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Whole Communities, Whole Families: How Cross-Sector Collaboration Moves Results

October 20, 2025

BY: Renada Johnson and Regan McManus

This month, teams from the Family Stabilization Initiative (FSI) and the Rural Aging Action Network (RAAN) came together in Billings, Montana, to strengthen how we support whole families and whole communities. Leaders from across sectors aligned around one result: giving children the opportunity to grow up in safe, stable, permanent families, and ensuring older adults and caregivers have what they need to thrive. With representation from 10 communities across six states, the gathering was designed for practical learning and concrete action.

We are in the work of transformation, not transaction. Our focus is on creating lasting change, not just checking boxes or exchanging resources. Collaboration begins with relationships and grows through belonging and shared accountability.

When organizations coordinate around shared outcomes, communities feel the difference: children become safer and more connected; parents and caregivers gain stability and hope; older adults access coordinated, dignified support; and community trust in local organizations grows. That understanding is why we brought partners together in Billings — to strengthen relationships, align around shared results, and lay the groundwork for actions that can move us toward those outcomes.

What We Did Together

On Day 1 we used data, community voice, and a shared results framework to move from coordination to collaboration.

To surface the stories behind the numbers, we began with a Data Walk. The goal was simple: see patterns, spot gaps, and lift up bright spots we could build on. We asked, “What had changed — and what could change — for families, older adults, and caregivers? What root causes were we seeing across age ranges?”

From there, paired FSI and RAAN teams compared their Results-in-the-Center charts to find overlap and leverage, moving from intention to action. Using plain-language concepts adapted from the Collaboration Multiplier, teams surfaced shared root causes and practical opportunities to act together. Throughout, we listened for how lived experience and community voice were engaged in design and decision making.

We closed with Team Time and action commitments. Each team documented a near-term roadmap detailing goals for the next 6 to 12 months, owners and partners, timelines, and the feedback loops they would use for course correction.

Day 2 offered an opportunity for FSI and RAAN to focus on their respective models and priorities. The RAAN collaborative spent the day diving deep into their data — exploring what the numbers reveal about their communities, identifying trends, successes, and areas for growth to strengthen their work in serving rural older adults and family caregivers. Each RAAN also took part in a storytelling session, sharing personal stories that highlighted the impact of their efforts to support older adults and mobilize their communities. The day concluded with meaningful discussions on managing compassion fatigue and a leadership development session that underscored the unique gifts each leader brings and the power of collaboration in advancing this important work.

In parallel, FSI focused on systems change and the practice shifts needed to improve family outcomes. We highlighted the Community Building and Mobilization Framework we developed with Chapin Hall, a shared language for how communities lead and how organizations resource what already works. In Montana, partners brought the framework to life by sharing their story and organizing a Fall Family Festival that met families in trusted spaces, elevated lived experience, and activated cross-sector support on the ground. Teams also examined their current efforts, traced their “story of change,” and identified the next tests of change to carry forward.

The Leadership Stance We Modeled

We knew that support that lasts requires more than a new initiative; it requires adaptive work. We let go of “how we have always done it,” challenged assumptions, tried new approaches, and learned in the open. We built shared accountability across organizations and sectors and centered lived expertise and community voice as non-negotiables. We did not script perfection at the front of the room; we modeled authentic learning so teams could mirror that same openness at their tables.

A Note of Thanks

We could not have created this container for change without our partners, who helped us dig deeper. Their support stretched our learning and leadership and demonstrated what is possible when local vision is resourced and respected. We are grateful for partners investing in the long game — community trust, equitable outcomes, and stronger families. And last but certainly not least, a special thank you to our host organization, St. John’s United, for their generous hospitality, beautiful meeting spaces, and thoughtful support throughout our time together. Their team’s care and attention to detail helped create an environment that encouraged collaboration, reflection, and connection.

Together, we showed that when organizations lean into community partnerships and elevate family voices, families thrive and systems shift.

Renada Johnson is Senior Director of Children, Youth & Family Initiatives at Lutheran Services in America. Regan McManus is Director of Aging Initiatives at Lutheran Services in America.

Community Building That Sticks: A Framework for Stronger Families and Thriving Communities

October 17, 2025

BY: Renada Johnson

Every day, families work hard to care for their children and build stable lives, often while navigating gaps in systems that weren’t designed with them at the center. If we want children to grow up in safe, stable, permanent family homes, we have to build communities where help is early, relationships are strong, and partners act together.

Our network of 300 health and human services organizations reaches one in 50 people in America each year. That reach gives us a unique ability to see both the barriers that threaten family stability and the strength, leadership, and innovation within communities themselves.

The Conditions Families Face

When affordable child care, mental health supports, or reliable access to food are out of reach, even the most determined efforts can become overwhelmed. These challenges reflect systems that too often step in after a crisis has unfolded, rather than investing in the conditions that help families thrive from the start. When support arrives late, crises can snowball—placing children at greater risk of long-term hardship and forcing families to carry burdens that should be shared by communities and systems. Research and experience show that when families have access to employment opportunities and strong supports within their communities, they are far more likely to be stable.

Laying the Foundation for Change  

This understanding laid the foundation for the launch of our Family Stabilization Initiative (FSI) four years ago—a multi-pronged effort to build systems that put family well-being first. Through this initiative, we’ve partnered with six communities in four states to strengthen evidence-based wraparound programs that help families overcome crises and prevent unnecessary involvement in the child welfare system. To deepen and expand this work, we partnered with Chapin Hall to develop a practical new framework for the field: “Community Building and Mobilization for All Families: A Pathway to Family Stability.”

This new framework provides clear guidance for operationalizing key principles that address the root causes of instability and build on the inherent strengths of families and communities. It’s grounded in lived expertise, shaped by on-the-ground partnerships, and designed for practitioners and organizations committed to authentically engaging communities in partnership with families.

Guiding Principles

At our recent webinar, practitioners and nonprofit leaders explored five guiding principles that form the framework’s Theory of Change:

  • People-driven Collaboration: Centering community members’ voices to co-create solutions that reflect local priorities and build resilient, long-term relationships.
  • Asset-based Partnerships: Building on existing community strengths and networks, both traditional and nontraditional, to foster trust and sustainable change.
  • Capacity Building: Investing in people and systems to create equitable, adaptable, and enduring community support structures.
  • Shared Leadership: Promoting collective action, fair power-sharing, and lasting partnerships that enable communities to respond effectively and sustainably.
  • Collaborative Evaluation: Co-developing goals, using both data and lived experience to measure progress, and creating feedback loops that ensure strategies evolve with community needs.

These principles are already in practice through FSI sites, including AK Child & Family in Alaska, Lutheran Community Services Northwest in Washington state, Lutheran Social Services of South Dakota, and St. John’s United in Montana. Each organization has demonstrated how community-driven strategies can lead to better, measurable outcomes for children and families.

Why This Framework Matters

The framework is a set of simple practices that help communities lead and help organizations resource what already works. It doesn’t replace services — it creates the conditions that make them accessible, trusted, and effective.

It’s a way of working that weaves relationships, local leadership, and data into every decision. Transactional responses meet immediate needs, but transformational relationships create the conditions for lasting change. Community building helps us move from delivering services to co-creating solutions, calling us to practice humility and share power.

Community building is prevention with people at the center.

Join Us

The well-being of children and families is a shared responsibility that belongs to everyone: families, schools, service agencies, government, business, and the faith community alike. As we continue to advance this work through the FSI framework, we invite you to join us.

We encourage Lutheran Services in America members to explore how these five principles can strengthen your own community partnerships. We also welcome the chance to create new partnerships with outside organizations willing to help us scale this framework to more communities nationwide to advance family stability.

The strength of this framework lies in what happens next — in how each of us chooses to lead, connect, and act. Community building isn’t extra work; it’s the work that makes lasting change possible.

Renada Johnson is Senior Director of Children, Youth & Family Initiatives at Lutheran Services in America.

Strengthening Families to Improve Health Outcomes

November 14, 2024

BY: Alesia Frerichs

Lutheran Services in America (LSA), in initial collaboration with UnitedHealthcare (UHC), is embarking on a multi-year initiative to reshape and foster alignment between health and social care systems through the “Strengthening Families Initiative.” We aim to improve outcomes for children, youth and families enrolled in Medicaid, with an initial focus on behavioral health conditions. Specifically, building upon LSA’s Results Innovation Lab and Family Stabilization Initiative, we seek to better leverage the capacity and leadership of the LSA member network, in alignment with key health and multi-sector stakeholders, to improve health outcomes.

Lutheran  Services in  America is one of the nation’s largest networks of health and human service providers with a mission to cultivate caring communities that advance health and opportunity for all. Together, we are 300 nonprofit organizations across 1,400 U.S. communities with more than $26 billion in combined annual services.

Lutheran social service organizations have been working by, in, with and for their communities for decades — and in some instances, for more than a century. This new initiative incorporates national and local efforts with the engagement of Lutheran Services in America member organizations, including Gemma Services in Philadelphia and enCircle in Roanoke, Virginia.

As faith-based, trusted and community-centered leaders our aim is to continue to develop and foster innovative national and local partnerships, including with Medicaid Managed Care Organizations (MCOs), to improve individual and community outcomes. We are pleased to announce our collaboration with UnitedHealthcare through a $1.5 million award as we seek to expand engagement with other MCOs along with philanthropic partners.

UnitedHealthcare (UHC) is a health care and well-being company with a mission to help people live healthier lives and make the health system work better for everyone. In the United States, UnitedHealthcare offers the full spectrum of health benefit programs for individuals, employers, and Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, and contracts directly with more than 1.7 million physicians and care professionals, and 7,000 hospitals and other care facilities nationwide.

As part of this effort, we will:

  • Disseminate case studies and a series of briefs, based on LSA member organization efforts to innovate approaches that address behavioral health challenges and unmet health-related social needs, along with a literature review and environmental scan of on-going national, state and local efforts, to improve understanding and inform action that build upon successes and lessons learned in aligning health and social care.
  • Convene national and local leaders from health/behavioral health systems and providers, social service organizations, payers, community-based nonprofits, policymakers, people with lived expertise, along with community and other key stakeholders to foster coalition building and partnership towards aligned action; and
  • Disseminate a ‘blueprint’ to identify and define the policy, practice and system changes necessary to catalyze and foster coordination, connection and alignment that improve health so all families can thrive.

Goals of the Initiative

Through this initiative, our shared aim is to align data-informed, community-centered approaches that have sustainable reimbursement and financing mechanisms to better address social determinants of health (SDOH) and that improve outcomes for children and families. Specifically, our work is guided through the following areas of focus:

  • Spurring a shift from segmented services provided to individual family members to a family-centered orientation, that considers measures and metrics related to family-based and community outcomes.
  • Improving cross-system collaboration to ensure alignment to better address social drivers of family stability and well-being by meeting holistic health and mental health-related social needs, including:
    • Access to food, housing, employment, childcare, among other services.
    • Support to address substance use disorder and mental health challenges within families (across all life stages), including parents, caregivers and children.
  • Building capacity and enhancing the capability of providers, community-based organizations (CBOs), and payers to ensure resources, including adequate reimbursement, and coordination are in place to better address the holistic needs of families.
  • Applying a lens that considers family structure and traditions.

Guiding Principles

The following principles and objectives will guide the overall effort:

  • Articulate a clear value proposition to deepen and expand coordination and alignment of care with appropriate and equitable services and payment to better address the holistic needs families, especially those historically marginalized.
  • Identify practice, policy and systems changes needed to catalyze more efficient and effective approaches to improve outcomes for families.
  • Identify effective ways to engage community and family voice so efforts reflect and address the highest priority needs of historically and persistently marginalized people and places.
  • Explore the workforce, data and technology considerations necessary to support and better align the delivery of quality care and services.
  • Identify the critical success factors for high-performing partnerships and collaboration to advance policy and systems change, especially the ways in which CBOs and Medicaid Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) coordinate and align for improved outcomes.
  • Build support for federal, state and local policy changes necessary to broadly advance the conditions for families to have their needs met in a sustainable way.

Alesia Frerichs is President & CEO of Lutheran Services in America.

Building Community Through Our Family Stabilization Initiative: Reflections from a Site Visit to St. John’s United in Montana

November 20, 2024

BY: Renada Johnson and Liz Vetter

Through our Family Stabilization Initiative, we’ve committed ourselves to supporting families in crisis. Recently, Lutheran Services in America staff visited St. John’s United in Montana. The trip provided an important opportunity to reaffirm the importance of building community to support families. St. John’s United is leading significant community-building efforts that will strengthen resilience and resonate for years to come.

During our visit, St. John’s hosted a Family Night event that brought together over 60 families, a testament to the power of community. Families currently enrolled in St. John’s United’s high-fidelity wraparound program, as well as families who had successfully graduated from the program, came together for an evening of connection, games, and fun. It was heartwarming to see children laughing together, parents sharing their experiences, and families building bonds and memories that go far beyond the scope of any single program.

Many of the young people have formed friendships across families, learning the invaluable lesson of building community amongst themselves. These relationships help strengthen their sense of belonging and support, something that is vital for any child, especially those who have faced challenging circumstances.

Strategic Partnerships and Community Engagement
St. John’s United expands their work through key community partners, including one who recently opened a Family Resource Center through the local school system. The center is a direct result of their collaboration with St. John’s United. The partnership exemplifies the broader goal of our Family Stabilization Initiative—by connecting families with the right resources, we can create a network of support that extends far beyond any single organization.

A seminal moment of the visit was an event in honor of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People. It was a powerful reminder of the importance of supporting and standing with Indigenous communities. Through a moving drum presentation and the reading of the names of missing or murdered individuals, we took time to acknowledge the deep impact of these losses on the community. It was a humbling experience, reinforcing the need for accountability and the continued advocacy for equity and justice. St. John’s United exemplifies that broader commitment of our network as we extend our reach and support to improve health and opportunity for all.

Moving Forward Together

As we look ahead, it’s clear that the Family Stabilization Initiative is about much more than just addressing immediate crises. It’s about creating long-term, sustainable systems of care that empower families to stay together and avoid involvement in child welfare systems. It’s about fostering equitable outcomes for all, particularly for communities that have been historically marginalized.

The friendships formed among young people, the continuing collaboration with community partners, and the shared commitment to equity are essential as we come together to create change.

Together, as partners, advocates, and allies, we have the power to strengthen communities that uplift and support families in meaningful ways and ensure equity and justice to cultivate caring communities that advance health and opportunity for all.

Renada Johnson is Senior Director of Children, Youth and Family Initiatives. Liz Vetter is a Senior Program Associate.

Transforming Child Welfare: Reflections from the Results Network Convening in Chicago

May 17, 2024

BY: Renada Johnson

Members of our Results Network cohort gathered in Chicago this week to continue our ongoing journey to find innovative solutions for families that keep them together and change our nation’s child welfare system for the better.

Our United Commitment

With 41 participants from our member organizations as well as additional stakeholders and partners, the two-day session was a testament to our collective commitment to drive change. Guided by the Person Role System approach from the Results Count framework, we are not just dreaming of change, we are actively shaping it. By zooming in on our roles as change agents, we are reshaping systems and moving towards a future where every child has the opportunity to thrive.

During the morning session, we focused on somatic practices to foster resilience. Through activities such as centering and grounding, the introduction to somatic toys, and breathwork, we embraced the journey of personal care, healing, and recognizing the importance of nurturing our own well-being as we advocate for others.

Strategizing for the Future

One of the highlights of the convening was our data walk, where we reviewed the work of each organization, shared insights, and engaged in table conversations. This reflective exercise allowed us to celebrate past achievements and identify areas for growth, all while centering equity and justice in our discussions.

In our final session, we came together to understand and help develop a framing guide that is aimed at simplifying the complexities of our work into plain language. This guide will serve as a powerful tool, enabling us to communicate effectively and inspire others to join our efforts to advance equity in the child welfare space.

Cultivating Genuine Connections

Throughout the convening, we prioritized the cultivation of genuine connections. We know that only together do we as advocates, allies, and change agents have the power to create caring communities that advance health and opportunity for children, youth, and families across the country. We invite you to join us as we continue to be innovative in our pursuit of equity and justice in child welfare.

Renada Johnson is the Senior Director of Children, Youth and Family Initiatives at Lutheran Services in America.

Results Network: A Journey to Transform Communities by Cultivating Caring Communities

September 28, 2023

BY: Renada Johnson

Our Results Network cohort, a part of our Results Innovation Lab, is a dynamic nine-month learning collaborative that brings together leaders from across the Lutheran Services in America network to explore and innovate new strategies and approaches that will reshape how we engage children and families, with a specific focus on racial justice.

Thanks to a new partnership between Lutheran Services in America and the ELCA, grassroots faith-based ELCA church-led organizations and congregations have joined our 2023–2024 cohort to help us answer the question: “What will it take to stabilize families in their communities, ensuring families remain intact, and children do not enter out-of-home care?”

The Results Network is designed to accelerate innovative approaches, revamp how we engage families in crisis, and create pathways to keep families together, especially children, youth, and families who are over-represented in the child welfare system.

This proven approach has produced tremendous results in past years, and we believe that this year’s cohort will contribute immensely to our efforts, having already reached over 25,000 children and families in our Lab to date.

Organizations that have joined this transformative journey will have the opportunity to:

  • Access expertise from across the network and national thought leaders.
  • Become part of a learning community through the exchange of ideas and learning, building lasting, supportive relationships within the network.
  • Develop new approaches to achieve results and engage partners in moving the work forward.
  • Challenge the status quo and identify barriers to improving equitable outcomes for children, youth, and families.

Throughout the year, participants will create results-driven action plans through a step-by-step process by delving into key themes, incorporating and amplifying lived expertise, and utilizing plain language to engage a wider audience in addressing disparities. They will also examine and pursue opportunities to shift policies, practices, resources, and power structures all aimed at supporting and sustaining equitable outcomes for children, youth, and families. The goal is for each organization to consistently achieve measurable and impactful advancements by increasing equitable access to supports and strengthening community networks through a racial equity lens, advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion as a social norm.

Stay tuned for more information on this incredible journey of impact and transformation.

Renada Johnson is Senior Director of Children, Youth and Family Initiatives at Lutheran Services in America.

The Courage to Come Together

August 30, 2023

BY: Kent Mitchell

Lutheran Services in America is currently seeking grassroots, faith-based organizations and initiatives affiliated with an ELCA church or community to join our 2023–2024 Results Network cohort, which starts September 28. Participation is free. The Results Network is a transformative opportunity for teams to advance racial equity for children and families in a high-support and high-accountability hybrid cohort experience. Participants work in fields as varied as child welfare, housing and economic empowerment, but are united by the goals of preventing or stabilizing families in crisis, strengthening communities and addressing racial disparities. Learn more about this opportunity and how to join.

Five years ago, I hit a wall professionally. I was exhausted by a four-year effort to transform an early childhood organization in Indiana and questioning my ability to lead teams. I did something that felt scary. With a second child on the way, I took a professional role with a lot less pay, but the flexibility to join a virtual cohort of changemakers I had long eyed as an opportunity to reinvigorate and refresh my purpose and my skills in advocacy and organizing.

The cohort, which was university-organized and crossed global boundaries, was a transformative experience that gave me the space to learn and safely practice new skills. One of my closest cohort relationships was with a young person working to create a new political party in Eastern Europe. We explored common challenges and solutions, despite our disparate focus areas. We provided each other candid, but empathetic coaching. I found my skill set growing exponentially, almost day-to-day. When the cohort ended, I used my new skills—and new energy—to grow a campaign to end smoking related death and illness in Indiana to 10,000 advocates.

Professional cohorts are amazing vehicles for change, in part because the act of joining one is motivated by courage. Courage to put yourself into a new and unfamiliar community. Courage to admit you need to grow professionally. Courage to explore what it means to move from the transactional (most of our day-to-day work, often by necessity) to the transformational.

I’m honored that Lutheran Services in America is host to the Results Network—a powerful annual cohort of child and family-serving organizations working toward transformative outcomes rooted in a focus on race equity.

In the past year, 41 Lutheran social ministry leaders across 10 U.S. communities took the courageous act of joining the Results Network and working through professional challenges. The results at the end of the year? Transformative change for over 8,300 children and families!

In coming together, participants in the Results Network—who work in teams of three—make the courageous commitment to:

  • Be results-based and data-driven
  • Bring attention to and act on disparities
  • Use oneself as an instrument of change to move a result
  • Master the skills of adaptive leadership
  • Collaborate with others

When these commitments are made and supported by the cohort’s facilitation and coaching, transformation happens. Here are just a few of the remarkable results from last year’s cohort:

  • Lutheran Social Services of New York witnessed a 13% decrease in the length of stay for Black youth in foster care, demonstrating their commitment to addressing disparities.
  • Gemma Services’ (Pennsylvania) initiative to establish adolescent and father peer-support groups provided vital support to youth and families, empowering them to access resources, navigate systems and feel less isolated.
  • Lutheran Child and Family Services of Illinois achieved a remarkable milestone with 72% of their foster youth successfully reunified with their families, a 50% improvement in the past year through a renewed dedication to strengthening families and emphasizing reunification rather than adoption or guardianship.
  • Lutheran Social Services of Southern California implemented changes to electronic records and diligent search efforts to engage Black fathers and paternal resources which yielded positive outcomes.

One of the amazing elements of the Results Network cohort is the integration of peer leadership. In the most recent cohort, six diverse peer leaders were engaged to formally share their expertise, coaching and guidance.

The coming year of Results Network—which begins September 28—holds such high promise. Through a partnership with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), we are thrilled to welcome grassroots, faith-based organizations and initiatives affiliated with an ELCA church or community to join, contribute and transform. Their courageous work and presence will deepen and expand the experiences, expertise and diversity of the Results Network, yielding unexplored results. I cannot wait to see what results emerge from this coming together of the Lutheran Services in America and ELCA communities!

If you are a grassroots, faith-based organization or initiative affiliated with an ELCA church or community that is interested in joining this year’s Results Network, please take a moment to learn more about participation and reach out to Renada Johnson, Senior Director of Child, Youth and Family Initiatives (rjohnson@lutheranservices.org).

Onward, together, with courage!

Kent Mitchell is the Vice President of Strategy and Innovation at Lutheran Services in America.

Grounding our Work in the Lives of Families

June 13, 2023

BY: Renada Johnson and Elizabeth Vetter

Participating members of our Family Stabilization Initiative united in Seattle to discuss how to raise the visibility and support the sustainability of our work to engage 580 families in crisis in Alaska, Montana, South Dakota and Washington state. Through this cohort—part of our Results Innovation Lab—we activate community networks to address the disproportionate number of children of color separated from their families. Key to our success are our valued partners. By building a broad base of support, we are expanding supports in underserved communities that empower families to stay together.

For three days, member collaborated on approaches for sharing our story to engage community partners, evaluated the impacts of the collaborative learning model on implementation and sustainability, focused on the urgency to engage families in crisis and reviewed best practices to support key components of sustainability. Cohort members also shared marketing and outreach materials with each other to spark ideas for raising the visibility of their programs and engaging key community stakeholders in this work to reach more families.

Through this close interaction in such a collaborative setting, the Family Stabilization Initiative is generating the momentum needed to make a quantifiable difference for leaders in their communities and incentivizing additional partners to join us in this work. The cohort challenges participants to step into the shoes of the families with whom they engage to provide additional perspective on their experiences.

Several of our partners joined us for the convening:

  • Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago facilitated collaborative breakout discussions around the seven components of sustainability—leadership capacity, equity, program fidelity, staffing, referrals, investment and community partnerships—for cohort members to share valuable insights on their successes and challenges as it relates to each component. Chapin Hall is committed to improving the well-being of children, youth, families and communities, dedicated to equity, and charged to create child welfare resources, practices, and policies that prioritize family support and prevention.
  • Evans & Associates discussed asset-based storytelling to promote learning, sharing and telling our story and the stories of our families to engage people and the community in this work. The group provides an equity lens to storytelling through aspirational communications that amplifies the impacts of mission-related causes, initiatives and organizations.
  • Our evaluation partner Wilder Research led an interactive session, “Ripple Effects Mapping,” to visually capture the impacts of the Results Innovation Lab over the course of the three-year initiative in building the capacity of the targeted four states to address racial inequities in local child welfare through prevention and to sustain the evidenced-based model beyond three years.
  • Our partners at the National Center for Innovation and Excellence (NCFIE) organized a session around the urgency to engage families that are in crisis and best practices for family engagement and follow-up.
  • Sheila Weber of Homegrown Strategies led a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) session focused on managing stress and building resiliency as well as a group brainstorming and problem-solving session focused on a specific dilemma one team is facing. Fellow cohort members were able to offer questions, expertise and ideas for tackling this challenge within their respective communities.

Collectively, we’re spearheading approaches that build on the strengths of families in ways we could not do on our own. When we come together, we create new pathways—and hope—for people and communities across the country.

 

Renada Johnson is the Director of Children, Youth and Families and Elizabeth Vetter is a Program Associate at Lutheran Services in America.

Renada Johnson Joins Us to Lead the Results Innovation Lab, Launch of Results Network Year 3

June 28, 2022

BY: Alesia Frerichs

Renada Johnson joined Lutheran Services in America as the Director of the Children, Youth and Family Practice in June. Renada has more than 20 years of experience in child welfare, nonprofit, social justice and community engagement, most recently serving as the Director of Youth and Birth Family Engagement at the National Center for Children and Families in Washington D.C.

Renada will lead the Results Network and the Family Stabilization Initiative, two prominent initiatives in the Results Innovation Lab (“The Lab”) committed to empowering families and transforming policy and practice in the child welfare system. The Lab recognizes the key role that providers have in transforming policy and practice and engages leaders from across our network to address the racial disparities in the child welfare system. Together with partners from academia, philanthropy and others, we are working towards transformative change!

Launched in January 2021, our Family Stabilization Initiative is a three-year project where we are awarding $2.9 million in grants to organizations in our network located in four target states: Alaska, Montana, South Dakota and Washington. The work under this initiative expands services in underserved communities in the target states and activates community networks to address the disproportionate number of children of color separated from their families.

The Results Network is a three-year initiative dedicated to stabilizing families in crisis so more families can remain safe, strong and together and children across the United States have the opportunity to thrive and grow up to be healthy, productive adults. Using a variety of data-drive strategies we build the capacity of nonprofit leaders to lead broadscale change in their organizations and communities.  Launched in July 2020, 48 nonprofit leaders from 15 communities across the country have joined together to explore what will it take to ensure that all children regardless of race or ZIP code are given the opportunity to thrive in stable loving families.

We are in the process of launching a new cohort: Results Network Year 3. If you would like to be part of this exciting opportunity, please contact Renada Johnson for more information.

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