INNOVATE!
Welcome to INNOVATE! Podcast host Angela Tucker sits down with Re-Envisioning Foster Care Champions - visionary leaders using their lived experience expertise to improve life outcomes for our nation's children and youth in foster care. They are creating a Culture of Possibility, changing the foster care narrative & leading the nation forward. To learn more about INNOVATE!, the Re-Envisioning Foster Care Movement & the Treehouse Foundation, go to treehousefoundation.net.
Episodes
33 episodes
S04E02: Merchandise on a Conveyer Belt
ReEnvisioning Foster Care Champion, Dakota Roundtree Swain, teaches Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and is the Diversity & Inclusion Manager at Harvard Medical School. Dakota has a Ph.D. in Social Policy from B...
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Season 4
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Episode 2
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36:01
S04E01: Belonging: It's Transformational Value
ReEnvisioning Foster Care Champion Gaelin Elmore is a former NFL player who chose to retire from football and become a full-time advocate for children and youth whose lives have been impacted by foster care. A visionary leader who experienced l...
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Season 4
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Episode 1
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41:05
S3E10: A More Expansive Definition of Family
Charles and Molly Lerner were adopted by the same parents when they were children. They are siblings by adoption. Today Charles and his husband, who live in Boston, are parenting Molly’s son. They are his adoptive parents. Molly, who lives in T...
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Season 3
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Episode 10
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40:56
S3E9: Healing Through Meditation
ReEnvisioning Foster Care Champion Demetrius Napolitano is a passionate advocate for children and young people who are experiencing foster care and their peers in NYC public schools. Using his knowledge of yoga and meditation, plus his lived ex...
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Season 3
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Episode 9
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31:50
S3E8: Healed People Heal People
2023 REFCA Champion Keri Hope Richmond is a change maker, storyteller, and a passionate advocate for children and families. She is the manager of child welfare policy for the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Executive Director of Unbeliev...
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Season 3
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Episode 8
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38:24
S3E7: Soul Family - Young People Choose Their Circle of Caring Adults
REFCA Champion Patty Chin is a visionary advocate for young people in foster care. Using her lived expertise, she created a compelling new option to support the needs of the 20,000 youth who age out of foster care every year without the benefit...
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Season 3
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Episode 7
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28:26
S3E6: How Mandatory Reporters Could Become Mandated Supporters
REFCA Champion Jasmine Snell has a dream: to create a primary school that supports two generations of Americans - children and their parents; a community based resource that is available to children experiencing foster care and thei...
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Season 3
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Episode 6
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33:20
S3E5: The “Schism’s” and the “Isms” Within Foster Care
REFCA Champion Carloe Moser discusses the ways that the Crosby Scholars LIGHHT Program in Winston-Salem, North Carolina helps young people living in foster care see a light at the end of the tunnel while facing racism, classism, conflict, and d...
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Season 3
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Episode 5
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28:29
S3E4: How The Supportive Words of A Child Attorney Led Cristal To Her Dream College
In the 6th grade, REFCA Champion Cristal Ramirez had a dream … to attend San Diego State University. She knew that very few kids living in foster care ever receive college or graduate-level degrees, but she wanted to break through the barrier o...
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Season 3
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Episode 4
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32:40
S3E3: How Being in Foster Care While in College Led to the Creation of Foster U
As a freshman at Old Dominion University, Melvin encountered a plethora of resources colleges have for almost anything you can think of - tutoring, counseling, intramural sports, and clubs. What he wasn’t finding was support for kids in college...
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Season 3
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Episode 3
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35:33
S3E2: The Voices of Foster Youth & Alumni in Ohio Are Being Elevated
REFCA Champion Lisa Dickson is involved in a wide array of initiatives in Ohio that amplify and honor youth voice and experience. She works diligently to ensure that young people living in foster care are designing and implementing on the feder...
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Season 3
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Episode 2
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33:33
S3E1: Lived Experience Leadership is the Way Forward
Takkeem Morgan aged out of foster care and uses his experiences to reimagine child welfare. At times, Takeem calls himself “delusional” because he doesn’t think of the child welfare system as a complex problem to solve. He breaks it down into l...
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Season 3
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Episode 1
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32:52
S2E10: What If We Marketed Foster Care Like a Product?
David Ambroz and Brondalyn Coleman posit how foster care awareness could utilize tactics used by other social movements like breast cancer awareness who’ve revolutionized the color pink to become synonymous with breast cancer. How can we better...
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29:43
S2E9: Lived Experiences in Foster Care IS Data
Demetrius Napolitano and Maddy Day discuss their work towards systemic changes in foster care through meditation and academia advocating for including lived experiences as useful metrics and data for reporting. Welcome back to IN...
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Season 2
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Episode 9
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31:32
S2E8 - Our System Can’t Treat Kids The Same As We Treat Teens
Michael Williams and Jarel Skinner-Melendez discuss re-envisioning the way we approach the system of care stemmning from their belief that one system can’t fit all. They discuss ways the system can offer teenagers the right response when they f...
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Season 2
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Episode 8
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30:47
S2E7 - Behind The Scenes of INNOVATE!
Angela Tucker, the host of the podcast speaks with Nick Ramsey, the audio editor about the process of producing Season 1 and Season 2 of INNOVATE!Welcome back to INNOVATE! for Season Two! This season, host Angela Tucker highlights REF...
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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27:50
S2E6 - Can The Government Be a Parent?
Alain Datcher and Angelique Salizan speak about the many intersectionalities within child welfare. They discuss the ways the Department of Justice, Department of Education overlap with issues such as child trafficking, LGBTQ and racism.<...
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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32:44
S2E5 - "My Mom Was Mentally Ill, Abused Substances, and Worshipped The Ground I Walked On."
Jamie Bennett and Charity Bell speak about the need for all foster homes to be therapeutic foster homes, which means homes that don't demonize biological parents. They double down on the notion that someone who does not have the ability to care...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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32:58
S2E4 - "I Was The First One With Lived Experience to Sit On The Board."
Julie Segovia and Janay Eustace talk about how their experiences being the first people with lived experiences to sit on the Board and be named Executive Director of child welfare organizations. They lay a blueprint for shifting "the way things...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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31:48
S2E3 - Let’s Reframe Who We Call a “Success Story”
Jennifer Rodriguez and Shalita O'Neale talk with Angela about ways to reorient the child-welfare system by measuring success by asking if youth leave the system feeling loved, respected and cherished. If so, they are a success story.W...
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31:20
S2E2 - "You Cannot Get Kicked Out of Our Program."
Phoenix Santiago and Charles Lerner discuss the responsibilities we have to care for those who have experienced trauma under our watch. They ask the question "How dare we abdicate our responsibilities after the age of 18?" and discuss what it l...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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30:47
S2E1 - "Sometimes Policy Change Moves Faster Than the Speed of Bureaucracy!"
Scout Hartley and Tony Parsons break down the ways the administrative state impacts child-welfare legislation and specifically youth in foster care.Welcome back to INNOVATE! for Season Two! This season, host Angela Tucker highlights R...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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33:10
Season 2 - Trailer
Welcome to Season 2 of INNOVATE! Angela Tucker, a transracial adoptee and an alumni of foster-care, is back to interivew 20 individuals who were crowned Re-envisioning Foster Care Champions in America. These individuals share the w...
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Season 2
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Episode 0
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1:32