial divides, and barriers to housing equity further strain families already overloaded by stress.

Metropolitan Milwaukee is enduring a housing crisis, underscored by high eviction rates and a dearth of affordable housing. Over 50% of Milwaukee’s renters are burdened by rent, spending more than 30% of their income on it. The city also reveals a glaring shortfall in affordable rentals, with only 29 homes available for every 100 low-income renters. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that unstable housing situations heighten the risk of child removal due to maltreatment. Furthermore, such instability can plunge parents into economic distress, stress, and mental health issues, heightening family separation risks.

Join MCAPS for a virtual conversation, as we discuss:

  • how housing instability impacts families who have contact with child protective services (CPS),
  • the implications of the current housing context in Milwaukee on child protective services
  • current systemic challenges around housing in Milwaukee
  • lessons learned from a CPS housing voucher program in Kenosha

Our goal is to promote housing solutions that support families overloaded by stress and prevent involvement in the child protective services system.  Your involvement can help champion stable, secure, and affordable housing as a community priority, making a positive difference in family lives.

Resources:

Watch the webinar recording here 

Community Advocates

Recent ICFW Publications: Intergenerational Trauma

Two new ICFW papers uncover the intergenerational consequences of trauma.

ICFW predoctoral fellow, Anthony Gómez, headed a study that called attention to the lasting effects of maternal incarceration on children’s social and emotional development.

Dr. Colleen Janczewski, ICFW policy and practice analyst, showed that childhood adversity predicts adult experiences of domestic violence and involvement in the child welfare system.

Announcing Season 2 of Overloaded: Understanding Neglect

Announcing season 2 of Overloaded: Understanding Neglect, a podcast series from the Institute for Child and Family Well-being.

Neglect is a complex and wicked problem, but it’s one that we believe is preventable if we work together to reimagine how we support families overloaded by stress.

So how might we address the root causes of poverty-induced stress and support family economic stability?

How might we strengthen social connectedness for our communities, caregivers, and children?

How might we foster authentic and inclusive community collaboration so that we can effectively address the historical and current inequities that have resulted in disproportionate rates of family separations among families of color and poor families?

And how might we diversify and support our workforce, and elevate and empower the contribution of families and staff with lived experience in our prevention services and the child welfare system to advance equity and justice for all families?

In season 2 of Overloaded: Understanding Neglect, we will be confronting these complex questions as we explore our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities’ four Critical Pathways, our roadmaps for discovering and developing innovative solutions to these wicked problems. Through the first year of our Strong Families initiative, which included season 1 of this podcast series, we were able to align the insights and experiences of those who know these issues best with the evidence that has shown promise in advancing meaningful solutions. This collaborative effort identified four critical pathways – Economic Stability, Social Connectedness, Community Collaboration, and Workforce Inclusion and Innovation – that will shape the future of our initiative that aspires to reduce family separations for reasons of neglect.

Join host Luke Waldo as he explores these Critical Pathways with research, policy, and practice experts Julie Ahnen from Dane County DHS, Clare Anderson from Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, Mark Cabaj of From Here 2 There, Laura Glaub of Madison Metro School District, Tim Grove of Wellpoint Care Network, Linda Hall of Wisconsin’s Office of Children’s Mental Health, Josh Mersky of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Rebecca Murray of Wisconsin’s Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board, Jermaine Reed of Fresh Start Family Services, Marc Seidl of Brown County DHHS, and Liz Weaver of the Tamarack Institute. Additionally, he will shine a light on these Critical Pathways through the practice and lived experience experts of many of Children’s Wisconsin’s child welfare and child maltreatment prevention programs and the caregivers with whom they have worked closely.

We believe neglect is preventable. Take a journey with us on our Critical Pathways to discover some of the strategies that can help us make that belief a reality for our families and communities. The conversations begin on Wednesday, December 6th when we premiere the first episode of season 2 of Overloaded: Understanding Neglect wherever you listen to your podcasts. Then come back each week on Wednesday to listen to the rest of the series.

Listen to the trailer wherever you listen to your podcasts:

Apple Podcasts

Amazon Music

Google Podcasts

Spotify

Season 2 Guests

Julie Ahnen

Manager of Child Protective Services
Dane County Department of Human Services

Julie Ahnen is a native of Madison, WI, and a graduate of the University of WI-Madison, receiving a graduate degree in Social Work in 1984. She has practiced professionally as a Social Worker since October of 1984, holding a variety of positions in the non-profit and private sector in the Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX area during her first 10 years of practice. Ms. Ahnen began employment with the Dane County Department of Human Services in June of 1995 where she has held a variety of positions within Child Protective Services as a line Social Worker and as a CPS Supervisor. Ms. Ahnen has been the Manager of Child Protective Services in Dane County since March of 2010.


Clare Anderson

Senior Policy Fellow
Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago

Clare Anderson is a Senior Policy Fellow at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. She uses research, policy, and fiscal levers to improve outcomes for children, youth, and families. Anderson engages child welfare agencies, stakeholders, and constituents in large-scale system change. This includes guiding states to implement the Family First Prevention Services Act. Additionally, Anderson is a national thought leader on economic and concrete supports as core to prevention of child welfare involvement, and the development of a family and child well-being system that prioritizes family support and cross-sector partnerships.

Prior to joining Chapin Hall, Anderson was Deputy Commissioner at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration on Children, Youth, and Families (ACYF). There, she provided leadership for federal programs including child welfare, runaway and homeless youth, domestic and intimate partner violence, and teen pregnancy prevention. During her tenure at ACYF, Anderson co-led the development and implementation of a national well-being policy agenda. She was among the chief architects of the effort to address trauma, adverse childhood experiences, and toxic stress in children known to child welfare. Anderson spent a decade at the Center for the Study of Social Policy helping states and urban jurisdictions change policies and practices to improve outcomes. This included initiatives such as Family to Family and Community Partnerships for Protecting Children, as well as federal court-ordered monitoring of child welfare agencies. Anderson started her career as a frontline social worker.

Anderson holds a Master of Social Work from the University of Alabama.


Amy Baldus

Family Support Worker
Children’s Wisconsin’s Stevens Point office

As a Family Support Worker, Amy’s role is to build connections between the family and community. Before starting with Children’s Wisconsin in 2016, Amy had over 20 years of experience working directly with children in various childcare settings. Amy feels her work is important because she believe it’s essential for every parent to feel valued and proud. Being a parent is hard, and knowing they are not alone in this and having someone rooting for them and supporting them can make all the difference in the world.


Mark Cabaj

President
Here to There Consulting Inc.

Mark is President of the consulting company From Here to There and an Associate of Tamarack – An Institute for Community Engagement. While studying the Solidarity movement in Krakow, Poland, in mid-1989, Mark experienced a variety of tumultuous events that signaled the end of communism in Eastern Europe – including walking on the Berlin Wall with a million people the week it came down in November 1989. He worked as an Investment Advisor in Poland’s Foreign Investment Agency, the Foreign Assistance Coordinator for Grants in the new Ministry of Privatization, and the Mission Coordinator for the creation of the United Nations Development Program’s first regional economic development initiative in Eastern Europe.

Back in Canada, Mark was the Coordinator of the Waterloo Region’s Opportunities 2000 project (1997-2000), an initiative that won provincial, national and international awards for its multi-sector approach to poverty reduction. He served as Executive Director of the Canadian Community Economic Development Network (CCEDNet) (2001) before joining the Tamarack Institute and becoming Executive Director of Vibrant Communities Canada (2002-2011).

Mark’s current focus is on developing practical ways to understand, plan and evaluate efforts to address complex issues. This includes addressing the systemic roots underlying issues related to poverty and homelessness, community safety, educational achievement, health and climate change. He is particularly involved in developing and promoting developmental evaluation, a new approach to assessment which emphasizes real time feedback and learning in emerging, messy and often fast-moving environments.

Mark lives in Edmonton, Alberta (Canada) with his wife Leann and their children Isaiah and Zoë.


Micaela Conlon-Bue

Prevention Supervisor
Children’s Wisconsin’s Black River Falls and Marshfield offices

Micaela has actively engaged in the culture of learning her entire adult life. She served five years in the United States Navy (USN) flying combat missions in HH-60 helicopters. After her service, Micaela attended The University of Minnesota where she completed her undergraduate and Master’s degrees. Micaela also worked at The University of Minnesota’s Youth Development Leadership Program and partnered with faculty to start a community based research program, Learning Dreams, which expanded across five elementary schools, three high schools, and two major metropolitan cities. Micaela’s programming efforts at Learning Dreams have gone on to impact state and local policies and contributed to educational theory on the importance of community in determining educational success and civic engagement. Micaela moved to Black River Falls after getting married in 2021. Micaela is the proud mother of four beautiful children and enjoys spending time with her family.


Laura Glaub

Lead Social Worker
Madison Metropolitan School District

Laura Glaub is lead social worker for Madison Metropolitan School District. She has had the honor of being in the school district for 12 years in various roles that have supported students and families in 4k-12 grade level as an AmeriCorps member, director of after school programming, elementary social worker and now in the lead role. In all these roles, Laura has had the opportunity to create connections with students, families and community members that continue to question and dismantle systems to create a true community of care, love, and support.


Tim Grove

Tim Grove

Senior Director of Trauma Informed Strategy and Practice
Wellpoint Care Network

Tim Grove serves as the Senior Director of Trauma Informed Strategy and Practice at Wellpoint Care Network. Tim has more than 25 years of experience in the social service field in a variety of programs and roles. Tim has been a Mentor with Dr. Bruce Perry’s Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT), is a master trainer of ACE Interface and is the creator of Wellpoint Care’s Trauma Informed Care (TIC) curriculum, 7 Essential Ingredients (7ei). In addition to leading the TIC efforts across all Wellpoint Care programs, Tim has been providing training and consulting on trauma, ACEs, secondary trauma/caregiver capacity and related topics for 15 years. Tim has worked with and trained a diverse group of professionals – including judges, police officers, juvenile justice and child welfare staff, hospitals and healthcare staff, child development staff, veteran groups, college/university staff and professors, Boys and Girls Clubs, Religious Groups, Correctional staff, employers/employment staff and many others.

Tim and the Wellpoint Care team’s work has been highlighted in various radio and television projects, including a 2018 60 Minutes segment with special correspondent Oprah Winfrey and a three-year research study on the effectiveness of 7ei in child welfare published by the Journal of Child Custody in 2019.


Linda Hall

Director
Wisconsin’s Office of Children’s Mental Health

The well-being of children has been a primary focus of Linda’s career in health and mental health policy.  She has pursued this children’s well-being and increased support for families agenda at the National Governors’ Association, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, Kids Forward, as Executive Director of the Wisconsin Association of Family & Children’s Agencies – an association for family-serving organizations, and as Interim Director for Community Partnerships – the Dane County wraparound program.  Linda holds a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a Masters in Theology with a specialization in Ethics from McCormick Theological Seminary.  Since being appointed by Governor Evers in 2019 to lead the Wisconsin Office of Children’s Mental Health, she has had the privilege of collaborating with state and mental health leaders, youth with lived experience, and parent partners to improve the children’s mental health system and highlight what we all can do to support the well-being of children.


Jessika Harlston

Jessika Harlston is a mother of 3 boys and a Financial Career Planner and Case Manager for individuals and families at Ross Innovative Employment Solutions. In Overloaded, she shares her experience of becoming socially isolated that led to child welfare involvement, and then her powerful story of reconnection with her family and support system. Jessika shares that “so many people look at me as this woman who has it all; when in reality, I am just like everyone else. I cry like everyone else, I struggle like everyone else, and of course, I smile like everyone else. Look at me and see a woman who has been through the trenches and now she creating her own golden brick road one brick at a time.”


Esmeralda Martinez

Parent Advocate
Children’s Wisconsin

Esmeralda Martinez is a lived experience professional and the Parent Advocate for Children’s Wisconsin child welfare ongoing services. Esme is the mother of a toddler and a teenager, is working on a degree in Psychology with a minor in Counseling. She was a victim of childhood trauma, survivor of domestic violence and trafficking, and has had personal child welfare involvement. Today, she is living a healthy, sober life.

Esme serves as a Parent Leader in Child Welfare with the Department for Children and Families. She is also part of the design team for Breaking Barriers, Rightsizing Congregate Care and has been a valued contributor to our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative.


Diana Maya

Diana Maya es madre de dos hijos y una hija. Ella es Mexicana de Nuevo Leon, y vive hoy en Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

Diana escribe “Mi infancia fue en su parte buena viviendo con mi abuela porque mi experiencia con mi mamá no fue muy buena, pero el dia de hoy he perdonado y sanado.”

Diana Maya is the mother of two sons and a daughter. She is Mexican from Nuevo Leon, and lives today in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

Diana writes, “My childhood was at times good living with my grandmother because my experience with my mom wasn’t very good, but now I have forgiven and healed.”


Josh Mersky

Co-Director

Institute for Child and Family Well-Being

Joshua Mersky is a founding director of the Institute for Child and Family Well-Being and a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Helen Bader School of Social Welfare. Dr. Mersky’s research interests include child maltreatment and other adverse experiences that undermine health and well-being over the life course. He is dedicated to working with local and state partners to translate evidence into real-world solutions that improve outcomes for vulnerable children and families. Dr. Mersky applies his expertise to the design, application, evaluation, and dissemination of effective practices, programs, and policies. He is currently the lead evaluator of the Family Foundations Home Visiting program, a partnership between the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families and Department of Health Services that supports evidence-based home visiting programs statewide. He also heads the Healthy Families Study, a randomized trial of multiple home visiting programs at the Milwaukee Health Department. In addition, Dr. Mersky is principal investigator of the Families and Children Thriving (FACT) Study, a longitudinal investigation into the health and well-being of at-risk children and families across Wisconsin.

Dr. Mersky and Dr. James Topitzes directed Project Connect, a randomized trial of a novel group-based model of parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT) for children in foster care. Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin integrated the model into its community services array based on results demonstrating that this intervention enhances the parenting skills of foster care providers and the mental health of children in foster care.

Through his collaborative work at ICFW, Dr. Mersky continues to promote the use of empirically validated interventions such as PCIT and TF-CBT as well as effective and innovative screening and assessment practices within the context of usual care.

Dr. Mersky holds a master’s degree in social work from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Ph.D. in social welfare from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also earned an advanced certificate in prevention science.


Rebecca Murray

Executive Director
Wisconsin’s Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board

Rebecca Murray joined the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board in 2011 and is currently the Executive Director.  In her previous position at the Prevention Board, Ms. Murray administer the grants program and provided technical assistance to the Prevention Board grantees. Ms. Murray is a certified trainer for “Bringing the Protective Factors Framework to Life in Your Work” and a Triple P Seminars accredited practitioner. Ms. Murray is also the Executive Director for the Celebrate Children Foundation, the fundraising agency for the Prevention Board. She received her Bachelor’s in Communication Arts and a Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire.


Jermaine Reed

Executive Director
Fresh Start Family Services

Jermaine Reed was born and reared in Milwaukee, WI. A 22 year child welfare career veteran, Reed is the first African-American person and foster parent in the history of Wisconsin to privately own a foster care agency. In 2011, he was one of two child welfare leaders in the state chosen to serve on the First Lady of Wisconsin’s “Fostering Futures” Steering Committee focused on advancing trauma informed care in child welfare and other child-and family serving systems; he served in that capacity for 3 years. In 2009, Reed was designated by Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration to lead a focus group on family support in the Governor’s 2009 Summit, Building Bridges to Family Economic Success.  Jermaine has committed his life to working on improving the quality of life for abused and neglected children and youth.  He focuses a lot of his work around partnering with and advising birth, foster and adoptive families, state and local officials, and other stakeholders.  Jermaine is committed to boldly addressing racial disproportionality and disparities in Wisconsin’s foster care system. Since 2010, Jermaine organizes and convenes the only child welfare conference in the nation that solely focuses on the needs of Black children, youth, and their families involved in foster care and juvenile justice systems. Each year there are between 450+ participants in attendance from across the child welfare spectrum.

Since beginning his speaking career in church at the age of 9, Reed has become a respected public speaker in a variety of circles. He infuses comedy, practicality, passion, and truth in all of his presentations. He is masterful in creating safe spaces to have hard conversations.  He is also a community advocate, playwright, and biological and adoptive parent.  Jermaine received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Upper Iowa University and completed master level courses at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.


Marc Seidl

Child Protection Initial Assessment Supervisor
Brown County Health and Human Services

Marc Seidl is currently a Child Protection Initial Assessment Supervisor with Brown County Health and Human Services. He has been a supervisor with Brown County for over seven years and was an Initial Assessment Social Worker in the field with families for 8 years for both Brown and Outagamie Counties.  Marc has been active in several local multidisciplinary teams involving drug endangered children, abusive injuries in young children and human trafficking.  Marc has presented on panels for NASW-WI’s annual conference in 2020 on how the pandemic was affecting child welfare practice as well as in 2022 on how the pandemic changed child welfare practice.  Marc was also a co-presenter at the 2022 Wisconsin Public Child Welfare Conference session on the changing mindset on Mandated Reporting.

Marc earned his MSW and BSW from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay both with an emphasis in Child Welfare. Marc is a member of the Child Welfare Advisory Committee for the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay as well as a member of the National Association of Social Workers and a past member of the Board of Directors for the Wisconsin Chapter.  Marc is also a member of the Wisconsin Human Services Association – Children, Youth and Families Advisory Committee.


Ayesha Teague

Family Support Specialist II
Children’s Wisconsin – Milwaukee office

Ayesha Teague began her career at Children’s Wisconsin in 2014 as a Family Support Specialist, working to support families whose children were placed in out of home care, succeeding a healthy career as an educator of over 12 years. While working to support those families’ needs, she also assisted with supervised visitations and family reunification. Because of her dedication, commitment, and passion to family support and care, Ayesha was promoted to Intensive In-Home Support Specialist, in 2018, where she currently works with families whose children remain in-home. Her endeavors to support families in maintaining a safe environment that enables the child(ren) to remain in their placement is coupled with teaching clients to model behavioral changes and increase their protective capacities.

In 2021 Children’s Wisconsin piloted the Early Intervention Services (EIS) program through DMCPS which has allowed her to intervene with families sooner, while DMCPS conducts their assessments. This early intervention allows Ayesha to provide supportive services and provide resources that prevent further Child Welfare involvement. Because of her involvement in the piloting phase, leadership saw fit for this talented advocate to be promoted to In-Home Training Specialist for the Family Support Program, where she diligently and enthusiastically trains new hires, while leading and supporting a team of specialist, to model appropriate conduct, behavior, and skills to support program participants while controlling safety in the homes.


Liz Weaver

Co-CEO
Tamarack Institute

Liz Weaver is the Co-CEO of Tamarack Institute and leads the Tamarack Learning Centre. The Tamarack Learning Centre advances community change efforts by focusing on five strategic areas including collective impact, collaborative leadership, community engagement, community innovation and evaluating community impact. Liz is well-known for her thought leadership on collaborative leadership and collective impact and is the author of several popular and academic papers on the topic. She is a co-catalyst partner with the Collective Impact Forum.   Liz is passionate about the power and potential of communities getting to impact on complex issues.

ICFW Newsletter, Fall 2023

The mission of the Institute for Child and Family Well-Being is to improve the lives of children and families with complex challenges by implementing effective programs, conducting cutting-edge research, engaging communities, and promoting systems change.

The Institute for Child and Family Well-Being is a collaboration between Children’s Wisconsin and the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The shared values and strengths of this academic-community partnership are reflected in the Institute’s three core service areas: Program Design and Implementation, Research and Evaluation, and Community Engagement and Systems Change.

In This Issue:


Meet the ICFW

Meet our Research Assistants

Theresa Beaumier is a research assistant for the Institute for Child and Family Well-Being. She is working on the Healing Adversity and Trauma through Conversation and Hope (HATCH) project.

Theresa is a doctoral student in Sociology at UW-Milwaukee. She is interested in sociology of mental health, environmental sociology, and mixed methods research, as well as conducting research in community settings. Theresa holds a BA in Religious Studies from St. Norbert College and an MA in Social and Applied Philosophy from Marquette University.


Sara Chopp is a Research Assistant and Project Coordinator currently engaged with the Milwaukee Equity Action Plan and Family Foundations Home Visiting (FFHV) evaluation.

She is dedicated to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within organizational cultures. She has a keen eye for scrutinizing organizational policies and practices through the lens of DEI standards, providing valuable insights and recommendations for their enhancement. She is an ABD in UWM’s Educational Psychology PhD program, holds a Master’s in Public Administration, and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Communication.


Xiyao Liu is a research assistant with the Institute for Child and Family Well-being. She is working on the Families and Children Thriving Study (FACT) and Strong and Stable Families (SSF) project.

Xiyao is a doctoral student in Social Welfare at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her research interests encompass areas such as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), child and adolescent developmental outcomes, racial and ethnic disparities, poverty, and intersectionality. Xiyao holds a Master of Social Work (MSW) from both the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.


Meet Our New Predoctoral Fellow

Kaiser

The ICFW continues to support a predoctoral fellowship training program that provides mentorship and funding to doctoral students whose research can be applied to promote better and more equitable outcomes for children and families.

We are proud to announce our newest predoctoral fellow Daniela Kaiser. Her research broadly explores how contact with criminal justice and child welfare systems shapes the wellbeing of families and children, as well as a wide array of collateral effects brought about by the involvement with these systems. Daniela holds a master’s degree in Criminological Research from the University of Cambridge and is currently a Criminology, Law and Society doctoral candidate at the University of California, Irvine.

Learn more about the ICFW Predoctoral Fellowship.


Program Design and Implementation

The Institute develops, implements and disseminates validated prevention and intervention strategies that are accessible in real-world settings.

Translational Design Workshop

By Megan Frederick-Usoh

Do you have a longstanding problem facing the families in your community?

We all know that accomplishing a positive shift in mindsets is both lofty and daunting, but essential to everlasting policy and systems change. If your organization is seeking innovative ways to influence the narrative surrounding child welfare, poverty or other systemic issues in your community, this workshop is for you!

The Translational Design workshop is a six-week training course that is structured to meet the needs of busy schedules. At your own pace, you will complete weekly on-line activities and exercises that are focused on creating tangible opportunities for knowledge application. Each weekly session will be supplemented with instructor-led practice sessions, where you can ask questions and build a Community of Practice with your peers.

Translational Design is a process that draws on different disciplines, from Human Centered DesignCommon Elements Approach, and Implementation Science into a three-phase process.

Learning Objectives:

  • Brainstorm and design solutions to longstanding challenges
  • Engage content and context experts in the design and improvement processes
  • Build a Community of Practice which can serve as a learning collaborative and supportive capacity-builder
  • Identify and frame the challenges concerning complex issues that have been standing in the way of program- and client- level success
  • Move your program or current research more quickly into practice

Join us as we create meaningful prototypes and tangible solutions.

Registration fee: $400 for a team of up to four people. Scholarships available.

If you are interested in joining the next cohort in early 2024, contact Megan Frederick-Usoh at mfrederick-usoh@childrenswi.org or Luke Waldo at lwaldo@childrenswi.org.


Research and Evaluation

The Institute accelerates the process of translating knowledge into direct practices, programs and policies that promote health and well-being, and provides analytic, data management and grant-writing support.


Recent ICFW Publications

Janczewski, C. E., & Nitkowski, J. (2023). Predicting mental and behavioral health service utilization among child welfare-involved caregivers: A machine learning approach. Children and Youth Services Review155, 107150.

A recent publication found a large portion of child welfare involved caregivers who reported needing mental health or substance misuse services did not receive services. Frequent contact with CPS workers, adverse experiences in adulthood, and court involvement in CPS case predicted service uptake.


Community Engagement & Systems Change

The Institute develops community-university partnerships to promote systems change that increases the accessibility of evidence-based and evidence-informed practices.


Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities Initiative – Economic Stability Critical Pathway

By Gabe McGaughey

Economic security plays a crucial role in reducing stress, contributing to a sense of well-being, and fostering healthy parenting and parent-child interactions. When discussing the biggest challenges that put families at risk for child welfare involvement due to neglect, SFTCCC participants consistently pointed to ‘poverty’, its associated struggles, and the stress it generates as the key obstacles to family functioning and child well-being. Child neglect is more likely in families that are experiencing an overload of stress related to the weight of poverty, which can overload parents’ abilities to provide the supportive relationships children need.

The Ripple Effects of Poverty on Parenting and Family Dynamics

Since the first roundtable, SFTCCC participants have identified poverty as the biggest challenge facing the families they work with, one that people working in family preservation programs feel like they lack tools to address. The stressors of poverty are complex and represent a constellation of challenges, from housing insecurity, economic shocks, lack of access to childcare, food insecurity, and navigating the benefits cliff.

While Wisconsin law states that family separation due to neglect should only happen for reasons other than poverty, economic insecurities are common among families with children entering the foster care system. Nationally, nearly 85% of families investigated by CPS earn below 200% of the poverty line. Children from economically insecure households are more likely to face maltreatment and neglect (Drake, 2014).

Poverty can lead to chronic stress, which negatively impacts parenting and parent-child interactions.

High levels of stress caused by poverty can result in parents becoming more irritable, less patient, and exacerbate mental health and substance use challenges. Parents experiencing financial strain may have limited time and resources to focus on their children’s needs, affecting the quality of their interactions.

When parents are overloaded by the stressors of poverty, it can negatively affect their ability to engage in healthy parenting practices, it harms their mental health, child development, and wellbeing. This includes being less responsive to their child’s needs, having difficulty setting boundaries, and exhibiting harsher discipline methods.

Breaking the Cycle: Supporting Family Economic Stability

To improve parent-child interactions and overall parenting, it is essential to address the root causes of poverty-induced stress and support family economic stability. This includes increasing access to resources such as affordable housing, healthcare, and education, as well as implementing policies to reduce income inequality.

Learning from innovative new initiatives in this space, broadening our network, and collectively advancing policy solutions are all opportunities for SFTCCC participants to contribute to moving forward. By creating a more supportive environment for families, we can help alleviate the stressors associated with poverty, thereby promoting healthy parenting and fostering stronger parent-child relationships.

Learn more about our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities’ Critical Pathways here.


Overloaded: Understanding Neglect Season 2 Coming Soon!

By Luke Waldo

We currently live in a time where over 90% of Americans are connected to each other and the world through smart phones, internet access, and social media.

At the same time, the US Surgeon General released a report this year titled “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation”, which calls out the fact that 1 in 4 Wisconsinites report that they only sometimes or never get the social and emotional support they need; and only 4 in 10 American adults said that they feel very connected to others in 2022.

In Wisconsin, Native American and Black families make up about 13% of our population, and yet make up 27% of all reports to Child Protective Services (CPS), 34% of all CPS investigations, 38% of all family separations, and a staggering 47% of group home placements.

Also, Native Americans and Black professionals in the three systems that contribute to the majority of reports to CPS – the education, law enforcement, and healthcare systems – are underrepresented, in some cases as low as 5% of that system’s workforce.

How might we address the root causes of poverty-induced stress and support family economic stability?

How might we strengthen social connectedness for our communities, caregivers, and children?

How might we foster authentic and inclusive community collaboration among our systems and organizations, service providers, communities, and families, so that we can effectively address the historical and current inequities that have resulted in disproportionate rates of family separations among families of color and poor families?

And how might we diversify and support our workforce and elevate and empower the contribution of families and staff with lived experience in our prevention services and the child welfare system to advance equity and justice for all families?

In season 2 of Overloaded: Understanding Neglectwe will be confronting these conflicting realities and complex questions as we explore our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities’ four Critical Pathways, our roadmaps for discovering and developing innovative solutions to these wicked problem. Through the first year of our Strong Families initiative, which included season 1 of this podcast series, we were able to align the insights and experiences of those who know these issues best with the evidence that has shown promise in advancing meaningful solutions. This collaborative effort identified four critical pathways – Economic StabilitySocial ConnectednessCommunity Collaboration, and Workforce Inclusion and Innovation – that will shape the future of our initiative that aspires to reduce family separations for reasons of neglect.

Join me, Luke Waldo, as I explore these Critical Pathways with research and policy experts Clare Anderson from Chapin Hall at the University of ChicagoMark Cabaj of From Here 2 ThereTim Grove of Wellpoint Care NetworkLinda Hall of Wisconsin’s Office of Children’s Mental Health, my Institute colleague Josh Mersky of the University of Wisconsin-MilwaukeeRebecca Murray of Wisconsin’s Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention BoardJermaine Reed of Fresh Start Family Services, and Liz Weaver of the Tamarack Institute. Additionally, we will shine a light on these Critical Pathways through the lived experience experts of many of my close colleagues at Children’s Wisconsin’s child welfare and child maltreatment prevention programs and the caregivers with whom they have worked closely.

We believe neglect is preventable. Take a journey with us on our Critical Pathways to discover some of the strategies that can help us make that belief a reality for our families and communities. The conversations begin on Wednesday, December 6th when we premiere the first episode of season 2 of Overloaded: Understanding Neglect wherever you listen to your podcasts. Then come back each week on Wednesday to listen to the rest of the series.


Recent and Upcoming Events

The Institute provides training, consultation and technical assistance to help human service agencies implement and replicate best practices. If you are interested in training or technical assistance, please complete our speaker request form.

Critical Pathways – Economic Stability

Economic security plays a crucial role in reducing stress, contributing to a sense of well-being, and fostering healthy parenting and parent-child interactions. When discussing the biggest challenges that put families at risk for child welfare involvement due to neglect, SFTCCC participants consistently pointed to ‘poverty’, its associated struggles, and the stress it generates as the key obstacles to family functioning and child well-being. Child neglect is more likely in families that are experiencing an overload of stress related to the weight of poverty, which can overload parents’ abilities to provide the supportive relationships children need.

The Ripple Effects of Poverty on Parenting and Family Dynamics

Since the first roundtable, SFTCCC participants have identified poverty as the biggest challenge facing the families they work with, one that people working in family preservation programs feel like they lack tools to address. The stressors of poverty are complex and represent a constellation of challenges, from housing insecurity, economic shocks, lack of access to childcare, food insecurity, and navigating the benefits cliff.

While Wisconsin law states that family separation due to neglect should only happen for reasons other than poverty, economic insecurities are common among families with children entering the foster care system. Nationally, nearly 85% of families investigated by CPS earn below 200% of the poverty line. Children from economically insecure households are more likely to face maltreatment and neglect (Drake, 2014).

Poverty can lead to chronic stress, which negatively impacts parenting and parent-child interactions.

High levels of stress caused by poverty can result in parents becoming more irritable, less patient, and exacerbate mental health and substance use challenges. Parents experiencing financial strain may have limited time and resources to focus on their children’s needs, affecting the quality of their interactions.

When parents are overloaded by the stressors of poverty, it can negatively affect their ability to engage in healthy parenting practices, it harms their mental health, child development, and wellbeing. This includes being less responsive to their child’s needs, having difficulty setting boundaries, and exhibiting harsher discipline methods.

Breaking the Cycle: Supporting Family Economic Stability

To improve parent-child interactions and overall parenting, it is essential to address the root causes of poverty-induced stress and support family economic stability. This includes increasing access to resources such as affordable housing, healthcare, and education, as well as implementing policies to reduce income inequality.

Learning from innovative new initiatives in this space, broadening our network, and collectively advancing policy solutions are all opportunities for SFTCCC participants to contribute to moving forward. By creating a more supportive environment for families, we can help alleviate the stressors associated with poverty, thereby promoting healthy parenting and fostering stronger parent-child relationships.

Download PDF

Critical Pathways – Workforce Inclusion & Innovation

A stable and diverse family preservation workforce ensures continuity of care, fosters expertise and experience, preserves institutional knowledge, promotes cultural competence, encourages collaboration and innovation, and enhances representation and trust. These factors contribute to the effectiveness and impact of programs that support families overloaded by stress.

Stabilizing and Supporting our Workforce

Surpassing the average for all occupations, employment growth for social workers is expected to increase 9% from 2021-2031, with many separations resulting from workers transferring to other occupations or exiting the labor force (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022). Turnover in our workforce is costly to families, staff, and the organizations that serve and employ them. Home-visiting workforce turnover and attrition rates are high, with similar shared challenges contributing to separations. Faced with a shortage of resources and 28.9% of workers leaving to take jobs with increased compensation, home-visiting programs will continue to struggle with recruitment and retention (Fitzgerald et. al, 2020).

We believe that innovation plays a pivotal role in shaping our future workforce, yielding stability as it brings forth fresh perspectives and diverse experiences to empower, equip, and support our families and those serving them. Through cultivating and prioritizing an environment that fosters creativity, collaboration, and growth, we can build a resilient and adaptable workforce today that is ready to tackle the challenges of tomorrow.

Diversity Representation and Family Voice in the Workforce

Diversifying our present workforce and elevating and recognizing the contribution of families and staff with lived experience in both prevention services and the child welfare system, is essential for change moving forward. Our current social services workforce still lacks representation from the populations it serves. According to the 2015 American Community Survey, 68.8% of our social work workforce is White (Salsberg et al., 2017). Specifically in prevention, in 2020, 63% of our home-visiting workforce were White (Fitzgerald et. al, 2020). Finally, the most recent State of WI workforce report reveals that within the Department of Children and Families, only 29.2% of its workforce are racial and ethnic minorities.

Peer Support: A Powerful Tool in Prevention

The use of peer supports or paraprofessionals in the workforce could ease struggles around workforce recruitment and make services more accessible. It also offers potential solutions to a workforce lacking in diversity, language skills, and cultural understanding of those it serves. Concurrently, by valuing and developing a career pathway for those with lived experience, use of a peer support model also functions as an economic stability intervention.

The Workforce of the Future

In conclusion, workforce innovation plays a pivotal role in shaping our future workforce, as it brings forth fresh perspectives and diverse experiences. By including individuals with lived experience and providing ample support to our staff, we cultivate an environment that fosters creativity, collaboration, and growth. Therefore, it is crucial that we prioritize these elements in order to build a resilient and adaptable workforce of the future.

Download PDF

Critical Pathways – Social Connectedness

The Importance of Social Connectedness

A child’s community plays a critical role in fostering their growth. For children to truly thrive, they need safe, responsive connections with caring adults. When the adults in their lives have their own needs met, they’re better equipped to respond to the social and emotional needs of their kids.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, social connectedness is defined as the relationships people or groups have, which lead to a sense of belonging, being cared for, valued, and supported. When individuals are socially connected, they are better able to navigate life challenges and cope with stress, trauma, adversity, anxiety, and depression.

The Toll of Social IsolationGraphic that reads: Benefits of Social Connectedness Improved mental health and resilience: Being connected to others can help reduce feelings of loneliness and isolation, and can provide support during difficult times, leading to better mental well-being and the ability to confront and overcome challenges. Greater sense of belonging: Feeling valued and accepted by a community can foster a sense of purpose and identity. Healthier habits: Being part of a supportive group can encourage individuals to make healthier choices, physically, mentally and socially.

Social isolation is the absence of connectedness to people, community, and therefore, influence and power. Social isolation creates barriers to developing supportive relationships and communities, sharing personal and communal experiences, or forming part of the bigger whole that can build a sense of individual and collective identity.

The toll of social isolation has been shown in recent studies in which nearly 1 in 4 Wisconsinites report that they only sometimes or never get the social and emotional support they need; and only 4 in 10 American adults said that they feel very connected to others in 2022. Even more troubling, caregivers of children, especially mothers and single parents, are more likely to experience feelings of loneliness.

So, what is causing the increased social isolation across our communities? A few examples:

  • Declines in meaningful connection, trust and membership in religious groups, social clubs, and labor unions due to the increase in use of smart phones, social media, remote work and political polarization;
  • Disruption of communities due to loss of industries such as farming and manufacturing;
  • Increased demands on lower-wage earners’ time and energy due to working longer hours and having less money to spend on transportation, social activities, etc.

When we are socially isolated, our health becomes vulnerable to heart attacks, dementia, depression, and early death. Recent studies have compared its impact to smoking nearly a pack of cigarettes a day. Additionally, when caregivers are socially isolated, they are less likely to have the coping skills AND community such as family and friends to support them when they become overloaded by stress. In these critical moments, children become vulnerable to neglect.

The Path to Social Connectedness

How might we strengthen social connectedness for our communities, caregivers, and children? Social connectedness occurs through family, school, work, and recreational and faith communities. More formally, it occurs through community and cultural events, support groups, and social services. Strengthening social infrastructure is crucial for enhancing community health, resilience, safety, and prosperity.

The goal of SFTCCC is to create and support a movement that shares knowledge and strategies, elevates one another’s efforts, and collaborates intentionally to co-design and advance policy and practice solutions that prevent and reduce social isolation by refocusing our efforts on building community and strengthening social connectedness for families, so that we may reduce family separations for reasons of neglect.

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Critical Pathways – Community Collaboration

Embracing Authentic Community Collaboration

Authentic community collaboration brings together a diverse group of changemakers to share power and learning that animates co-design of solutions for social change that directly impacts their respective communities. By engaging the lived experience of families, communities, service providers, mandated reporters, and organizational and systems leaders, together we can improve systems and service coordination that prioritizes family empowerment and support over mandated reporting. To accomplish this, we will need to reach across many systems, build trust through power-sharing with each other and the families that we serve, so that we may amplify our impact. Together, we can advocate for policy changes, share best practices, and create a network of support that fosters the well-being of families, particularly families of color who have been disproportionately affected by family separations.

Essential Ingredients for Authentic Community Collaboration

  • Open communication: Encourage honest and transparent conversations among changemakers to promote understanding and empathy.
  • Shared language and goals: Establish common language and objectives that everyone can share and understand, ensuring collective efforts are rooted in lived experience and evidence, and focusing on achieving meaningful change.
  • Inclusive decision-making: Involve all those impacted in the decision-making process, respecting the diverse perspectives and experiences they bring to the table.

The Need for Systems Change and Coordination

In Wisconsin, families of color experience disproportionate rates of family separation and longer stays in foster care. Native American and Black families make up about 13% of our population, and yet make up 27% of all reports to Child Protective Services (CPS), 34% of all CPS investigations, 38% of all family separations, and a staggering 47% of group home placements. To truly combat historical inequities that are further exacerbated by family separation, we must advocate for systems change that addresses the root causes of these issues. At the same time, we have nearly 40,000 non-profits statewide that support our children, families and communities, yet families too often need support or services that are unknown to them or hard to access. Our greatest challenges, therefore, lie in how we coordinate our services to ensure that they are meeting the real needs of all that seek them. We must work smarter, not harder, to elevate solutions to ensure all families can access the help they need when they need it. By building bridges between service providers, community organizations, and the families we serve, we can create a more equitable, cohesive, and impactful support network.

The Path to Community Collaboration

By fostering authentic and inclusive community collaboration among our systems, service providers, communities, and families, we can effectively address the historical inequities that have resulted in disproportionate rates of family separations among families of color and poor families. Through co-design with families and service providers, we can shift more efforts and resources towards community empowerment and maltreatment prevention, improve our systems and service coordination, and strengthen social connectedness and trust, which can alleviate the stress that overloads families and reduce the risk of neglect and family separation.

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Podcast Episodes and Show Notes

Season 2

After finishing this second season in which we released two episodes for each of our four Critical Pathways – one with policy and research experts and one with lived experience and practice experts – we’ve decided to share a bonus episode that may serve as a bridge between this season and the future of our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative and this podcast series. If you remember back to our first episode of this season, my team at the Institute shared the vision of our Critical Pathways strategy. In Gabe McGaughey’s words, “There are several high quality initiatives focused on prevention policy, and we don’t want to replicate or compete with any of those efforts, but rather connect and elevate them. And in doing so we hope we can accelerate the impact of a collective network.”

As we enter further into the Critical Pathways, broaden our awareness and understanding of the impactful work and systems change efforts happening across our state, and deepen our relationships with those doing that work, we hope to elevate the practices, policies, relationships and mental model shifts that are strengthening families and reducing child welfare involvement in their lives.

As I started this season talking with my Institute team at Children’s, I thought it would be fitting to finish this season in conversation with my Institute colleague at UW-Milwaukee, Josh Mersky, to further elevate one of those promising approaches. In our conversation, we discuss the research Josh has done with our partners from across the state on the impacts of Family Resource Centers and other universal programs that promote family protective factors and social connectedness. We also explore his journey studying resilience and protective factors and what he has learned about the impact of child neglect and, conversely, how social connectedness may reduce the risk of neglect or mitigate its effects.

Dr. Josh Mersky is a founding director of the Institute for Child and Family Well-Being and a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Helen Bader School of Social Welfare. Josh’s research interests include child maltreatment and other adverse experiences that undermine health and well-being over the life course. He is dedicated to working with local and state partners to translate evidence into real-world solutions that improve outcomes for vulnerable children and families.

Josh applies his expertise to the design, application, evaluation, and dissemination of effective practices, programs, and policies through Institute projects that include the Strong and Stable Families project that he will discuss today. I encourage you to check out our Institute for Child and Family Well-being website to learn more about those projects.


In Wisconsin, 72,942 reports were made to Child Protective Services last year alone. To make sense of that, 200 children are being reported every day because someone believes they are being abused or neglected. Every single day. To put that in further perspective, that comes out to about 1 out of every 17 children in our state being subject to a child protective services report. Imagine having someone call a government agency to report that your child appears to be unsafe. How might that feel as a parent? Now, of those nearly 73,000 reports, 51,000 of them (or 7 out of every 10) is screened out, meaning that they don’t rise to the level of maltreatment that would require an assessment to be completed by CPS. And finally, just over 3,000 children were separated last year from their parents from those nearly 73,000 initial reports. At the same time this is happening, we have nearly 40,000 non-profits statewide that support our children, families and communities, yet families too often need support or services that are unknown to them or hard to access. So how might we work smarter, not harder, to elevate solutions to ensure all families can access the help they need when they need it? How might we lead with compassion and curiosity to build bridges between service providers, community organizations, and the families we serve, so we can create a more equitable, collaborative, and impactful support network rather than a reporting network? I invited Julie Ahnen, Laura Glaub and Marc Seidl to have this conversation today to explore these questions as they have been on a journey of confronting the challenges of mandated reporting and mistrust of our systems.


In episode 2 of this season with Liz Weaver and Mark Cabaj, they centered the people closest to the problems that we are trying to solve. Liz talked about how their community change efforts driven by Collective Impact frameworks require that there is a balance of participants at the table, meaning that there are as many people with lived experience as professionals and government officials. Mark summoned the Polish constitution from centuries ago that brought us the words that have become synonymous with community voice – “Nothing about us, without us.”

Over the past many years, we have seen a movement within our family serving systems – from substance abuse to mental health to child welfare – to include those impacted most by those systems in the planning and decision-making processes. Organizations like Think of Us have been founded by and for people that have been impacted by the child welfare system. In Wisconsin, Bregetta Wilson, our guest from season 1, leads a team of Parent Leaders at our Department for Children and Families that has advised changes to our state’s child welfare policies and procedures. At Children’s Wisconsin, we have a Parent Advocate, Esmeralda Martinez, who we will be talking with today about her own lived experience that led to the child welfare system, and how that experience informs her role and the support she provides to parents that are living a similar experience to her own.

So how might we support and advance these movements to meet the promise of “Nothing about us, without us”? How might we learn from those with lived experience about what overloads families in the first place, so that we might support them before child welfare and family separation is needed? How might we create the power balance that Liz Weaver talked about where those with lived experience have the influence to make meaningful changes to the decisions and systems that impact them the most? And lastly, how might we support our lived experience partners so that we don’t overload them or cause harm?

I invited Esmeralda Martinez to answer these questions today through her experience and expertise.


20 years ago, I found myself jumping into a dry canal on a hot day in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia in an attempt to introduce myself to a group of kids who called the canal home. While my Spanish was in good form after two years designing programs for a nonprofit in Spain. My early attempts at communicating with youth who had been abused and neglected and were now living in the streets had gotten off to a rocky start. I learned quickly that my Spanish and even my ability to articulate what the kids had experienced that led them to the streets didn’t create the opening to enter into their community. So I stood awkwardly on the outside, respectfully observed from a distance and occasionally got an “hola, hermano”, as they assumed I was from the church. I was not.

Days later, a boy known as Choco asked if I wanted to play checkers with his friends. I accepted. I sat under the bridge, introduced myself and asked them their names. Before they even finished introducing themselves, I started my pitch as to why they should leave the streets. Nothing surprising here. The streets are full of danger like traffickers, drugs and disease. I even shared the data that made it clear that they would likely die of tuberculosis or addiction, or end up in jail before their 20th birthday. The kids didn’t flinch. Instead, Choco put his hand on my arm and said, “but the street is my family. They protect me.” In one of the more consequential decisions in my career, I fought my urge to argue with him, and again cite all the evidence as to why leaving the streets would be better for him in his future. Instead, I listened. What I learned in that moment would serve as the foundation of my work for the next two years in Bolivia, and in some ways for the past 20.

Our trusted social connections inform how we see ourselves in our world. If I wanted these boys to leave their only trusted social connections in the streets, I had to build trust with them. And kids see right through you, if you aren’t speaking their language, if you aren’t sitting in their reality with them. So I kept showing up, I kept listening. And soon I spoke their language. I understood that they didn’t want to hear about the dangers of the streets, but the safety of our community and new friendships, the opportunity of school, and most importantly, the promise that I would be there if things got hard. In that single social connection between me and that boy, the conditions that would in many ways dictate his future were changed.

In a way it was that experience and many like it over the years that inspired this podcast series. I wondered, how might we bring the language and expertise of policy, research and systems experts into the same space is the language and expertise of those most impacted by the policies, services and resources the former talk about? It’s my attempt at translating. I hope that there have been moments in these first two seasons that have helped translate the complexity of systems into how they impact the complex lives of real people.

That is my traditionally long-winded way of introducing today’s episode. And what I hope you will reflect on as you listen to two different conversations that we have weaved together for you. As you already heard in the opening clip, Diana Maya speaks Spanish. I chose very intentionally to give the same space to Diana’s voice as I do to all my guests, which means that she will tell her story without interruption. That also means that if you have to dust off your high school Spanish, you may find yourself in the shoes of the boys in Bolivia when I spouted projected outcomes or that of a mother sitting at a table with a half dozen professionals citing statutes right after her child has been separated from her. In the end, you won’t miss anything. I share in English what Diana says after she’s done, but I do hope that it’s an opportunity to reflect on how important shared language and social connection are to building trust, authentic engagement and the opportunity for meaningful change.

I have spent weeks thinking about this episode, what I have learned from listening to Diana and Jessika stories, the power of their connections with Amy and Ayesha and how we can change lives by listening to understand what someone has been through who they are, and who they might become if someone believes in them.

Social Connectedness came alive in these conversations. And one powerful moment I watched as Amy was brought to tears while listening to Diana tell her story. While Amy doesn’t speak Spanish, it was clear that she understood what Diana was experiencing and sharing in that moment. I want to thank that Diana Maya and Jessika Harleston, for sharing their stories with me. I also want to thank my colleagues here at Children’s Wisconsin, Amy Baldus, Ayesha Teague and Micaela Conlon-Bue, who have become part of Diana and Jessika stories do their amazing work and care. I encourage you to learn more about them on our podcast website.


On January 8th, we mark the 60th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. In his State of the Union remarks, he called poverty a national disgrace and described it as a societal failure. He stated, “The cause may lie deeper in our failure to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack of education and training, in a lack of medical care and housing, in a lack of decent communities in which to live and bring up their children.” He signed into law the Economic Opportunity Act later that year, which would create job training programs, Head Start early childhood education, and a domestic volunteer program – now known as Americorps. It would also attempt to combat racial discrimination, which had marginalized people of color from fair participation in our politics and economy. It would later inspire cash assistance and tax credits that have shown to reduce poverty such as TANF, the Earned Income and Child Tax Credits.

Policies, such as the Economic Opportunity Act, that strengthen family economic stability can go a long way toward reducing childhood adversity and supporting the relationships that help children thrive.

While progress has been made in Johnson’s War on Poverty, it’s clear that there are still many battles before us as child and family poverty have not been eradicated. As Mark Cabaj discussed in our second episode, we often solve one problem only to expose or create another in this infinite game. For example, with our economic safety net, many families find themselves on the benefits cliff as they make too much to be eligible for housing vouchers or cash assistance, but too little to pay for what they need for their families.

So how might we raise the floor on family economic stability, while lowering the ceiling on the cost of living? How might we better support overloaded families so that they may achieve economic stability?

I invited Jessika Harlston to have this conversation today to share her lived experience and her role as a Financial Employability Planner to explore these questions.

Jessika Harlston is a mother of 3 boys and a Financial Career Planner and Case Manager for individuals and families. In Overloaded, she shares her experience of becoming socially isolated that led to child welfare involvement, and then her powerful story of reconnection with her family and support system. Jessika shares that “so many people look at me as this woman who has it all; when in reality, I am just like everyone else. I cry like everyone else, I struggle like everyone else, and of course, I smile like everyone else.”


Earlier this year, Jermaine Reed hosted the Color of Child Welfare conference as he has since 2010, which included a keynote by Dorothy Roberts, the author of Torn Apart, from which Bregetta Wilson read in our first season. Ms. Roberts wrote an article last year titled, “Why End Mandated Reporting”, in which she makes this foundational statement:

“By federal edict, every state must identify people who work in professions that put them in contact with children – such as teachers, health care providers, social services staff, and day care workers – and require them by law to report suspected child abuse and neglect to government authorities.” Consequently, she states, “Poor and low-income families are more likely to come in contact with professionals who are mandated to report child maltreatment. Receiving social services, relying on welfare benefits, living in public housing or shelters, and using public clinics all subject parents to an extra layer of surveillance by government workers who are quick to report when they suspect maltreatment or a family’s needs for services.” As we shared in season 1, this system has led to the deeply troubling reality in which 53% of all Black children and 1 in 3 of all children in the United States are subject to a child maltreatment investigation.

How does our current system of mandated reporting discourage overloaded families from seeking the help that they really need due to fear of ending up in the child welfare system? How does it create moral dilemmas for the many helpers in our community – teachers, social workers, doctors and nurses – who feel compelled to report a family under the weight of the potential consequences if they don’t?
So how might we transform our mandated reporting system into community support and collaboration that lifts overloaded families up and over their challenges? How might we confront the biases that influence reporters’ decisions as to who to report and who to support? And how might we improve our systems and service coordination so that our helpers know who can help and how to connect them to the families that need them when they need them?

I invited Jermaine to have this conversation today to share his expertise and explore these questions. As an added bonus, Jermaine and I begin this conversation discussing his journey as a child welfare professional, which covers some of the topics we explored in the Workforce Inclusion and Innovation discussion we had last week with Tim Grove.


In 2021, amid a global pandemic, a national reckoning on racial justice, and human and environmental devastation from the opioid epidemic, gun violence, and climate disasters, Harvard Public Health published a feature called “The Age of Trauma”. In that feature, they describe these times as “the age of syndemics”, a theory that first emerged in the 1990s during the AIDS epidemic as a way to examine how social ills and medical illnesses collide. In other words, we are again living in a time when those who are most adversely impacted by social ills such as poverty, systemic racism, and trauma, are also most vulnerable to diseases such as COVID.

These syndemic times are devastating for our most overloaded families, which in turn puts even greater stress on the people who are serving and supporting them. In our mental health, child welfare, and family well-being systems, vicarious trauma, moral injury, and burnout have become more prevalent during the past few years as professionals were exposed to not only human suffering but also the impossible decisions as to whose suffering took priority when their resources limited their ability to meet everyone’s need.

These past few years have also exposed the lack of diversity and representation in our workforce, which led to a movement of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in and across organizations and systems.

In the face of these challenging times, how might we begin to address the long-standing underlying root causes of these syndemic times that overload families and, in turn, burn out our workforce? How might we create a workforce that is authentically representative of our communities, while also nurturing a work environment that honors and elevates the lived experience of our workforce?

I invited Tim Grove to help answer these questions by sharing his expertise and understanding of the impacts of trauma and moral injury within the child welfare system, and workforce culture through Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and trauma-informed care frameworks.


On May 3rd, 2023, Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. Surgeon General, released a national plan to fight against our country’s “loneliness epidemic”. In his opening statement, he wrote:
“When I first took office as Surgeon General in 2014, I didn’t view loneliness as a public health concern. But that was before I embarked on a cross-country listening tour, where I heard stories from my fellow Americans that surprised me. People began to tell me they felt isolated, invisible, and insignificant. Even when they couldn’t put their finger on the word “lonely,” time and time again, people of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds would tell me, “I have to shoulder all of life’s burdens by myself,” or “if I disappear tomorrow, no one will even notice.”
It was a lightbulb moment for me: social disconnection was far more common than I had realized.”

The research supports what Dr. Murthy heard, and the consequences of loneliness and social isolation are troubling.
Recently, about one-in-two adults in America reported experiencing loneliness, nearly 1 in 4 Wisconsinites report that they only sometimes or never get the social and emotional support they need; and even more troubling, caregivers of children, especially mothers and single parents, are more likely to experience feelings of loneliness. And that was before COVID-19 cut off so many of us from our support systems, exacerbating loneliness and isolation. Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling—it is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.

While these realities are cause for concern, I believe the fact that we are talking about social isolation and its harms is the first important step in confronting it, in shifting the narrative towards how we build and strengthen social connectedness. So how might we build a movement that brings people and organizations together to destigmatize loneliness and change our cultural and policy response to it?

I invited Linda Hall and Rebecca Murray to help answer that question by sharing their expertise on the underlying root causes of social isolation; the positive impacts of social connectedness on child development and family prosperity; and the promising and proven practices and policies that effectively strengthen the social connectedness of families that may be at risk of child neglect and family separation. Their work leading Wisconsin’s Office of Children’s Mental Health and Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board has prioritized social connectedness for children and families through research and advocacy, and the promotion of practices and frameworks such as Five for Families, the Five Categories of Social Connectedness for Youth, and Family Resource Centers.


While Wisconsin defines neglect as the failure, refusal, or inability to care for a child for reasons other than poverty, we can’t ignore the fact that 85% of families investigated by our child welfare system live below 200% of the federal poverty line. Earlier this year, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago published a report on the impacts of poverty on child neglect and abuse. The message was clear. Income supports to families with low incomes, like those provided through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, reduce the risk of child maltreatment and the child welfare system involvement that results from it.

What if we were to think about programs like TANF that we commonly think of as anti-poverty programs as child maltreatment prevention programs that keep families together? How might we build partnerships across systems that empower the economic stability of overloaded families? How might we follow the evidence, even if it contradicts how we have always done things, so that we may change the conditions that overload families and make them vulnerable to our most intrusive systems?

Clare Anderson from Chapin Hall joins the podcast to share her expertise on the root causes and role of poverty and their intersection with child neglect, and the practices and policies that effectively address the economic needs of overloaded families that may reduce family separation for reasons of neglect.


In 2019, The New York Times published an opinion column entitled “Winning the War on Poverty. The Canadians are doing it, we’re not.” In the column, they note that Canada reduced its official poverty rate by at least 20% from 2015 to 2017. This accomplishment brought its poverty rate to its lowest in recorded history. My guests today, Liz Weaver and Mark Cabaj were part of this societal transformation. Their leadership and use of methodologies such as Collective Impact and Field Catalyst brought people living in poverty together with business, nonprofit, and government partners in hundreds of communities across Canada. By building authentic relationships, each community would learn from one another and build a shared understanding of what was at the root of their poverty.

So how might we learn from Canada’s transformation so that we might empower communities to overcome poverty or child neglect, and build wealth and child and family well-being? I invited Liz and Mark to have this conversation today to share their wisdom and why these approaches are so vital to community and systems change, how they should be and shouldn’t be used, and what they look like in real life so that we may create transformational change for our children, families and our communities.


Since you last joined us in season one, our team at the Institute for Child and Family Well-being has been busy learning from the experts that you heard here, community changemakers from across our state, and the latest evidence from lots of reading. Through that learning, we developed four critical pathways that will serve as roadmaps to help us focus our efforts, foster deeper relationships across systems and communities and clarify shared goals.

As a small team, we know that we can’t achieve our goal of reducing family separations for reasons of neglect across the state of Wisconsin on our own. So we hope through this podcast, convenings, and ongoing shared learning that we can serve as a catalyst of change. As my team at the Institute has learned this past year and a half, the evidence may take us and you to new places that lead to better outcomes for families. In this first episode, I talk with my team to introduce this season of the podcast so that they can share with us how we got here, where we’re going, and what you can anticipate hearing from our experts in season two.


In season 2 of Overloaded: Understanding Neglect, we will be confronting complex challenges like poverty, social isolation, and systemic racism that overload families as we explore our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities’ four Critical Pathways, our roadmaps for discovering and developing innovative solutions to these wicked problems. Through the first year of our Strong Families initiative, which included season 1 of this podcast series, we were able to align the insights and experiences of those who know these issues best with the evidence that has shown promise in advancing meaningful solutions. This collaborative effort identified four critical pathways – Economic Stability, Social Connectedness, Community Collaboration, and Workforce Inclusion and Innovation – that will shape the future of our initiative that aspires to reduce family separations for reasons of neglect.

Join me, Luke Waldo, as I explore these Critical Pathways with research and policy experts Clare Anderson from Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, Mark Cabaj of From Here 2 There, Tim Grove of Wellpoint Care Network, Linda Hall of Wisconsin’s Office of Children’s Mental Health, my Institute colleague Josh Mersky of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Rebecca Murray of Wisconsin’s Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board, Jermaine Reed of Fresh Start Family Services, Liz Weaver of the Tamarack Institute. Additionally, we will shine a light on these Critical Pathways through the lived experience experts of many of my close colleagues at Children’s Wisconsin’s child welfare and child maltreatment prevention programs and the caregivers with whom they have worked closely.


Season 1

In today’s bonus episode, we brought together some of our Overloaded: Understanding Neglect experts to thank them and celebrate our collective effort that led to this podcast series. But before we went out to celebrate, we sat down to discuss two topics that have become even more relevant, more top of mind for many of us. First, we explored the Legislation and Policy that have been passed, renewed or begun implementation this year. Then, we discussed the challenges and opportunities that we face with our Workforce within our child welfare and maltreatment prevention systems.


In today’s episode, our last in this series, we will be looking back at our previous seven episodes in an effort to elevate our key lessons learned to present a blueprint towards our ultimate goal of supporting overloaded families and reducing family separations for reasons of neglect. We will be looking at them through the lens of the systems change drivers that we have explored over the past many episodes, by looking at the impact of mental models – our beliefs and biases that influence our behavior – and the relationships and power dynamics that connect or divide us in our communities and systems, and how they influence the important policies, practices and allocation of funding and resources that support our systems change strategies and efforts.


In today’s episode, we will be looking at how we might move further upstream from our current child welfare system, with the intent of revealing current strategies, efforts and opportunities to prevent adversity from occurring for children and families. As we discussed in our previous episodes, we will be looking at the impact of mental models – our beliefs and biases that influence our behavior – and the relationships and power dynamics that connect or divide us in our communities and systems, and how they influence the important policies, practices and allocation of funding and resources that support our prevention strategies and efforts.

As you will hear today, there are many prevention strategies that currently exist that we believe, if employed more frequently and effectively, can dramatically lessen the overload that too many families in our communities are carrying. In turn, they can be the nurturing, responsive parents that their children need and deserve; and we can reduce family separations for reasons of neglect.


Today’s episode intends to provide a framework of systems drivers along with some concrete examples of how we might move our child welfare system towards a child and family well-being system. We hope that it provides an initial framework along with some inspiration as to how each of us has the power to influence systems change through the seemingly small acts of compassion and challenging our own biases. Through those small acts real change begins, especially in a system and society where historical inequities and trauma have deep roots that persist today.

How might we challenge those inequities in our policies and practices within our own organizations and communities? How might we share power, leadership and decision-making with those that we serve? And how might we learn from the policies and practices that have allowed families to fall or be separated before we actively supported them? Join us today to hear our experts share their experience with those questions.


In our first four episodes, we explored neglect, three of its underlying root causes in the forms of trauma, systemic oppression, and poverty, and their compounding challenges like housing instability, mental illness, and addiction that further overload families with stress, and can lead to child welfare involvement and family separation. Moving forward, we will shift our focus from the challenges that overloaded families experience to the challenges and opportunities that our complex systems, organizations, and communities face as we aspire to reduce family separations for reasons of neglect.

To begin this shift, we will explore the child welfare system over a two-part episode, beginning today in part 1 as we look more closely at how the system is designed and functions, how policies, which are often created by those furthest away from the most affected communities, dictate practice and resources, and how we are failing overloaded families by not effectively addressing the underlying root causes of neglect that we explored in our first few episodes.


Children thrive when they have regular interactions with responsive, caring adults. Families experiencing significant stressors related to financial insecurity, housing instability, or the impact of systemic racism and trauma can be overloaded with stress, interrupting those interactions. Over time, and without adequate supports, overloaded families can become vulnerable to adverse experiences, ranging from toxic levels of stress to involvement in the child welfare system, and even family separation for reasons of neglect. How might we support and empower overloaded families, so that they may overcome these challenges? How might we see families for their strengths and potential rather than as defined by their darkest moments?


Poverty, like neglect, is a constellation of complex challenges. We are too often investigating families for child maltreatment because other systems are failing. When this happens, a family that may have been experiencing temporary financial insecurity becomes more vulnerable to compounding factors such as homelessness and mounting stress. It’s in these moments that a family becomes vulnerable to a child welfare investigation and potential family separation. So how might we begin to address financial insecurity before it becomes poverty? How might we support families experiencing poverty before it leads to child neglect?


In Wisconsin, family separations disproportionately impact Children of Color. In 2020, Children of Color made up about 31% of Wisconsin’s child population, but 56% of the foster care population in out-of-home care. Nationally, 53% of Black children will experience a Child Protective Services’ investigation before their 18th birthday. In this episode, we explore these disparities and impacts of systemic oppression on children and families, and how these experiences intersect with trauma.


How do we define neglect? How is neglect interpreted and operationalized by our child welfare system, and how many children and families are separated because of it? What are the underlying root causes of neglect that overload caregivers with stress? In this first episode, host Luke Waldo explores these questions and the complexity of neglect with our research and policy, child welfare and child maltreatment prevention, and lived experience experts.


Podcast Contributors

Luke Waldo
Podcast Host and Executive Editor
Director of Program Design and Community Engagement

Luke Waldo is the Host and Executive Editor of the podcast Overloaded: Understanding Neglect, and the Director of Program Design and Community Engagement for the Institute for Child and Family Well-Being.

Luke has dedicated his career to child well-being in Europe, South America and his native Milwaukee where he has worked with children and families adversely impacted by forced migration, homelessness, family violence, and abuse and neglect. He has over two decades of experience working in the complex systems of domestic violence, childhood trauma and well-being, homelessness, education and maltreatment prevention, with a particular focus on engagement and innovative solutions to personal and community challenges. Luke has trained hundreds of child well-being professionals in the areas of domestic violence, toxic stress, adverse childhood experiences, childhood resilience, social innovation and systems change. Prior to joining ICFW’s leadership team, Luke led the Family Support Program, which serves families involved with the child welfare system by providing strengths- and evidence-based interventions.

Luke believes in the power of storytelling, scientific evidence, and their potential to catalyze better outcomes for children and families when brought together effectively.

Luke earned his Master of Science in Cultural Foundations of Education from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and Spanish from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.


Gabe McGaughey
Podcast Contributor and Interviewer
Co-Director for the Institute for Child and Family Well-being

Gabriel McGaughey serves as the director of well-being for Children’s Hospital of Milwaukee Community Services. In this role, he hopes to push child welfare and other public systems toward a more holistic approach to working with children with the goal of improving their immediate health and long-term well-being.

Previously, Gabriel served as the director of Children’s Child Welfare program, overseeing the implementation of a new program design. With more than 16 years of experience, he has worked at every level of social work from field work at group homes and prevention programs to data analytics and administration. Gabriel joined Milwaukee Child Welfare in 2003 as a case manager, eventually taking on a supervisory role. In 2007, he moved into quality improvement where he created analytic processes to better understand the needs of children and families in foster care.

Gabriel holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.


Carrie Wade
Technical Production and Original Music for Overloaded: Understanding Neglect
Librarian at Harvard Medical School

Carrie Wade is a research librarian, sound artist, and musician based in Boston, Massachusetts. She records and performs under the name Vadi. When this podcast recording began, Carrie worked as the Health Sciences Librarian at UWM before moving into her current role at the Countway Library at Harvard Medical School.

Podcast Guests

Tim Grove
Wellpoint Care Network
Senior Consultant

Tim Grove, MSSW, is a senior consultant at Wellpoint Care Network (formerly SaintA), a human services agency whose mission it is to facilitate equity, learning, healing and wellness for all. He has over 25 years of professional experience in a variety of direct care, administrative and executive positions. Tim created, developed and lead Wellpoint’s Trauma Informed Care (TIC) initiatives. He created a TIC training curriculum centered around the Seven Essential Ingredients, or 7ei, of understanding and practicing TIC. Tim and the training team at Wellpoint have used the 7ei framework to train more than 60,000 people from diverse disciplines over the past 15 years.
Tim is an Affiliate of the Institute for Child and Family Well-being.

Tim is a Mentor with Dr. Bruce Perry’s Neuroseqential Network and a Master Trainer in Dr. Rob Anda and Laura Porter’s ACE Interface curriculum. Tim and the Wellpoint team’s work has been highlighted and published in a number of magazines, journals and newspapers. He was the lead project manager of a three year research study on the effectiveness of 7ei in child welfare outcomes which demonstrated positive effect on creating placement stability and permanency for kids. Tim is recognized nationally as a trauma informed care expert and was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey for a 60 Minutes segment on trauma and resilience.


Ashlee Jackson
Children’s Wisconsin’s Family Support Program – Milwaukee
Family Support Specialist I

Ashlee Jackson is a Family Support Specialist II at Children’s Wisconsin in Milwaukee. She has worked for Children’s for 8 years, 6 of those as a Family Support Specialist, and 2 in our Prevention Program as a Home Visitor. She also has volunteer experience supporting families at the La Causa Crisis Nursery. Ashlee graduated with her BSSW from UW-Milwaukee.


Jennifer Jones
Prevent Child Abuse America
Chief Strategy Officer

Jennifer Jones, MSW, serves as the Chief Strategy Officer at Prevent Child Abuse America (PCA America) where she develops, implements, and advocates for an integrated strategic framework to help grow PCA America’s leadership role consistent with national prevention priorities, and serves as the lead on regional and national strategic partnerships. Prior to her role with PCA America, Jones was the Director of the Change in Mind Institute and the Co-Director of the Safety and Resilience Impact Area at the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities. Jones led all aspects of the Institute, including raising $1.7 million for the Texas Change in Mind Learning Collaborative and National Impact Study. Jones also served as the Project Director of the Child Safety Forward Initiative, a three-year Department of Justice cooperative agreement working with 5 jurisdictions to develop community-led, systematic solutions to reduce child fatalities caused by child maltreatment. Jones worked closely with the Alliance policy team, other national organizations and congressional representatives to advance brain science infused policy and trauma-informed care legislation. Preceding her role at the Alliance, Jones served as the Associate Director of the Wisconsin Children’s Trust Fund (CTF). In her last two years at the agency, Jones served as Interim Executive Director, at the Board’s request, and coordinated all activities related to the Governor-appointed Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board, including managing all operations, and overseeing the agency’s budget and grantmaking functions. Before her positions with the Children’s Trust Fund, Jennifer served as the communications specialist in the Secretary’s Office at the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families and as a child welfare policy advisor in the Wisconsin Division of Children and Family Services. Jones is an affiliate of the Institute for Child and Family Well-Being, a joint project of Children’s Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Jones is also a member of the National HOPE (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences) Advisory Board and serves on the Board of Directors of the Hunger Task Force. Jennifer received her master’s in social work from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and bachelor’s in social work from Marquette University.


Hannah Kirk
Children’s Wisconsin’s Healthy Start Program Milwaukee
Healthy Start Supervisor

Hannah Kirk is the Healthy Start Supervisor in Milwaukee, and was previously a Family Case Manager Training Specialist with Children’s Wisconsin, who partners with the Division of Milwaukee Child Protective Services.

Hannah has dedicated her professional career to Child Welfare within Milwaukee County, where she has worked extensively with children who have adverse childhood experiences. Hannah has a decade of experience in child welfare, where she has served children and families extensively with strengths-based and evidence-based interventions. Hannah has trained several child welfare case managers at Children’s Wisconsin over the last four years, supporting service implementation, and highlighting the importance of community engagement.

Hannah earned her Masters of Social Work from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2021 and served as an intern with the Institute. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.


Bryan Samuels
Chapin Hall
Executive Director

Bryan Samuels is the Executive Director of Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, a nonprofit policy research institute focused on connecting research to action. Under Bryan’s leadership, Chapin Hall is actively working in more than 40 states in building knowledge and creating solutions with and for public system partners, community leaders and members, and families—all with an aim to improve the wellbeing of children and youth and ensure all families thrive.

Across his career, Bryan’s work has centered on identifying and addressing inequities using evidence in policymaking. Key accomplishments include the creation and application of a well-being framework based on the best developmental understanding of normal childhood development; formation of a shared and actionable understanding of the effects of exposure to violence, trauma, poverty, and adverse childhood experiences on the mental, emotional, behavioral, and physical health of children; and emphasis on the importance of building the capacity of public and private child- and family-serving systems and organizations to focus on and produce positive outcomes.

Bryan was appointed by President Obama as the Commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families (ACYF), where he served from 2009 to 2013 and leveraged the work of federal departments including Health and Human Services, Justice, and Education, among others, on behalf of children in foster care, youth experiencing housing instability, and families impacted by domestic violence. He received his B.A. in Economics from the University of Notre Dame in 1989 and his M.P.P. from the University of Chicago-Harris School in 1993.


Dr. Kristen Slack
University of Wisconsin School of Social Work

Dr. Kristen Slack’s research focuses on understanding the role of poverty and economic hardship in the etiology of child maltreatment, with a particular emphasis on child neglect. She is also interested in the caseload dynamics of child welfare systems in relation to other public benefit systems, and in community-based programs designed to prevent child maltreatment. Her work advances approaches to better coordinating services and benefits to effectively address the economic needs of families at risk for child maltreatment, and improved assessment strategies for identifying risks and protective factors related to child neglect. Her current research is supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Wisconsin Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board. Dr. Slack has been published in dozens of academic journals, authored dozens of reports and manuscripts, and been primary investigator on over 20 federally-funded research projects.

Dr. Slack is also the founder of Prof2Prof, a free platform for professionals and doctoral students in academia to showcase their work, network, and find resources for college teaching, research, higher education administration, and student affairs services.


Theresa Swiechowski
Children’s Wisconsin’s Family Support Program – Merrill
Family Support Supervisor

Theresa Swiechowski is a Family Support Supervisor for Children’s Wisconsin’s Northwoods Family Resource Centers, where she has worked for 7 years in various roles. She is a UW Oshkosh graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Human Services. After moving around a bit from Oshkosh to the state of Maine, she and her husband returned to her hometown of Merrill, Wisconsin to raise their 5 children. The balance of work and family is always a challenge for families and theirs was no exception. Theresa’s career, although weaved in and out of raising her kids, has always been working in the human service field but mainly in case management involving mental health, addiction, and parent education. Over the years, she has seen those that were faced with the most difficult obstacles, build resilience and become super heroes of their own stories.


Soua Thao
Children’s Wisconsin’s Family Preservation and Support Program – Wausau
Home Visitor

Soua Thao has been a Home Visitor for Children’s Wisconsin for 16 years. She serves parents of young children from before they have their child up to their child’s fifth birthday. Soua works primarily with Hmong families in Central Wisconsin. Over the past 18 months, I have had the pleasure of getting to know Soua as she has worked with me as a champion for elevating the voice of the families that she serves to better design and improve our programs. I was thrilled when she accepted our invitation to participate in this podcast as she brings so much experience and understanding of the families that she serves, their strengths, the challenges that they face, and the opportunities that our programs and systems have to support and empower them further.


Bregetta Wilson
Wisconsin Department for Children and Families
Lived Experience Coordinator

Bregetta Wilson, MS, LPC-IT, is a positive person, an advocate, community leader, and change agent. She has been working for and with families for the last eighteen years. Bregetta has worked with Pew Charitable Trusts and National Organization Foster Club on Capitol Hill to bring awareness and issues regarding children and families on behalf of Wisconsin. She is a recipient of the Black Excellence Award for her work around Child & Youth Advocacy. Bregetta’s current role within the Department of Children and Families includes working with Lived Experience Partners to elevate the voices of families and children within system and policy change.

Through her organization Embrace Improve Empower, LLC. Bregetta supports organizations with mental health and community engagement efforts. She is a contracted psychotherapist for the Multicultural Trauma and Addiction Treatment Center of Wisconsin, providing mental health services to families in Wisconsin.
She is active in her community around social justice efforts and serves on the boards of the YWCA of Southeast Wisconsin, Rubies and Milwaukee Center for Children and Youth; she is a member of Professional Dimensions, a network of women professionals in Milwaukee and an Alum of Forward48.

A graduate of Alverno and Cardinal Stritch University, she resides in Milwaukee with her fiancé, three children, and pet Husky. Bregetta enjoys going to Orangetheory, dancing, traveling, collecting crystals, practicing holistic aspects of healing, and spending time with family and friends.


Julie Woodbury
Children’s Wisconsin’s Family Preservation and Support Program – Black River Falls
Family Preservation and Support Manager

Dr. Julie Woodbury has been actively involved in the education of families and youth for more than 30 years. Her focus has been on teaching resilience to emerging adults through youth education and development, staff management, and leadership. Julie has been with Children’s Wisconsin for 6 years and is currently a Family Preservation and Support Manager in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. Dr. Woodbury supervises the delivery of child abuse prevention services to Children’s Wisconsin clients in the Western Wisconsin area. She holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Technical Management, a Master’s Degree in Public Administration with an emphasis on Non-Profit Organizations, and a Doctorate in Education.