Sarah Winograd’s journey as a “professional volunteer” led to the realization that poverty was a driving factor in the child removals in the families she was working with. See how Sarah mobilized her community to address family poverty to help families stay together. Through the Together for Families program, Sarah lives out her vision of supporting families by helping them meet basic needs.
Show Notes
00:00:30 | Matt opens this episode reflecting on the child welfare system’s association between poverty and neglect

00:01:10 | Meet Sarah Winograd: Program Manager for Together for Families, Advocates for Children, and an adoptive mom.

00:05:05 | Back in the U.S. as an adult, Sarah dedicated herself to volunteering where she would begin spending a lot of her time working with youth formerly in foster care in New York and later in Georgia.

00:06:45 | Sarah talks about the first case she worked on as a CASA volunteer in Georgia.

00:10:37 | Who was representing and supporting the mom in Sarah’s case?

00:11:28 | Sarah explains the “ah-ha” moment she experienced while talking to one of the children in the family. This helped her fill in gaps that were missing from the family’s case file.

00:15:20 | Matt and Sarah discuss a shift in thinking around the reason Sarah became a CASA volunteer—from helping kids to helping the whole family.

00:17:38 | Sarah explains some of the support she provided to the family while staying within the boundaries of her role as a CASA volunteer.

00:20:37 | Sarah shares how she received the reputation for the "resource queen” by helping families not on her case load meet their basic needs and stay in-tact.

00:22:59 | Sarah shares her findings on poverty as a driver of child welfare involvements, as well as how her colleagues felt about the realities of the families they served.

00:25:10 | Sarah talks about the conversation with her CASA supervisor.

00:30:54 | Matt reflects on the punitive structure of the child welfare system and Sarah’s approach to seeing families for their strengths and with empathy, rather than defining them by their circumstances.

00:32:14 | What’s next for Sarah after CASA?

00:41:14 | Sarah’s vision of what’s next for the Together for Families program.

00:44:40 | Advice for people seeing the same issues in their community who want to address the needs of families.

00:45:53 | Final thoughts from Matt Anderson.

Resources
Together for Families | Advocates for Children

Georgia ranks 38th in the Nation for Child and Family Well-Being | Georgia Family Connection Partnership

One promise became a lifelong mission for this Atlanta family advocate | CBS46

Cobb County, GA Child Welfare Stats | Fostering Court Improvement

A Key Connection: Economic Stability and Family Well-being | Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago

Child Welfare: Purposes, Federal Programs, and Funding | Congressional Research Service Reports

Child Welfare Financing SFY 2018: A survey of federal, state, and local expenditures | Child Trends

Cherie Craft, the founding CEO and Executive Director of Smart from the Start, talks about her organization’s unique approach to engaging communities and addressing conditions to enhance child and family well-being. Cherie references a previous episode of Seen Out Loud with Matthew Jackson to explain how Smart from the Start builds trust with families. Cherie also offers advice for other organizational leaders on relationship building, reducing recidivism rates, and incorporating social justice into community work.

00:00:23 | Matt recaps the last episode S2, E5: The Impact of Community Conditions with Matthew Jackson

00:02:36 | What is Smart from the Start and what are they all about?

00:07:39 | What is Cherie’s “secret sauce” to building trust with families?

00:08:52 | Why don’t families trust social workers and service-providing organizations that come into communities?

00:10:14 | Cherie shares how Smart from the Start operates

00:13:03 | Cherie talks about how she saw Matthew when he first approached her at Smart from the Start.

00:18:00 | Cherie talks about baking a strengths-based approach to seeing families into Smart from the Start’s culture.

00:20:10 | Matt and Cherie recall a story Matthew shared in S2, E5: The Impact of Community Conditions with Matthew Jackson

00:25:27 | Matt asks Cherie about what happens when something her team vouches for doesn’t come to fruition.

00:29:06 | Matt asks Cherie how Smart from the Start responds to skeptics of her organization.

00:33:11 | Cherie shares more about her origin story.

00:36:44 | Cherie shares how her organization’s foundation impacts the recidivism rate for fully engaged families in organizational programs.

00:39:50 | Cherie explains Smart from the Start’s intentional approach to addressing systemic issues impacting families and the new program, Justice 4.

00:47:22 | Matt, an organizational leader at Children’s Home Society of N.C. and the Institute for Family asks advice from Cherie for leaders like him that feel like they don’t have relatable stories to use as building blocks when connecting with families.

00:49:12 | Final thoughts from host Matt Anderson.

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In this episode, Matthew Jackson explains how the community conditions he grew up in influenced the trajectory of his life into adulthood, and the difficulties he experienced with leaving “Jungle” in the past and charting a new path for the betterment of his family. Listen as Matthew shares his story as a single father, passionately invested in his daughter’s life, and how he’s helping other dads, with similar beginnings in Boston, MA and Washington, D.C.

[Warning: This conversation contains explicit language]

Show Notes
00:00:26 | Matt starts the conversation on what he means by child welfare reform.

00:01:18 | Meet Matthew Jackson.

00:04:17 | Matthew talks about parenting his 10-year-old daughter.

00:06:44 | Matthew’s take on how options presented in his community during his youth strongly impacted the trajectory of his early years into adulthood.

00:09:53 | Matthew explains how baseball provided him and his peers a vision of a way out of his neighborhood and the surrounding circumstances.

00:12:06 | How Matthew arrived at the decision to push his baseball dreams aside and pursue the hustle culture that consumed his community and––one by one––each of his teammates and friends.

00:13:50 | Matthew shares how he received his nickname “Jungle” and how the creation of this persona helped him survive in a community where lives were often cut short.

00:17:22 | Matthew recalls the beginnings of his relationship with his then-girlfriend and eventually becoming a first-time dad.

00:20:08 | Matthew reflects on the conflict he experienced while wrestling with how he would provide for his family.

00:21:49 | On Halloween 2014, Matthew’s life changed forever–– he describes the events that take place which hurled him into the role of a single father.

00:24:49 | Matthew shares how wrestling with the grief of the loss of his girlfriend, as well as his newfound responsibility as the sole provider for his daughter, brought him to the decision to leave hustling in his past and chart a new path.

00:27:42 | Matthew explains the difficulties of earning low wages at a retail job and providing for his daughter.

00:31:17 | Matthew shares the impact of the district attorneys on his case postponing his trial and later putting Matthew on probation instead of in jail.

00:35:35 | Matt poses a question to listeners as he reflects on Matthew’s story.

00:36:30 | Matthew shares more on his involvement with Smart from the Start.

00:37:34 | What are some things Matthew is hearing from other dads he works with at Smart from the Start about how they’re viewed and treated as fathers in communities?

00:38:55 | What exactly does Matthew do when working with fathers in the Focusing on Fatherhood program?

00:41:46 | Matt shares final thoughts

Resources
Smart from the Start
Fatherhood Organizations | Child Welfare Information Gateway

Bonus Content
Photo album

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