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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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