Child welfare conversations that turn the lens on systems.
The Social Work Lens comes from the University of Vermont's Child Welfare Training Partnership and the State of Vermont. Its conversations keep asking what systems do to families instead of what is wrong with them, with guests that include an adoption scholar, a filmmaker, a Food Not Cops member and a university culture and compliance officer.
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The Social Work Lens is produced by the University of Vermont's Child Welfare Training Partnership and the State of Vermont, and it takes the form of studio interviews. What marks the conversations is where they point: less at what a young person or family did wrong, more at what the surrounding systems keep doing. The episode 'Foster Care to Prison Pipeline Part 1: Dr. Sherri Simmons-Horton' puts it plainly. It asks why the same populations, among them kids experiencing poverty, kids of marginalized races and LGBTQ youth, see negative outcomes across child welfare, education and criminal justice alike. It also names what helps: stability, family connection formed long before removal, the awareness that something in the system is not right, and for some participants, spiritual belief. That series is told through guest host Mackenzie Leonard, a student intern from Champlain College working toward a bachelor's degree in social work. Adoption is examined from more than one side. Filmmaker Chithra Jeyram comes in to discuss her film Love, Chaos, Kin before a Burlington screening and audience Q&A, and the talk turns to race and belonging inside adoptive families. One voice admits to having wanted 'a hole fixed' without thinking about the holes being created. Dr. Seungmi Laura Cho, speaking as an adopted person, brings abolitionist perspectives to Korean intercountry adoption and points to Adoptee Solidarity Korea's petition asking the Korean government to end it. She is careful. She makes room for adoptees whose adoptions produced loving families while questioning how low-income single-parent families get reduced to 'birth mothers'. The show's range runs past child welfare, too. Dr. Sam Bliss, an ecological economist and Food Not Cops member, walks through the plain mechanics of rescued food: end-of-day farmers market produce, sealed yogurt past its sell-by date, day-old bread that might need toasting. The same conversation calls out better-off neighbors who blame homelessness and addiction on the people experiencing them. In 'DEI Part 2: What Is Going On In Higher Education?', academics and DEI professionals, including Paul Yoon, Chief Culture and Compliance Officer at Vermont State University, ask why the current administration is attacking higher education; Part 1 featured Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark on executive orders. Vermont resources get direct attention as well. Emma McDessie, Director of Camp Programs at Outright Vermont, describes camps for queer and gender-creative kids, including Camp Branch Out for 10- to 12-year-olds, and camper feedback that came back overwhelmingly hopeful. Cassie Gillespie and Chyna Boyce conduct interviews in a warm, affirming register. Start with the Simmons-Horton conversation for the show's core argument, or the Camp Outright spotlight for its local side.
Made for: Suits a listener working in or studying social work, foster care or adoption who wants conversations that weigh systems and policy alongside individual families. It also fits someone looking for Vermont community resources discussed next to national and international questions.
What sets it apart: It comes from a university child welfare training partnership working with the state, yet it openly questions the field's own practices, from adoption as best practice to the path from foster care into prison. Spotlights on local Vermont resources sit right beside those critiques.
The Social Work Lens (formerly known as Welcome to the Field) is a podcast for child welfare professionals, caregivers, & all folks wanting to learn about social work & child welfare. Join the Training Specialists at the University of Vermont’s Child Welfare Training Partnership (VT- CWTP) as they bring you interviews with local, national, & international experts on subjects ranging from case typologies to systems level change.
A sack of donated beans might change how you think about who gets called deserving.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A clear, systems-focused opening that traces foster care's harms without putting the blame on young people.
The opening installment of The Social Work Lens' foster care to prison pipeline series moves the focus away from blaming young people and families and toward the systems shaping their lives.
A Vermont camp conversation shows how belonging can become a practical form of hope for queer and gender-creative youth.
The Social Work Lens follows a Vermont camp conversation about what changes when queer and gender-creative children enter a space where they are not the only kid.
A filmmaker reflects on how adoption reshapes family ties without making the old ones vanish.
The Social Work Lens invites award-winning filmmaker Chithra J. Ram to discuss Love, Chaos, Kin, with adoption framed through identity, belonging, and family bonds that resist clean endings.
A measured adoptee-led discussion of Korean intercountry adoption, child welfare, and the systems that made adoption seem normal.
Korean intercountry adoption is examined here through Dr. Seungmi Laura Cho's path from being treated as an object of social work intervention to developing work on anti-adopterism.
A grounded conversation about food, dignity, and mutual aid in Burlington.
Food Not Cops is presented as Burlington's chapter of Food Not Bombs, an international movement that shares food freely in public space while protesting the choice to fund war over basic needs.
Sherry Simmons-Horton says more foster kids are sent to prison than college, and links that line to placement instability, delinquency charges, and school disruption.
["Emma McDessie says Camp Outright's camper evaluations showed youth leaving with a sense of hope.", "Chyna Boyce interviews McDessie, Director of Camp Programs at Outright Vermont, about the queer summer camp for youth 13 to 17.", "The episode gives concrete dates for Camp Outright applications, which open Monday, February 2 and close Monday, March 2, and explains why the process stays open for a month instead of first-come, first-served.", "Chyna and Emma also discuss scholarships, BIPOC outreach, Camp Branch Out in Montpelier, Sunrise in southern Vermont, and the CAT and CAST advisory teams that shape camp each year."]
["The Social Work Lens episode centers Chithra J.
["Cassie Gillespie hosts The Social Work Lens with Dr.
Cassie Gillespie hosts Dr.
Paul Yoon describes DEI through the line “diversity is a fact, inclusion is a choice, equity is a practice, and belonging is an outcome.” Jay Garvey says higher education can deepen understanding when people with different perspectives participate in learning.
On The Social Work Lens, host Cassie Gillespie asks Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark what executive orders mean for DEI.
Emmett, a second-year youth organizer with Outright Vermont, says youth can describe their own lives and experiences of discrimination.
Cassie Gillespie interviews her friend of roughly 25 years, immigration attorney Anna Rogers, about practicing removal defense in Denver, Colorado, under the second Trump administration.
Wilmer Savaria says officers seized his district-issued laptop, demanded passwords and pins, and questioned the validity of his marriage during a four-to-five-hour border interrogation.
Paul Nixon, a social worker since 1990 and New Zealand's chief social worker for ten years, tells China Boyce that family group conferences changed how decisions about children are made.
In the final episode of a miniseries on racial justice and child welfare, hosts discuss building a just child and family support system with guests Corey Best and Erica Radke.
Part two of a conversation on child welfare with justice as the throughline, focusing on listening to black people's truth and directing anger at racist ideology rather than individuals.
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