The Imprint Weekly

On today’s episode, we are joined by Dan Macallair of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, to talk about his organization’s new report, Costly Blunder: The Expansion of Juvenile Halls in California. We discussed this recent analysis of juvenile facility spending in California and what the state should do next when it comes to its continuum of services and strategies for system-involved you...

What does lasting support look like after foster care ends? Ivory Bennett speaks with Christina Young-Van Osten, a child welfare professional and consultant who aged out of New York’s foster care system, about connection, mental health, and genuine decision-making power. Christina reflects on navigating adulthood, finding family beyond care, and turning lived experience into leadership. Together,...

On this week’s headlines edition we discuss recent actions by the Trump administration, including efforts to improve the background check process for foster home licensing. We also discuss why in some states, the end of SNAP waivers for former foster youth won’t mean much, because they never got the waivers in the first place; and the push to build more juvenile facilities in states that can barel...

This week on InnerViews ... What does it take to help raise a child when you’re not their parent? Ivory sits down with her sister Ebony Turner to talk about becoming Jayden’s mother and aunt, the joys and exhaustion of caregiving, and the gap between having a village and having people who show up.  Guest Bio: Ebony Turner is an insurance underwriting professional with eight years of experience. Sh...

On this week’s episode we are joined by Toni Watt, a sociology professor at Texas State University of San Marcos, who has worked diligently along with others to help foster youth in the state get to college and get a degree.  A recent landscape analysis, which Watt was part of, shows that those efforts have yet to yield the kind of changes anyone would hope for out of a state with a broad tuition...

On this week’s episode we welcome back Ian Forber-Pratt, former president of the Children’s Emergency Relief International, who has launched The Ties Foundation to help people who experienced an international adoption travel to their homelands and process the experience.  Ian Forber-Pratt is the founder and executive director of The Ties Foundation. He is the former president of Children’s Emergen...

Billie has experienced child welfare from multiple perspectives: as a child in foster care and group placements, and later as a parent. In this deeply personal conversation, she joins InnerViews host Ivory Bennett to discuss grief, being unheard in care, motherhood, addiction and recovery, family separation, advocacy, and what children and families truly need from the systems designed to support t...

On this week’s episode we review some interesting research on kinship diversion, emergency placements and the nexus between child welfare systems and immigration under Trump. Then we discuss some local headlines on state child welfare spending and the result of two recent legal challenges. Reading Room How Are Heightened Deportation Efforts Affecting Child Welfare Agencies? https://shorturl.at/AqJ...

On the week’s episode, SchoolHouse Connection founder Barbara Duffield joins to discuss the different approaches the U.S. government has for tallying youth and family homelessness. We also discussed recent Trump policy announcements around the McKinney-Vento program and Head Start, and why she thinks these issues would be best handled by the Department of Health and Human Services.  Barbara Duffie...

On this week’s episode, we review some recent headlines on youth justice, including Minnesota raising their floor and some questionable comments on the system by officials in Mississippi and New Mexico.  Liz Ryan joined to talk about her new project aimed at helping journalists and newsrooms with reporting on a complicated system.  Liz Ryan served as administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice...

For three years, a collaborative effort was made to develop core principles and concepts around how best to support young adults as they prepared to exit the foster care system. That effort culminated in the publishing of Improving Outcomes for Young Adults and the Systems that Serve Them: A Playbook of Best Practices.  On this week’s episode we were joined by Natalie Clark and Sarah Goad, two of...

What happens after you “age out” of foster care? InnerViews host Ivory Bennett sits down with Leigh-Anna Faith, a former foster youth, law student, and advocate, for a candid conversation about navigating adulthood without a traditional safety net. From education and housing instability to mental health, advocacy, and finding community, Leigh-Anna reflects on turning lived experience into a commit...

There are dozens of girls incarcerated in Los Angeles’ juvenile justice facilities, and virtually everyone agrees they don’t need to be there. On this episode, we talk to Jessica Nowlan of Reimagine Freedom and Lisa Small of the Liberty Hill Foundation about the Liberation Fund and other efforts to rethink the way Los Angeles supports system-involved girls.  Jessica Nowlan is the president and CEO...

On this month’s Headlines edition of The Imprint Weekly Podcast, we start by discussing the latest details on A Home for Every Child, which every state in the nation has officially opted in for. Among the other headline we cover: the new national model licensing standards for foster care; stricter vetting around unaccompanied immigrant children seeking asylum protection; Mississippi’s new law that...

In this deeply personal episode of InnerViews, host Ivory Bennett welcomes back Dr. Alison Davis for an honest conversation about single motherhood, parenting children who have experienced trauma, and the village so many families are searching for. Together, they explore matrescence, caregiver well-being, emotional safety, and the realities of raising children while navigating healing of your own....

On this week’s episode we are joined by Wendy Smith, author of the new book "Before Their Crimes: What We're Misunderstanding About Child Trauma, Youth Crime, and the Path to Healing." Smith, who is a veteran psychotherapist and former professor and dean at the University of Southern California School of Social Work, talked about the visit to one of California’s prisons that sparked...

On this month’s Headlines edition of The Imprint Weekly Podcast, we start by discussing a new announcement by the First Lady enabling states to start and contribute to Trump Accounts for kids in foster care. We also discuss a new bill that would significantly alter a major federal welfare program, new research on child brain development, and several other headlines.  Reading Room Melania Trump Urg...

On this week’s podcast we talk to Anthony Pierro, executive director of Strategies for Youth (SFY), a national policy and training organization dedicated to improving interactions between law enforcement and youth. Pierro took the helm at SFY last year from its founder, Lisa Thurau. We talked about Pierro’s career as a juvenile prosecutor on the New Jersey shore, and how that informed his approach...

On today’s episode we are joined by David Muhammad, founder and executive director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform. We talked to Muhammad about “high risk, hard to reach youth,” which is a term he and fellow justice reformer Vinny Schiraldi have coined to describe the relatively small group of youth they believe should be the focus of the next phase of youth justice reform. T...

In this powerful episode of InnerViews , Ivory Bennett sits down with author, musician, and creative visionary Qpidluv for a deeply honest conversation about foster care, masculinity, identity, and healing through storytelling. From entering foster care as an infant to creating The Safe Home Chronicles and the Forever Home Project , Qpidluv reflects on survival, imagination, and the search for bel...

On this week’s Headlines edition of the podcast, we discuss the latest on the Trump administration’s A Home for Every Child initiative and some child welfare bills moving in Congress. We also discuss The Imprint’s recent reporting on parental relinquishments, a law in Oklahoma prompted by a child fentanyl death, foster youth and chronic absenteeism, and more.  Thanks to iFoster for sponsoring this...

In 2021, Christopher Baker-Scott joined The Imprint Weekly Podcast to talk about Sun Scholars, a new nonprofit he started to help support Connecticut foster youth on college campuses. Unlike many school-based approaches around the country, Sun Scholars is a centrally located organization serving youth on a number of campuses around the state.  Five years later, Baker-Scott joined us to talk about...

On this week’s episode, we were joined by Sixto Cancel, founder and CEO of Think of Us, and Sharon McDaniel, founder and CEO of A Second Chance. We talked first about their relatively new joint venture between the two organizations called Fashion Forward Kinspire, which is entering its second year of helping expose youth in kinship or foster care to the world of fashion culminating with a trip to...

In this episode of InnerViews , Ivory Bennett sits down with Nesta N. Johnson to explore what it means to reach an “It Gets Better” era after surviving systems and trauma. Together, they unpack the slow, nonlinear journey toward healing, the power of storytelling as both release and responsibility, and what it means to hold hope for the next generation. This conversation is honest, grounding, and...

Alex Adams, assistant secretary in charge of the Administration for Children and Families, joined the podcast last year to discuss his background and the child welfare goals for President Trump’s second term.  This week he returned to discuss his first six months on the job. We discussed the early going of the A Home for Every Child initiative, his decision to rescind the “designated placement” ru...