Community Possibilities
Community Possibilities
Together With Families: A Second Visit with Sarah Winograd Babayeuski
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski is a relentless advocate for families involved in the foster care system. Sarah joins me for the second time on the show to update us on the latest transformation of the nonprofit she founded. Together With Families (TWF) harnesses grassroots efforts and community resources to prevent family separations due to poverty.
Sarah's shares the evolution of Together With Families, emphasizing the importance of equity, justice, and active family participation in decision-making. We'll dive into the significance of trusting relationships and the harmful effects of pathologizing poverty and trauma. TWF groundbreaking initiatives like the Parent Ally and design team programs, supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, empower families to navigate crises and reduce unnecessary Child Protective Services involvement.
Lastly, we'll tackle the formidable challenges that low-income families face, from housing affordability and inadequate wages to bureaucratic obstacles in accessing essential services. Sarah's is an unexpected journey as a nonprofit executive director. Don't miss this inspiring conversation that promises to deepen your understanding of the complexities and solutions in family advocacy.
Guest Bio
As a missionary kid, Sarah grew up amongst poverty and oppression in the former Soviet Republic of Belarus. After returning to the states with her husband and daughter, she completed her bachelor’s degree in psychology at Kennesaw State University.
A former Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) in the Cobb County Juvenile Court, where for two years Sarah advocated for the best interests of children involved in dependency hearings. SheI was heartbroken to see so many children separated from loving parents for underlying issues of poverty. She is the founder of Together With Families, a nonprofit working to prevent family seperation due to poverty.
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So so, hi everybody. This is Anne Price. Thank you for joining me on today's episode of Community Possibilities. If you are new around here, this is a show where I interview community leaders doing the real work of social change. Before we get into the episode, I do have a favor to ask if you've listened a couple of times or more, can you please like and share this episode, and if you would be willing take another minute or two to write a review? Those kinds of things really help us get into the ears of more community leaders like yourself.
Ann Price:Now, today I have a repeat guest. I don't have those very often, but this young woman so impressed me when I met her and, as I say in our conversation today, she is an unapologetic advocate and fighter for families involved in the foster care system. So Sarah Winograd joins me again. Sarah was also on our episode 28, I believe, and we'll be sure and put a link to the show notes. Since we had that conversation a year or so ago, sarah has taken her organization Together for Families, rebranded it, established a nonprofit of their own and now they are called Together with Families. So because things have changed so much with together with families, I wanted to invite Sarah back to tell us all about the changes that they have made. If you've been hanging around here a skinny minute, you know foster care and kids in care are an area that is just near and dear to my heart. So again, thanks for joining us. Don't forget to like and share, and now let's have a conversation with Sarah. Thanks everybody. Hey, sarah, how are you?
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:I'm doing great. How are you, Anne?
Ann Price:I'm doing very well. Hey everybody, welcome back to Community Possibilities. My good friend Sarah has been chatting with me and she has been very patient as I complain all about tech. But, Sarah, welcome back to the podcast.
Ann Price:I'm so excited. When was I here last time? I don't know the date off the top of my head, but that's pretty early on, because I think I'm on episode like 63, because I don't you know, we only do this every couple of weeks. I don't record every week like a lot of podcasts do. But so you were like maybe you would know the date because you were with another organization and you were just new to that organization.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:And now we're just new to Together With Families.
Ann Price:Yeah, exactly, and that's why I wanted to have you back on, because things have changed so much. So, for those of you who have not met Sarah, go back and listen to episode 28. And for those of you who are new, sarah, can you just introduce yourself a little bit and just tell us a little bit about yourself?
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:Yeah, so a little bit about my background. I was a missionary kid, so my parents raised us, actually moved from upstate New York to the former Soviet Union, to Belarus, and we were raised there and we did a lot of work with children who were living in orphanages and families, kids who are battling cancer, because you know about the Chernobyl disaster that impacted Belarus and the Ukraine mostly the Ukraine, but also Belarus and so did a lot of work there and then came back to the States when I was already an adult and had married my husband and we had one child and he's from Belarus and started finished school here in psychology, studied psychology, and I was thinking I'd always thought I would get my PhD in psychology like you and ah, but that never actually, that actually never happened and I don't think I'm would continue to pursue that route. But that was kind of my dream. I thought I would work with children who I wanted to work with, the children who everyone had given up on, and so kids who had extraordinary trauma or who had been through child exploitation, and that was my dream. And I started volunteering with youth who were experiencing homelessness on the streets of Atlanta, and that was still while I was a student in studying psychology and expanded to starting working with families who were living in public housing or who were living in low-income housing and then started as a court-appointed special advocate in the Cobb County Juvenile Court where I was advocating for children who were in foster care.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:And all of my life I've known that I wanted to work with children. What I didn't know was that my calling was actually to work with families. I remember Dr Ziegler in my family interactions class in psychology and I remember I told her oh, I just want to work with kids. And she said Sarah, you're not going to just work with kids. If you want to work with kids, you got to work with families and there was really never an interest to work with families until I started to get to know the families more and more and I fell in love with the parents and the families and I had always loved the children, but I fell in love with the parents and so that's a little bit about the background.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:We started a grassroots effort while I was a court-appointed special advocate to help parents prevent foster care for their children, so prevent family separation, from children being taken from their parents or being taken from a loving relative because of poverty. So we were meeting basic needs, helping families navigate and access resources and then really working with our families to provide what is considered minimum sufficient level of care so the kids could stay in the home, and we were highly successful. It was shocking to me that resources could keep a child out of foster care. I had always grown up thinking that children who were in foster care or children who were orphaned, their parents were the people you might see on the news who are a psychopath who duct tapes their kid and ties them to a bed and doesn't feed them. And so this was my context for understanding just these horrible news stories.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:And the reality is that is extraordinarily thankfully, it's extraordinarily rare that most of the cases, families do love their kids and care about them and they're not abusing them and they're not trying to neglect them. And those psychopaths I always tell people that really are truly sociopathic and are harming their kids and doing these horrible things to them or trafficking them no, they exist in biological homes and they exist in foster homes and they exist in adoptive homes. And so you know they exist in biological homes and they exist in foster homes and they exist in adoptive homes, and so you know, when we do interact somebody who is like that. Obviously you do need to protect children from those types of people. But the majority of people are like you and me and they care about their kids and they love their kids, but they just didn't have the same opportunities that we have and the same path that we have, and it makes life a lot harder when you're living in poverty and you're trying to provide for your children.
Ann Price:Well, I love that you fell in love with the families, with the families. I don't know if I've ever told you this before, but I used to work in a clinical setting, which makes me kind of an oddball for an evaluator, for someone who does evaluation works in communities. I love, like you, I loved working with the kids. I never fell in love with the parents most of the time because where I worked, the kid was the identified patient and the moms and dads were not so willing to work on their own stuff. So good for you, I just couldn't, yeah, it just broke my heart. But you absolutely have like a calling for this thing, for this, and by this thing I mean this hard work. I went on the prevention side, which is also really hard work and really hard to to show that you're making a difference.
Ann Price:But I love that you followed your passion and you've developed this together for families. And I remember when you kind of made the you know the choice that you made, I remember thinking, yeah, she's gonna be out on her own Right, because that's your nature, that's your personality. You're a doer, you are a mover and a shaker and I would describe you as a disruptor, and I mean that in the best way possible, right? You've seen the t-shirt like uh, women, what is it? Um bad, is it? Well-behaved women rarely make history bat shirt.
Ann Price:That kind of describes you, and I mean that, definitely mean that as a compliment to you. For sure, I wish I was as ill-behaved as people.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:That's so funny. It's funny because I was just talking to my dad and I said I feel like some people underestimate me. They just look at me and they're like, oh, look at that cute sweet girl with the big heart and look at her just helping those families. Oh, how sweet. Bless her heart. And my dad's like I never accused you of being sweet, sarah, I would never accuse you of being sweet. He's like you are loving, you are kind, but you're a fighter.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:And I came out of the womb a fighter. I mean, my parents say, and it wasn't just fighting for the, the, the purpose of fighting, it was always for things and people that I believed in. And it just so happens that I believe God called me to fight, um, for families and to take on this fight with families. And, and I'm going to tell you this, I saw I was a Casa and I had a kid who was in foster care and he had been there for a year and a half and he was begging to go home to his family. He had written the name of his mom, his dad, his siblings on his arm and I was afraid that he was even suicidal or for sure he was going to run away and he was just at. Every month he was just worse and worse. While he was in foster care in strangers' homes he had moved five times and so I remember seeing him and seeing how much love he had for his family and him talking about his family, and I made a prayer and I said, god, I just want to see the parents and the families the way that you see them and I want to see them the way that their children see them, and it changed my life. Everything changed.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:And the families. If we think about the parents that we serve and the families that we serve, these are the children that everybody wanted to work with At one point. They were those kids Our parents are the kids who were in foster care. They are the kids who were abused and neglected. They are the kids who were abused and neglected. They are the kids who were trafficked and they are the kids who aged out of foster care. These are our parents and we dump them and we marginalize them. But really what happened is oftentimes they're just stuck in that place where they were left, in that trauma, and they need help navigating out of that.
Ann Price:Yeah, absolutely yeah, unresolved trauma. And what I also love about you is that you are an unabashed, unapologetic advocate for these families and you also kind of reveal your own history. And if folks are honest and by folks I mean everybody has unresolved trauma in their family and we can probably look not very far to the left and the right on either side of our family that's what I mean Whether it be your spouse's side or your side and not look very far down the family tree to see what happens when trauma is unresolved. So you said this prayer and I love that, because God always answers our prayers, I believe, and you are the founder of Together for Families. And again, the reason why I wanted to have you on the podcast is so much has changed with TFF, right, You're not housed in another nonprofit, you guys are on your own. So I'd love for you to kind of talk about what's happened since you were on the podcast last time, which that's a big question, I know, Because you've been up to some things.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:Yeah, so we actually changed our name to Together With Families. So when we started Together For Families, the idea was when I was at CASA, that if my friends and my family knew what was happening to families in our community, that a parent's worst nightmare losing their children that that could happen because the family couldn't afford housing or couldn't afford food or couldn't afford the basics for the children, if that could happen to them, that my friends and my family would intervene and they would help. And so that was the idea for Together for Families that we would work together for families. And as we grew under this other nonprofit and we served 180 families during the first year and those are families who were impacted by child welfare. So we were receiving referrals from CPS, from Child Protective Agency.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:And as we got to know the families and the families became my friends, some of them I've known for over the past five years, I learned that they don't want us to just work for them, that they have a fight, that they believe in equity and justice for their families.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:They would know that they're being treated wrongly and they want us to fight with them, not for them, and all they want is a seat at that table to be able to do that, and so together with families is simply that it's saying we will fight with you for what you need in order for your family to thrive.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:And here's the seat at our table, and your seat is just as valuable as anybody else's seat, and actually in my mind, it's the most important seat. Because if we're not doing work with the people that we're serving and if we're not including work with the people that we're serving and if we're not including them in the work, then how do you even sustain that kind of work? Like community you're a community psychologist community work should be done with the community, and so how do you sustain work if you just fly in and provide some services and programs and then you fly out Families? I strongly believe and I know that people will debate this that nobody knows your life better than you, ann, and nobody knows my life better than me, and those of us who are closest to our problems are closest to our solutions.
Ann Price:And those of us who are closest to our problems are closest to our solutions, but oftentimes our families don't have the opportunities, they don't have the education and they don't have the power to make things happen for their families and for their communities. So when we share opportunities and we share power, we can see, in my opinion, what I see air quotes here help, but very often those people that they are trying to help are not in the room and therefore you can't help in any kind of real way, not in a sustainable way, to use your, your phrase, and I think we probably do a lot more harm than good when you know they're not. Because you know you said that really well that you know they people know what they need and they know what their solutions are. They just need folks to kind of walk with them.
Ann Price:My friend, um susan wolf, and and I, you know, wrote that the book together last year and Susan will often stand in front of a community group or a group of nonprofit leaders and ask them how would you like it if somebody came into your house and started rearranging your furniture for you? Well, that should go here and that should go there, and I don't like the paint color on your wall and why are you doing this and why are you doing that? And that's sometimes how we treat other people that we are trying to help.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:Yeah, I think, and we pathologize poverty and hardship, we pathologize trauma. And oftentimes what people need, like you said, is they need somebody who can walk alongside them. They need people they can trust. They need to belong and they need to have the opportunity to be vulnerable and be authentic and be themselves and be accepted. And I remember, just looking back, I had two kids back to back, so I had Eliana, our oldest. She was eight years old.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:Then we adopted our son, who he was eight years old. We adopted him from Russia, because my husband's from the former Soviet Union and he has cerebral palsy. When we adopted him Russia, because my husband's from the former Soviet Union and he has cerebral palsy. When we adopted him, he could not walk. He needed three major surgeries and he was in a wheelchair. After one of the surgeries I had just given birth. So I had a baby. I threw out my back, I had to carry him to the bathroom, carry him back on the wheelchair. He had a lot of challenges because he had experienced a lot of trauma in the orphanage, so he was unpacking that trauma. And so we have these two little babies a one and a half year old, a newborn, my daughter, who's eight years old.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:And then Jan, who at this time had just had one major surgery, had just arrived from living in an orphanage and he's unpacking his trauma and I throw out my bag and I was so overwhelmed. I was just so overwhelmed and I was starting to have panic attacks and just because I felt like I cannot handle all of this that's going on, meanwhile my husband, he's a physician, so we make you know he's a top earner. And I remember my mom coming to my house and my house was a mess because I just and I felt like I was failing, because I couldn't keep the house clean and I couldn't manage everything that I was having to manage and therapy appointments and all this. And my mom just came to the house and she, no judgment, and she's just like, what do you need? And I was just like, well, can you help me clean? So she cleans the house and then she sits me down and she says, after she cleans the whole house, she does the laundry. She sits me down and she says to me she said, sarah, your husband's a physician, you guys have money, you can hire somebody to help you cook and clean while you have a child in a wheelchair and your back's out, and you have these two, a baby and a one-year-old, and I was just okay Because we had just come from.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:You know, we didn't have a lot of money when we came to the States. He was my husband, was studying to pass the United States licensing exam and so we went from, you know, not having very much money to having a lot of money in a short amount of time. But we were still kind of living like we didn't have a lot of money. And so my mom's like, sarah, you have money you can hire. So I did that and we hired somebody during that period of time to help cook and to help clean the house and I was able to focus on the kids and myself and my mental health. Everything got better.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:And so sometimes we can look at that and we can say, oh, look, somebody's having these panic attacks or these mental health issues, and we can go and think that they're or just treat them like they're isolated. But they're interconnected and sometimes if we address the stress that people are under and the kind of chronic stress that they're under, then it'll address a lot of the mental health issue. And so that's what happened with me and I see this over and over with our families that our families who are living in poverty don't have a physician husband that they can hire to clean their house and have groceries delivered to their house and have meals made for them. They don't have that and so oftentimes when they're under this stress it just continues. And they don't have somebody like my mom who's coming over and cleaning their whole house. They don't have that respite, and so that chronic stress just keeps feeding into a mental health issue and then it gets worse.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:And then what happens? If you have panic attacks for long enough, then it can impact you leaving your house, being able to work. And then if you can't afford a counselor or a psychologist to help you deal with that, or you don't have the practical help to unload some of that stress, then what are people going to do to relieve, to cut off some of that edge? Somebody's going to offer them a pill or they're going to drink. And so we look at the families and we say, oh, look, they are popping that pill or they're drinking. But do we look underneath that? What's actually happening within their lives? Are we looking at what's going on? Because any of us living under that kind of chronic stress that our families live under would not be able to function well and we would not be at our best selves, and there would be a high likelihood that we would also be impacted by a mental health issue.
Ann Price:Yeah, mental and physical health too. Right and physical health too. Yeah, trauma takes that toll too. Takes that toll too. So you've taken this calling this passion, this experience that you've had and you've kind of recreated together with family. So how do programs and services look different now compared to maybe back then? I know things have changed a lot.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:Yeah. So we're structuring all of our programs in a way that we can build community with our families and then empower our families to also be running our programs. So that is vastly different. Our program Together for Families, which was under another nonprofit, it was run by our team and volunteers, so we were providing basic needs and navigation of resource and access to resources. But now it's really focused on community building with our families. It's focused on creating programs where our families can lead.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:So I can give you some examples we piloted with funding from the Annie E Casey Foundation, which I can only say a million good things about them. It's such a blessing to have them because they have been and especially Felicia Kellum who's been working with us just so kind and so helpful in every single way not prescriptive with us, but when we ask for help you know they're always looking for help, whether it's with evaluations or it's every different aspect of building our nonprofit. They have been such a huge help. And so our Parent Ally program is unique in that we have parents who are in our program, who are trained to partner along with another parent who is going through our program. So we originally were only receiving referrals from Child Protective Services in the courts, and we expanded with this pilot to receiving referrals from schools for families who are experiencing a crisis of poverty, and so that is a brand new thing too. And the reason we did that was because when we were working with families from referrals from child protective services, we learned which I didn't know how traumatic being investigated by CPS is and when it's unnecessary trauma. Our families already have so much trauma we shouldn't be putting them through that, and so if we can catch families before CPS is involved, that's better for the family. So our pilot we received referrals from schools for families who were in a crisis of poverty but there was no child maltreatment visible and worked with those families to address the social determinants of health. All of the families that were in the pilot secured housing they had all been experiencing homelessness helped families get cars, get their license, and so they were partnered with this parent ally who had been in our program, and our goal is a cycle of empowerment, so having families come in who need support, giving them the support that they need to care for their kids and then being able to train them as parent allies to be able to give support to another family, because many of our families want to give back.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:Another program is our design team program, which is continuing to evolve. Initially it started as an advisory council of our parents who were giving impact on the pilot and on together with families as we were building together with families to make sure that this was their organization more than mine or anybody or on dell's or sarah's like. This is their organization and so we want to make sure it's something that aligns with them and what they want to see, and so, but that's evolved. Our design team is now an official program where we are training our parents in design thinking and in program project management so that they can run throughout each cohort, two projects from inception to completion. And so the next program is obviously our family support, which I told you about receiving those referrals from schools, preventing CPS involvement, preventing unnecessary trauma and keeping families together.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:And then another program which we were doing when we were at this other nonprofit but in a little bit different capacity, is what we call our setup program, where we set up kinship families who are bypassing foster care.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:So most families who are taking in relative children aren't getting the support from the government that foster parents are getting or strangers are getting and what's happening is oftentimes families are struggling financially as well and as a result, sometimes the children end up moving from a relative's home into traditional foster care because of just financial reasons.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:So we want to keep our children with their parents, with people they know and love, so the setup program is a way to keep them with their relatives and their kin, so we set them up with everything that they need right when the kids are placed with them.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:That's beds, cleaning products, hiding clothes for the kids everything that will meet minimum sufficient level of care. If the family needs a home repair, if they need some help with utilities, we have flexible financial assistance to help them. If they need daycare while they're waiting for the government caps government subsidized daycare to go through, we'll help them with daycare until we can get caps, so helping them navigate and access. And then another thing we added was support groups. And also we have a processing group with a licensed counselor, kind of psychoeducational group as well, that families can participate in. And we are Exciting news, anne, breaking news right here, and we are exciting news and breaking news right here. We just signed a lease on a new hub for Together With Families, and so we will be opening that up for our families who are currently in our program now, but we will have a ribbon cutting in September, so you are invited.
Ann Price:Awesome.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:Save the date. Well, I'll get you the date, but we'll have a ribbon cutting and that's where we're going to run all of our support groups and our design team. Our design team meets in person twice a month. Our parent allies meet together twice a month. A big part of what we do is solving for social isolation, which is building community with our families and then creating belonging and purpose, because I need belonging and purpose and our families need belonging and purpose.
Ann Price:Yeah, and we should go back and just say that Sarah and Del are two folks that are working with you to kind of build the plane as it is flying, so to speak. And I was going to ask you like, hey, what are you doing for, like, the resources? Because I know when you first got started, your whole house was diapers and cribs and all kinds of things, and yeah, so that's good to know. So I just want to kind of clarify a little bit. So when folks, so when you get the referral, is there like, is there like an assessment that you do, or is there a cycle of services or steps that families go through? What does you've talked about, like the different programs?
Ann Price:But I'm curious as to whether or not there's, you know, there's what that, what that looks like, and maybe you guys are still kind of working on that that part. So I'm, you know, I'm a mom and I'm I'm in danger of losing my kids and I'm working at, you know, Burger King or Taco Bell or whatever it is, and that transportation is iffy and I'm got, you know, going, I'm couch surfing, whatever, how, how, what does that contact look like? And what are the steps that I'm going to go through before I make it to that process of being on the design team or being that support. What does that look like?
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:Sure, let's walk through it. So we would get a referral right now through the schools, so previously through CPS. If it's a relative, it's going to be through CPS Child Protective Services. If it's a family who are working to prevent CPS involvement, then it's going to be through the schools and we're going to receive the referral and they're going to let us know what they've identified. Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry about that.
Ann Price:That's all right.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:But they would have identified what they see that the family needs and so we're going to let them know if we are able to accept that referral. Once we accept the referral, we immediately call the family and we work to meet their most urgent need as identified by the family. So whether that be food, temporary shelter, clothes, a bed, whatever it is, we want to meet that most urgent need. Before we actually will meet that need, we do have families complete the protective factors survey so PFS2, looking at the protective factors and also looking at the resources within their family. This not only helps us to identify maybe other areas where they might need support, but it also helps us to track over time if they're getting the support that they need and helps them also be a part of tracking over time if they're getting the support that they need. So we will look over those assessments together after three months and then six months to identify if those needs are being met so immediately. Yeah, those assessments are happening, but they're not done in the way where it's impersonal. It's done first and foremost. Our goal is to build trust and relationships with our families so that they can tell us what's really going on, so that they can be vulnerable with us, can tell us what's really going on, so that they can be vulnerable with us and so that we can help them, not just their surface needs but maybe some of their more core psychological needs too. And so then they're matched All of our families are matched with a social worker, which is more of a life coach and somebody who's guiding them, and they also have a navigator who's working with them, and so the navigator is working to find resources to meet the needs and the life coach social worker, is working with them to provide guidance and coaching in areas where the families identify that they need coaching and also suggestions from you know, the life coach on. Maybe there's areas that the family hasn't identified but they may be willing to get some support in. And so the walk we walk with the families.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:If the family's experiencing homelessness, usually we're walking and partnering with the family for six months and then follow up for three months. If a family is not experiencing homelessness, it's usually about three months and then follow up for three months, and that is that intensive. They're getting flexible financial assistance working to meet immediate basic needs, kind of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where that first three months is let's make sure your basic needs are met. Then afterwards families can partner with and go into what we would consider phase two, can partner with a peer, mentor, a parent, ally, and work on those other needs that are in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is relationships and self-actualization, which would be more of a design team. And so the actual parent-ally program that families would go through is about six months and it's working on building those relationships, it's working on storytelling, community building and then really addressing some also life skills that the families identify that they need or that's suggested to them that they may agree that could be helpful for their life.
Ann Price:Yep, that's really helpful to kind of I think helpful for folks to kind of think about the process that people go through. I wanted to ask you, since it's been I don't know a year-ish since we've talked, do you think anything has changed for families involved in foster care? And it doesn't have to necessarily be our state, but just in general I know you've met a lot of people, a lot of advocates across the country Are things better or worse for families? Do you think?
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:you think, much, much worse in my opinion. So that's not just anecdotally, but that's also if you look at the data. So anecdotally I can see in our community that things are much, much worse. And then also reading some of the you know the research that's come out, you could see that it's much worse. So I'm going to say why.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:The cost of living is much higher and family salaries don't keep up with the cost of living. So housing is a huge issue. Families can't find housing that's affordable and then when they do get into housing through programs, hud programs because they're homeless, like rapid rehousing like rapid rehousing they do that support lasts for a year. But if you during that year can't get a higher paid job that will pay for that housing after that year we find that families in not so long after can end up homeless again because it's just too high the cost. So if you have a ninth grade education or a 10th grade or 11th grade education coming in out of homelessness and you move into housing and you're getting support for a year, it takes a while to be able to get a higher paid job. More than $18 an hour, $19 an hour Now. Families housing is $1,600 for a two-bedroom apartment, and that's not even a really nice two-bedroom apartment. So if you're making $19 an hour, which is considered okay for somebody without a college degree, you can't survive.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:And another thing, anne, that's really disturbing I have seen so many of our families who qualify for food stamps get kicked off food stamps when they're reapplying and they can't get them back on food stamps because either they're short of staff or the bureaucracy is not working right. And so we have so many children right now who are truly hungry and families who are hungry, and people tell me they say why don't they go to a food bank? Well, if you don't have a car to go to a food bank and you're relying on the transit in our community, which is not reliable and doesn't get you everywhere, it's quite challenging to actually get any food. So they might be able to get food once a month from this one, but it's very challenging. And then, if you're working, oftentimes food banks will be open during working hours, and so it's just families are struggling more than they've ever struggled, and I can tell you so many families that I meet say I just want to give up. I'm working two jobs, I can't make ends meet, I can't pay for childcare. I can't pay for food. Maybe my kids would be better off in foster care. And we're not talking about families who have ever been accused of abuse or neglect. We're talking about, now, you know, working class families and lower income families. So I've never in my life in America seen anything like this, and I think it has to do with inflation, but it also has to do with we.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:During COVID, we had all this money flowing into the economy, but, even more importantly, we had all this money being given to families with low incomes and provided for rental assistance and provided for utilities and all of that, most of that, has dried up, and so families during COVID were getting that support the childcare, the tax credit, the child tax credit and they're not following.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:They're living in a crisis of poverty. They're not following politics, they don't know when these things will drop off and then all of a sudden, it drops off. They don't know, I'm telling you, they don't know. If you're homeless and you're moving from one motel to another and you're just trying to keep your like, you're literally surviving one day at a time, trying to keep your kid fed, trying to keep things together, one day at a time. You're not paying attention to that, and so what happens is this assistance dries up and it falls, and they fall down a cliff, and that cliff and that fall is so much further than even before, and so my belief is that, first of all, our politicians are doing it so wrong.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:You don't provide temporary assistance in this kind of way to families who are living day by day without either keeping it there so that they know they can depend on it, or having a way to taper it off so that they know it's going away and have a way to provide them with better jobs or training, and so this is what the problem is you have people who make decisions who are far removed from the problem, and people who are far removed from the problem think that theoretically this should work, and they have no idea what it's like on the ground.
Ann Price:Yeah, yeah, we make a. You know, I say the universal, we, not just politicians. People make a lot of judgments about people they know nothing about really. Well, those people should just get a job. And you just talked about a lot of those social determinants of health. Right, you talked about, you know, transportation and access to food and all of the things.
Ann Price:And I love it when you talked about the food bank, because that became very clear to me when I did some poverty training a few years ago. To me, when I did some poverty training a few years ago and one of our assignments was to go to a local food bank. Well, gee, golly gee, you know it's. You know the food bank is open from, you know, 9 to 11 am, monday through Friday, and I think it was I can't even remember it was a couple hours in the afternoon and, lord forbid. You know you've already gotten your one basket or box of food for the year. Therefore, no more help for you, otherwise you're considered a freeloader.
Ann Price:And even when you were talking about you know, the cost of housing, when we were trying to move our youngest home from college and kind of help him get an apartment here, I mean even $1,800, $1,900 a month for a very small place was in a very sketchy, not safe in my opinion as a mom, middle-class mom, where I wanted my young person living, right, it was so expensive you were really talking about, you know, $2,200 a month for a young person, let alone a family. I've got, you know I've got a friend moving. Her and her husband are moving back to Georgia from Florida and rent is so ridiculous, it is so expensive. And you know we've got organizations coming in and they're buying out neighborhoods, they're refurbishing them and charging, you know, out the wazoo powerful, very, and he is um.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:He just got his phd in psychology. He works at georgia tech, in the counseling at georgia tech, and he's a graduate of georgia tech. He has three kids and a wife his wife um. She's a counselor. She has a licensed professional counselor. She works part time because they don't want to pay for child care. They keep the young kids at home, so she just works a few hours and she takes care of the kids. He drives an old car. She drives an old car.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:He couldn't afford housing. He was like I can't save up to buy a house. It's barely enough to even afford my basics right now. When you talk about health insurance, when you talk about the three kids, they can't. It's not worth it to put the kids in childcare. Because you put the kids in childcare you know it's like, it's like her getting paid. So she just kept the kids at home.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:So he moved in with my parents. He's lived with my parents for the last year With his family. Yeah, with my parents. He's lived with my parents for the last year With his family. Yeah, with my parents. Yeah, because he was like I can't save any money for a down payment or anything like that, I mean, and he is, has a PhD, smart guy, not irresponsible, has three kids, I mean he can barely make his bills, so he can't save anything because he wanted to buy a house. So he moved in to say he can barely make his bills, living a modest lifestyle, basic lifestyle.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:What do we say about our families who are working at FedEx and Kroger and Publix? And what do we say about those families who are the working class families who we found out during COVID that they are some of the most needed essential workers? Because when COVID happened, right that those were the people we wanted to show up to work. We wanted the person, the associate at Publix and the person who's stocking the shelf at Publix, to show up to work so we can get our food and our wipes and our masks. And so these are our essential workers and they can't and they're homeless, they're homeless. I had a mom who was referred to me. She works at Piedmont hospital and she was sleeping in her car.
Ann Price:Oh, my goodness.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:She was sleeping in a hotel. Then what happened was she had to pay for her car repair, so she couldn't afford her hotel anymore. But she had been homeless. She had lost her housing. We have, I'm not, oh my goodness, there are. I don't know the numbers, but I think DFACS Division of Family Children's Services should show the numbers of how many of their employees who are either living in shared housing or who are homeless or who are in some sort of unstable housing situation. I bet you it's going to be astronomical.
Ann Price:Yeah.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:Because I've talked to so many DFACS workers who are case managers, so the ones who are on the ground, the investigators who are on the ground, and they're doing some of the most important work in the sense that they got to get this right. They got to get this right. They're about, they're dealing with families and children and and and all of these things. They have to get this right. There's a life of children and families on the line and the health of children and families and they're paid. You know what I? You know 50,000, 55, but you can't, really, if you have three kids and you're a single mom and you're paid 55,000, I mean even that you can barely afford housing and and food and healthcare and childcare and healthcare and childcare.
Ann Price:Yeah, yeah, it's such a challenge. I got to ask you because we've kind of already talked about what states could do. I want to talk to you about what you've learned as an executive director, because you did not intend on developing your own nonprofit-profit, my friend. No. What have you learned in the last year about being an executive director, especially one who works in such a complicated space? Again, you know, we want to think that problems are simple and solutions are simple, and they're not. So what have you learned? And gosh, I hope the answer is I learned. I don't want to do it.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:Actually, the answer is the opposite. I never wanted to lead a nonprofit. I always passed the buck. That's why I went to another nonprofit. We do have co-executive director on Dell. I asked him to be co-executive director.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:I never wanted to lead a nonprofit, but what I realized is that I have this vision of what I want to see come to life, and that vision doesn't come from my imagination. That comes from our families telling me what they want to see, and I only work for our families. Like I don't need this as a career, I don't need this. I'm sacrificing my time with my children. I don't need that in that way and I wasn't looking for a career. But so I would say the hardest part for me is in a startup, finding the place, the right place for everybody because we're a startup. Finding the right board members, finding the right place, putting people in the right place. I feel like it's going to be easier once everybody's in the right place, where they should be. But we rushed out of the other nonprofit and everybody was just building this startup and so finding the right place for everyone with the right skill level and the right place. I think that's been the toughest part for me so far, but I love it. I realized I said, oh no, I shouldn't be giving this to someone else anymore. And I, because I carry with me the hopes and the dreams of the hundreds of families that I've worked with and I want to realize those hopes and dreams, because those have become my hopes and dreams. And so I would say the hardest part in general of doing this work for me, so I like it. I didn't think I would like it but I actually love it. I just have to get through the startup phase where everybody we can put everybody. But I didn't realize. Um, I would like it so much because I feel like I can. Didn't realize. I would like it so much because I feel like I can push our family's agenda in a way that I never could before. So I like being able to be in that place to push it.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:Hardest part in general of this work for me is shutting it off, and that's always been, whether I was executive director or whether I was a volunteer or when I was a program manager is shutting it off. It's very, very hard when you know families and you care about them and you know that they're hungry or they're at risk of losing their kids or there's so much going on in their lives. It's so traumatic. And you come back to your house and it's this completely different world. It's this upper middle class world where you have big houses, you don't worry about your electricity getting shut off, you don't worry about not having enough food. And you come back here and you think, think, maybe I should be doing more, maybe I'm not doing enough, and being present with your own children like that is in your own family. It's hard when you have the phone ring and you realize there's a kid out there who's sleeping in their car or on the street, and so that's the hardest part for me is just being able to say no and detach, because I just realized how lucky I am and how blessed I am and I don't deserve.
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:I don't believe that any of us deserve to live in poverty or any of us deserve to live in these big houses that we live in. I believe that they're blessings from God and they're blessings. The blessing is to share with others, and so that's always a challenge for me. I maybe I would be happier with less like. No, my husband, my poor, I was just like he's the one who makes the money. I was just like you know, when the kids leave, maybe we should get a really small house, or maybe we should have all the families move into our house and I feel bad that we have these extra rooms that we don't use in those families. So it hurts me to see people living the way they're living and knowing that I don't deserve this, and yet I have all this excess.
Ann Price:Yeah, yeah, I can. I can totally relate to that, sarah, I really can. So I got to ask you the question. I'm curious. I'm going to have to go back to listen to the end of the podcast to see how you answered this last time. My favorite question when you look to the future, what podcast to see how you answered this last time? Oh gosh, my favorite question when you look to the future, what community possibilities do you see?
Sarah Winograd Babayeuski:I see endless possibilities. I feel like if we take more control from the government and give it to communities to solve our own problems and the government can invest in our communities, I feel like the possibilities are endless. People, I feel like if you, we can bring out the good in people and we can bring out the bad in people, and if we choose to go in and invest in communities and bring out the good in people, people will help each other, people will look out for each other. That's in our nature and I think they're endless and that's what we want to build. We want to build community and and because we know that it's like a ripple effect, it will, it will continue to impact generations.
Ann Price:Yeah Well, sarah, thank you so much for coming on the show again and for giving us the update I'm so glad to hear. I love together with families, I love that switch. I love the um, the turn that you are taking and leaning in and the ripples that you're having in the community. So thanks so much for coming on the show. Wow, thank you, ann, so much for having me and for all your support. Oh yeah, and don't forget to send me the date of your groundbreaking. I'm so excited for you. Ribbon cutting, I guess it is. Yes, I will Awesome. Thanks, sarah. Thank you, hi everybody. Thanks, as always, for joining me on today's episode of Community Possibilities. I hope you were inspired by something you heard and are ready to get out and do that hard work that is community change. As always, if you have been inspired, please like and share this episode with someone else you know who works in communities and be sure to leave us a review. That just helps so much. Before I let you go, I want to share some big news.
Ann Price:At Community Evaluation Solutions this week, we have launched our course yes, I finally got done with my course for non-evaluators. It's called Powerful Evidence Evaluation for Non-Evaluators and it is designed just for you, my community leader friend, and you can join the course now. In our Launch Early Bird special, yep, you can get 50% off the rate. Limited spots are available. Only the first 10 people who enroll in the course will get that 50% off discount. Be sure and use early bird as your promo code at checkout. Now, if you are interested in the course, let me tell you a little bit more about it. Again, this is perfect for nonprofits, community leaders, coalition leaders, really anyone who wants to learn how to do evaluation more effectively. It includes seven modules and one bonus module with five hours of guided video and a beautiful, gorgeous, step-by-step 80-page workbook. So please don't miss this opportunity to join Powerful Evidence at this discounted rate and enroll now to secure your spot and start your journey on becoming that evaluation expert in your community.
Ann Price:Now, this course is really designed for folks who don't know a lot about evaluation, so it's going to help you decipher the language of evaluation. You know I try to speak in a very accessible way so it is not full of evaluation jargon. You definitely will not be lost and I hold your hand throughout the process. So the course is really going to help you navigate through the essentials of things like data collection and thinking about how do we measure the thing that we need to measure, whether that be something we are interested in or our funder is interested in, or likely both. It's going to help you think through tools and methods and really streamline your process to get to the must-collect information.
Ann Price:More importantly, the most important information for you to use to really make a difference in your community, because isn't that what it's all about? And then we're going to talk about you know how do we tell that data story? How do we use that data to really communicate our results? So again, I invite you to enroll now into Powerful Evidence. You can go over to our website, communityevaluationsolutionscom slash resources and you can sign up. Thanks, everybody. Thank you.