Lessons from Within Our Reach: Insight from Cross-Sector Conversation on Child and Family Well-Being

In November 2025, Social Current convened cross-sector leaders for Lessons from Within Our Reach: A Cross-Sector Conversation on Child and Family Well-Being. This multiday virtual event explored what we know about preventing child fatalities from maltreatment and what it will take to build a 21st-century system that truly centers families.

The Within Our Reach report made a clear case for upstream prevention and meaningful investments in family support. One of its most enduring messages is that a true investment in familial support is the most effective way to prevent serious child injury and fatalities.

Throughout the virtual convening, Social Current’s Romero Davis reinforced that prevention requires a whole-community approach. Fatality reviews consistently identify breakdowns in coordination across systems, including law enforcement, health care, education, and community-based organizations. Cultural differences, communication gaps, and interpersonal dynamics can weaken collaboration, even when shared goals exist.

The event kicked off with an introductory Q&A with Social Current President and CEO Jody Levison-Johnson, participants discussed how purposeful partnership, shared values, and stronger coordination across systems can address barriers and create more responsive, sustainable supports for families.

Learn more about the sessions and access the individual recordings below. The convening slide deck also is available for download.

Centering Protective Factors and Family Strength

Within Our Reach underscores the importance of strengthening protective factors that reduce the likelihood of abuse and neglect. Rather than focusing solely on risk, the framework calls on communities to build the conditions that help families thrive. Protective factors include:

• Strong social connections
• Access to concrete supports
• Knowledge of parenting and child development, and
• Social and emotional competence in both parents and children.

The shift from crisis response to family strengthening requires intentional policy change and strategic communications. The Building Better Childhoods toolkit, developed by Social Current and Prevent Child Abuse America, uses the “overloaded” metaphor to reframe how we talk about family stress: Just as a vehicle can carry only so much weight before it breaks down, families facing compounding challenges can become overwhelmed.

For this session, presenters Kara Georgi of the Children’s Trust Fund Alliance and consultant Regina Dyton were joined by parents with lived experience. They explored how prevention means lightening the load through accessible child care, economic supports, mental health services, and community-based programs that promote stability, health, and security.

Watch the session recording.

The Power of Narrative in Policy Change

A central theme across sessions was the value of community voice. Social Current’s Senior Director of Government Affairs Blair Abelle-Kiser shared that while data is essential for effective policy, it leaves critical gaps when used alone. Stories are necessary to fill that gap. They build connection, humanize challenges that are created by complex systems, and help decision makers understand how policies affect real families.

Participants explored how to translate lived experience into action using a clear framework:

Value + Problem + Solution + Call to Action

By leading with shared values such as safety, health, and security, advocates can ground policy conversations in common purpose. In her presentation, Blair encourages advocates to keep their stories focused, make specific asks, use strengths-based language, and remain bold and values driven.

Watch the session recording and access the slide deck.

Supporting the Workforce That Supports Families

Workforce strain was another key topic. For this session, Social Current’s Karen Johnson and Kelly Martin were joined by Michael Cull of the Center for Innovation in Population Health and associate professor at the University of Kentucky. Across child- and family-serving fields, including child welfare, education, health care, and community development, professionals are experiencing high levels of burnout and organizations are struggling with retention and recruitment. When workforce well-being suffers, prevention efforts are harder to sustain.

This conversation elevates the importance of promoting self-care and organizational wellness. Sustaining a prevention-oriented child and family well-being system requires investing in the people who carry out this work every day.

Watch the session recording.

Expanding the Circle: Fatherhood and Family Engagement

In his session, Churmell Michell, founder of A Father’s Voice Matters, emphasized fatherhood engagement as a critical prevention strategy. Supportive policies, inclusive programming, and father-friendly practices can strengthen outcomes for children and improve family stability.

Michell discussed how policymakers, child welfare leaders, community-based organizations, and educational institutions can all play a role in advancing father engagement through training, collaboration, and legislative action.

Watch the session recording.

Continuing the Conversation

The final session included collaborative conversations between cross-sector professionals, such as Scott Allen of Cordata Healthcare Innovations and Dr. Rachael J. Keefe of the Baylor College of Medicine.

As collaborative conversations such as these take place, Social Current’s Within Our Reach policy education and communications toolkit evolves as we learn alongside communities and partners. The toolkit offers practical, research-informed resources, including messaging guidance, policy context, and customizable tools, to help organizations effectively communicate and advocate for child and family well-being.

Together, through collaboration, storytelling, and coordinated advocacy, we can build a proactive, equitable child and family well-being system rooted in shared responsibility.

Additional Resources

Download our free reflection and coloring book, which was shared with convening participants. It offers space to pause, process, and reflect on the themes of prevention, protective factors, and shared responsibility.

Social Current also developed these one-pagers related to the convening:

• Self-Care and Well-Being for Families
• Promoting Help-Seeking Behaviors Among Families
• Cross-Sector Support for Families

Preventing child fatalities is within our reach. Learn more about Social Current’s expertise in Child, Family, and Community Well-Being.