The Shift: Voices of Prevention — A podcast by Prevent Child Abuse America
How do we create a future where every family is safe, supported, and filled with hope? The Shift explores bold, upstream solutions to the public health challenges facing children and families today.
Hosted by Prevent Child Abuse America, each episode features transformative conversations with experts, changemakers, and people with lived experience. Together, we dive into prevention strategies, policy breakthroughs, and the systemic shifts that have the power to change lives.
Part of PCA America’s movement to make family well-being the new normal, The Shift amplifies the voices and ideas shaping a brighter, more hopeful future for all families.
Subscribe to The Shift wherever you get your podcasts.
Guest ideas or feedback? Email us at theshift@preventchildabuse.org
The Shift: Voices of Prevention — A podcast by Prevent Child Abuse America
Power of Prevention: Stories of Hope and Healing from the Strengthened by Prevention Panel
Recorded live at PCA America’s 2025 National Conference in Portland, this episode of The Shift: Voices of Prevention features the Strengthened by Prevention panel, a powerful group of leaders, advocates, and storytellers who remind us what prevention looks like in real life.
Panelists Keri Hope Richmond, Camille Idedevo, Kali Thorne Ladd, Elayna Fernández and moderator Habeebah Rasheed Grimes share deeply personal stories of how early support, community care, and safe relationships changed their lives and the lives of those around them. From the protective power of Head Start and mental health services, to the ministry of presence in moments of crisis, the conversation highlights why prevention must be centered in every system, policy, and community.
Together, they call for a future where children are at the center, relationships are honored, and healing is collective. As one panelist put it, “Safe people save people.”
Tune in for a heartfelt discussion on empathy, healing, and why prevention is not only possible—it’s powerful.
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SPEAKER_02:This is The Shift, Voices of Prevention, a podcast from Prevent Child Abuse America, where we explore bold ideas, cultural change, and what it truly means to support children and families. Join us to change the narrative one conversation at a time. Hello and welcome to The Shift, Voices of Prevention, recording live from PCA America's 2025 National Conference in Portland, Oregon. I'm Nathan Fink, and today we're excited to be joined by the PCA America Strengthened by Prevention panel, who helped us close out the conference, and I'm going to pass it around so we can introduce ourselves.
SPEAKER_00:Hello, everyone. My name is Keri Hope Richman. I'm a policy advocate advocating for stronger children and families policies. I am a storyteller and I'm a yoga teacher.
SPEAKER_03:My name is Habiba Rasheed Grimes. I'll admit I'm in a moment of transition as I think about who am I. So first of all, I am a mom to two beautiful little boys. And I've spent over 25 years working with young people with complex mental health and developmental needs and have recently made a shift toward really leaning full time into supporting organizations and young people with a trauma informed and healing centered perspective outside of an organization. So I'm stepping into the consultancy space and continuing my work around advocacy for youth mental health.
SPEAKER_05:Hey, everybody. Camille Idedevo. I am with the 1803 Fund, serving as the Director of Community Strategy and Evaluation. We are a black investment fund located in Portland, Oregon, and our entire goal is to grow rooted and prosperous life for the city, particularly for black families and children.
SPEAKER_06:My name is Kelly Thorne Ladd, and I have the privilege of serving as the CEO of the Children's Institute. I consider myself a social entrepreneur focused on children and love and belonging. I'm also a mom of two amazing teenagers, and I love what I do every day. Well, not every day. Most days.
SPEAKER_01:I love that. My name is Elaina Fernandez, and I am the founder of the Positive Mom blog. And I am a proud mom of four daughters. They are 22, 21, 11, and 5. And my purpose is to help... moms break cycles, find peace, and feel whole. And I do that through the power of storytelling and just amplifying voices so that people can feel seen, safe, and supported.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I'm glad we have some parents in the room because I've got two young ones myself, seven and nine. So I wish this were a podcast where I could just ask you questions about that. We've been talking about primary prevention for decades, right? The programs, the strategies, the policies that support it. And as Dr. Perry said, we're pretty much in agreement around these needs. And yet I'm not convinced that as a society, we truly empathize with the thing that needs to happen. There's this disconnect. So I wanted to pose this question When you look at your life, can you describe a moment where primary prevention was activated for you or someone you knew?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, if I may jump in here, because there's an important aspect of my identity that I didn't speak to, and that's my role as a board member with Prevent Child Abuse America. And when that invitation came through, I had to pause and think about, like, is this the right space for me? Because adolescents are my jam. I love some conduct-issued adolescents. You got some challenges that are acting out. I'm here to support you. And young children were folks that I I saw other experts being much more confident in serving. And I had to think about like, why would I step into this space? And it's the lived experience. It's understanding how abuse and neglect show up in families, the systemic and structural forces that create conditions for that, but also how prevention, things like Head Start that changed my own life, things like wraparound services that I saw activating for young people in the work that I did that really helped me know this is the right space. And I have a voice and a perspective that could be valuable to bring through leading around early prevention work.
SPEAKER_00:I think for me, I also have an identity I didn't speak to, which is I have lived experience having been in foster care and seen the failure to prevent foster care. And then I was reunified and I saw, again, the failure to provide supportive services to families to successfully reunify. And then I was adopted and my adoption dissolved and I saw the failure to support adoptive families. So I really have seen, you know, what happens when you don't have primary prevention and when you wait until the bridge is collapsing And it is so important, I think, to have people who show up with storm supplies before there's ever a storm warning, right? To show up to check that the bridge is safe before we're ever collapsing, right? And so for me, I think that has shown up in my life as a young adult before I'm having my own family as mental health supports. And there is an incredible organization that I want to flag called A Home Within, and they provide free mental health care to anyone who spent one day in foster care. That is, to me, primary prevention. You are providing those mental health supports up front, helping people heal so that they can go into parenthood, feeling safe and secure and regulated to show up and be so present for their kids. And that is what we need.
SPEAKER_05:I think prevention has changed the trajectory of my own life personally. So I am somebody who went from having stable housing to not. I'm somebody who suffered with mental health challenges as a young person. I'm somebody who school was my refuge. And so between the education system itself and having educators who made my success their personal mission from having church mothers pull up to my house with food boxes or a godmother that saw me in the street at the time of day that I wasn't supposed to be there and waited in her car and flashed the lights until I came out. There were moments in my own story that had it not been for the people who made those early investments, I couldn't say with confidence that I'd be sitting here today.
SPEAKER_06:And I think I would say, and I shared a little bit of this earlier, that for me, primary prevention was my family and the care and connectedness. They rooted me in who I was, my identity, in a world that stripped that away, a world that told me all we were were slaves. And it was always a very deficit-based lens through which my people, my ancestors, were viewed. And I had a counter-narrative always in my home, a counterfactual. And it was that counterfactual, along with just effusive love, and belonging. And my parents both grew up with a lot of ACEs and overcame a lot. But they created this bubble of love that I felt safe in. And I think part of why I do the work I do is I recognize that schools have the opportunity to harm or to heal. And too many of our schools are dehumanizing of children. They are not seeing children. And sometimes they are, and it's radically transformative. And so part of my goal is how do we make all schools places where children are healed and not harmed? Where people are seen and valued and we re-humanize children, not dehumanize them. For me, most of my educational experience was a dehumanizing one.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly with all of that was shared. And I want to echo that because for me, growing up, I didn't have... really a lot of resources growing up in a slum and having no access to medical and sanitary conditions in which a child should live. But also when I went to school, I felt seen by some of my teachers and that made a huge difference in how I saw myself because they didn't focus on my past or my circumstances, but they focused on my potential and my possibilities. And moving fast forward to living in the United States, I experienced homelessness with my children. I was able to see the difference that it makes when you have access to support. And even as we lifted ourselves out of poverty, feeling alone and feeling that there are policies in place that can help you as an immigrant especially, but also the difference that it makes when it is there. the tax credits or the Head Start programs like Habiba said. So those systems really help you feel more hope and that it is possible sometime because when we feel that hope that prevention or that change is possible, then we are preventing abuse and neglect and adversity for future generations.
SPEAKER_02:Right. I want to pick up on that because I think we sometimes look at services as being these silos, right? But we don't exist in one thing ever. We are existing always between things, right? So it's like this glue between different, you know, either it's healthcare, it's, you know, finances, either it's school, there's, and it's, that's the thing, the stuff that connects us. And Habiba, you said something really interesting when we were planning for this on that Zoom call about your commitment or reaffirming your commitment to the future. And I'm not sure you remember that, but I was like, write that down. Because the question for me is, what does it take? What does it take to actually commit to a future?
SPEAKER_06:I think committing to the future is centering children in all of our systems, in all of our society. We in the United States have a very adult-centered system. world and we there are other countries that send our children and people often quote the Maasai tribe who ask and how are the children because they know that how you're doing as a society is dependent on how the children are doing and I would say we do not do that at all and until we send our children in our all of our systems health systems human services mental health education Because even education is sometimes more adult-centered than child-centered. We are not going to see the future that I think we deserve and hope for for the next generation.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it reminds me of the quote, it's easier to build a strong child than repair a broken man. I'm not sure that's exactly it. But to that point, that really investing in children and showing up, like it takes a village to raise a child. But I think that in order to get there, we have to get rid of the individualistic thinking that like parents can do it alone. They can't. And that's where kids become collateral damage is that there's so much from someone who's not even a parent. I just see all of shame that gets put on parents and so much weight on parents. And again, I'm not even a parent and I'm recognizing this. And I just I think that's so wrong that, you know, parents should feel that they can trust if their child is in the street at the hours they shouldn't be, that someone is going to step in and show up and that there is like that community of care. And I'll just share a few years ago, I was living in Mexico and this this building I was living in, a woman who cleaned there, she brought her baby, her her three-month-old baby to work every day and the car seat would just move around this building and she would be you know on the first floor and the car seat would be on the second floor and I'm like in the U.S. there would have already been a CPS call but the beauty of it was everyone that worked in this building anytime the baby was crying and the mom was you know in a room they would go and respond and pick up the baby and so I started doing it and I started just holding the baby and rocking the baby back to sleep and it was so healing for me to be a part of caring for a child, even though I'm not a mother. And, you know, it created this shared responsibility in this space that that is the vision. That is the hope that we can leave a child in a car seat without fear that someone's going to come snatch them or do something to them, you know? Yeah, and to support the mother in that. How beautiful.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I would say part of it is also co-creating said vision and then organizing people to get in their lane. So part of what I spoke to earlier is how these sorts of justice related or child centric futures, they're going to take all of us. Right. And I think it's sometimes a cop out when people say, well, that's not really my thing. I wasn't at the table. And so I think part of it is setting the table. with a shared intention, shared outcomes, shared things that we're looking towards, and then organizing people to do what they do best to make that thing a reality. So I think that's part of how we get to this future.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you know, what comes up for me is like decommodifying humanity. You know, part of why we don't value children is they don't produce anything for this system of things. And so... they are not important. They don't produce anything. They are really consumers. and we devalue them for those reasons. And so in my mind, affirming the future being possible is about decommodifying all of our lives on this planet. We're not here to produce for a system. We're not here to add value by creating dollars and wealth that then gets hoarded away from the people who produce it. We're here to live in community and be in community. And so the future must be intergenerational. It must be healable. And it must be decommodified.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I also just love what you said about children not being safe, because I think that it's about creating safe spaces. And I always say that safe people save people. Because the thing is that when we create spaces that are safe for anyone, and that means safe for you to be your whole self, that means for you to be safe to heal, safe to feel an emotion, safe to, like you said, hold a baby because you are a safe person that can come up and step up to whatever, rise to the occasion. But what I think is that a safe space is a trauma-informed space. It is a trauma-sensitive space. So when we recognize the reality that we all experience trauma, whether it's big T, small t, we need to step away from comparative suffering and understand that we are united through a common thread of pain, whether it's from our ancestors that has been passed down, or it has been from the situation that we're living today, and to focus on as we unite, stay connected, and provide a safe space for each other, then those generations can heal over time.
SPEAKER_02:What I wanted to talk about was the fact that this decommodifying, because in our conversation with both Ruth Perry and Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, we were really talking about the fact that, wait a minute, people live here. We live here. But we've got this idea of systems and this dehumanizing kind of structures. And so the question is, we've just laid out a future that I say, yes, yes, yes, yes, absolutely. Any pieces of advice or actions that you would say could get us closer to the future that you imagine?
SPEAKER_01:I'm very passionate about this because... So when I was 19 years old, I boarded this public transportation car, or so I thought, and was kidnapped. And during this time, it was the most dehumanizing experience that I have lived. And this is coming from someone who at 15 already had a nine ACEs score. And when I was able to escape this situation, I found myself just feeling really ashamed, feeling really hopeless. And I had an experience that completely transformed me that I vowed to share with everyone, which is I was walking to our gas station and I saw this beautiful woman walk toward me. And growing up in a slum, there was classism and racism and colorism and all kinds of isms that separated us. So when I saw her, I felt that she was going to come and shame me or maybe humiliate me because she looked so fancy. She was so beautiful. She was dressed like, if you've seen the cover of Breakfast at Tiffany's, that's what she looked like. But when she approached me, she had some kind of gentleman's coat and she wrapped it around me and she just held me with the most motherly, nurturing, hug that I had ever felt and that was you know Carrie was talking about how you're not a mother but you mothered somebody and this was the first time I was actually mothered and I felt the mistrust and the separation disappear and she just felt like a safe space where I felt connected and enveloped in love and And I feel that what she gave me that day is something that has kept me here. Because after that, I experienced all of this invalidation. And this is my point of what we can do every day. She provided three things that I say we can all provide this on a daily basis to everyone. One was silence. She didn't ask. She didn't say. She didn't assure me. She didn't give me advice. She didn't give me affirmation. She just simply stayed silent so that I could process what was going through so I could feel her love and care. Then she provided safety. I finally let myself cry. And I just felt so safe to just feel what I was feeling without having to be strong, which is something that I had to be on a daily basis for. or everyone around me had to wear this mask of strength that I really didn't feel was real. And then the third thing was that she gave me space. safety, silence, and space. And I call this the ministry of presence. And we can do that for everyone around us. And as I went through the medical system, because then the paramedics and the police showed up, and I went through the judicial system, what happens is that I was invalidated. And people kept just saying things like, it's going to be okay. Everything happens for a reason. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And that motivation was killing me. me because I felt so alone and disconnected from everyone. But her validating touch was just something that helped me through all of that process and that I think every one of us can provide to someone who's in pain. So what I always say when someone's in deep pain, don't be positive, be present.
SPEAKER_00:I think this is spot on. And there is, I think it's Shia LaBeouf talks about this, that when he was struggling with addiction, that somebody gave him the ministry of presence and that made all the difference. And I think that in our planet or universe that we currently live in, we get so tied up with labels. And so there are people who are do-gooders who come on podcasts and introduce themselves as advocates. And then I meet people And they say, well, I don't know what my purpose is in life. You know, I want to find something like you're doing, like you're making a difference for kids. And I'm like, yeah, but so can you. You know, you don't have to be a mother to nurture. So can you. And you don't have to wear a label as advocate or philanthropist or teacher to make a difference in a child's life, to make a difference in your community, to make a difference for the world. And so I would say is if we want to actualize that future, stop focusing on the labels. The label is human. The label is we. are living, we have a shared commitment to one another if we want to have an enjoyable life together. And I think that for the people who are searching for purpose, let your purpose be presence. Let your purpose be I'm rooting for my friends. I'm showing up for my neighbors. I know my barista's name because I am choosing to be in relationship. And to Bruce Perry's point, to Nadine Burke Harris's point, to all of these leading experts, they're drilling it down to the simplicity of relationship. And that's what we keep forgetting, that it is a simplicity of being in relationship. So focus on that if you want to make a difference in the world.
SPEAKER_06:There's a South African term. I had the privilege of living in South Africa for a couple of years, and there's a term, Ubuntu, which is I am who I am because of who we all are, that my humanity is tied up in yours. And I think this idea is something that we all need to hold to both of your points. And when you said the future is intergenerational, I think across this generation, since living with the spirit of Ubuntu across generations and seeing one another as fully human and recognizing that my future is tied up in
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. What I will add is we need to get in right relationship. We need to get in right relationship with one another as human beings on this planet. And we need to get in right relationship with the planet, right? And the life that exists beyond human life on the planet. I have a dear friend and colleague who emphasizes that we need to decenter human beings. and our priorities and needs and figure out how we reconnect to the planet in a way that honors the reciprocity that's necessary for all of us to survive. In order to get a right relationship, you have to acknowledge harm and engage in repair. And I really struggle to see how we really advance well-being for all without addressing those original sins, commodification of literal human beings through chattel slavery and the iteration on that theme of chattel slavery for centuries and now several generations. And we have to get into right relationship and repair with the indigenous communities that were stewards of the land we stand on and that others stand on around the world who understood what right relationship would look like, but have been displaced from that soil and displaced from the cultural traditions that honored and acknowledged and celebrated the interrelationship and interdependence of human beings with life on the planet. So I think that we absolutely need to be in relationship, but I can't be in relationship without an acknowledgement of harm that's occurred to me as an individual at the interpersonal level, without an acknowledgement of harm that happens at the familial or the communal level, and then the collective level, and then the We got to figure this out. We don't know because we haven't tried it. We don't know what repair might look like. So let's get into the dream space. Let's get into our imaginative space and discern. What does it look like to heal the kind of harm that's been occurring for generations on this planet?
SPEAKER_02:We've talked about a lot of things here. We've had a lot of discussions. How do we wrap this up? Where do we end this amazing conference? What should we do with all this?
SPEAKER_03:I think we enter into the space of gratitude. What PCA America creates by bringing folks into community like this is the power of healing and relationship and the work that's happening in prevention. For folks who are out there oftentimes feeling like they're on an island, they're isolated, they're lost, There isn't community to support them. There isn't a community of learning. So I just want to share my deep appreciation for this organization and its leadership, my fellow board members who take a risk to create the space, invest deeply to create the space. And being here with everyone just demonstrates so fully how important it is that we gather together. that we connect with one another, particularly when we're feeling lonely or isolated in the work of supporting other living beings. I have
SPEAKER_06:gratitude for all of you. It's a blessing to meet all of you, to be in space. Yeah, gratitude for this panel and this space and being able to be part of it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I want to echo that because the energy that I have felt here in this space place with everyone as we danced, as we talked, as we ate together, as we learned from each other and in our panel that was beautifully moderated. And thank you also for providing this platform for us to amplify our voices. And I feel that that's our most powerful tool is not only to raise our voices for prevention, but also raise our voices to share our stories of hope that there is a before and after and while I don't believe in the word overcome as a whole I feel that we're overcoming together and that this is what what it means to have a space where we can feel the power fuel the power of overcoming together and just to see the beautiful people who are making change, those are the news that we need to spread, that we are not alone, that there are beautiful people educating themselves, getting more tools, feeling stronger each day so that they can do life-changing work. And we know that that change is possible because we feel it. It's palpable. I feel it right now. So thank you.
SPEAKER_00:I want to go back to a comment because your comments made me think that when I said simplicity of relationships, I certainly don't want to pass over that the relationships also are complicated and that our shared humanity is complicated because there has been a lot of hurt. But I do believe in healing and I do believe that there is hope that we can repair relationships and that we can be better for it. And so I'm grateful. that Prevent Child Abuse America has brought us all together this week to build relationships with people who have that shared heart, who have that shared vision, who also can see each other in a way that the people who show up to this conference, we are not afraid of darkness. We're running headfirst into it. And we're not afraid to sit in that space where a lot of people are uncomfortable there. And so the space to be in relationship with like-minded people professionals and advocates and and cares it is healing and so I want to just thank the organization for creating that space and also thank the organization for such an emphasis on lived experience for recognizing that we are not just professionals we are not just experts of data and of research and of what are the best practices we are the experts of our experience of our human experience and that is just as critically important to understand Thank
SPEAKER_02:you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for being part of this panel. Thank you for making it all the way to Portland for the 2025 PCA America National Conference. It is an absolute pleasure to have you here.
SPEAKER_04:Thank you.
SPEAKER_02:And you can invite Upstream Solutions into your feed by subscribing to The Shift Voices of Prevention today. Join us to create an ecosystem where children and families live purposeful and happy lives with hope for the future.