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.
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The Shift: Voices of Prevention — A podcast by Prevent Child Abuse America
Ep. 8: Kathleen Strader | PCA America 2023 National Conference Podcast
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Welcome to the official broadcast of PCAA America's National Conference. I'm Nathan Fink, and I'll be your host for the next four days as we embark on this transformative journey and hear from experts in prevention, and together discover innovative family-focused policies, cutting-edge research programs, and practices that help drive the field toward upstream thinking so every child has the opportunity to grow up safe and nurtured. As Prevent Child Abuse America's first in-person meeting of state chapters and home visiting networks, policy and community partners, and other collaborators since 2019, the 2023 conference offers nearly 90 sessions, three keynote speakers, workshops, symposia, and presentations focusing on effective prevention strategies with nationally recognized experts and leaders. So tune in to hear from professionals, advocates, and innovators in child abuse and neglect prevention because each day is an opportunity to build foundations for our future. Hello and welcome to the PCA America National Conference Podcast. I'm thrilled to be here with Healthy Families American National Director, Kathleen Strader. Kathleen, welcome to the show. Thank you. So I'm excited to have you on. I'm so proud of the work that you guys do at Healthy Families America and its mission to ensure that all children receive nurturing care from their families and that the many positives that follow do in fact follow a healthy, long, and successful life. Now, when I say that, that's kind of the why of what you do. But let's talk a little bit about the hows.
SPEAKER_01:So it's a really good question. And I think that uh we really are all about the how, right? Because uh it's it's great to have vision and we all need that, but we also need like the practical application of what does it take? What are the steps? What do we all need to do and how do we come together collectively to achieve that? Because it it the the old proverb, it takes a village, it's the same thing with HFA, it takes all of us. Um, just by way of a little bit of background, you know, HFA is a network that has great momentum around this country because we have nearly 600 Healthy Families America sites around the country. We have a collective workforce of over 5,000 individuals who are doing this work every day with families, um, in total supporting nearly 70,000 families every year. And in order to achieve the outcomes that we all envision for families, it has to be in the way that we partner directly with families. This is not a doing to families, this is a coming alongside families, helping families to achieve their goals, their dreams, listening uh genuinely to what's working and not working so well, focusing on strengths, accentuating the positives, all of those are like the hows that get us to ultimately the outcomes that we are looking at in terms of stronger relational health, meaning both the connections between uh parents and their children, uh as well as for the whole family, the way those relationships are that are the cornerstone of healthy childhood growth and development and lifelong and generational well-being.
SPEAKER_00:Generational, yep. Now tell me a little bit about some of the conversations that are happening at the HFA conference.
SPEAKER_01:This has been and it always is. When we come, uh, and it's been a while, I think everybody knows it was 2019, the last time we were together in person, and there's just so much energy and vibrancy around that, both in the the opportunities for learning together, but really it's in the connections because we talk a lot in HFA about the parallel process, about what happens at all levels in in the connections that we make, whether it's from the national office and our local implementing sites that we're supporting, or at our local implementing sites, the way in which supervisors work with their staff, the way that uh home visiting staff are working with families, it all parallels each other. And so what's happening at this conference has just demonstrated that in such an enormous way. Uh, people really like reconnecting after so long and forming new relationships. Just the other day I had an opportunity with a large group of folks to ask how many people are here and have been in their role for less than a year. The number who raised their hands and stood up so that we could all acknowledge and welcome them was enormous. And so I think building those new relationships, cultivating the opportunities to just not only come together in this way, but also what it ultimately does in terms of going back home and strengthening the work and the commitment that we have to be engaged with families.
SPEAKER_00:So now let's talk about looking over the horizon line of this program, this work. When we do that, what do we see?
SPEAKER_01:Well, the horizon, I I'm a big optimist. I think what's on the horizon is really something that um takes us to a next level of supporting families, not in just how we continue to advance, the way in which at both the staff level and our direct work with families, but also at the community level that we're promoting equity, that we're addressing barriers that exist in the community for families. We're empowering families to be the voice in their communities, and again, partnering with them in that endeavor. The other piece is the way in which we uh engage families in being advocates around how home visiting can become more available to families. We have, we've developed some just recently, some great parent leadership, parent ambassador work in that way. And families more than anything want to be a part of giving back uh once they have been connected to to HFA. Whether that means that they are becoming involved themselves as family support specialists, we have so many around the country. It's it's awe-inspiring that uh families uh who have been involved with HFA later become HFA home visitors uh and leaders in their communities. And that's the horizon that I see that just is reshaping the way that communities are caring for the families that are are in the communities. And of course, we know we've got some increased funding opportunities that are coming forward, both from McVe as it was reauthorized, also from uh Family First, increased state resources directed toward evidence-based home visiting. We want to optimize all of those for the purpose of ensuring that we can uh partner with more families.
SPEAKER_00:I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing, and I'm so grateful for the energy that you're bringing to this work because it's very clear that when we get together like this, we do leave energized.
SPEAKER_01:Great. Thank you so much. It was wonderful to be here.
SPEAKER_00:And stay tuned for more interviews from PCA America's National Conference Podcast.