2023 Annual Convening

8:00 AM - 9:00 AM ET
Name Tag Pickup and Breakfast

All attendees are required to sign in at the front desk when entering the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s building. The front desk staff will have your name and you can pick up your name tag from Partnership staff on the second floor. Want to connect to wi-fi when you arrive? The network is “AECF – Guest” and the password is jimcasey.

9:00 AM - 9:30 AM ET
Welcome

• Elissa Hyne – Partnership for America’s Children

• Marquita Little NuMan – Partnership for America’s Children

• Todd Lloyd – Annie E. Casey Foundation

9:30 AM - 11:00 AM ET
Investing in Families / A Holistic Approach to Prevention

This discussion will focus on prevention strategies for meeting the needs of children and families before they become involved with the child welfare system. We will focus on family resource centers, and how these flexible and family-focused hubs of support and resources provide programs and targeted services to meet families’ needs and prevent child welfare involvement. We will then turn our focus to the role of economic and concrete supports, highlighting the mounting evidence that macro-economic and public benefit policies designed to support families by meeting their basic needs, reducing material hardship, and buffering against income shocks, can prevent both child abuse and neglect. 

• Sarah Jankowski – New Jersey Department of Children and Families

• Gretchen Cusick – Chapin Hall

• Susan Elsen – Massachusetts Law Reform Institute

• Danielle Mitchell – Acenda Integrated Health

• Christina Armstrong – Greenway Family Success Center

11:00 AM - 11:15 AM ET
Break

11:15 AM - 12:45 PM ET
Partnering with Lived Experience / Policy & Practice Change

In this session, members will be provided tools and considerations to utilize in making a plan for Lived Experience Leader (LEx) engagement in their policy and practice agendas. SPARC members will receive direct insight from FosterClub, Lived Experience Leaders, Florida’s Children First and Florida Youth SHINE on how to best engage LEx in creating, achieving and implementing their state level policy and practice agendas.

• Angel Petite – FosterClub

• Binley Taylor – FosterClub

• Bianca Bennett-Scott – National Foster Care Youth & Alumni Policy Council and FosterClub Lived Experience Leader

• Tina Harris – National Foster Care Youth & Alumni Policy Council and FosterClub Lived Experience Leader

• Melvin Roy – FosterClub Lived Experience Leader

• Geori Berman – Florida’s Children First

• Rebekka Behr – Florida Youth SHINE

12:45 PM - 1:45 PM ET
Lunch

1:45 PM - 3:15 PM ET
Rethinking Mandated Reporting / Prioritizing Family Resources and Community Support

This session will explore alternative approaches to mandated reporting, shifting the narrative from a reactive model to one focused on empowerment, equity, and community through mandated supporting. In this engaging discussion, we'll dissect the impact of mandated reporting and subsequent CPS investigations and the documented immediate and lasting harm inflicted on both children and families. Finally, we will consider an alternative approach that provides families with resources and community support through equitable, harm reductionist, and anti-racist practices, while divesting from systems of surveillance and punishment.

View/download the Decision Tree that goes with the new NY Mandated Reporter training
View/download The Child and Family Wellbeing Fund One-Pager

• Crystal Charles – Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy

• Jasmine Wali – policy, advocacy, and research consultant focusing on child welfare, gender-based violence, and economic justice

• Leanne Heaton – Chapin Hall 

3:15 PM - 3:30 PM ET
Break

3:30 PM - 4:30 PM ET
REI Workgroup Session  

This interactive session will focus on the Model Neglect Statute Project of the Race, Equity, and Inclusion Workgroup. Through small group discussion and digital engagement, participants will have an opportunity to review and shape the draft model policy. Beyond identifying the strengths and deficits of the draft policy, we will discuss the feasibility of adopting a model policy in specific jurisdictions and probe what conditions need to be created to make a model policy both politically feasible and impactful for children and families.

• Molly Dunn – Children’s Action Alliance

• Kelsey Bala – Rhode Island KIDS COUNT

4:30 PM - 4:40 PM ET
Day One Wrap Up

• Rachael Miller – Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children (SPARC Leadership Council) 

4:40 PM - 6:00 PM ET
Break

6:00 PM - 6:15 PM ET
Gather for Transport to Dinner

Meet in the Indigo Hotel Lobby at 6:00 pm where we will gather and take transportation to La Tavola.

6:30 PM ET
Dinner at La Tavola Ristorante Italiano / 248 Albemarle Street, Baltimore, MD 21202

This is a time to connect, celebrate, laugh, and have fun together! Shuttles back to the hotel will run 8:00 – 9:00 PM.