Spring 2020. The world shut down. Schools closed. Families sheltered in place. And a narrative began to spread through newsrooms across the country. Children were unsafe at home. Without teachers watching, without mandatory reporters, abuse would become invisible. It was a narrative born of genuine concern. But it was also "an alarmist media narrative." And it was doing harm. But what happens when the people who know better — child welfare experts, advocates, people with lived experience — decide they're not going to let that narrative stand? What happens when they don't just push back, but build something new? And what happens when they track, measure, and actually change how the media tells stories about families? This is Episode 11: Changing the Story. Today, we're exploring how journalism and media both create and challenge narratives. How a network of experts and advocates came together to confront harmful media narratives about children and families. How they built strategies that actually work. And how counter-narratives aren't just responses, they're architecture.
Today's episode included the following speakers (in the order they appear):
Host: Luke Waldo
Guests:
00:14–02:52 – Luke Waldo
Luke opens in spring 2020: as the pandemic shut down schools and workplaces, a narrative spread through newsrooms that children were unsafe at home, invisible to the mandated reporters who normally would catch signs of abuse. The concern was genuine, but the message it sent was damaging: parents are threats, homes are dangerous, and professional surveillance is the only thing keeping children safe. Luke frames the episode's central question: what happens when child welfare experts, advocates, and people with lived experience decide not to let that narrative stand, and build something new in its place?
02:52–07:39 – Kim Dvorchak and Jared Robinson: The Origins of the Changing the Narrative Network
Kim Dvorchak describes how the network was born: during a Casey Family Programs national partners meeting on Zoom in spring 2020, she typed into the chat offering to co-write an op-ed pushing back on the alarmist pandemic narrative. That single offer sparked an offline conversation that grew into the Changing the Narrative working group, which has been meeting for five years since.
Jared Robinson describes the working group's purpose: not another policy update meeting, but a dedicated space for communications-minded people who understood that changing a narrative requires different skills than writing policy. It requires knowing how stories work, what frames resonate, and which ones backfire. The spirit from the start was collaborative and entrepreneurial: "feeling our way forward" rather than following a prescribed formula. Casey Family Programs brought in Rally to provide communications expertise alongside the partners' subject matter knowledge.
10:11–14:12 – Kim Dvorchak and Jared Robinson: Strategy and Measurable Results
The group made a crucial early decision: don't just have experts and lawyers explain why the dominant narrative is wrong. Bring in lived experience: young people with foster care backgrounds, parents who had navigated the system, pediatricians and other frontline voices. The op-ed and letters-to-the-editor campaign became the primary vehicle, placing counter-narrative content in local, state, and national outlets where the harmful narrative had originally circulated, then amplifying it through partner newsletters and social media.
The results are documented. The network has tracked child welfare media coverage for five years. In 2020, mentions of prevention in child welfare coverage were essentially negligible. By the end of 2024, prevention appeared in approximately 20% of the stories analyzed, a significant shift that is continuing to grow. Coverage increasingly features the lived experience of families rather than just policymakers and agency leaders.
16:42–22:38 – Luke Waldo and Tarik Moody: Solutions Journalism and the Doomed Feeling
Luke shifts from the network's media strategy to the storytellers themselves. Tarik Moody describes Radio Milwaukee's editorial commitment: whenever a story covers something harmful or systemic, always follow it with how that harm is being addressed. Not sometimes; always. His goal with By Every Measure, a podcast on systemic racism in Milwaukee, was to educate without inducing guilt, making a deliberate distinction between systemic cause and individual blame, and structuring each episode so listeners left feeling agency rather than despair.
Luke identifies the psychological mechanism: when people are shown a massive systemic problem with no pathway to address it, they develop learned helplessness. Tarik's formula counters this: show the problem, show people doing something about it, and leave the listener asking "What can I do?" rather than "Are we doomed?" The response to By Every Measure confirmed the approach: listener gratitude, sustained engagement years after release, and requests for another season.
22:38–31:02 – Luke Waldo and Claudia Rowe: Why "Why?" Changes Everything
Claudia Rowe represents a different but complementary approach: years-long, deeply reported journalism that refuses simple answers. Luke draws a distinction between two questions journalists can ask. "What happened?" leads to blame: this kid was damaged, this family failed, this system is broken. "Why did this happen?" leads to understanding: what does severing parental bonds do neurologically? What does repeated placement with strangers do to attachment? What does poverty plus trauma plus system intervention create together?
Claudia's work on Wards of the State exemplifies this: she does not deny that foster care causes harm, but she traces the mechanisms of that harm and asks what it would take to do better. She also names the professional challenge directly: simple, sensational stories confirm biases and get clicks. Monster narratives don't require systemic thinking. Looking closer does, and it takes time, trust, and willingness to engage with complexity that frightens or confuses.
31:02–38:04 – Luke Waldo
Luke synthesizes the episode as a single system with multiple entry points. Kim and Jared's network changes how journalists tell stories about families by providing messaging support, expert voices, and lived experience to counter harmful narratives as they emerge. Tarik and Claudia are the storytellers doing the work differently, structuring coverage to create agency rather than paralysis, asking "why" rather than just "what", and holding complexity rather than collapsing into simple labels.
He leaves listeners with four questions: How might we resist sensational headlines and seek out complexity? How might we support journalism that takes years to understand an issue deeply? How might we share stories that create agency instead of despair? And when telling our own stories, how might we follow Tarik's formula: show the problem, show the solutions, leave people asking "What can I do?" rather than "Are we doomed?"
He previews Episode 12: Pardeep Singh Kaleka on how he transformed a devastating act of violence against his family and community into a story of compassion and friendship.
Closing Credits
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Luke Waldo 00:14
Welcome to season four of Overloaded: Understanding Neglect, where we explore how stories and narratives shape what we believe and how we act and how we might tell different stories that change the narrative so that all children and families can thrive.
Hey, everyone, this is Luke Waldo, your host for this podcast series, and the Director of Program Design and Community Engagement for the Institute for Child and Family Well-being, our partnership between Children's Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Helen Bader School of Social Welfare.
Spring 2020: the world shut down.
Media Clips 00:55
To growing concerns about the deadly coronavirus officially hitting the US. Here's what we know: the risk from that patient that's being treated here is said to be low, but doctors are so concerned because they still don't know how she got the virus. Tonight, the first containment zone here in America, the New York Governor imposing restrictions on a community just outside New York City. Let's look at the numbers today, and they're not good.
Luke Waldo 01:18
Schools closed, families sheltered in place, and a narrative began to spread through newsrooms across the country.
Media Clip 01:25
Experts say there will be more cases of child abuse during the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers are often primary reporters of abuse before it goes too far.
Luke Waldo 01:34
Children were unsafe at home, without teachers watching, without mandated reporters, abuse would become invisible. It was a narrative born of genuine concern, but it was also an...
Kim Dvorchak 01:48
...alarmist media narrative.
Luke Waldo 01:50
...and it was doing harm. But what happens when the people who know better - child welfare experts, advocates, people with lived experience - decide they're not going to let that narrative stand? What happens when they don't just push back but build something new? And what happens when they track, measure, and actually change how the media tells stories about families?
This is Episode 11: Changing the Story. Today, we're exploring how journalism and media both create and challenge narratives; how a network of experts and advocates came together to confront harmful media narratives about children and families; how they built strategies that actually work; and how counter-narratives aren't just responses, they're architecture. Before we talk about the solutions, we need to understand the problem, and to understand the problem, we need to go back to spring 2020.
Kim Dvorchak 02:52
And as the pandemic was unfolding in the spring of 2020, we noticed, as a group of child welfare advocates and stakeholders, that there was a narrative emerging through media articles and certain interviews that children were potentially facing harm at home.
Media Clips 03:14
Well, welcome back. Quarantines aimed at keeping people safe during the pandemic may actually be making some people less safe, trapped with their abusers. Local advocates say they are seeing an increase in calls to domestic violence hotlines since people began self-isolating tonight. NBC 15's Darwin Singleton looks at how the COVID-19 pandemic is leaving some youngsters fearing more than just the virus.
Kim Dvorchak 03:36
The children were not safe at home. You know, if we recall back, this was a time when we were all working from home, putting our children through school at home, doing everything through home on Zoom, not a lot of interaction with other people. And so there was a concerning narrative developing that this meant that children were unsafe because child abuse would be invisible, and children would not be going to school where there are teachers who serve as mandatory reporters and other folks that might be able to identify if there was abuse in the home.
Luke Waldo 04:14
That's Kim Dvorchak, CEO of the National Association of Counsel for Children, and she's describing a narrative that felt like it was everywhere in those early pandemic months: if children aren't being watched by professionals - teachers, counselors, coaches - who is keeping them safe from their own parents? It sounds protective. It sounds like concern for children, but here's what it actually communicated: parents are threats, homes are dangerous, and the only thing keeping children safe is surveillance.
Kim Dvorchak 04:45
We knew from our expertise and research that mandatory reporting is not an effective way to detect child abuse. We were also very concerned that it was an alarmist media narrative.
Luke Waldo 05:00
Think about what narrative does: when the dominant story is children are unsafe at home, what policies does that inspire? More surveillance, more investigation, more separation of families. And who gets investigated most? Not wealthy families with resources and privacy; families living in poverty, families of color, families already overloaded by systems that are often suspicious of them.
Jared Robinson 05:28
But like Kim said, the experts among us really knew enough to understand that the predominant narratives about children being unsafe at home with their families were at best misrepresenting the situation, and at worst they were actively harming efforts to get families the support they need during such a difficult time.
Luke Waldo 05:43
That's Jared Robinson from Rally, a communication strategy firm, and his phrase "actively harming" is critical. This was a narrative that was shaping real-world responses in real time, while families were already scared and struggling.
Media Clips 05:58
And today, we are expecting to cross that 100,000 threshold, 100,000 Americans to have lost their lives. This morning, a growing number of major meat processing plants are closed because coronavirus. Has had a devastating impact on the jobs market, with more than 36 million Americans filing for unemployment since the coronavirus outbreak.
Jared Robinson 06:20
There wasn't anybody talking about the need to strengthen and support families during that time, at least at first. Coverage was very focused on the experience of individual children, and a lot of that conversation was happening among politicians and agency leaders with no real strong national cohesion regarding what was happening at that time.
Luke Waldo 06:41
So what do you do when you see a harmful narrative taking root in real time? If you're Kim Dvorchak, you pop into the chat and say,
Kim Dvorchak 06:48
Hey, I'd be happy to write an op-ed. Let's co-write a letter to the editor. Let's co-write an op-ed". You know, as the leader of an organization that advocates for children, I think it's really important for organizations like mine to take a stand on these issues—to say we do care about children's safety, but this doesn't mean that children are not safe.
Luke Waldo 07:08
This moment, Kim typing into a Zoom chat during a Casey Family Programs national partners meeting is where the narrative change network begins. Not with a grand strategy, but with an offer: "I'll write something".
Kim Dvorchak 07:23
And so that's really what sparked this, what became an offline conversation about how do we respond to the media narrative, and then that grew into the Changing the Narrative working group that has been meeting ever since for, I would say, the last five years.
Luke Waldo 07:39
Five years from one op-ed to a sustained collaborative effort to change how media tells stories about children and families. But how do you actually do that?
Jared Robinson 07:48
Casey Family Programs has this fantastic network of national partners that they work with, and convening weekly during the pandemic, there was just so much happening week to week that that space was just jam-packed with policy updates and updates on what families need and what they were experiencing. And so we saw this need to step a level down into: what does the communications around this issue look like, and who were the right people to be in that space? Because it might not be the same people meeting elsewhere. So really facilitating this space where we could convene comms-minded people who had an interest in pushing back against these harmful narratives.
Luke Waldo 08:23
This is important. Jared is talking about creating a different kind of space, not the general policy meeting where everyone shares updates, but a specific space for people thinking about communication strategy, because changing a narrative requires different skills than writing policy. It requires understanding how stories work, how media works, what frames resonate and which ones backfire. And it requires something else too.
Jared Robinson 08:49
And I don't think any one of us at the time would have claimed to have all the answers.
Luke Waldo 08:54
Humility, uncertainty, a willingness to figure it out together.
Jared Robinson 08:59
So while it started with kind of this initial desire to write like an opening letter to the editor or an opening op-ed, there was a real entrepreneurial spirit in the group as we explored different approaches to see what worked to get this message out. And that included inviting in other colleagues, other people from our network, who we thought could contribute or benefit from this. And I think that overall mindset of collaboration and feeling our way forward has guided the evolution of this work group.
Luke Waldo 09:27
"Feeling our way forward." That stuck with me, because narrative change isn't a prescribed linear formula. It's adaptive, collaborative, persistent, and it requires bringing in expertise that advocacy organizations don't always have in-house.
Kim Dvorchak 09:43
That Casey Family Programs identified the need for some expertise. Let's bring in some media expertise. They were already working with Rally on some narrative strategies, and so it was a natural fit to bring Rally into this conversation, which leveraged its ability to kind of take the helm of this conversation and translate it into something that would produce results in the media.
Luke Waldo 10:11
Rally brings the media expertise, the national partners bring the subject matter expertise, and together, they start building not just responses to harmful narratives, but a new narrative architecture. But here's where it gets interesting. Early on, the group made a crucial decision: this wasn't going to be lawyers talking about law or policy experts talking about policy. Listen to how Kim describes the evolution.
Kim Dvorchak 10:37
And so as we had the conversation about how do we change this story, it evolved into a really, I think, exciting, dynamic way to present the information. Let's not just have the "talking heads" in the room say why this is wrong. Let's bring in subject matter experts, and particularly people with lived experience. Let's bring in young people who had foster care experience, or parents who had experienced that, or pediatricians, different stakeholders in the system, so that it wasn't simply, from my perspective, lawyers talking about the law and the legal system, but how do we bring in different voices? And I think the vision really became so robust at that point.
Luke Waldo 11:31
This is the shift from advocacy to narrative change. Advocacy says: "Here's why this policy is wrong, here's what should change". Narrative change says: "Here's a different way to see this. Here's whose voices we need to hear to understand what's really happening". Because, as we have heard from Jess Moyer, our resident expert this season from the FrameWorks Institute, narratives aren't changed by facts alone. They're changed by stories, by lived experience, by voices that complicate dominant narratives and challenge mental models.
When the dominant narrative is "children are unsafe at home," the counter-narrative can't just be "No, they're not". It has to be: "Listen to this parent who's keeping their children safe while navigating impossible conditions". "Listen to this pediatrician who's seeing families hold together under extraordinary stress." "Listen to the young person who thrived at home when school wasn't a safe place for them". That's not just pushback; that's reframing. That's building something new.
And this is where the network's specific strategies come in. The network developed an op-ed and letters to the editor campaign, and I can speak to this personally because I've been part of it. Here’s what makes it work.
Jared Robinson 12:46
That form of media engagement has been really important for us, because that is how we saw the harmful narrative circulating at the onset of the pandemic, in a lot of traditional media outlets, whether local, state, or national, and so finding ways to interject expert and lived experience voices into that conversation felt really important. We know that how people consume information nowadays is changing rapidly. We know a lot of people get their information on social media in relatively small bubbles of creators and reporters that they opt into, but by creating content that we can place in those local, national, and state outlets, we can also have these pieces of content that can be amplified on social media through partner newsletters and channels and elsewhere to reach even broader audiences.
Luke Waldo 13:35
Meet people where they are: traditional outlets and social media, expert voices and lived experience. But here's the thing about writing op-eds and letters to the editor: it can feel intimidating, especially for organizations that don't have communications staff.
Jared Robinson 13:51
Sometimes writing an op-ed or a letter to the editor feels like a huge, intimidating task, especially if it's not something that you practiced in or that you had much experience with. And that's where Rally really came in to put some structure around that and provide our support. Because while we might have the communications expertise, the rest of the group is the subject matter experts, and we really need both to go hand in hand.
Luke Waldo 14:12
This is the power of collaboration. Rally brings communications expertise, the partners bring subject matter expertise and lived experience, and together they can respond quickly when harmful narratives emerge. So does this actually work? Can you measure narrative change? Jared and the team have been tracking media coverage about child welfare for five years now, and the shifts they've documented are remarkable.
Jared Robinson 14:40
And I really think of this as like a constellation of indicators that all create the environment where tangible progress can occur. So a big part of this is persuading audiences to think differently about the issue, to think differently about what kind of families deserve support, and what that looks like, and how we can create these better outcomes, and really telling that story and painting that before them.
Luke Waldo 15:01.
A constellation of indicators, not one silver bullet, but multiple data points showing the same shift. Remember where we started? 2020: Pandemic. Children unsafe at home. Here's where we are now.
Jared Robinson 15:14
Moving through 2023 and 2024, we saw the narrative in favor of strengthening and supporting families began to sprout and became much stronger through the end of 2024. It became a normalized part of the conversation to talk about how to support families, how to prevent them from getting to that point in the first place. And one data point that I like to come back to is that in 2020, mentions of prevention were essentially negligible in the coverage that we were analyzing. But by the end of 2024, mentions of prevention were coming up in about 20% of the stories about child welfare that we looked at. That's a pretty huge uptick and a really heartening trend that we're seeing continue now.
Luke Waldo 15:55
From essentially zero to 20%. That's not just a talking point, that's measurable narrative change. Prevention is now part of the conversation. Supporting families is now normalized. And there's another shift.
Jared Robinson 16:09
We've also seen that coverage is increasingly highlighting the lived experience of families, and we know that that's really meaningful towards changing hearts and minds on this issue.
Luke Waldo 16:16 Lived experience, different voices—not just experts and politicians, but families themselves. This is what Kim was talking about when she said, "Let's bring in different voices," and it's working. But while the narrative change network was building the strategy for engaging with media, there was another kind of narrative work happening right here in Milwaukee.
Tarik Moody 16:42
HYFIN. 414music.fm, this is Radio Milwaukee.
Luke Waldo 16:51
So far, we've talked about how the narrative change network engages with journalists and media to change how stories get told. But here's a question I keep coming back to: what if the journalists and media themselves see their work differently? What if they understand their role not just as documenting problems, but as exploring solutions? And here's the bigger question: why does that distinction matter so much? Because I think there's something fundamental happening when a journalist and media make that choice. Something about what stories do to us, how they shape not just what we know, but what we believe is possible.
Let me introduce you to two storytellers that you met earlier this season: a radio host and a journalist who've been thinking about this. First, Tarik Moody, the creator of Rhythm Lab Radio, HYFIN, and co-host of the podcasts By Every Measure and This Bites here in Milwaukee.
Tarik Moody 17:51
That's the mission... that's my personal mission. But that's also kind of what we at Radio Milwaukee try to do. Like, yeah, we might tell a story of something that's bad, but we always want to follow up with how is that being addressed?
Luke Waldo 18:05
Listen to that word "always." Not sometimes, not when it's convenient, but always. Why make that commitment? What does Tarik understand about how stories work that makes that "always" so essential? And then there's Claudia Rowe.
Claudia Rowe 18:21
There are no accidents. This is the pool where I swim.
Luke Waldo 18:23.
Investigative journalist, member of the editorial board of the Seattle Times, and author of National Book Awards finalist Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care, who wrote the book after listening closely to the stories of people who grew up in the foster care system.
Claudia Rowe 18:39
I'm really interested in: what am I seeing? I don't really care how it fits into this narrative or that narrative. I'm particularly trying to answer my question: Why is this happening? Why is this kid doing this? That's what I want to know.
Luke Waldo 18:52
"Why is this happening?" That's a different question than "What happened?" or "Who's to blame?" It's a question that requires complexity, that refuses simple answers. So here's what I want to explore: what happens to our understanding of an issue when journalists ask "Why is this happening?" instead of just "What's wrong?" And what happens to our sense of agency, our belief that we can do something, when journalists show us not just problems, but reasons and possible solutions?
Tarik and Claudia work in different cities, different beats, but I think they're both grappling with the same fundamental challenge: how do you tell stories that create possibility instead of paralysis?
Let me start with Tarik, because I want to understand his thinking here. He's saying something that sounds simple: show the problem and show how it's being addressed. But why does it feel like that happens so infrequently in today's media ecosystem? Why are we so often shown the problem and then nothing to solve it? Tarik tells us how he approached the podcast By Every Measure.
Tarik Moody 20:00
The subject's dark, you know? You listen to it, we try to make it more of a historical thing with personal stories than just, "Oh, this is so dark." They didn't want to go away feeling awful, right? You want to feel like you're coming away knowing that there are people doing something. And then, hopefully, those people, whether we talked about it, it's been a while, whoever we talked to, maybe someone listening wants to help out, right? They want to get engaged, or they want to share the story of somebody who is trying to do something, or maybe someone that might inspire someone else to pick up the mantle and do something else, right? That's kind of the goal, right? I mean, I just don't want people to walk away just going, "Damn, we're doomed".
I mean, it's hard to overcome. It's not going to be solved overnight. It's been years. But ultimately, when you listen to something, you don't want to just come away and just sit there like, "I need a drink," right? You want to be like, "Oh, let me do some more research on my own. Let me Google are there any other solutions out there?" That was my hope: that people would want to learn more, dive deeper into the solutions, or get involved, or figure out how else they can help. That's what I wanted people to take away from listening to the podcast.
Luke Waldo 21:24
"I just don't want people to walk away going, 'Damn, we're doomed.'" So here's what I'm wrestling with: what is the psychology of that "we're doomed" response? Because Tarik is describing something I think we've all felt. You read an article about systemic racism or poverty, and you come away thinking: "This is too big. It's been going on too long. What can I possibly do?" When you're shown a problem over and over with no pathway to address it, you learn that action is pointless.
So the question becomes: how might we tell stories about massive, systemic problems in ways that don't create that learned helplessness? And Tarik's answer seems to be: show the response. Show the people doing something, not because it solves everything overnight (he's clear about that), but because it changes the question in the listener's mind from "Are we doomed?" to "What are people doing? How can I learn more? How can I help?" That shift from passive despair to active curiosity, that might be what separates journalism and media that reinforces harmful narratives from those that challenge them.
But let me push on this a little more, because I think there's something Claudia helps us see here that we've heard earlier this season, but I think is important to revisit.
Claudia Rowe 22:38
"There are some kids that are so damaged you can't do anything for them." Literally, a researcher in child welfare wrote that to me within the last two weeks; I was stunned. "There are some kids who are never going to be able to do math. There are some kids who will never be able to really comprehend the themes of a complicated novel, and there are some kids that are kind of doomed from birth".
Luke Waldo 23:16
"Some kids are doomed from birth." Why does that narrative persist? And more importantly, how does journalism either challenge or reinforce it? Because here's what I think Claudia is pointing to: when we tell simple stories, "This kid was damaged. Nothing could be done”, we're not just reporting facts; we're reinforcing a narrative of fatalism. And when that narrative takes hold, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we believe some kids are doomed, we don't invest in them, and then the outcomes confirm our belief.
So how might journalism break that cycle? Not by denying that systems fail children, but by asking: why are the outcomes so bad? What happened to these kids? What does the research show? And critically: what would it take to do and be better? Those are different questions than "Are some kids just doomed?"
Okay, so we have a philosophy: show problem and response; ask why, not just what. But how does that actually work in practice? Because I think it's one thing to say "Don't make people feel doomed," it's another thing to structure an entire podcast series around that principle when you're tackling Milwaukee's history of systemic racism. So I want to look at how Tarik actually did this with By Every Measure. How do you balance truth-telling about systemic harm with showing responses without making it feel like you're letting the system off the hook? Because I think that's the fear, right? If you show people addressing a problem, does that make the problem seem less urgent? Does it suggest that individual action can solve systemic issues?
Tarik Moody 24:56
That's kind of the concept. I wanted a way to make people... I didn't want a podcast where non-Black people felt awful, like, "I feel bad". That was not the goal, because it's systemic, not an individual's cause. So we wanted a podcast that's educational, didn't make you feel bad, at least personally bad, but maybe made you angry. "What can I do about it?" kind of situation. So that's kind of the planning process: how do we structure this in a way that's not making people feel guilty, but angry, and you know, even though I was angry about the systems, I wanted to make sure it's approachable and that people don't tune out thinking, "Oh, they're blaming me," right?
Luke Waldo 25:47
This is fascinating to me. Listen to the distinction he's making: educational but not guilt-inducing; angry at systems, not individuals; approachable, not alienating. And the goal is a specific emotional and cognitive shift: "What can I do about it?" So the question I'm sitting with is: how might we design communication, whether it's journalism or advocacy or even a conversation, to create that shift from guilt to agency, from blame to curiosity, from "This is someone else's problem" to "What can I do?"
Because I think what Tarik is describing is actually narrative change strategy at the level of emotional response. He's thinking not just about what information to share, but how people will feel after receiving it, and whether that feeling leads to action or paralysis. How might we apply that thinking more broadly? What if every story about a systemic problem asked: how will this make people feel? Will it create agency or despair? And how do we structure it to create the former?
But here's where I need to complicate this a little, because I don't want to suggest that solutions journalism is just "feel-good" journalism, that it's about making people feel better or papering over real harms. In fact, I think the opposite is true. I think real solutions journalism requires holding more complexity, not less. And this is where Claudia's work becomes essential, because she didn't just write a series of articles; she wrote a book. And not just any book, a book that required spending years listening to the stories of young people who'd grown up in the foster care system and reviewing the data to support it. Why does that time matter? What does long-form, deeply reported and researched journalism reveal that quick stories can't?
Claudia Rowe 27:41
This book is looking at that very specifically. It's not the entire system with every wrinkle and nuance. It's: what's up with these numbers? Why are they so high? How does this happen? And to your point about getting back to what we were saying about families: yes, because these outcomes are now becoming more and more known, and I hope that this book Wards of the State helps more people to know them.
For that reason, I think rightly so, there is an appreciation of the fact that we have traditionally swept enormous numbers of children from poor families into the child welfare system, and that we didn't need to do that for all of them. However, okay, great, if we're going to say we didn't need to do that, we should keep more kids with their families. Because when you rupture that bond, even if the original family is struggling, even if there are problems, when you take the kid out and you rupture that bond, and then you move them from stranger to stranger to stranger in each different placement, it just gets worse and worse, and their ability to form attachments goes away, and that has real neurological effects on behavior.
Luke Waldo 28:55
Yes, listen to what Claudia is doing here. She's not saying foster care is all bad. She's not saying keep all kids with their families no matter what. She's showing the complexity: when you rupture bonds, when you move kids from stranger to stranger, the neurological effects, the accumulating harm. And then she's asking, given what we know about how this causes harm: what does that mean we need to do differently?
So here's the question I'm exploring: how is this different from just showing problems? Because Claudia is showing problems, terrible, devastating problems. Over 50% of kids who've been in foster care end up in the criminal justice system. That's not a "feel-good" statistic. But she's asking "Why?" Not just that it happens, but why it happens. What are the mechanisms? What does the research show? And that "Why?" question opens up different possibilities than the "What?" question. "What happened?" often leads to blame: "This kid was damaged. This family failed. This system is broken". "Why did this happen?" leads to understanding: "This is what tearing bonds does neurologically. This is what moving kids repeatedly does to attachment. This is what poverty plus trauma plus system intervention creates". Understanding doesn't excuse, but it does suggest different interventions.
So how might we cultivate more journalism that asks "Why?" instead of just "What?"
Claudia Rowe 30:21
Instead of pulling away or slapping a label on, "Monster," "Sociopath", no, no, look closer. It will be more interesting, and you will have the added benefit of puncturing your fear. You will be less afraid if you understand better. Trust is essential, but it is difficult... Trust is the key. It is the building block. We must sort of be willing to believe in one another more, and that means working more closely together, hearing one another and looking more closely at the things that frighten and confuse us, which has been my whole approach to my job.
Luke Waldo 31:02
Claudia is naming the challenge directly: simple stories are easier. Sensational headlines get clicks: "Monster Attacks," "Hero Saves". Those are simple stories; they confirm our biases; they don't require us to think systemically. But what if we ask different questions? Not "Is this person a monster or a hero?" but "What conditions or systems shaped this situation? What might have prevented it? What does the research show about what actually helps?" Those questions lead to different stories, more complicated stories that don't fit in a three-word headline, but they're also stories that might actually change something.
So how might we, as listeners, readers, consumers of news, demand more of those complicated stories? How might we resist the pull of simple narratives that confirm what we already believe? And how might we support journalism that takes the time, years, sometimes, to understand complexity?
All right, so we have this theory of how journalism might work differently: problem plus response; "Why?" questions, not just "What?"; complexity, not simplification; agency, not despair. But here's the crucial question: does it actually work when you do journalism this way? When you show responses, when you hold complexity, does it change anything?
Tarik Moody 32:27
When we put it out, I remember getting a lot of comments on Facebook saying, "Thank you. You know, this is great". I remember Greater Milwaukee Foundation wanted us to do a Zoom with them. And even recently, not a few months ago, like, "Are you going to do another season?" Even to the day, not as much as when the first two seasons were out, people bring it up. Because I think... I hope people felt that it was not only educational, informative, and engaging, but hopefully, it felt hopeful. You know, that there are people who care.
Luke Waldo 33:06
"Educational, informative, engaging, and hopeful." Tarik is not claiming he solved Milwaukee's racial history. He's not saying the podcast changed policy or ended segregation. He's describing something more subtle, but maybe more important: a shift in how people felt after engaging with difficult history. They said thank you. They asked for more. They wanted to have conversations. It felt hopeful.
So what does that tell us about what narrative change actually looks like? Maybe it's not "We convinced everyone to agree with us". Maybe it's "We created space for people to engage with complexity without shutting down". We showed them problems and solutions. We left them feeling like action is possible. And that emotional shift, from "We're doomed" to "People care and are doing something", might be what allows other changes to happen: policy changes, investment changes, system changes. But they start with an emotional and cognitive shift from paralysis to possibility.
How might we measure that? How might we know if we're creating that shift? Tarik has some indicators: comments, requests for more, sustained engagement over years. What other indicators might we look for? And here's another question: how might we scale this approach?
So let me bring this all together. What we're seeing in this episode is actually a single system with multiple entry points. Kim and Jared and the narrative change network are working to change how journalists tell stories about families, providing messaging support and expert voices. Tarik and Claudia are those storytellers, the ones doing the work of telling stories differently. The network pushes back on "children are unsafe at home" and provides counter-narratives. Tarik shows Milwaukee's history alongside the people addressing it. The network elevates lived experience and tracks whether prevention gets mentioned in coverage. Claudia spends years with young people in foster care, showing the full complexity of their lives beyond simple "damaged kid" narratives. Different roles, different approaches, same fundamental understanding: stories shape reality, and if we want to change reality, we have to change the stories.
But here's what I keep coming back to: it's not just what stories we tell, it's how we tell them, with complexity or simplicity, with despair or agency, with blame or understanding, with problems alone or problems plus solutions. These are choices. And storytellers - journalists, media members like Tarik and Claudia - are showing us what it looks like to make different choices.
So my question to you listening right now is: how might we make different choices in how we consume and share stories? How might we resist the simple, sensational headline and seek out complexity? How might we support journalism that takes years to understand an issue deeply? How might we share stories that create agency instead of despair? And when we're telling our own stories in our work, our organizations, our communities, how might we follow Tarik's formula: show the problem, show the solutions, leave people asking "What can I do?" instead of "Are we doomed?" Because the data shows this works.
I would like to thank Kim Dvorchak, Jared Robinson, Tarik Moody, and Claudia Rowe for sharing their vision for narrative change with us today. Join us for our next episode with Pardeep Singh Kalika as we explore how he turned a terrible act of violence and hatred against his family and community into a story of compassion and friendship.
You've been listening to Overloaded: Understanding Neglect. Until next time, keep asking: What stories shape how we see the world, and how can we tell them differently? If you enjoyed today's episode, please share with friends, family, and colleagues. Also leave us a rating or comment so that we can see your reaction and reach more people.
This podcast would not have been possible without the support and talents of Nathan Fink, who is responsible for our technical production. I can't express my gratitude enough to Nathan. I'm also grateful to my team at the Institute for Child and Family Well-being at Children's Wisconsin, who drive the Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative and contributed to the ideas behind this podcast.
Finally, I would like to thank all of our speakers that you have heard today and throughout the podcast for their partnership, their willingness to share their stories and expertise with me and all of you, and their commitment to improving the lives of children and families. I'm Luke Waldo, your host and executive editor. Thanks again for listening and see you next time.