This season’s bonus episode was inspired by our collaboration with Children’s Home Society of America or CHSA and the upcoming Wicked Problems Institute national convening on November 13th and 14th. The Wicked Problems Institute will bring together CHSA’s state-based member organizations and a team of partners from their state including individuals with lived expertise, philanthropists, public agency leaders, researchers, elected officials, health care providers, community-based advocates and others committed to improving the lives of children and families. I have the great honor of opening Wicked with the powerful conversation you are about to hear with 7 lived experience changemakers from across the country. Their diverse lived experiences shed a bright light on what is weighing most heavily on them about families’ well-being right now, and how leaders should respond differently if they want to build a better future with families.
Luke Waldo 00:04
Welcome to season 3 of Overloaded: Understanding Neglect, where we explore how we might change the conditions that overload families with stress, so that families can thrive and children grow up with a strong foundation built on positive childhood experiences.
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.
Luke Waldo 00:47
This season’s bonus episode was inspired by our collaboration with Children’s Home Society of America or CHSA and the upcoming Wicked Problems Institute national convening on November 13th and 14th. The Wicked Problems Institute will bring together CHSA’s state-based member organizations and a team of partners from their state including individuals with lived expertise, philanthropists, public agency leaders, researchers, elected officials, health care providers, community-based advocates and others committed to improving the lives of children and families.
I have the great honor of opening Wicked with the powerful conversation you are about to hear with 7 lived experience changemakers from across the country. Their diverse lived experiences shed a bright light on what is weighing most heavily on them about families’ well-being right now, and how leaders should respond differently if they want to build a better future with families. Now on to the conversation.
We are living in a moment that demands both urgency and reflection. Families are experiencing rapid shifts in policy, resources, and daily life. The Wicked Problems Institute 2025 offers a rare space to pause, learn, and generate fresh thinking that leads to stability, connection, positive experiences, health, and well-being for families and their communities.
As we welcome you to this year’s Wicked Problems Institute - The Future We Shape Together: Real Solutions for Families in Changing Times – let’s start our two days together by listening to what is weighing most heavily on caregivers and families and what is needed to lighten the overload.
Welcome. I'm Luke Waldo, as we welcome all of you to Wicked Problems 2025 we wanted to ask the question of what is weighing most heavily on you. As a caregiver, as someone who's been impacted by the child welfare system, as somebody who's part of their community, and this is what we had to say.
Valerie Frost 02:46
My name is Valerie Frost. My favorite title is mom. I am based here in Kentucky, and I have lived experience with public assistance, child welfare and court systems.
So what's weighing on me most heavily right now about family well-being is how out of reach it feels, and that's because of power who holds it and who is blocked from having any those with the most power over policies and programs, they tend to be the furthest from the realities that families live. Families and systems are becoming more and more disconnected.
So I remember when my twins were in the NICU, how Medicaid covered their stay, and I'm grateful for that, but afterward, constant authorizations made caring for infants with developmental needs hard. During my second pregnancy, my childcare assistance was cut off because of a verification error, and I was charged for a denied appeal the same month I gave birth. I've had three CPS investigations that offered no support and only exasperated the situation I was found in. I know these systems because I am living them, but too often my voice, and voices like mine are the least heard or completely left out. Families are not failing, systems are.
Michael Huesca 04:09
Hello everyone and welcome. My name is Michael Huesca. I'm a birth father who has been impacted by the child welfare system, and I'm here elevating the voices of families and parents.
What weighs heavily on me is really a collective of things. Right now, for black and brown folks that are in our country, it's a scary time. It is a time where children are experiencing the highest level of anxiety and trauma, whether they are going to see their parents, whether their parents are going to be harmed, whether they're going to be harmed, is such a fear for so many children today and for so many families. What worries me is this is another barrier for us giving help to families. Who's going to ask for help when they're fearing the very government that might be asking to offer that said help? I think that's a real big challenge.
And additionally, it's been decades that we know fathers are important for families and children well-being yet we have yet been able to authentically engage those and so it's our hope, it's my hope, that we're able to have conversations about strategies that could be effective in solving some of these solutions.
Derreasha Jones 05:35
Hi, my name is Derreasha Jones. I am coming from the Children's Home Society of Florida, and today I identify with change makers and community advocates.
It's weighing heavily on me that these issues are not new. It shows us that things are getting worse for our families. Historically, our families have been trying to build stability and systems that weren't even designed for them to thrive, and so they've climbed and climbed and climbed, and here they go to fall again. And instead of trying to build a net to save them, why were they falling in the first place? And so we have to look at history the way that it is, without erasing it, rewriting it or acting like it's not there. And so we all know that the cost of living keeps rising, but wages and resources haven't kept pace, and that creates a ripple effect on mental health, relationships and child development.
Sonia Cohen 06:31
Hello.I am Sonia Marie Cohen, lived expert, consultant and Child and Family Well Being advocate as well as an impacted young person, not so young anymore by both the child welfare and justice system.
You know what's weighing on me the most when I watch, oh, man, it's an accumulation of everything that families are being asked to hold. I think about families that I work alongside with every day I think about my family, my own story, which is often unburied, as I sit back and watch time after time harm be perpetuated against our young people and families. And I think about often what it means to grow up in systems that were supposed to protect us, to protect our families, to protect our young people, but instead fractured the very fabric of our beingness, our sense of safety, our sense of trust and our sense of belonging.
It aches me to watch the harm continuing to see families, especially those mostly impacted by poverty and racism and generational trauma, still having to prove their worthiness of support and healing of human dignity and resources, quite frankly, that are essential to them surviving to their well-being. It's heartbreaking. What also saddens me is how little we're prioritizing healing and well-being at a time such as this, when families need it the most, the spaces that hold people together, the communities and resource centers that are always constantly there, the healing circles, the gathering hubs, the services, the resources that families and young people trust and rely on, truly rely on, that now they're at risk of losing funding.
I you know, often think about how we make this commitment and do this work from a place of we want families to be well. We want families to be better, yet we're watching the very programs that make that possible, the support, the wellness, the healing possible. We're watching them struggle to survive. Healing cannot happen in scarcity. If we truly want families to heal, to stay strong, to feel safe, to feel together, to be together, we must invest in the people and the places that create that sense of belonging, safety and collective healing.
Titianna Goings 08:57
Hello, I'm Titianna Goings, located in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I am identifying with kinship caregivers.
Economic and financial strains weigh most heavily on me regarding families’ well-being. In my opinion, work life balance is also essential to the well-being of families. With the rise in housing costs, childcare expenses and the price of groceries, that balance becomes interrupted. We must strengthen community support systems, advocate for family friendly workplace policies and promote financial security initiatives that help families meet their basic needs and maintain a healthy work life balance.
Shana King 09:36
My name is Ida’akube Xuba’ash Mia, Holy Owl Woman in Hidatsa, and my English given name is Shana King. I am a parent mentor at the ICWA Law Center in Minneapolis. I am somebody who aged out of foster care and then I became a parent who was involved in the system as well. I successfully reunified with my children. I am here to reach everybody who works in the child welfare system.
What weighs on me most in this current times is watching an entire race of people's families be torn apart, and what's going to happen to those children in the future. I've seen it happen to my people, and I have, I'm a product of that. I can trace our historical trauma that happened to Indigenous people down my family tree, including me and my children. I think about the adoption era and the boarding school era and how people were just okay with that and how that has so impacted my people today, and now I'm watching that again.
I also work in the Indigenous community, so I am dealing with families who are impacted by ICWA, and the generational and historical trauma that caused is hard to overcome, and now I'm watching it happen to an entire race of people based on their skin color, which includes my people too. And I just really hope that we bring some humanity back into our lives and into what we see every day that we can work with these families. We know the trauma that this causes on people due to what is going on with Black and Brown people currently. So we need to do better for our families today, because we know that we're going to have some trauma coming up in our future.
Dony Jean Charles 11:35
Hello, I'm Dony Jean Charles, Communications and Marketing Manager for Children's Home Society of Florida, and my lived experience is being a product of Community Partnership Schools.
What's been weighing on me the most is capacity in terms of families, what they're dealing with on a daily basis, all the obstacles they encounter, and where they can counteract those obstacles with resources, support and community. How can you think of watering someone else's lawn when you still have to tend to yours?
Luke Waldo 12:15
So over the next day and a half, what are we going to do about it? Here's our call to action.
Titianna Goings 12:21
Families in crisis should have access to strong community resources such as food programs and affordable, safe childcare. Employers who promote family friendly workplaces play a key role in restoring work life balance for those in less flexible jobs, it's essential to set boundaries, prioritize meaningful tasks and practice self-care to maintain stability and well-being. Get moving. Advocate.
Valerie Frost 12:49
if we want a better future, leaders need to center lived experience. Lead with families, not just for them, and close the gap between intent and impact. Traditional leaders need to share power with humility. When proximity and lived experience guide leadership, when systems are built with families instead of around them, that's when they will truly serve.
Michael Huesca 13:14
What we need to do is put humanity back into human services. We need to meet families where they are, and that's not just a cliche that's really, truly showing up and supporting where they need the support, listening to what families need. We need to stop marginalizing and separating individuals and welcome community and collaborations together. We have solutions, but we need to be heard.
Derreasha Jones 13:47
We have to make sure that the communities that we are serving have a seat at the table. We can't just give them a service. We have to try to meet their specific needs. We want to make sure that there is representation at all levels of decision making. We also want to make sure that the decisions that we're making are not short term, but they're long term. We're not thinking about an individual, but we're thinking about their families and their children and the generations that come after that. We have to remember to treat our families with dignity, because they are still the leaders of their own lives.
Sonia Cohen 14:22
I think about how much courage it takes to center humanity and healing over hierarchy, to actually sit to listen, to value, to design the future of families with families so that healing is possible.
Shana King 14:38
We need to have come to this space with an open mind. And when we look at the children we're working with, the moms and the dads, we need to realize that they're human and that they need to heal from whatever has caused them to be in this space in the first place, and think outside of the box. Think of where that family comes from, what traditions they have. Think about adding culture into case plans so that families can truly heal and not come back into the system.
Dony Jean Charles 15:04
My call to action is to empathize to reflect, reflect to build, and build to cultivate true community.
Everyone 15:14
So let's step into our conversations at Wicked with open hearts, open ears, with open hands, ready to listen, learn and act together.
Luke Waldo 15:27
I want to thank each and every one of the seven changemakers who shared their lived experience with me and all of you today. May we be moved by what's weighing most heavily on them, and inspired and guided by their calls to action.
Thank you for listening and for showing up. I hope you will join the conversation at Wicked and again soon as Season Four of Overloaded launches in 2026.
Luke Waldo 00:04
Welcome to season 3 of Overloaded: Understanding Neglect, where we explore how we might change the conditions that overload families with stress, so that families can thrive and children grow up with a strong foundation built on positive childhood experiences.
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.
Luke Waldo 00:47
This season’s bonus episode was inspired by our collaboration with Children’s Home Society of America or CHSA and the upcoming Wicked Problems Institute national convening on November 13th and 14th. The Wicked Problems Institute will bring together CHSA’s state-based member organizations and a team of partners from their state including individuals with lived expertise, philanthropists, public agency leaders, researchers, elected officials, health care providers, community-based advocates and others committed to improving the lives of children and families.
I have the great honor of opening Wicked with the powerful conversation you are about to hear with 7 lived experience changemakers from across the country. Their diverse lived experiences shed a bright light on what is weighing most heavily on them about families’ well-being right now, and how leaders should respond differently if they want to build a better future with families. Now on to the conversation.
We are living in a moment that demands both urgency and reflection. Families are experiencing rapid shifts in policy, resources, and daily life. The Wicked Problems Institute 2025 offers a rare space to pause, learn, and generate fresh thinking that leads to stability, connection, positive experiences, health, and well-being for families and their communities.
As we welcome you to this year’s Wicked Problems Institute - The Future We Shape Together: Real Solutions for Families in Changing Times – let’s start our two days together by listening to what is weighing most heavily on caregivers and families and what is needed to lighten the overload.
Welcome. I'm Luke Waldo, as we welcome all of you to Wicked Problems 2025 we wanted to ask the question of what is weighing most heavily on you. As a caregiver, as someone who's been impacted by the child welfare system, as somebody who's part of their community, and this is what we had to say.
Valerie Frost 02:46
My name is Valerie Frost. My favorite title is mom. I am based here in Kentucky, and I have lived experience with public assistance, child welfare and court systems.
So what's weighing on me most heavily right now about family well-being is how out of reach it feels, and that's because of power who holds it and who is blocked from having any those with the most power over policies and programs, they tend to be the furthest from the realities that families live. Families and systems are becoming more and more disconnected.
So I remember when my twins were in the NICU, how Medicaid covered their stay, and I'm grateful for that, but afterward, constant authorizations made caring for infants with developmental needs hard. During my second pregnancy, my childcare assistance was cut off because of a verification error, and I was charged for a denied appeal the same month I gave birth. I've had three CPS investigations that offered no support and only exasperated the situation I was found in. I know these systems because I am living them, but too often my voice, and voices like mine are the least heard or completely left out. Families are not failing, systems are.
Michael Huesca 04:09
Hello everyone and welcome. My name is Michael Huesca. I'm a birth father who has been impacted by the child welfare system, and I'm here elevating the voices of families and parents.
What weighs heavily on me is really a collective of things. Right now, for black and brown folks that are in our country, it's a scary time. It is a time where children are experiencing the highest level of anxiety and trauma, whether they are going to see their parents, whether their parents are going to be harmed, whether they're going to be harmed, is such a fear for so many children today and for so many families. What worries me is this is another barrier for us giving help to families. Who's going to ask for help when they're fearing the very government that might be asking to offer that said help? I think that's a real big challenge.
And additionally, it's been decades that we know fathers are important for families and children well-being yet we have yet been able to authentically engage those and so it's our hope, it's my hope, that we're able to have conversations about strategies that could be effective in solving some of these solutions.
Derreasha Jones 05:35
Hi, my name is Derreasha Jones. I am coming from the Children's Home Society of Florida, and today I identify with change makers and community advocates.
It's weighing heavily on me that these issues are not new. It shows us that things are getting worse for our families. Historically, our families have been trying to build stability and systems that weren't even designed for them to thrive, and so they've climbed and climbed and climbed, and here they go to fall again. And instead of trying to build a net to save them, why were they falling in the first place? And so we have to look at history the way that it is, without erasing it, rewriting it or acting like it's not there. And so we all know that the cost of living keeps rising, but wages and resources haven't kept pace, and that creates a ripple effect on mental health, relationships and child development.
Sonia Cohen 06:31
Hello.I am Sonia Marie Cohen, lived expert, consultant and Child and Family Well Being advocate as well as an impacted young person, not so young anymore by both the child welfare and justice system.
You know what's weighing on me the most when I watch, oh, man, it's an accumulation of everything that families are being asked to hold. I think about families that I work alongside with every day I think about my family, my own story, which is often unburied, as I sit back and watch time after time harm be perpetuated against our young people and families. And I think about often what it means to grow up in systems that were supposed to protect us, to protect our families, to protect our young people, but instead fractured the very fabric of our beingness, our sense of safety, our sense of trust and our sense of belonging.
It aches me to watch the harm continuing to see families, especially those mostly impacted by poverty and racism and generational trauma, still having to prove their worthiness of support and healing of human dignity and resources, quite frankly, that are essential to them surviving to their well-being. It's heartbreaking. What also saddens me is how little we're prioritizing healing and well-being at a time such as this, when families need it the most, the spaces that hold people together, the communities and resource centers that are always constantly there, the healing circles, the gathering hubs, the services, the resources that families and young people trust and rely on, truly rely on, that now they're at risk of losing funding.
I you know, often think about how we make this commitment and do this work from a place of we want families to be well. We want families to be better, yet we're watching the very programs that make that possible, the support, the wellness, the healing possible. We're watching them struggle to survive. Healing cannot happen in scarcity. If we truly want families to heal, to stay strong, to feel safe, to feel together, to be together, we must invest in the people and the places that create that sense of belonging, safety and collective healing.
Titianna Goings 08:57
Hello, I'm Titianna Goings, located in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I am identifying with kinship caregivers.
Economic and financial strains weigh most heavily on me regarding families’ well-being. In my opinion, work life balance is also essential to the well-being of families. With the rise in housing costs, childcare expenses and the price of groceries, that balance becomes interrupted. We must strengthen community support systems, advocate for family friendly workplace policies and promote financial security initiatives that help families meet their basic needs and maintain a healthy work life balance.
Shana King 09:36
My name is Ida’akube Xuba’ash Mia, Holy Owl Woman in Hidatsa, and my English given name is Shana King. I am a parent mentor at the ICWA Law Center in Minneapolis. I am somebody who aged out of foster care and then I became a parent who was involved in the system as well. I successfully reunified with my children. I am here to reach everybody who works in the child welfare system.
What weighs on me most in this current times is watching an entire race of people's families be torn apart, and what's going to happen to those children in the future. I've seen it happen to my people, and I have, I'm a product of that. I can trace our historical trauma that happened to Indigenous people down my family tree, including me and my children. I think about the adoption era and the boarding school era and how people were just okay with that and how that has so impacted my people today, and now I'm watching that again.
I also work in the Indigenous community, so I am dealing with families who are impacted by ICWA, and the generational and historical trauma that caused is hard to overcome, and now I'm watching it happen to an entire race of people based on their skin color, which includes my people too. And I just really hope that we bring some humanity back into our lives and into what we see every day that we can work with these families. We know the trauma that this causes on people due to what is going on with Black and Brown people currently. So we need to do better for our families today, because we know that we're going to have some trauma coming up in our future.
Dony Jean Charles 11:35
Hello, I'm Dony Jean Charles, Communications and Marketing Manager for Children's Home Society of Florida, and my lived experience is being a product of Community Partnership Schools.
What's been weighing on me the most is capacity in terms of families, what they're dealing with on a daily basis, all the obstacles they encounter, and where they can counteract those obstacles with resources, support and community. How can you think of watering someone else's lawn when you still have to tend to yours?
Luke Waldo 12:15
So over the next day and a half, what are we going to do about it? Here's our call to action.
Titianna Goings 12:21
Families in crisis should have access to strong community resources such as food programs and affordable, safe childcare. Employers who promote family friendly workplaces play a key role in restoring work life balance for those in less flexible jobs, it's essential to set boundaries, prioritize meaningful tasks and practice self-care to maintain stability and well-being. Get moving. Advocate.
Valerie Frost 12:49
if we want a better future, leaders need to center lived experience. Lead with families, not just for them, and close the gap between intent and impact. Traditional leaders need to share power with humility. When proximity and lived experience guide leadership, when systems are built with families instead of around them, that's when they will truly serve.
Michael Huesca 13:14
What we need to do is put humanity back into human services. We need to meet families where they are, and that's not just a cliche that's really, truly showing up and supporting where they need the support, listening to what families need. We need to stop marginalizing and separating individuals and welcome community and collaborations together. We have solutions, but we need to be heard.
Derreasha Jones 13:47
We have to make sure that the communities that we are serving have a seat at the table. We can't just give them a service. We have to try to meet their specific needs. We want to make sure that there is representation at all levels of decision making. We also want to make sure that the decisions that we're making are not short term, but they're long term. We're not thinking about an individual, but we're thinking about their families and their children and the generations that come after that. We have to remember to treat our families with dignity, because they are still the leaders of their own lives.
Sonia Cohen 14:22
I think about how much courage it takes to center humanity and healing over hierarchy, to actually sit to listen, to value, to design the future of families with families so that healing is possible.
Shana King 14:38
We need to have come to this space with an open mind. And when we look at the children we're working with, the moms and the dads, we need to realize that they're human and that they need to heal from whatever has caused them to be in this space in the first place, and think outside of the box. Think of where that family comes from, what traditions they have. Think about adding culture into case plans so that families can truly heal and not come back into the system.
Dony Jean Charles 15:04
My call to action is to empathize to reflect, reflect to build, and build to cultivate true community.
Everyone 15:14
So let's step into our conversations at Wicked with open hearts, open ears, with open hands, ready to listen, learn and act together.
Luke Waldo 15:27
I want to thank each and every one of the seven changemakers who shared their lived experience with me and all of you today. May we be moved by what's weighing most heavily on them, and inspired and guided by their calls to action.
Thank you for listening and for showing up. I hope you will join the conversation at Wicked and again soon as Season Four of Overloaded launches in 2026.