Last episode, we explored how art, culture, food, and music create the connective tissue that makes narrative change possible. We heard how shared meals break down barriers, how music creates belonging, and how cultural expression helps us see each other's full humanity. These weren't abstract ideas, they were recipes for building the relationships that movements and narratives require. From this last episode, new questions emerged. Once you've built those relationships, once you've shifted how people see families in crisis, How does changing the story change the system? Because narrative change without structural change is just conversation. And structural change without narrative change doesn't last. Today, we're exploring what happens when an organization works intentionally and strategically to get both sides of that equation right; when they pair strategic narrative work with concrete policy advocacy, when they match new language with new pathways of support. This episode serves, for me, as a powerful example of how narrative change efforts can have ripple effects that are often invisible to us. Let me explain. In season 2, we finished with an episode called Reimagining Mandated Reporting in response to our Strong Famiilies, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiatives’ focus on the troubling fact that around 87% of all families reported to CPS for reasons of neglect were unsubstantiated. This system of mandated reporting was clearly not working for families nor reporters, so we have been looking closely at how to reimagine the system and the alternative support pathways. Fast forward to summer 2025, and I receive an email from Safe and Sound, a San Francisco-based organization working to prevent childhood abuse, neglect, and trauma, who is interested in joining our podcast to talk about how they’ve operationalized so much of what we discussed in that episode and throughout our initiative. The ripples from Lake Michigan reached the shores of the Bay Area, something to be proud of. I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Pegah Faed, Safe and Sound’s CEO, to share how small, community-based organizations’ narrative change can drive systems-level change that influences statewide practice and policy, and how working strategically with aligned partners can make all the difference. Today’s conversation is the beginning of that partnership between our team and theirs. Welcome to Episode 10: From Narrative to Systems Change: Mandated Reporting to Community Supporting
Today's episode included the following speakers (in the order they appear):
Host: Luke Waldo
Guest:
00:14–04:44 – Luke Waldo
Narrative change without structural change is just conversation, and structural change without narrative change doesn't last. You need both, working together. He traces the origin of today's conversation to Season 2 of the podcast, which explored the troubling reality that around 87% of families reported to CPS for neglect are unsubstantiated. That episode sparked outreach from Safe and Sound in San Francisco, who had been operationalizing many of the same ideas. Luke frames the conversation as a real-world case study: how one community-based organization used a 2022 issue brief to drive narrative change that rippled into statewide policy.
04:44–07:42 – Dr. Pegah Faed: Safe and Sound's Three-Pronged Model
Dr. Faed describes Safe and Sound's three integrated areas of work:
07:42–13:04 – Dr. Pegah Faed: Narrative Change as Systems Strategy
Safe and Sound made narrative change central to their systems work: you cannot transform a system if you don't first transform the story the system is built upon. Their 2022 issue brief, Creating a Child and Family Well-Being System, was not primarily a policy document. It was a deliberate reframe of how society understands family stress and safety.
The core argument: mandated reporting is structured around a low threshold of "reasonable suspicion" that criminalizes not reporting. Because neglect is broadly defined and often tied to poverty, this casts an extremely wide net, capturing families whose challenges reflect their living conditions, not their caregiving. The reframe she proposes: the first question when a child's environment is concerning should be, is there truly substantial risk for harm? If yes, CPS is essential. If no, the question becomes, how can we support this child within their caregiving system?
The results have been tangible: practitioners who have absorbed the new language now say "this family is unsupported" instead of "this family is neglectful." The question for mandated reporters has shifted from "should I report?" to "how can I support?" And policymakers who understand that poverty-linked reports make up the vast majority of hotline calls now legislate differently.
13:04–24:53 – Luke Waldo and Dr. Pegah Faed: The Ecosystem of Support
Shifting the mental model of mandated reporters is necessary but not sufficient. Overloaded teachers and nurses who want to support a family still need somewhere to refer them. Dr. Faed describes what Safe and Sound is piloting in San Francisco: the Strong Families Partnership, in which the CPS hotline becomes a triage point. When a call comes in and screeners determine a family needs support rather than investigation, there is now a community pathway, routing the family to Safe and Sound and partner nonprofits rather than opening an investigation.
The shift in framing also changed who gets invited to the table. Instead of risk-management partners (lawyers, law enforcement), Safe and Sound began convening public health organizations, housing agencies, and early childhood programs, all of whom see themselves as supporting family thriving rather than managing child welfare risk. During COVID, this crystallized into a Family Services Alliance of 26 organizations; it has since grown to over 40. That alliance is now the infrastructure for the community pathway.
On the policy side, the California statewide task force that emerged from Safe and Sound's brief has produced recommendations now shaping state policy, including California AB 2085, which narrowed the definition of general neglect and shifted expectations for mandated reporters.
28:51–33:37 – Dr. Pegah Faed: Poverty as Condition, Not Character
Dr. Faed articulates Safe and Sound's foundational reframe around poverty: it is a condition, an external set of constraints, not a parenting deficit or moral failure. This starting point changes everything about program design. Care coordinators work from family strengths, helping families identify their own goals and the steps to reach them, rather than diagnosing deficits. Advocacy work challenges the implicit bias that links poverty to poor parenting, naming neglect as a symptom of stress, isolation, and resource scarcity.
The reframe also shifts the public question from "what's wrong with this parent?" to "what does this family need, and why isn't our system providing it?"
35:29–41:50 – Dr. Pegah Faed: Striking the Balance and Leading the Transformation
Dr. Faed addresses the tension in this work directly: the goal is not to weaken child protection, but to right-size it so CPS can focus on actual safety threats while a broader web of community-based organizations catches families earlier and more effectively. CPS was never designed to solve poverty, heal parental stress, build community connections, and provide material support simultaneously. The vision is not dismantling child protection but surrounding it with the ecosystem it never had.
She describes the four pillars guiding Safe and Sound's transformation, drawn from her letter to the organization at the opening of their strategic plan:
46:05–50:16 – Dr. Pegah Faed: Lessons Learned
Dr. Faed offers five distilled lessons from Safe and Sound's narrative change journey:
50:16–54:07 – Luke Waldo
Luke synthesizes the episode and opens the next question: if families need a different story told about them, who tells it to the public? If 87% of neglect reports are unsubstantiated but headlines never say so, how does the public narrative shift? He previews Episode 11: a conversation with Kim Dvorchak and Jared Robinson on how a national narrative change network has influenced media coverage, and with Tarik Moody on how Radio Milwaukee's solutions journalism and community storytelling are shifting the narrative locally.
Closing Credits
Join the conversation and connect with us!
Luke Waldo 00:14
Welcome to season 4 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.
Last episode, we explored how art, culture, food, and music create the connective tissue that makes narrative change possible. We heard how shared meals break down barriers, how music creates belonging, and how cultural expression helps us see each other's full humanity. These weren't abstract ideas, they were recipes for building the relationships that movements and narratives require.
From this last episode, new questions emerged. Once you've built those relationships, once you've shifted how people see families in crisis, How does changing the story change the system?
Because narrative change without structural change is just conversation. And structural change without narrative change doesn't last.
Today, we're exploring what happens when an organization works intentionally and strategically to get both sides of that equation right; when they pair strategic narrative work with concrete policy advocacy, when they match new language with new pathways of support.
This episode serves, for me, as a powerful example of how narrative change efforts can have ripple effects that are often invisible to us. Let me explain. In season 2, we finished with an episode called Reimagining Mandated Reporting in response to our Strong Famiilies, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiatives’ focus on the troubling fact that around 87% of all families reported to CPS for reasons of neglect were unsubstantiated. This system of mandated reporting was clearly not working for families nor reporters, so we have been looking closely at how to reimagine the system and the alternative support pathways.
Fast forward to summer 2025, and I receive an email from Safe and Sound, a San Francisco-based organization working to prevent childhood abuse, neglect, and trauma, who is interested in joining our podcast to talk about how they’ve operationalized so much of what we discussed in that episode and throughout our initiative. The ripples from Lake Michigan reached the shores of the Bay Area, something to be proud of.
I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Pegah Faed, Safe and Sound’s CEO, to share how small, community-based organizations’ narrative change can drive systems-level change that influences statewide practice and policy, and how working strategically with aligned partners can make all the difference. Today’s conversation is the beginning of that partnership between our team and theirs.
Welcome to Episode 10: From Narrative to Systems Change: Mandated Reporting to Community Supporting
Dr Pegah Faed serves as a CEO of Safe and Sound, a San Francisco based organization working to prevent and reduce the impact of childhood abuse, neglect and trauma. Last year alone, they supported nearly 14,000 children and caregivers in the Bay area and beyond. Prior to this role, Dr. Faed gained a depth of experience in establishing programs, policy and systems change efforts that create lasting change for children and families in roles at First Five Marin working closely with San Francisco Mayor’s Children's Policy Council and serving on the Center for Youth Wellness’ California Campaign to Counter Childhood Adversity steering committee.
Welcome, Pegah. Thank you for joining us today. I appreciate you and Safe and Sound for reaching out, recognizing the alignment that we have in these complex areas like the intersection of poverty and neglect, mandated reporting and some other challenges that we'll be talking about today. It's really important that we as small organizations across the country find each other and really elevate the really important work that we're doing, especially when it's so aligned as ours is. So it's wonderful having you on the podcast. Welcome again.
Dr. Pegah Faed 04:44
Thank you so much, Luke. It's a pleasure to be here. I mean, the work that you're doing to shift narratives through this podcast is really exciting. So it's my honor to be here with you today.
Luke Waldo 04:55
Wonderful. Thanks again. So we wanted to start at the beginning, so could you tell us a bit more about Safe and Sound?
Dr. Pegah Faed 05:01
Absolutely. Safe and Sound is a community based organization here in San Francisco, California with over 51 years of history supporting families so that every child can grow up safe, supported and connected. And we were founded by the Chief of Pediatrics at San Francisco General Hospital back in 1973 with an ambition to prevent child abuse and neglect, and over time, that mission has really evolved into something bigger, really about building connections and conditions that help families thrive long before they even reach crisis.
And so what that means in the day to day for us here at Safe and Sound is that we do that through a mix of direct service work, directly with families, community building and systems change work. So on the direct service side of the house, we run a Family Resource Center where parents can access diapers, formula, food and hygiene bags, parenting classes, play groups and mental health support as well, all in a warm kind of judgment free space created for parents and caregivers. Our team supports families with care coordination as well to help them achieve goals that they've set for themselves and their families to thrive and and then we also have a 24/7 talk line, which is a warm line that parents and caregivers can call at any point when they're experiencing a need, a crisis, and be able to connect with one of our team members and volunteers for support.
In terms of the community building side of the house, we train professionals, so whether it be teachers, medical providers, other mandated reporters to recognize family trauma, stress and overload and respond with support rather than reporting. And we also work across sectors to shift policy and narratives, helping to move locally, San Francisco, but also our state, towards a system that's not focused on mandated reporting, but one that's really centered on community support. And the thing that makes Safe and Sound, for me, really unique is that we are a nonprofit that has those three prongs. We have deep relationships in community with families for over 51 years, but now we're able to amplify those lessons and challenges and innovation that we do locally to the systems level to really make scalable, sustainable change for families within San Francisco and hopefully beyond.
Luke Waldo 07:42
So that's what really struck me at first, when, when we first talked about this conversation about this opportunity to partner with the podcast, is that you, as you just stated, are an organization that prides itself on its relationship with its community, community members, and its service, its direct service, and yet it's also very transformational, I would argue, in the narrative change that ultimately leads to policy change, to practice change, and to really culture change, right? And I think for a very, very long time, and this is my own experience, those of us that are doing the work in direct practice, see ourselves as as limited to and that's there's nothing wrong with, with just being focused on direct practice, right? We need, we need more service providers in our community that are doing transformational work for families.
But it's this idea that we can do more right when it comes to systems change type work, and we're going to get into that. So I want, I want to shift our focus specifically to 2022 when Safe and Sound authored the foundational issue brief, Creating a Child and Family Well Being System explicitly designed to shift public discourse toward community support for overloaded families. As a result, there are meaningful policy shifts that happen at the state level in California over these past three years, Safe and Sound's recent work seems to frame prevention not just as a policy shift, but a shift in how we talk about families, stress and support. So could you share how narrative change has become a key strategy for Safe and Sound to drive impact in your organization and community?
Dr. Pegah Faed 09:20
I would say narrative change is critical to the work that we want to do, and it's critical because we realized early on that you can't transform a system if you don't first transform the story the system is built upon. And so when we wrote Creating a Child and Family Well Being System back in 2022 we weren't just making policy recommendations in that report, we were intentionally reframing how we as society understand families stress and safety, and that brief laid out something fundamental, which is the moving from mandated reporting to community supporting isn't just about a residual shift in how we do our work, it requires rethinking the entire framing of our response to families, and so when you think about what our system looks like now, the mandated reporting system is structured around a very low threshold of reasonable suspicion that triggers reporting even when there's really little concern for a child's safety. And because neglect is so broadly defined and so often tied to poverty, that threshold casts an incredibly wide net.
And so too often, what gets labeled as risk is really a reflection of a family's living conditions, not their caregiving, for example, and so for mandated reporters, failing to report that reasonable suspicion is a crime. So if the system is set up to err on the side of reporting even when a family actually needs support, we need to think about what that narrative shift really means. And so we want to start somewhere more honest, right? And so when there's a concern about a child's environment or living conditions, the first question should be, is there truly substantial risk for harm? And if the answer is yes, then Child Protective Services absolutely plays an essential role. But if it's no, then the next step should be, then how can we support this child within their caregiving system so that they can be safe and thrive, and that reframing creates a completely different starting place, one that's grounded in best outcomes for the child and not in fear and liability of what's going to happen if I don't do this.
And this work goes beyond mandated reporting, really at the 40,000 foot level, if you want to transform a system built for Child Protection into one that prioritizes Child and Family Well Being, we have to shift the narrative about what families are experiencing and what it means for a family to thrive. And so we have we have to help people understand the root causes of what they're seeing downstream as stress and overload and instability, not as character flaws or parenting failures, but really as symptoms or conditions that can be changed. And what we've seen over the past few years, since that publishing of that brief is that narrative change is able to then unlock behavior change. And when practitioners have started talking about stress and particular conditions rather than neglect, they've been responding differently. And when policymakers understand that poverty linked reports make up the vast majority of our hotline calls, they legislate differently. And when communities then hear about stories centered on their dignity and their support, they engage differently. And so that just is a lever that shifts every particular partner in this whole scheme of serving, from children all the way through policymakers.
Luke Waldo 13:04
So when we first met, it was immediately clear, as I mentioned earlier, to me, that we were confronting similar challenges, right? So more specifically, we are concerned in the state of Wisconsin that around 87% of neglect reports to Wisconsin's child protective services are ultimately unsubstantiated, meaning that 1000s of kids and families that someone a teacher right, law enforcement official, a nurse, a doctor, right, that's someone who believed that that family needed support or intervention is ultimately not getting that support or intervention.
So this reality has moved us to ask how we might reimagine mandated reporting much as you have so that overloaded families receive the support they need, and mandated reporters also are receiving the sort of institutional and system level support that they need, right? So my first question to you when considering that brief in 2022 that described the move from mandated reporting to community supporting as more than a policy change, but also really a deeper rethinking of what families actually need. What ultimately inspired that shift?
Dr. Pegah Faed 14:15
Such an important question, and honestly, I would say the shift grew out of listening, really listening to both families, frontline practitioners and communities over many years, and listening to the data. So when we looked closely at what was happening, it became clear that the issue wasn't just that mandated reporting wasn't working as it was intended to it was that the framework itself that it was built on assumptions that no longer reflect what families are actually needing to be safe and stable and supported.
So we publish a report annually called the Economics of Child Abuse, and we break down the data by county in California and every county has the opportunity to go into this report that's interactive and filter the data accordingly. And in that report, we've consistently seen that something around 87% of calls that come into child protective services are not substantiated, and so that's a huge number. When you're talking about in California, let's say 4500 calls came in. If only 13% of them needed the child welfare system, then we are setting up both children and families and the system for failure. And so when we noticed that families were getting reported, not because they were harmful, but because they were overwhelmed, they were isolated, they lacked access to the things that they needed to cope, whether it was childcare, stable housing, mental health supports, all of that. And so the only doorway that we've been able to build so far has been this mandated reporting system, but it was never designed to respond to those unmet needs.
And so we took a step back and said, what do these families actually need? What inspired the shift was seeing that, looking at the data, hearing from families that it's not working, and saying, Okay, well, we need to help support the people that want to to not have to report. What does that system look like, and what does that pathway look like that narrows the door to child welfare and opens the door to multiple doors, no wrong doors, to community supports for families?
Luke Waldo 16:42
So the brief and its powerful shift in narrative ultimately led to a statewide Task Force and recommendations that have led to policy change, and I'm sure then practice change, right and how we think about the work. This is an inspiring example of how narrative change leads to behavior change. It also is an important reminder that organizations that direct practice, that provide direct practices, can also be systems change leaders, as I mentioned earlier. So can you tell us about the shifts you've seen in how professionals think about families and how partners engage with you, or how policies are written as a result of the narrative change?
Dr. Pegah Faed 17:24
I have to say, of all the work that I've done in my career, watching narrative shift translate into real behavior change is one of the most hopeful parts of doing this work, because you see, you start to really see shifts In in behaviors that can make an scalable and sustainable change right beyond just one family, but to many. And here in San Francisco and across the state of California, we've seen that once people had language that better reflected what they were witnessing in families’ lives, it unlocked a totally different way of thinking and acting.
So when I think about the professionals, the shift has been profound. If we're thinking about whoever is considered a mandated reporter, whether it be teachers, pediatricians, social workers, nurses, who've already been doing their best within a constrained system, begins start to I've been, we've been hearing them start to talk about their work with families as, oh, this family isn't experiencing neglect or abuse. They're unsupported. Or what is what this parent’s needs isn't calling the hotline. They need a resource. They need a connection. They need support in that way. And so once they've started to see families through that lens, they can't unsee it. And so suddenly the question that we're seeing professionals that have been trained in this way changes from Should I report to how can I support? And that's a huge cultural turning point for such a short period of time that this this conversation has been happening,
Luke Waldo 19:08
Can I? Can I, before you go into the next group, just ask a question, because I think this is the sort of transformation that we have also started to see in Wisconsin, right when you start to shift from this idea of being mandated to report to finding opportunities to support families differently, as you did. The concern that we had when we started to kind of go down this path was that there are a lot of overwhelmed, overloaded teachers, overloaded social workers who have a concern and want to support the child who came to school without enough food or with without a winter coat in the middle of January, for example, but they have 28 other students in their classroom, and they don't know where to go for these families, right? So I'm curious if through the task force or through your organization's work, it's one, very important that we shift these mental models and the language so that folks start to see families as needing support rather than needing a report to CPS, for example. But they also need a very aligned, very comprehensive support system that they can refer those families to who will actually be able to deliver the services that they need. Have you seen a shift in that as well, in that kind of ecosystem of support?
Dr. Pegah Faed 20:35
It's such a timely question. I love that you you posed it because we're just now starting to explore what a supportive resource system could look like for those professionals. So there are different models that people are exploring in California. So I'll say in San Francisco, we're piloting Strong Families Partnership with our child welfare system. And what that looks like is that the hotline still exists, and calls still come into the hotline, and it becomes the for lack of a better word, the triaging location for for how that mandated report, or whether it be a teacher, or what other professional that calls in can offer their reflections of what's happening with this child, and the hotline can then, based on certain questions, and the screeners determine whether that family is evaluated out, quote, unquote, or if and if they are then there is a new pathway, a community pathway, to Safe and Sound and other nonprofits in San Francisco, so that that family is not necessarily investigated.
Now there are questions about whether that makes sense. Is the hotline trained and prepared to actually be that hub or not, and that's where in this new work we're exploring and wanting to assess whether that is the right place, and what kind of training and support do the hotline callers need to be able to accurately evaluate that out I know a pilot like that is happening in Los Angeles County as well, and so that community pathway that I mentioned is one that's still being explored, and so that's one strategy that's been that we've done in San Francisco right now.
Luke Waldo 22:32
Thank you for sharing, because I think that's where we're seeing a lot of momentum building. We have, we have a number of partners here in Wisconsin, who have really kind of leaned into this idea of more of a warm line as you, as you've just illustrated right in your work in San Francisco and in Los Angeles, and finding ways to more effectively engage these supportive services in a way that we know where they are, how to get to them right, and how to hand off families really effectively, and then ideally, of course, to invest more in them, so that they have the resources and the capacity to take on more and more families right at maybe a time of growing crisis, to ensure that they stay together and stay out of child protective system.
Dr. Pegah Faed 23:16
So if I could just offer, presumably, if we are pivoting and allowing the families that need support to get support outside of child welfare, that makes total sense, right? We have to resource the organizations to serve what child welfare has historically been attempting to serve but hasn't been really set up to do.
And the other thing I'll mention is that teachers, like you said—I think when you originally posed the question—teachers, nurses, everyone is already at capacity, and to expect them to then know every community resource that exists and be able to connect families to them—that's not their part of their job.
And so I think an important piece of this work, and where we are right now in this moment in time, is being really thoughtful about using this opportunity to create a system that feels responsive to everyone's needs, not just one particular population or group, right? And so thinking about the folks that are the ones that are actually interacting with children, and how we can support them best.
How do we create a child welfare system that feels right-sized for what they need to do, which is protect children actually in harm? And then, how do we create a network of support—a web of support, if you will—of community-based organizations that can work together rather than compete against one another for resources to create this web of support for families.
Luke Waldo 24:53
So I interrupted you. You were going to talk about a couple different groups or populations in response to the previous question. So if you had more to say about that, please, please go ahead.
Dr. Pegah Faed 25:05
Absolutely. I wanted to say something about our partners. So we've also seen a huge shift as a result of this work and how our partners engage with us. The narrative opened the door for collaboration that didn't really feel possible before.
So instead of talking to partners about avoiding removals or trying to reduce reports, we started to have conversations about: How do we strengthen our communities? How do we reduce stress on families and making sure people have something to call before they're in crisis like we just talked about?
And so it changed the energy in the room, and rather than thinking about how we're managing risk, it was about how we're building support, and that allowed for a lot of clarity around who our partners should be. So typically, when you're managing risk, there's a certain set of partners that you would reach out to or invite to the conversation, but when you're talking about building support, building a community that feels strong, you're talking about public health organizations, housing organizations, early childhood programs, and so many more who may have not seen themselves as part of the child welfare system, but absolutely see themselves as a part of helping families thrive.
And so it's both inviting the right people to the table that's changed as a result of thinking about it in this way, but then also one way that in San Francisco we used COVID as the silver lining to having a pandemic was that we were able to come together across San Francisco with over 26 other family resource centers at that time to serve children and families in San Francisco at a time unprecedented in our lifetimes.
That alliance that we had has grown since COVID to over 40-plus organizations in San Francisco that serve children and families in a variety of ways, and that family services alliance is what it's called. And that alliance is critical to the success of creating a community pathway. We all share resources. We refer families to one another. It truly is a web of support, and I don't know that that would have been possible in a world where this narrative shift hadn't happened necessarily.
The last thing I'll say is around policy. In terms of policy, the change has been real and concrete, which is really exciting, because we often do a lot of—I've done narrative shift and communication projects across my career, but sometimes they don't yield actual policy change. And so once policymakers understood that the vast majority of reports weren't about abuse, but about unmet needs, it created a space for solutions, much like the partners that actually address those needs.
And so you mentioned the task force at the state of California. That task force met and brought together a variety of folks and proposed some recommendations, and those recommendations are now shaping statewide policy that reflect this shift that we want to see—more upstream investment, more community-based supports, more alternatives to reporting. Policies are actually being written with the recognition that family challenges are often systemic and not personal failures.
And that's a huge step. And so with this transformation, people are no longer seeing families as problems to necessarily be fixed, but as humans that need to be supported. And that's—that's the power of narrative change.
Luke Waldo 28:51
I really appreciate you illustrating that kind of consequence, right? The very kind of strategic approach to narrative change—that this isn't just about having people think differently about children and families. It's about leading to behavior change that leads to policy change, that leads to practice change, and ultimately can lead to better outcomes for kids and families.
So thank you for really showing how that happens over time, right, and in a really kind of strategic collaborative manner. So I want to slightly shift to another kind of strategic narrative shift that I think you've all undertaken at Safe and Sound. In your work, you've emphasized that poverty is a condition families experience, not a personal failure or a character flaw. So how has Safe and Sound approached this intersection of poverty and neglect in its programs, advocacy, and narrative change efforts?
Dr. Pegah Faed 29:51
It's been critical. It really has. And at Safe and Sound, we are very intentional about naming that poverty is a condition, an external set of constraints, and again, like you said, not a parenting deficit or character flaw. Starting from that truth, everything about your approach changes.
So when we look at our programs, it means that we don't treat families as deficient or broken. We treat them as capable people navigating extremely constrained circumstances. And so instead of jumping to intervention, we pause and we focus on what strengthens a family's environment, whether it's connection, stability, resources, and community.
In the work that we do there, it's all built on the idea that support should be accessible long before conditions become overwhelming. So our care coordinators, for example, work with families to identify what strengths they have, what goals they want to set for their family, and what steps they think they need to take to achieve those. We are really just in support of those strengths.
And so that's how it translates into how we work directly with families. And when we think about our advocacy work, it means we shine a light on the overlap between what gets labeled as neglect and what is actually a lack of access to housing, childcare, mental healthcare, transportation, or just basic needs.
At this point, when 87% of neglect reports are unsubstantiated, it tells us that families are struggling with structural barriers and not a lack of love or commitment or anything like that. And so our policy work pushes for upstream investment and community-based supports, rather than punitive systems or ones that only respond when families are at a breaking again.
One concrete example of some of the policy work that's come out of this narrative shift is that we had AB 2085 in California was passed, and that changed the definition of general neglect. And what that did was narrow that definition. And so that had direct impact on how we train our mandated reporters and then hopefully what we see downstream is that mandated reporters are getting better with that shift, with a training change, and with, like we talked about earlier, that entire support system really in place to help them, help their children, that other children and families that they're seeing.
And so with all of that, we hope to see that shift and that 87% come way down. One last thing I'll say about this is that when we talk about our narrative change efforts, we're very deliberate about challenging the implicit bias that links poverty to poor parenting. We talk openly about how neglect is often a symptom of stress, isolation, and resource scarcity.
It's not a moral failing, and I think that's really important to bring into this space. And we highlight this, like I said, the strength that families bring, the ways that they're already supporting each other. The structural issues that need to change are our focus, and when you reframe the issue in that way, it shifts the public conversation from "What's wrong with this parent?" to "What does this family need, and why isn't our system providing it?"
Luke Waldo 33:37
You know, we met a few months ago out of a kind of a cold call from your communications director, who said: We seem to be doing a lot of similar work. We are in two different states focused on these particular challenging, complex historical challenges of poverty and neglect and the kind of over-reporting of families that really just need support—they don't need CPS intervention.
And for me, it tells me that there's some underlying narrative that must be existing across our country that we're grabbing on to, right, and doing this work without knowing of each other's existence as of three or four months ago, right?
And I think what I've heard from you thus far is that we are also trying to, in this narrative change, strike this difficult balance at times of supporting and empowering overloaded families, keeping them together while also ensuring that children are safe, right? It's not an either-or. It's—you know—it's a both-and.
And I think both of our organizations believe that that is very, very possible. But considering your organization is named Safe and Sound, and you're also leaning very, very much into this narrative change towards supportive, empowering, positive language around overloaded families, I wonder how you feel about that kind of balance, right? How you strike that balance between safety and supporting overloaded families and keeping them together.
Dr. Pegah Faed 35:29
It's a really hard balance to strike, I think, particularly now in this moment in our country, we feel far more divided than we have ever felt. And I think that places a lot of extremes in various conversations. Regardless of whatever topic you want to pick, there are extremes.
And whenever you want to make a transformational shift like this, people try to put you into one camp or the other. And really what you talked about around that balance is so important. A couple of things I'll say about that.
One, I am Safe and Sound, and our partners would say we start with the understanding that we want the best for children and families. That's our ultimate outcome, right? So everything that we do has to be grounded in that. And so obviously that means that we have a lot of respect for the role that CPS plays in this large field of protecting children and supporting them.
And when a child is truly unsafe, we need that strong, responsive system to be there to support them, but we are clearer than ever today, I would say, that CPS has had too much to do. They were not set up to be responsive in this way.
And so striking that balance so that CPS doesn't feel like they need to solve the issue of poverty for a family and heal parental stress and build community connections and provide various supports—I mean, there's just—it's too much for one system.
And so like I mentioned earlier, right-sizing CPS and allowing them to focus on actual safety threats, while then building a broader ecosystem, which isn't—being built doesn't need to be built from scratch, right? I'm sure in Wisconsin, like in California, you have a web of support that exists amongst CBOs—child community-based organizations—that can already really serve as that ecosystem that catches families earlier and more effectively.
And so it's not about necessarily weakening child protection; it's about strengthening everything around it so that families don't hit that crisis point in the first place. But it is a tough thing to balance.
Luke Waldo 38:02
So Pegah, I recently reviewed your strategic plan—your strategic direction for Safe and Sound—and in reading your letter to your team and community to open that strategic plan, you talk about a transformation to build the conditions for family well-being that will require humility, urgency, collaboration, and hope. So tell me more about how you hope to lead Safe and Sound towards this transformation and continue building on these past few years?
Dr. Pegah Faed 38:36
Yeah, when I was writing that letter, I was trying to think about what are the pillars that I think are really important for this particular moment in time, both for the organization and for what families are facing in our country more broadly. And it really requires a different kind of leadership.
And they weren't just aspirational words that I threw in there; they really are a compass for how we need to show up right now. So when we're talking about humility, that means recognizing that communities already hold so much wisdom about what they need to be well. And so as an organization, it's our job to not impose solutions, but really to listen deeply with responding with respect and allowing families and neighborhoods and communities to guide the work.
So that is how it translates to how we show up. When we talk about urgency, it comes from the reality that so many families are struggling right now in this moment. And so the systems that we've inherited—they weren't designed for these conditions, like we've talked about, that families are facing right now.
And so waiting for change isn't an option. There are families struggling today. So when we show up to work every day, that means—if we're showing up with urgency—that means we ask ourselves: What can we build right now? Who can we support today? How can we make it easier for families this month, not some day in the future, which we should also think about? But what kind of urgency do we need to show up with today to make sure that real lives are impacted?
And then, when I say collaboration, I say this because the challenges that we've talked about on this call—and we all know that families are facing—are bigger than just one organization trying to solve them. And so leading towards this kind of transformation means working together, collaborating, bringing all the necessary partners together to the table. And my hope is to keep positioning Safe and Sound as a connector and a catalyst, a place where people can come together to really build solutions that none of us can build alone.
And finally, I think hope is really what I lean on every day. And it's not to be naive and like, "Oh, I hope one day the world will be better." No, it's really—it's hope that's grounded in progress that we've already seen, whether it be the narrative shift we talked about, the statewide Task Force, the policy changes, or even just watching families come through our door and get the support that they need and leaving better off.
And so my goal is to keep showing up and showing for—showing our team and our partners that change is not only possible, but it's already happening in the work that we're doing every day. And so I hope that I can lead Safe and Sound in a way that keeps us bold enough to imagine a different system, grounded enough to act on what families actually need right now, and to build the conditions where families don't just survive—I'm sorry, but thrive.
Luke Waldo 41:50
So there's a lot there. The one thing, aside from, I think, your really powerful illustration of hope, right, being a reflection of our progress already made, is also what you said about systems and how we've inherited those systems.
And I think back to your earlier statement about how we are in this oftentimes very polarized country, right, politically, socially, in many ways, and yet I am seeing an interesting convergence across those polarized kind of populations on this idea that systems aren't working for us—the systems that we inherited no longer kind of solve the problems of today.
And the question really that I have for you is, when we think about this kind of broader landscape, right—it's one thing for us to really focus in on our work when it comes to Child and Family Well-Being and the child protection system, for example, but just really more broadly, right? Because we are navigating in our specific work in a broader context, right, in our political, in our social environments, and so on. How do you see and why do you see narrative change as particularly urgent right now to achieve the outcomes and the hopes that you have?
Dr. Pegah Faed 43:14
It's so urgent because the stories that we tell about whatever topic you want to talk about—but particularly for us today—the stories we tell about families shape everything, like I mentioned earlier: how systems respond to them, how professionals interpret their circumstances, and even how families see themselves. If we don't shift the narrative, we end up reinforcing the very perceptions and models that we already know are hurting the people we're trying to serve.
As a parent, you know—you read about parenting guides and all books and all kinds of things, and they tell you to help your children talk to themselves. The voice that you tell them is the voice that they hear in their head. How you talk to them is how they will talk to themselves. And it's that story, the narrative that we're telling, that is really important.
One of the biggest reasons this work matters right now is that lived experts—so the families who have experienced the system—are finally being recognized as subject matter experts. They're not subjects of reform, but they're partners in it. And so narrative change helps us trust that expertise rather than doubting it. And when we center their voices in the solution, instead of asking again kind of what's wrong with these families, we start to ask: What's wrong with the conditions surrounding them? And allowing them to weigh in on that is super important to the progress of the work.
Luke Waldo 44:47
The intention with this—with this podcast—is, one, first and foremost, to introduce really powerful, transformational thinkers and organizations and organizational leaders who are proposing or already doing really transformational work that shifts this narrative, but also shifts kind of policy and practice to provide better support for overloaded families and ultimately keep them together, keep them safe and well, right?
The other part of it is to provide opportunities for our listeners to really take some tangible and practical strategies or tasks or ideas into their own lives, into their own work—to take what's happening in San Francisco and try it out in Milwaukee or in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, right, or wherever they may be listening.
And so when you think about Safe and Sound's journey, which is 51 years old now, but also your journey, right, as Safe and Sound's leader: What are some of the key lessons learned as to kind of the implementation and impact of narrative change that you would share with our listeners?
Dr. Pegah Faed 46:05
There are so many lessons on this journey. I would say one of the biggest lessons that I would say we've learned as part of this narrative change work is that it's not something that you just "launch," right, quote-unquote "launch." It's something that you practice every day. It's a discipline.
It's how you show up differently every day in the way that you talk to the families. It's the way that you design your programs. It's the way that you train staff. It's the way that you partner with systems. And that consistency matters more than any single report that comes out or social media campaign. It needs to be reflected in the fabric of how you do the work. So that's the first thing I would say.
The second lesson that comes to mind is that narrative change lands better when it's co-created. So we learned early on that if the narrative wasn't shaped with lived experts—so families, caregivers, community members—it just doesn't have the level of legitimacy that it does when they are at the table and guiding that narrative shift. And so you can't shift the story without the storytellers. And so when those voices lead, that narrative becomes more honest, more nuanced, and that's what leads to transformation.
We also learned—that we talked about this a bunch too—which is that narrative change ends up unlocking behavior change. And so when people have new language for what they're seeing, then the overload that families are experiencing is instead of neglect, it's unmet needs. And so decisions start to shift from there and the narrative shift—it allows for new practices to take root. It allows for new policies to be created, and so it's critical to that behavior change.
Another lesson I think that's really important to just call out is that narrative work requires patience and persistence. It's tempting to assume that once the story is told, that everyone would automatically adopt it and—and that's the end of the old story. But what we've really found in this work is that people need to see it modeled.
So it goes back to kind of my first lesson, which is that they need to see real examples. They need to hear it more than once, in more ways than one, in different contexts. It's slow work, but the impact is cumulative over time. Over time, you'll start to hear your language reflected back to you in different settings and contexts from different people, and that's when you know that the narrative is really taking root.
I think the last, and maybe the most important lesson, is that narrative change has to be matched with structural change. You can't just change how people talk about families, although it's important—you have to actually change what families can access. So our narrative shift work was paired with strategy, so expanding that community pathway to more supports, building partnerships, informing policy, creating alternatives to reporting.
Those are the things that you need to pair with changing the story. So the story opens the door, but the practice really makes it real. I think that's really critical so that—I think oftentimes those things are separate from one another, and ensuring that they go hand in hand for real change is important.
And so looking back, what stands out most is that narrative change is powerful precisely because it reshapes how systems see families, and when systems see families differently, they behave differently, and that's been the real impact, and it's a lesson that we'll continue to carry forward.
Luke Waldo 50:16
Dr. Pegah Faed has given us something transformational today: a roadmap from narrative shift to systems change, a case study in how strategic reframing, when paired with policy advocacy and community partnership, can fundamentally alter how an entire state responds to families in crisis.
She showed us that you can't transform a system if you don't first transform the story the system is built on; that mandated reporting was structured around reasonable suspicion and liability—fear-driven concepts that cast too wide a net; and that reframing the question from "Should I report?" to "How can I support?" unlocks entirely different behaviors from teachers, police officers, nurses, social workers, and pediatricians.
But what struck me most was her honesty about what this work requires: that narrative change isn't something you "launch," it's something you practice every day; that it must be co-created with families and communities you're trying to serve, or it lacks legitimacy. And perhaps most importantly, that narrative change must be matched with structural change. You can't just change how people talk about families—you have to actually change what families can access. The story opens the door, but the practice makes it real.
Pegah reminded us of something critical—that we've inherited systems that weren't designed for the conditions families face today; that across our polarized country, there's emerging consensus that these systems aren't working for anyone; and that this moment of shared frustration creates possibility if we're willing to show up with humility, urgency, collaboration, and hope.
But here's what we haven't fully explored yet: If families need a different story told about them, who tells the story to the public? If 87% of neglect reports are unsubstantiated, but headlines never tell that story, how do we shift the public narrative?
Because for all the work happening in community-based organizations, in policy advocacy, and direct service, the stories that reach most people still come through the media—through headlines that sensationalize crisis, through reporting that reinforces the "monster" narrative, through journalism that often unintentionally amplifies the very frames we're trying to reimagine.
So what is the journalist's responsibility when reporting on families caught in systemic failure? How do we move the media from reinforcing dominant narratives to amplifying counter-narratives? What does ethical storytelling look like when the stakes are this high?
Join us for our next episode where we tackle these questions head-on. We'll hear from Kim Dvorchak and Jared Robinson, who share how a narrative change national network has influenced how the media is reacting to and reporting the counter-narratives that are essential to driving systems change. And Tarik Moody from Radio Milwaukee, who shares how a local radio station has changed the narrative through solutions journalism approaches, with podcasts and community stories.
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.
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.