Lived experience, lived expertise, context experts… For the past many years, we have seen a movement towards including or elevating or integrating the voice of lived experience into our work. But what does that really mean? What does that mean for the person that has lived through the child welfare system? What does that mean for the people working in the system? What are we trying to accomplish or change, and how might we do this better? If you have considered any of these questions or find yourself at a loss as to what the answers might or should be, then you’re in the right place. Over the next three episodes, we will be exploring these questions, many lessons learned as our guests worked through these questions, and the strategies designed and implemented by people with lived experience who, today, are leading others with lived experience. Today’s episode, along with next week’s, will share what was learned during this year’s Wicked Problems Institute national convening titled “Unlocking the Power of Lived Experience through True Collaboration,” hosted by Children’s Home Society of America or CHSA and the Jordan Institute for Families at the University of North Carolina School of Social Work. Today you will hear from Marlo Nash, managing director of CHSA, who led the planning and execution of the convening.
Today’s episode included the following speakers (in the order they appear):
Host: Luke Waldo
Experts:
:00-:15 – Marlo Nash - “It’s really important to understand that the information we understand through people’s experiences is knowledge that can be used to change systems, to make practices and policies better.”
:22–3:33 – Luke Waldo – Opening, Marlo’s Bio, and Welcome
Lived experience, lived expertise, context experts… For the past many years, we have seen a movement towards including or elevating or integrating the voice of lived experience into our work. But what does that really mean? What does that mean for the person that has lived through the child welfare system? What does that mean for the people working in the system? What are we trying to accomplish or change, and how might we do this better?
If you have considered any of these questions or find yourself at a loss as to what the answers might or should be, then you’re in the right place. Over the next three episodes, we will be exploring these questions, many lessons learned as our guests worked through these questions, and the strategies designed and implemented by people with lived experience who, today, are leading others with lived experience.
Today’s episode, along with next week’s, will share what was learned during this year’s Wicked Problems Institute national convening titled “Unlocking the Power of Lived Experience through True Collaboration,” hosted by Children’s Home Society of America or CHSA and the Jordan Institute for Families at the University of North Carolina School of Social Work.
Today you will hear from Marlo Nash, managing director of CHSA, who led the planning and execution of the convening.
3:34-3:57 – Marlo Nash – As the podcast’s biggest fan, it’s a pleasure being here.
3:58-4:45 – Luke – Why do we need to give more attention and action to integrating lived expertise into our systems and organizations?
4:46-8:01 – Marlo – Why we need to create the answers by providing safe spaces to learn. Lived experience is knowledge that informs how we can improve systems, practices and policies.
Overarching theme of Building Equitable Pathways to Child and Family Well-being, and this year the theme was Unlocking the Power of Lived Experience through True Collaboration.
“How do we do this for real, for real.”
8:02-8:37 – Luke – Recognizing Marlo and CHSA for pulling off an inspiring virtual Wicked event. What are objectives and aspirations of Wicked? What does it hope to change?
8:38-12:40 – Marlo – CHSA’s mission and vision, and how Wicked supports this. Our systems and organizations have historically underappreciated the contributions of lived experience partners. Six conditions of systems change. Dig deeper in practice around integrating lived experience into our work.
The current transactional state of Lived Experience in our systems practices.
People with lived experience are willing to share their stories, often traumatic, but also their expertise to make changes that will improve outcomes for children and families now and for future generations.
12:41-13:45 - Luke – It’s important to acknowledge that we haven’t done this right or even caused harm. What is powerful about CHSA and Wicked is that we can acknowledge these challenges together across states and organizations.
13:46-14:08 - Marlo – Co-creating with lived experts is exciting, but can also retraumatize.
14:09-14:22 – Luke – What happened at Wicked this year?
14:23-23:38 - Marlo – Wicked is the event in which our 23 state members bring a team of public and private partners, funders, lived experience partners, so that we can hear our unique perspectives from one another.
Overview of CHSA, Wicked and the value of sharing unique perspectives from different sectors and roles.
Overview of the format of the day and introduces our 3 plenary speakers and their expertise and focus.
Synthesizers and their roles.
Themes that came up throughout the day:
Power imbalance. Put people and how they are feeling at the center. See empathetically. Move from storytelling and consultation to prioritization of informed-decision making. House metaphor and paint colors and curtains. Listen deeply even when it’s hard to hear. Relationships and community are the heart of doing this work.
23:39-24:33 - Luke – How might we implement these lessons learned into our practice, organizations, and systems?
24:34-26:05 - Marlo – Wicked has a graphic illustrator who captures the themes throughout the day. We encourage you to use it for ideas and inspiration.
26:06-26:45 - Luke – How do you see CHSA’s work and this year’s Wicked aligning with our SFTCCC Critical Pathways?
26:46-34:26 - Marlo – Engaging with Lived Experts requires that we center social connectedness. People are made up of lots of different parts, and we often see the worst parts of people as they are experiencing the darkest moments of their lives when they come to child welfare, for example. We must recognize that they are a whole person and they have many strong parts that we aren’t seeing right now. Their social connectedness and belonging are critical in understanding their whole self.
Workforce Inclusion and Innovation aligns well with the concept of Intersectional Professionals. Everyone wants appropriate boundaries to be set so that they can feel safe in their work. Everyone wants the support and resources needed to be their best self at work. How do we create those conditions that will make our workplaces positive spaces where they can be their whole selves?
Lived experience can illuminate what we really need to hear.
34:27-35:26 - Luke – I have seen how effective advocacy with policymakers by showing the data and research that is also supported by the lived experience of patients can be. Our mental models often allow us to have greater empathy for a family who has a child with cancer than a family who is involved in the child welfare system because of poverty.
35:27-38:04 - Marlo – “Listen deeply even when it’s hard to hear.” People with Lived Experience shouldn’t be paraded in front of policymakers, but rather put in a position much like an Ambassador – see Sixto next week – where they are an engaged part of the process and impact.
38:05-38:49 - Luke – How might we implement some of these strategies to advance the vision of Wicked and CHSA?
38:50-48:53 - Marlo – Encourages listeners to check out the Show Notes and the graphic illustration. Engage with partners with Lived Experience and Wicked participants to deepen knowledge and strategies around how to integrate lived experience into your work.
Pairing lived experience with research and science. Dean Ramona talked about lived experience as “a way of knowing”. Research Agenda on the 21st Century Child and Family Well-being. CHSA is a network of Scholar Practitioners who seek to confront the Wicked Problems in our systems.
What policies – both legislative and organizational – need to be changed?
We ideate so that we can work backwards from that big vision. Increasing authentic engagement with people with lived experience to make decisions together.
“Marrying data, science, service, research, and advocacy with humanity and equity.”
Examining mental models around how we engage with people with lived experience. What mental models exist in our community?
Wicked is not a day of learning, but a medium to stay in community all year long.
48:54-51:27 - Luke – My hope is that Wicked and this podcast will have ripple effects on our listeners. Wicked inspired me to build new relationships with partners including partners in New Jersey and Delaware to learn from one another and scale our work. Thank you for your partnership and vision.
51:28-53:30 - Marlo – Thank you for your work on this podcast that has challenged us to think about our mental models.
53:31-54:46 – Luke – 3 Key Takeaways
54:58-56:52 – Luke – Closing Credits
Join the conversation and connect with us!
Marlo Nash 00:03
It’s really important to understand that the information we understand through people’s experiences is knowledge that can be used to change systems, to make practices and policies better.
Luke Waldo 00:22
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.
Lived experience, lived expertise, context experts… For the past many years, we have seen a movement towards including or elevating or integrating the voice of lived experience into our work. But what does that really mean? What does that mean for the person that has lived through the child welfare system? What does that mean for the people working in the system? What are we trying to accomplish or change, and how might we do this better?
If you have considered any of these questions or find yourself at a loss as to what the answers might or should be, then you’re in the right place. Over the next three episodes, we will be exploring these questions, many lessons learned as our guests worked through these questions, and the strategies designed and implemented by people with lived experience who, today, are leading others with lived experience.
Today’s episode, along with next week’s, will share what was learned during this year’s Wicked Problems Institute national convening titled “Unlocking the Power of Lived Experience through True Collaboration,” hosted by Children’s Home Society of America or CHSA and the Jordan Institute for Families at the University of North Carolina School of Social Work.
Today you will hear from Marlo Nash, managing director of CHSA, who led the planning and execution of the convening.
Marlo Nash is a systems change strategist who is passionate about working with people to achieve big wins over intractable problems. In her role as the managing director of the CHSA national network, she collaborates with CHSA members, public sector leaders, researchers, national partners, philanthropists and lived experts to find ways to build well-being and ensure equity for children and families, and their communities.
Her career has featured work to facilitate connections among federal and state policymakers and public agencies, private human services organizations, issue coalitions and national networks for policy development, advocacy campaigns, systems change leadership, constituent mobilization, and more. She brings a background of advancing policies and systems changes designed to build and restore well-being for children and families through early childhood and child welfare systems.
Marlo has led these efforts in change-making roles for the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities, United Way of America, Voices for America’s Children, the National Foster Youth Institute, and the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy.
Thank you, Marlo, for joining me today and for your partnership. Welcome.
Marlo Nash 03:34
Thanks, Luke. I think I might be the podcast biggest fan. So it's really a pleasure to get to be here with you, and you know, I say that smiling, but I think it's such important work that the podcast is doing to help shift middle models around how we think about what's going on with families that we work with every day, and so it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
Luke Waldo 03:58
Well, thank you again, and today's going to be a fun conversation, because we get to reflect on the Wicked Problem Convening 2024 hosted by Children's Home Society of America, and had the pleasure of learning from three plenary speakers, as well as a number of panels, all who brought kind of their expertise and experience with the integration of lived experience into this critical work. So I want to start with exploring why Children's Home Society of America believes our systems and organizations need to focus more attention and action on lived experience and intersectional professionals in our workforce?
Marlo Nash 4:46
Well, I have so many answers to that question, and some of them came out of the convening that you spoke about. One of them I really appreciate, and that's just that we need to harmonize the personal experiences that individuals have when they interact with the systems that that are part of the ecosystem that we all work within, and recognize it as knowledge that we need to do better and so just fundamentally, that's how CHSA is thinking about it, and acknowledging that we're working in a time of many adaptive challenges. And adaptive challenges, unlike technical challenges, you can't turn to a manual or an evidence based practice. You have to be in relationship with one another and have containers where you can talk about how to do the work better.
And in fact, even during the Wicked convening, someone asked, Are there practical tools for how we do this? And then that case, in the in that point of the convening, it was practical tools for how do we really honor and value and integrate the experience of intersectional professionals so that individuals who who have lived expertise and also work within these systems. And the answer was really no, at least not that that our speaker who responded that question knew of and that just said to me that, you know, we've got to be communicating with one another. We have to create the answers. And to do that, you have to have spaces and containers that are safe where you can have those conversations.
So So for CHSA, it's really important to understand that that the information we we understand through people's experiences is knowledge that can be used to change the systems, to make practices and policies better. So it was important for us to focus and I will also say the Wicked Problems Institute is it's in its 12th year for the Children's Home Society of America, in partnership with our our partner from the beginning, the Jordan Institute for Families at the University of North Carolina School of Social Work. And in this particular cycle of the Wicked Problems Institute, we have an overarching theme that is Building Equitable Pathways to Child and Family Well Being, and so within that overarching theme, we chose to focus this year on unlocking the power of lived experience through true collaboration. But there was a quote from the from the event that that I feel like is, is, to me, like the the more direct way to say this. How do we do this for real, for real? How do we how do we collaborate with lived experts for real, for real? And we learned a lot from from the community about how to do that, and why it's important to do it.
Luke Waldo 08:02
Thank you, Marlo, that was certainly a quote that that stuck with many of us, I think, after, after the event. So let's get into the nuts, nuts and bolts right of this convening, and the vision that that CHSA and the Wicked Problems Institute has for its network, what do you see as a kind of primary objectives or goals to or aspirations to change for the CHSA Wicked Problems convening?
Marlo Nash 08:38
It's our mission to create solutions to problems that disrupt stability and limit potential, and we want to do that by changing practices, policies and systems, and frankly, changing our own individual behaviors and our organizational behaviors and cultures. The theme, again, the overarching Wicked Problems Institute theme in for the next few years, is Building Equitable Pathways to Child and Family Well Being. We focus this particular virtual, Wicked convening on authentically collaborating with individuals, individuals with lived expertise, because our planning committee and our board and our partner, UNC all agreed that that was such a fundamental component that we're not getting right at the current moment.
And I think all of us doing this work have either done some things or been a part of convenings or meetings or situations where things were done in a way that was not good and thoughtful about the individuals who courageously and generously share their experiences so that we can all learn, so that we can all do better, and so we have a lot to learn, and a lot of that came out in. During Wicked the advice of when you have someone come to share again, opening a meeting, for example, I think that happens a lot. I think a lot of well-intentioned folks invite someone with lived expertise to open a conference or meeting and tell a story that you know, effectively pulls people into the conversation and touches people's hearts. But then that often that person is, you know, not invited to stay for the whole convening.
And so you've, you've, you've extracted this story from them and made a very transactional situation. Often they're not even paid. So I think sometimes there's a conference where the speaker, the keynote speaker, might be getting several $1,000 and the lived expert who comes to open the meeting gets a $25 gift card, if at all. And and I think that's the kind of that transactional, kind of extractive approach we're really trying to move away from.
And we recognize that it's not crystal clear how to do that. There's no guidebook. I think more things are coming forward in terms of practical tools and advice. And honestly, in my experience, a lot of that's coming forward because people with lived expertise are willing to be in this work and say, Hey, not only can we tell you our stories, but we can also be in this work to help you better understand how to partner with us so that our full scope of who we are, not just our story, our traumatic story, but also our interest in helping make a change happen and and seeing our story lead to new outcomes that matter for for people today and future generations.
So so we really wanted to create this container in this space where we could talk about engaging with lived experts, collaborating with lived experts as a fundamental part of changing systems. And I know the Institute for Child and Family Well Being, and CHSA and the podcast are all a big fan of the Six Conditions of Systems Change framework. So when we think about, you know, practices, changing practices is one of those six conditions of systems change. And so we wanted to dig down into the practice of engaging with individuals with lived experience and figure out how to get much better at it.
Luke Waldo 12:41
I appreciate you leading with this idea that one of the clear objectives was to first acknowledge that this is an area that we can all get better at. In some cases, we've not only not done well, but potentially caused harm. What's really powerful about CHSA and Wicked is that we can acknowledge that together. I think oftentimes we think, well, in New Jersey, they've gotten a lot of really progressive things done to support over overloaded families. They must be getting this right. It's really powerful to know that folks in New Jersey are like, Yeah, we got a lot of work to do too. We're getting some things right, but we're getting a lot of things wrong. And there's a real opportunity today to not only learn from one another, but more importantly, to learn from the people with lived expertise who are here to share their experience with what's gone wrong, but where there are real opportunities to to drive positive change forward.
Marlo Nash 13:46
One of the phrases that are concepts that came out of the day was just the simple statement of co-creating with lived experts is exciting, but we miss steps along the way, and we can cause harm and re traumatization when we do that. So I think that that's that's a sort of a capstone to what we were talking about.
Luke Waldo 14:09
Can you talk a little bit more about what happened the day of the Wicked convening to kind of illustrate how some of that positive change might happen?
Marlo Nash 14:23
So the Wicked Problems Institute comes about each year with each CHSA member, and we're 23 members in 23 states. Our model is one member per state, and our members are nonprofit organizations that have multiple different ways that they join the pathway with children, families and communities toward healing. And so we talk about partnering with 1000s of children and families and our partners every day to build pathways that lead to health, stability and nurturing relationships.
So for our network, that the Wicked Problems Institute is a time when our our members pull together a team of their their local partners, so lived experts, who they are working with locally, researchers, philanthropists, public agency partners. Obviously, our member brings one or more of their staff, and increasingly, because we're really thinking about taking up an approach to how do we really think about the needs of children and families holistically, our members are beginning to invite health care partners, for example, and some some other folks that they're working with. And then the national CHSA office invites national partners that reflect all of those same profiles. So that's who's in the room.
And then there's quite a bit done during the day to make sure that those different multiple sector perspectives get opportunities to talk with one another. Because the value of having those different perspectives in the room is that we have this these few hours together where we can really hear how's a public agency leader thinking alike or differently about engaging lived experts, in this case, then, then a philanthropist or, you know, often folks in during the meeting will take the opportunity to cross talk.
So one of our speakers even said, really would love for funders to know about this unique way they're really trying to go at the engagement and collaboration with intersectional professionals, and it's become very important to the Wicked Problems Institute every year to have individuals with lived expertise involved. And we have worked over the last few years to really make that much more full integration. And so this year, we had individuals with lived expertise on our planning committee to help design the event, for example.
But we start the event hearing from individuals with lived expertise. So that was the start of our day. Was a panel, and they were asked, What does lived expertise mean to you? We heard some really great responses. You know, it's real life awareness, you know, being able to tell the story of how the system works from firsthand experience. So we had, and actually we ended the day hearing from lived experts. And what we wanted to do is have lived experts frame up the day at the beginning and at the end of the day. We wanted them to have the last word about what they heard for the day and what kind of challenge they wanted to issue with, to people based on what we all learned together, to go and do differently. So that was how we started and ended the day.
And then, in this case, for this topic, we invited our three speakers, Bryn Fortune, Sixto Cancel, and Anthony Barrows. All have lived expertise, and they're all working in the space of trying to help all of us get much better at collaborating with lived experts in our work to drive systems change.
And then throughout the day, wicked uses something we refer to as synthesizers. So when folks break into these multi sector small groups to give them time to process what they've heard and to explore questions like, how, how is this work particularly important for addressing equity thing, you know, questions like that. Then we asked one person from each group to join. At this case, it was one point in in the day to say, what are your what's your group talking about, and where are we seeing themes come up. And we had some really great input.
Some really great themes came forward. Put people and how and how they're feeling, how an experience is affecting them at the center, see empathetically. So really think about, how do you, how do you prefer to talk when you're sharing a really personal story? How do you what kind of what kind of safety do you need to feel, what kind of trust do you need to feel and just understand that individuals who courageously share their stories need that kind of safety and that kind of trust? Other themes that were coming out is that we need to move from storytelling and consultation kind of that. Let me ask you at one point in a process, individual you the person who's had this experience.
And actually there was a great analogy that was shared about building a house, and how you start with the blueprint and then you build the framing. And then you build, you finish out the house and and often lived experts if you, if you apply that analogy to systems change, efforts are often brought in at the end. One of our board members has had a family member whose experience that has been on kind of an advisory committee, and she said her family member started calling the paint color and curtains committee because all the big decisions were made until they came to the committee, and they just asked them the last, you know, the last bits. And so that really came out to say, you know, it's, it's not just about hearing the stories and have and then, and then having folks, individuals with lived experience, leave a meeting or a conference, like telling their story and then leaving or bringing them in, at one point, a process and just saying, we have this whole thing figured out. But what's your what do you think? Give us your feedback and moving that into the prioritization of informed decision making. So if we want to be informed, then we need to be collaborating from the start of whatever it is that we're doing, and really listening.
And any of us who have done that have had that experience of, oh, I didn't we had a total blinder on for that or or I had no idea that this particular thing that we were doing, or that has been done for all time, was so, so so harmful, or so challenging or difficult. So that was another theme.
So there are a couple of themes that came out of Wicked that I feel like go together. One of them is, listen deeply, even when it's hard to hear. I think that that just kept came coming up in different ways during our discussion that day, because to be authentic, you have to be able to talk about the difficult things. And it's actually something where we talk about we're working on within the CHSA network. If you're going to have a container of trust and safety, that means you're going to have to be able to say, my feelings were hurt. Or, you know, when you created as an intersectional professional, when you paraded me in front of this funder and then didn't speak to me for a week after because you got busy and, you know, we didn't process deep breathe, whatever the situation is that doesn't feel good. Or when you ask me to speak about something in in in a way that is not consistent with my actual experience, you know. So those, those things that are harder to talk about, but are definitely part of doing this work, so that listen deeply, even if, even when it's stuff that you don't want to hear. And it just kept coming up over and over this, being comfortable disagreeing with each other, being comfortable negotiating across differences and centering all of this work on solidarity and belonging, so being able to say we share values.
We're on this mission together to improve well-being for children, families and communities, and we know there are bumps along the way, and we're going to commit to one another, to stay in the container, to stay in the work and talk about the bumps and work through the bumps, because we're going to learn from that things that help us deal with this challenge that we don't have the answers for.
Luke Waldo 23:39
Thank you. I think that's a really great way to end kind of that very thorough and very thoughtful kind of recap of what happened in that very inspiring day during during Wicked I did want to also thank you, because we have a unique opportunity this this season in the podcast to share some of the content and conversation from that wicked problems convening. But you also talked a lot about what Anthony what six do, what Brynn shared. I do want to shift a little bit into how people can take all of this really rich and compelling and promising information and and begin implementing it more effectively into their work, into their organization, into their systems.
Marlo Nash 24:34
So for the past couple of years, we have invited a graphic illustrator to capture the Wicked Problems convening live as it happens. And we got, we've got a lot of great feedback from participants saying, you know, it's so interesting to begin to see the themes that are emerging out of the group just come up in picture form in front of the group. So it happens live during the conversation, it gets built throughout the convening.
So if listeners go and look at it, what they're seeing is appears to be a complete picture. But what might be helpful to understand is that it unfolds throughout the day. And my I always give advice to folks who, especially if this kind of picture is very busy to your eyes, to pick one thing and study it and then begin to see the other things that are around it. So I just encourage folks to use the graphic illustration that captures our whole day, to really dig into it and understand it as the themes that summarize the day. And I do hope people will use it as a conversation piece if they look at it and want to contact CHSA for just very practically, who did it, and can they bring them to their meetings or happy to help the organization a visual approach, get connected with other folks who would like to do this kind of graphic documentation of their meetings, but certainly to contact us if they want to talk more about the content and what kinds of things were emerging that day.
Luke Waldo 26:06
Thank you. Thank you for that opportunity. It's really exciting. And so you know what our intentions are with our Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative which this podcast aspires to really advance. And so I'd like to hear more from you as to how you see CHSA’s work, and more specifically, this year's convening aligning with any or all of our four critical pathways. Again, very briefly, that's economic stability, social connectedness, workforce inclusion and innovation and community collaboration.
Marlo Nash 26:46
As a fundamental aspect of the work that we're all doing, and certainly the work of SFTCCC. So when I when I think about what they are, social connectedness, and you know that this, the whole conversation that we had at Wicked that day, just kept going back to the theme of belonging and community. And I think that in CHSA, we think about so engaging with lived experts, even in the moment when we're partnering to help a child or a family along their journey.
So I often talk about in the work that that our members do and the and many of their partners, we're often meeting a family or a child at the worst or one of the worst moments in their life, but that is not the full experience of their life. It's not the full picture of who they are and what they and all the strengths that they have. So it's so important, when thinking about building social connectedness, building community collaboration, to recognize that whether it's a child and or family member who you are helping along their journey toward healing, or it's a community partner who you're struggling with, you're struggling together about an issue you're trying to solve, or you're struggling with one another about the way to solve the issue, or you're competing over funding, or, you know, you've got somebody who's left the collaborative table and you're trying to bring them back. I mean, these things that come up are about belonging and inclusion and getting better at putting people and their experiences in the center and recognize when you are encountering someone at a really tough moment, that's not the whole of who they are, and it's not the whole of you who you are.
I really love the parts theory. This is a little off topic, because it doesn't, didn't necessarily come up at Wicked but I really love the parts theory, and really thinking about people are made up of lots of different parts. And so you can think about, I'm encountering this person at a moment where one part of them is prominent, but this is not the whole of them. So to relate that back to lived experts when we're engaging with an individual with lived experience, to help you know address to help figure out, how do we address economic stability? How do we, if it's an intersectional professional, how do we improve our workplace so that you feel included as all of who you are, as an intersectional professional, and you feel safe to share who you are, it you know, in the meta sense, the relationship of this focusing on lived experts, relates to every aspect of SFTCCC, because it's, it's a through line of, how do we build belonging? How do we build belonging with everyone who's involved? And in particular, obviously this convening was, how do we build belonging and collaboration with, of individuals with lived experience and other folks who are in roles that are compelling them to improve systems and practices and policies and resource flows, and to change mental models and to change power dynamics.
As in terms of SFTCCC's critical pathways, particularly the one around workforce inclusion and innovation. This is a highly shared a priority between the Institute for Child and Family Well Being in Wisconsin and the National Children's Home Society of America network, because you're the the Institutes colleague organizations around the country all employ 1000s of individuals to do this work, and many of them are intersectional professionals. And CHSA has a real interest in acknowledging the research that says that peers who've experienced systems, who've experienced life issues, are very well suited to help others move through those same moments.
And so we want to bring more intersectional professionals into this work, and so we want to get much better at understanding how to create the kinds of workplaces that are are have the characteristics that support an Intersectional Professional in doing their professional work and also bringing when, when they are comfortable and they want to bringing their personal experience to bear on the kind of changes that are are needed, and whether that's working individually, with children and families or working, you know, in administrative levels, in an in an organization.
So I think you know, some of the things that that are true about that, that that came out in the Wicked convening are, you know, everyone wants spaces to be safe, to have to have appropriate boundaries set, and to be able to know what those boundaries are. Everyone wants information that helps them do their job better, or helps them make the kind of contribution in any given moment that's helpful. Everyone wants to be acknowledged and valued for the unique and helpful contributions they make. And so when, when we in the space of trying to improve workspaces and workplaces, when we see individuals with lived experience and intersectional professionals as experts because of what they've experienced and because they have done some work to prepare them, to prepare themselves, to share their story, to help make change happen, then you can see a clearer pathway to, how do we value them and include them as experts?
So I think this, it's almost like a study question that CHSA is in the space, same space as the Institute for Child and Family and Well-being, and for the for your work with the SFTCCC of saying, how do we create all those conditions that that will make our workplaces very positive places for people to come and be bring their full selves as intersectional professionals to to the workplace? So there's a definite tie in there. And in fact, our two organizations are working together to do some innovating around that which I'm really excited about.
My belief is that lived experts can illuminate those and that goes to the point about each of us in this ecosystem of building, or sometimes rebuilding Child and Family Well Being, needing to do our own work, to be able to truly listen deeply to things that are difficult to hear. Because I think that getting government and right relationship with children and families is a really wonderful question that we could spend an entire Wicked Problems Institute talking about, but it is also one of the fundamental problems that we have right now.
Luke Waldo 34:27
That's an excellent point where I where I've seen really effective policy advocacy done both data through evidence showing improved outcomes from a specific medical procedure and personal stories from say, say, a mother that a procedure helped save their child, it brings the issue and the data to life through a human story, and when you are addressing issues like treating childhood cancer, those stories can really build empathy and support. However, I think there's less openness or empathy for similar stories from. Families involved in the child welfare system due to things like poverty or social isolation, we have to disrupt the mental models that label these parents as bad by presenting the personal stories that show the real systemic barriers that make it hard for them to care for their kids as they'd love to. So I really appreciate you for highlighting this. I think it has significant and real, practical implications.
Marlo Nash 35:27
It falls into the category too, of being willing to listen deeply, even when it's hard to hear, because in the world of policy making, it's much easier if they're convenient, easy solutions, and when you start talking with people about how things are working or not working, or even not working and being harmful because they're not working, that's it's really hard to hear because it means big changes are needed. And that that takes time and is more complicated to do when we think about engaging with individuals with lived experience to try to help government be in right relationship with children and families for things like going to the State House or the capital in DC, we really need to think about the information those individuals need to truly be a part of the process.
Because I think often we bring someone in, in this really power imbalance situation of a whole, you know, semi-circle of Senators sitting across from a grandmother who was a kin caregiver, who's lower, like physically lower, in the room, and speaking up to them and and when that has happened, it's very powerful. It's it's become something that that the US Congress is doing more and really giving the sense that they're listening, and the individuals who are stepping forward to do that need to understand what kind of difference did that make in the long term? What, why? What, at what point in the process are they sharing, what they're sharing, and what kind of difference it might it make on policy? Because that just that respect of saying, you know, you're now involved in this process of trying to move this policy forward.
And I think in the past, we've kind of, I'm going to use the word paraded people, individuals with lived experience, in front of policy makers. Tell your story, and then let's move on. And we really need part of that. Integrating them into the work is to really, you know, acknowledge that they need to have information that helps them know, what are they a part of and what, what difference can their story make, and at what point is their story going to make a difference? Because so often policy takes years to to make. But that doesn't mean that the story they told four years ago wasn't a really important part of the process, but we don't always draw those connections and that arc over time.
Luke Waldo 38:05
That was awesome. Thank you for sharing all of those aspirations, right, the the the efforts being collectively done across the CHSA network to to advance this vision. And I would like to finish with that, with that question, really, how, how might we, as a CHSA network, and for the purposes of this podcast, how might our listeners implement right some of the strategies that you've talked about today to advance the vision that you just shared in that last response and throughout today's conversation?
Marlo Nash 38:50
So the Wicked Problems Institute that happened this year like ones in the past, generate lots of really great, mind blowing new ideas and information to take action on. So part of it is just unpacking all of that, and I would really encourage listeners to go into the show notes and see the graphic illustration that recaps in on one piece of paper all these incredible themes and and insights that came out of the wicked problems convening this year. So lots of what we've talked about today is encapsulated there.
I hope that out of the Wicked convening, there are lots of ideas that people are taking and using, and we've gotten really great feedback that that there are things that people are going to follow up on and do much more with. So I have several of the individuals with lived experience who participated that day, who followed up and said, I have so many ideas for how we could work together. Let's get together. So I think I would say, you know, for folks who were at the convening, they can get together with with people they met there, and for folks who are listening to podcasts and weren't at the convening, really figure out ways to be in regular conversation with individuals with lived experience, and use this podcast and use the graphic illustration, use engage with some of the speakers and participants at Wicked to help you have those conversations.
And at CHSA, as I mentioned, our mission is to create solutions or problems that disrupt stability and limit potential. And so we really are looking at, how can we collaborate with individuals with lived experience to help us understand firsthand what those problems are, because the problems as as we may define them, as system leaders and and staff may be very different than the problems as defined by individuals with lived experience. So we really need to be turning to them and and and experience into the professional capacity of providing treatment, providing evidence based practices that are intended to keep families together and intact.
So we want to learn much better about how to create workspaces and workplaces that embrace individuals with lived experience, intersectional professionals, and not just coming to work and hiding that part of them that is their experience, and just focusing on sort of what they're credentialed or degreed or licensed to do, but helping them If they want to bring their whole selves to to their professional work and to the work of creating an organizational culture that embraces this idea of centering people and building a sense of community and belonging as fundamental to providing supports and services to children and families to help them heal.
For CHSA, I think we're going to be thinking about, how do we pair human experience with our commitment to applying science? So I think at Wicked The Wicked Problems Institute, Dean Denby Brinson said it beautifully when she talked about we as social workers. Really think about, how do we know what we know? And we want to harmonize that with understanding that listening to lived experts is a way of knowing. So really thinking about how lived experts can be involved in conducting research and coming up with the research questions to really help understand what are the real things that we need to be researching. Not just what does the federal government fund us to do, you know, but what's what's really, Where are the gaps?
And so along those lines, CHSA is also going to be thinking about gaps, particularly in there's the National 21st century Research Agenda for Child and Family Well Being. And we're really thinking about, how do we come alongside that help close some of those research gaps, particularly in community-based prevention in the workforce. So very much thinking about, how do we integrate lived experiences into that work of innovating to try to try to close some research gaps, I'll just say about the CHSA network. We are a network of of folks who are doing the work of partnering with children, families and communities to bring stability, health and nurturing relationships. And we often use the term to describe our network as scholar practitioners. So we're really doing the work and also constantly trying to learn how to do the work better. And that's really the motivation by even hosting the Wicked Problems Institute is to create this space and container each year where we can come together with this cross sector view, these cross sector perspectives, and dig into a problem or set of problems that that we believe multiple sectors need to come together and help solve.
So we think about the six conditions of system change, and as scholar practitioners, how do we address not just practice, which is what we do every day and want to continuously get better at but what policies need to change, and not just legislative policies, but organizational policies. So when we think about intersectional professionals, we're really thinking about what organizational policies might need to be changed to create a better environment, a safe and trusting environment for intersectional professionals.
Some core things for us when we think about implementing the CHSA network's vision and mission is we're working on building belonging so even within our network, and certainly within our organizations, within the network, working on how to have courageous conversations and listen even when it's hard to hear. So we're really thinking about how we can create spaces where we can ideate. And I think Anthony Barrows gave us some really great advice at the Wicked Problems Institute, because he said, You know, sometimes you need to be thinking about how to pass a bill, and what is the Speaker of the House going to allow you to bring to the floor? What is the governor going to sign? And you have to think tactically about that. And then there's also the need to create the space where you can ideate and dream and really think generationally about how we're going to solve these problems. And so we're trying to do that at CHSA.
And again, the Wicked Problems Institute is one way that we create that space where we can ideate, where we can say, it doesn't, it doesn't matter what's actually going to for this moment. It doesn't matter what we can actually push forward. Let's really dream about what needs to be different, because we know that we put that dream out there, then we can kind of work backwards from that and say, Okay, in this moment, what can we do differently? What can we cause to be done differently so that we get closer to that big vision. We we're going to be focusing on increasing our authentic engagements and relationships with individuals with lived expertise, continuing to really deeply listen and to figure out structurally in our organization, how we're going to be able to partner with lived experts to inform the big decisions of our work that we're doing together.
Look at marrying data science, service, research and advocacy with humanity and equity. So how do we really bring the human side of this work into absolutely everything that we do at the same time we're thinking about the colder, harder facts of data and science and marrying all of that up and have all of that guide the kind of work we do going forward, both at the practice level and in policy change.
And, you know, I think another thing we're going to work on, and I encourage folks to work on, is examining your own mental models. So individually, personally, what mental models do you have that may be standing in the way of doing this work, of engaging with lived experts in the best way possible, and then organizationally, what what mental models is your organization operating on that may be causing barriers it? What? What is the community, your community around your organization, whether you define that as a city or a county or a state, what mental models are being held there that that need to be adjusting and really thinking about, then how to do that adaptive work of shifting people's mental models.
And with regard to Wicked we really see the Wicked Problems Institute as not just a day or when it's in person, a day and a half of really trying to dig into this. What we're working on is creating a way to stay in community year-round on this kind of work. So I really appreciate the opportunity to be able to share what we what was learned and shared at Wicked through the podcast, because I think it's going to hopefully help many other people get information that will help them do this work. And we're going to be looking at other things that we can offer over the next year to help people do this work better.
Luke Waldo 48:54
Well, that's that's my hope too, Marlo, is that we will have that sort of ripple effect here, not only from you and our conversation today, but the many other speakers that they'll hear throughout, throughout this season. You know, I wanted to give a couple concrete examples from what you just, you just shared, and I, I want to, I want to elevate, again, the real impact of relationships, CHSA and this network has has deepened relationships across the country.
I shortly after this year's Wicked met with one of my breakout partners from New Jersey, because I can, I can go to New Jersey's website, and I can learn about many of the things that they're doing, the programs they've implemented, the ways they've used Medicaid to provide mental and behavioral health to teens and youth. But what I can't learn from a website, generally speaking, is how that happened, right? The struggles that they endured in that process, the failures that they experienced through that process, right and and some of the kind of inspiration and brainstorming right that led to that moment right that you talked about, all of that happens through relationships, right and through reaching out to one another.
The other example I'd give is from last year's wicked, long standing partners of ours through CHSA in Delaware, discovered that we were doing similar work, and we saw an opportunity to work together, to collaborate very intentionally, to start scaling our work, to reach more and more individuals organizations across the country, right? So I can't stress it enough, the importance of building relationships, building trust, in particular the model of Wicked, of seeing opportunities to work across systems, right, as well as across roles, and working with people with lived experience, which has been a primary focus of today's conversation.
So I want to thank you, Marlo, not only for today's conversation, but for your leadership of the CHSA network, for carrying out the vision of this year's wicked and the CHSA network, and really look forward to upcoming conversations and collaboration throughout the year.
Marlo Nash 51:28
Thank you, Luke, so much for for inviting me to be a part of this conversation and for really working with me and CHSA to think about how this podcast can be a tool that inspires more conversation, that helps capture big ideas and and we've really, you know, turned to it to help shape Wicked conversations, because you're doing such great work around shifting mental models and getting people to really think deeply about the work in ways that we often don't have time to do when we're in meetings at work, but when we can take the time to listen to it on the podcast and let it soak in a different way, I think it's really driving work forward as well.
So I'm really delighted that we're connecting Wicked and the Overloaded podcast together in this way for season three. So thanks so much for the opportunity. And as you know, I was hesitant to be the person interviewed on behalf of CHSA because I really believe that the power of this work is the fact that we're a community that is very relational. Our members are well connected with one another and support one another in this work and our board, we are fully funded by by the investments our members make in this work. So Wicked is a manifestation of our board's true commitment to creating these really important spaces to ideate and imagine and challenge one another and help keep all of this on the leading edge of this system change work that we're all trying to do together. So I'm really grateful to hold a role that just brings everyone together to do that kind of work. So thank you.
Luke Waldo 53:31
Thank you, Marlo. I hope that this episode and insights from Marlo have you thinking more about how we might unlock the power of lived experience through true collaboration. Before we go, as always I wanted to highlight three key takeaways to reflect on as we move into our next episodes.
Thank you for joining us for today’s episode. We hope that you will come back and listen next week as we continue to explore how we might change the conditions that overload families with stress, so that families can thrive and children grow up with positive childhood experiences.
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To learn more about the experts that you heard today, visit the Show Notes, which is where you will also find links to sources or information that were mentioned in today’s episode.
Thank you again for joining us. See you next week.
This podcast would not have been possible without the support and talents of Carrie Wade, who is responsible for our technical production and original music composition. I can't express my gratitude enough to Carrie for all she has given to this project. 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.
As this season is how we show our work as we learn about the innovative systems change happening across our state and country. Please share your work that is changing the conditions for children and families by leaving a note in the comment section or emailing me. Thank you again for joining us. See you next week.
