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The Imprint Weekly Podcast offers listeners a regular review of news and trends in America's child welfare and juvenile justice systems, along with other critical services for youth and families. Join Imprint Senior Editor John Kelly for a discussion of the week's major headlines, plus interviews with leaders in the field.
265 Episodes
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On this week’s episode we talk to Naomi Goldstein, who for nearly two decades led the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation at the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). We discussed the way that the federal government decides what to research and how it gets the job done. And why she thinks the Trump administration’s recent decision to decentralize research at ACF is a mistake. Naomi Goldstein was the deputy assistant secretary for planning, research, and evaluation at t...
On this week’s episode we talk to Marsha Levick, co-founder of the Juvenile Law Center, who stepped down last year after serving for decades as the organization’s chief legal officer. We discussed the origins of the center and how it survived, how to write a good amicus brief, the Kids for Cash scandal and more. Marsha Levick is a co-founder and former chief legal officer for the Juvenile Law Center. She is currently the Phyllis W. Beck Visiting Chair in Law at Temple Law School.
InnerViews is trying something new. In this special episode, we bring you the audio from Youth Voices Rising’s powerful webinar, Love Shouldn’t Hurt. Panelists with lived child welfare experience reflect on how trauma, housing instability, and system involvement can shape beliefs about love and safety. This honest conversation explores survival-based relationships, healing, and what it takes to build emotionally safe connections. Listener discretion advised.
On this Headlines edition of The Imprint Weekly Podcast, we start with a discussion of three medication-assisted treatments for substance use that the Trump administration has cleared for federal child welfare funding. Also discussed on this episode: new national data on abuse and neglect investigations, Georgia’s budget woes, and two alarming indicators of the workforce crisis in youth justice. Reading Room Top Trump Health Officials Announce New Funding for Opioid Addiction Treatment ...
On this week’s episode we talk to Don Wells, the Chief Empowerment Officer at Just In Time, which is a San Diego based organization working to support and mentor older foster youth on their path to adulthood. President Trump signed an executive order on foster care at the end of 2025 which instructed his Department of Health and Human Services on some priorities for federal policy around improved data and evaluation, more support for older foster youth, and more efforts to include faith...
In this restorative Season 3 premiere of InnerViews, host Ivory Bennett reunites with Dr. Alison Davis for a soulful conversation on renewal, emotional safety, and intentional becoming. Together, they reflect on the lessons of the past season, explore what no longer serves them, and name what deserves to be carried forward. This episode invites listeners to pause, breathe, and consider how healing, boundaries, and self-compassion can shape the life they’re building next.
Last week, the Baltimore Sun’s Jean Marbella reported on a lawsuit filed on behalf of youth in the state’s foster care system who had been left in hospital wards with no plan for a return to the community. While the lawsuit focuses on events in the past two years, this has been a problem for far longer than that in Maryland. In 2022, we were joined by Erin Dorrien and Carrie Etheridge to discuss this exact issue of kids getting stuck in the hospital well after anyone thinks they need to...
In our first podcast of 2026, we discuss new data on the administration’s goal of A Home for Every Child, a new leader for the U.S. Children’s Bureau, Trump’s freezing of safety net funds in five states, and more. Reading Room Why We Are Putting the PIP on a PIP https://imprintnews.org/opinion/why-we-are-putting-the-pip-on-a-pip/269784 How States Stack Up on Trump’s “A Home for Every Child” Agenda https://bit.ly/4qmHcLo Trump Administration Issues Deadline Demands Before Releasing...
As always, we were fortunate to have some amazing guests join us this year on The Imprint Weekly Podcast. In this episode we feature clips of 12 great interviews from 2025. If you enjoy this podcast, or the great work our reporters do at The Imprint and Fostering Families Today, and the work that our Youth Voices Rising team does, please consider making a donation. And if you do so this month, during Newsmatch, your donation will get doubled! Fostering Media Connections is very lucky to...
We will post our annual “Best of The Imprint Weekly Podcast” show next, but this is the last new episode of 2025. Frequent guest Marina Nitze, a child welfare and tech expert, joined to discuss the flurry of federal activity on child welfare since the end of the federal shutdown. Marina Nitze is a crisis engineer helping organizations solve mission-critical challenges, with a particular focus on improving America’s child welfare system. She’s co-author of Crisis Engineering and Hack You...
On this week's episode, Imprint reporter Michael Fitzgerald was in Washington last week to interview Alex Adams, who was confirmed in October to serve as the Assistant Secretary for Family Support at the Administration for Children and Families. Fitzgerald asked Adams about a wide range of subjects. They discussed the administration’s goal of “A Home for Every Child” and how Adams plans to achieve that; how and why he plans to "barbecue" much of the regulatory language for states when it come...
On this week’s podcast Maddy Day of Maddy Day and Associates joins to talk about what it takes to provide stability on college campuses for youth who have experienced aging out of foster care, homelessness or both. She is helping to coordinate a Congressional briefing planned for 2026 on the subject. It’s Newsmatch season! Please consider donating to support this podcast and the incredible work that our Imprint reporters do every day. If you donate this month, your contribution will be ...
President Trump’s White House event announcing an executive order on foster care got a lot of attention. But it is not the only indicator of what the administration might have in mind for policy making in child welfare during his second term. We dive into the specifics of the executive order and several other interesting announcements from Trump’s team, then step back and try to describe the big picture. It’s Newsmatch season! Please consider donating to support this podcast and the inc...
In this powerful season finale, Ivory reflects on a transformative year—motherhood through kinship adoption, buying her first home, navigating love, and preparing for preventive surgeries after testing BRCA2+. Joined by spiritual healer and author Lorna J. Hines, she explores faith, ancestry, and healing beyond appearance. This conversation offers gentle truth: you can struggle and still be sacred. You can ache and still be anointed. And you, too, deserve good things.
Barry Cooper is founder of the BRO Experience, a Brooklyn-based organization that uses cognitive behavioral therapy at the center of its approach to mental health support for young men of color. He is among this year’s winners of the David Prize, which each year goes to five New Yorkers with an extraordinary idea for change. Cooper joined us to discuss his own adolescence growing up in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, and how his first early career as a barber informed his app...
On today’s episode we discuss some of the recent Imprint reporting on how the federal shutdown is impacting youth and family programs like food stamps and Head Start, and one state where the shutdown has prompted gatekeeping of child welfare services. We also review the child welfare priorities hinted at in a Journalist and author Nell Bernstein joins to discuss her new book In Our Future We Are Free: The Dismantling of the Youth Prison. We talked about her goals for the book, what the ...
Latonia Rolbiecki, a Minnesota mother of three, died last month at the age of 48. Several years ago, Rolbiecki was the subject of an Imprint series about her fight to adopt her grandson after he was taken into foster care at birth. Rolbiecki lost that legal battle, and her grandson was adopted by non-relative foster parents. On this week’s episode we reflect back on the series, “Latonia vs. Chisago County,” and what her experience reflects about the child welfare system. We ...
In this episode of InnerViews, Ivory sits down with Realtor Joy Hill and Mortgage Banker David McGowan to discuss her journey to becoming a first-time homeowner—while navigating adversity, foster care advocacy, and single motherhood. Together, they unpack the realities of accessible homeownership, financial literacy, and breaking generational cycles. This episode is both informative and deeply personal, reminding us that building a home isn’t just about property—it’s about planting roots for ...
On this week’s episode we present the second part of our career-spanning interview with Vinny Schiraldi, currently a visiting fellow with the Pinkerton Foundation. In part one we talked with Schiraldi about his formative years in youth justice and his first job leading a government agency. We start part two with a job Schiraldi actually didn’t get: leading the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention for the Obama administration. Then we turn to his time leading New York Ci...
On this week’s episode we begin a two-part in-depth interview with Vinny Schiraldi, a firebrand for justice reform whose career has included leadership on alternatives to incarceration, advocacy, and government leadership. In part one we talk to Schiraldi, now a fellow with the Pinkerton Foundation, about his own formative impressions of the justice system as an adolescent growing up in Brooklyn. Then we discuss his first job working at a New York group home for delinquent youth, and the chan...
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