In this special “Best of Season 1” episode of InnerViews, host Ivory Bennett revisits powerful moments from this year’s episodes. From healing generational trauma to empowering resilience in the face of adversity, Ivory highlights transformative insights from each guest. Join us for a reflection on themes of healing, self-discovery, and empowerment, celebrating the voices that made Season 1 unforgettable. Tune in for an inspiring recap and a glimpse of the exciting 2025 season ahead!
The most dangerous phrase in the language is “We’ve always done it this way.”
In this enlightening episode of the “Resilient Voices & Beyond” podcast, host Michael D. Davis-Thomas engages with Commissioner Rebecca Jones Gaston, the visionary leader of the Administration for Children, Youth, and Families (ACYF). Commissioner Gaston shares her compelling journey from her brief experience in foster care to spearheading significant reforms in the U.S. child welfare system.
Imagination Factory: Live Coaching with Jalaycia Lewis
This is a particularly exciting episode because we are doing something a little bit different. Today’s guest is Jalaycia Lewis who is part of the Imagination Factory community and someone I’ve been coaching for the past 6 months or so. Like so many of us, Jalaycia has ideas and dreams for what she wants to do in the world. She wants her work to align with her values, what she loves, what she’s good at, and how she wants to create a more just world. For her, that is an idea she calls The Social Recipe, which is an organization she’s wanted to start for years.
In this episode you are going to drop into a live coaching session with me and Jalaycia
Guaranteed Income as a Child Welfare Intervention
On this week’s episode, Brightpoint CEO Mike Shaver and University of Illinois School of Social Work researcher Will Schneider join to discuss Empower Parenting with Resource, a test of the impact of guaranteed income as a component of how child welfare systems engage parents. Empower will provide hundreds of system-involved parents with cash assistance as part of a randomized control trial.
When CPS Is at the Door, with Jim Mason, Kathleen Creamer, and Martin Guggenheim
This week, we have the privilege of hosting not one, not two, but three guests! We speak with Jim Mason, the president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, Kathleen Creamer, the managing attorney at Community Legal Services’ Family Advocacy Unit, and Martin Guggenheim, the founder and retired co-director of New York University School of Law’s Family Defense Clinic.
These longtime experts in their fields spend some time with us today discussing best practices for parents and important things to know if CPS shows up at your family’s door.
Am I Enough, Am I Doing Enough?
In this week’s journal episode, I share a simple exercise that my coach, Brendalyn King shared with me. Since then, I have shared this with a number of people I work with, and they typically resonate with it and find it valuable. This came to me at a time in my process where I was questioning the impact of my work and if I was doing enough and doing “the right” things. I think this is an experience that most of us have felt throughout our lives and careers. The exercise helps us to identify where those feelings are coming from and how we can remind ourselves that we are always enough, and we can trust our future to emerge.
If you haven’t listened to the episode with Brendalyn, I would highly recommend doing so. She is an incredibly skillful coach and absolutely amazing person.
Child Welfare In a Second Trump Administration, with Jerry Milner
On this week’s episode, we review some recent research on child opioid overdoses, youth with disabilities in foster care, and the Biden administration’s historic apology to the Indigenous community.
Jerry Milner, co-founder of the Family Justice Group, joins us to discuss his time leading the U.S. Children’s Bureau during the previous Trump administration, and what his experience during the first term suggests to him about what might be coming in the next four years.
In this episode of Resilient Voices & Beyond, we are honored to feature Aytia Tarpley—a remarkable Lived Experience Expert, Survivor Leader, Consultant, Keynote Speaker, and Peer Support Specialist. Aytia’s story of resilience is nothing short of incredible, as she has transformed her experiences with foster care, abuse, homelessness, and human trafficking into powerful advocacy and leadership for those facing similar struggles.
Embodied Liberation
Welcome to the cypher! We took a break, and now we are back to experience the rhythm of the cypher. We want to thank our loyal listeners for your grace during these tough times. This month’s pause was conducive to our overall health. Audio Nuggets is grateful to be joined by a fellow titan, dear friend, and comrade, Valerie Chafograck for Episode 38: Embodied Liberation.
WE NEEDED THIS!
Valerie Chafograck is an Afro-Caribbean woman born in France and moved to this country in 1990. Her love affair with dance and embodiment combined with her commitment to collective liberation fuels her radical imagination and creativity. An embodiment facilitator, devoted to decolonizing the body and promote liberation in the body, this inspired Valerie to create Movement Liberation in 2019–a California based healing justice non-profit, blending conscious dance, somatic and social justice perspectives to curate workshops and retreats for Black bodies and bodies of culture.
This conversation occurs just days after the execution of Marcellus Williams in Missouri. The episode begins with uncovering the pattern of Black annihilation, and how centering love for Black bodies will facilitate healing.
The conversation deepens as Valerie describes somatic and embodiment practices for the audience, describing embodiment as love, learning to stay in the body, reclaiming the body, and nurturing the body. Valerie reminds listeners to quiet, slow down, pay attention to the parts of us that need tending and celebration, and weave mindfulness in our daily practice.
Valerie shares the gifts of conscious dance on the dance floor at Movement Liberation–the importance of ritual, the beauty of being BIG and full, tapping into our born dignity, and following our ancestry for inspiration. All in a way that is unapologetic! Collective care is where it’s AT!
How Investing in Parents as Business Owners Improves Family Well-being with Zenayda Bonilla
In this episode, hosts Tecoria and Elliott connect with Zenayda Bonilla, a mother who overcame the challenge of feeling silenced by the child welfare system. Zenayda shares her journey of navigating motherhood in a new country and culture, and how she found support through the Center for Family Life in Brooklyn. The Center for Family Life is one of the recipients of the Youth, Family, and Community Partnership Grants, awarded to nonprofits engaging Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities within the Thriving Families, Safer Children initiative.
Rewind: Before You Call CPS, with Vivek Sankaren
This week, we’re rewinding to a conversation with Vivek Sankaran from June 2021.
When faced with a struggling family, bystanders can be quick to call CPS, not realizing that child protective agencies often aren’t equipped to help families and rush to punish them instead.
Vivek Sankaren is working to reform this broken system and provide families with helpful, high-quality legal care in the midst of CPS cases. Vivek is a clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, where he heads a program to educate future lawyers.
Jim and Vivek talk about the work Vivek is doing to help create a more supportive and humane child welfare system – a system that actually helps families instead of harming them.
Rerelease: From Agent to Advocate to Activist with Dr Jessica Pryce
I’ve been under the weather, so I decided to rerelease a gem from season one. I’m excited to share my conversation with Dr Jessica Pryce. Dr Pryce’s book, Broken: Transforming Child Protective Services, gave us a great backdrop to a wide-ranging conversation. At the beginning of the book, she lays out a framework or process of moving from being an agent of the child protection system to becoming an advocate and then activist. We talk about what these terms mean, the process of moving from one to the other, and how this has played out in Jessica’s career. The conversation then turns to the subtitle of the book, transforming child protective services, Dr Pryce’s Ted Talk, and her perspective on Termination of Parental Rights.
Please visit Dr Pryce’s website to learn more about her work, listen to her Ted Talk, or to purchase her new book. Reimagine Child Protection (jessicaprycephd.com)
Left Behind in Jamaica: Dawn Post on a Residential Care Tragedy
This year, Jamaican child welfare officials abruptly removed eight teenage boys from a residential facility known as Atlantis Leadership Academy. All eight were American youth and three were adoptees.
Dawn Post, a veteran attorney for youth in foster care, represented the teens pro bono, working with the Jamaican government to ensure their safe return to the United States. She joined us to tell the story, discuss the broader connections to child welfare present in this incident, and announce a new legal office she has launched called Themis Youth Law and Advocacy.
Imagining a Future Without Termination of Parental Rights
In this week’s journal episode, I wanted to return to the conversation about Termination of Parent Rights. I’ve been surprised by the number of conversations that are happening around TPR in recent months, more than any time in my career, including national working groups. While we have a long way to go in terms of making significant strides, it seems as though we are normalizing the conversation about a world without TPR. So, I wanted to come back to the thought experiment of, “what if TPR no longer existed?”
From Foster Care to Freedom: Jose A. Perez on Resilience, Art, and Advocacy
On InnerViews, Ivory Bennett speaks with Jose A. Perez, winner of the 2024 Youth Voices Rising New York Op-Ed competition, for his poignant essay, When Help Hurts: Foster Care vs. My Mom. In a powerful conversation, Perez shares his journey from New York’s foster care and prison systems to becoming an acclaimed poet, actor, and advocate. Listen as Jose reflects on a system that separated his family, the art that saved him, and his current role advocating for justice and opportunities for system-involved youth. Don’t miss this impactful dialogue on resilience, transformation, and the power of family.
Every Seven Minutes
That’s the rate at which infants and toddlers are being removed from their homes in the U.S. according to new research from Zero to Three, and this age group makes up nearly 50% of the foster care population. What should children’s attorneys know when advocating for this population? Angela interviewed Shannon Felder, Training Director from the NACC to get some practical advice and a preview of NACC’s upcoming Infants and Toddlers series. Some of the issues discussed included:
Are sibling bonds among infants and toddlers being discounted because they haven’t had time to solidify yet?
What does “compassionate advocacy” look like in the context of children 0-5?
For attorneys representing these children, does secondary trauma hit differently?
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