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Them Before Us Podcast
Them Before Us #092 | How Can We Save Families Before Tragedy | Upstream Collaborative
00:27:29
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A
Foreign.
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Welcome to the Them Before Us podcast. I'm your host, Jen Friesen, and today we are talking about another amazing organization doing work in the family space. And so we're really excited to welcome Phil and Melody, who are co directors of an organization called Upstream Collaborative, to join us today and share a little bit about what they do to preserve families, which is part of their mission statement. And their name, Upstream Collaborative, is a bit of a clue. They are trying to be upstream of many of the challenges that face families to help people and protect and preserve the family. And so it's very much aligned with what them before us does. So, Phil and Melody, thanks so much for being here.
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A
Yeah, thanks for having us. We're excited.
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C
Thanks for having us.
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B
All right, Melody, why don't you start us off? Just describe a little bit about what Upstream is and does, and actually then either one of you maybe just tell us how you two came to become the directors or what made you start it as well.
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A
Okay. Well, yeah, we're excited to be here. And you're right, our name is a clue. It's not an analogy that we made up. Where the upstream or the stream analogy is compared to the child welfare system, meaning there are kids drowning in the water, floating downstream, that is kind of a natural response is set up there where you would jump in, rescue those kids. And that is similar to what the foster care system looks like. It's a very reactive response. It's very. It's a very important response. We've got to rescue those kids. But our whole idea is that, man, if we're being really wise about this, let's go upstream and see why kids are ending up in the stream in the first place. So we spent a pretty significant amount of time really focused on what leads to childhood abuse and neglect. And our. Our goal, our desire is to see an upstream movement take place in the church across America, in the country across America, and the welfare system across America, and really across the world, too. But just desiring to help people see the power that we could have when we start upstream and take a proactive stance instead of just responding to kids being broken apart. So we joined with others that were doing similar work where we were kind of stepping in to support families at the last minute, right before maybe the foster care system would have to get involved. And we're really pleased to do that. For several years locally, here in Columbus, Ohio, we are seeing the drastic change start to take place. Number of kids in foster care were dropping. 30 churches and almost a thousand volunteers working together in this same way of surrounding and supporting families. And what we would do was something called crisis child hosting. So we would host kids in the home of our host families for a short period of time while their parents got their feet back on the ground. But it often was the hospital calling us and saying, hey, if you can't get somebody here in the next 30 minutes, we have to call the police instead or we have to call child protective services instead. And so there's still a decent amount of trauma for those kids. They're still going with a stranger. It's still kind of this last minute arrangement. But we felt like it gave us a really unique vantage point upstream to see what are the stories and situations that are happening for these families before they get to that hospital call. And between hearing those stories and talking to the families, we discovered a couple primary reasons that families end up in that situation. And National Clearinghouse on childhood Abuse neglect says actually two of the top four reasons kids are abused or neglected. Our social isolation and a temporary crisis. And so social isolation is something that we can solve when we mobilize people to be a community to the socially isolated. And a temporary crisis is not a reason that families should be losing their kids to the foster care system. It is something that's overcomeable that you get to the other side of. You and I have both had temporary crises in our life. And I know that I've had family members or friends step in and help support me. And man, that that support sometimes gets you to the other side, to a point where you can then stabilize and reach a point of thriving. So that's kind of the social isolation is like the problem within the problem of the families that we're serving. And offering them community and support is the solution within the solution. So we are doing those things together in collaboration with other organizations across the country. Yeah.
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B
That's awesome. Phil, I'll ask you, do you think that the government, the state can answer those sorts of like, answer the social isolation question? It seems like your organization sees the church as a big answer to that problem. But it is interesting to compare. You know, what can the state or a government or a social worker offer and then what does the church offer that's unique?
- [04:57]
C
It's a phenomenal question. As a, as a foster parent, I've have experience in both worlds of being a foster parent, but also being a host parent within crisis child hosting. And one of the reasons actually I wanted to see a child hosting ministry started in central Ohio was because of my experience within foster care and One of the burdens that I had within the system, there were, there was many, but one of them was that I feel like the foster care system does a pretty woefully inadequate job of helping to build the relationship between the bio parents and foster parents. And yeah, anyone that's worth their salt would understand and realize that if that relationship is going well, that that placement is actually going to be a lot better for all parties involved, including the kids. And so based upon that and then many other things, I don't think that the government or the state has the solution for social isolation. We also know that in God's word that he places the lonely in families. This is at the heart of what he wants his church, the bride, to be, is to wrap around those that are on the margins, that are isolated, the poor, the vulnerable, the orphan, the widow. And so I think the church is uniquely postured to be able to meet this need in ways that the government or state cannot do. I mean, I think we believe the strongest resource that churches have to offer is the community. And when that community can wrap around socially isolated families, we see God go to work in some pretty significant ways.
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B
I know in other organizations we've talked to people not having a community around them for a variety of reasons, they moved away or they, you know, they were came out of foster care or adoption or crisis things themselves in their own life growing up. But they don't have this big network of family and friends to rely on. And so it is really neat that you're offering. I mean the church is a family. That's kind of the Christian idea like you're saying Phil is. The church is a family that crosses culture, ethnicity, state lines, biology, you know, and it's this big eclectic thing which is really neat. In your vision statement for Upstream Collaborative, it says you want family preservation ministries to be gospel focused, church driven, professionally supported, financially healthy, networked and collaborative. Melody, can you talk a little bit more about professionally supported and sort of the network collaborative piece of your organization?
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A
When we were getting started, we heard lots of stats about non profits kind of starting up and failing quickly and experiencing mission drift and all kinds of things like that. And so we found a few other like minded organizations and there were four of us. We jokingly called ourselves the F4 and we started working together and helping write policies and procedures, manuals and man, if, if one person had a, a great link to an insurance agent, we shared that freely. If we found the right nonprofit lawyer or someone who could build a website, we just, we were collaborating Together really well. We felt like it was stewarding our time really well. And iron sharpens, iron building something better than we could have built if we were just existing in a vacuum. And over time we started to feel this commissioning others would reach out to us and say, you know, we want to start what you guys are doing. And we, and we just started to have less and less bandwidth to say yes to, to kind of coming alongside each person that asked. And so we decided we really wanted to create a collaborative organization where everybody's a learner and everybody's a teacher. And so we can kind of not each have to reinvent the wheel, but bring our own giftings and talents and help serve the other organizations. And so the networked and collaborative piece is exactly what it sounds like. We have a shared resource bank where if we find a great book or podcast or article, we can share those. But also if we make a make a great item of paperwork like here's 10 ways to get dads engaged in your in the work you're doing. Or this is the intake paperwork we use when we're hosting kids overnight, or here's the state law in Ohio for how to do such and such. So lots and lots of resources have been gathered there. We hop on calls together once a month and we have a national convention or not convention conference that we have in February, this coming up, coming in February. And so all in all of those ways we're networking, collaborating, sharing ideas with one another just helped the organizations to grow really strong. And then as far as being professionally supported, we have developed a bench of what we call upstream coaches that can offer three to six month nonprofit coaching for the members of the collaboration that is completely donor backed. And so it's minimal to zero cost for them to sign up for that. And those coaches can walk them through things like marketing ideas, fundraising strategy, you know, communications, all kinds of things that could help your organization grow, including and even up to launching a new chapter. If somebody were to come in and say, or a new organization come in and say, hey, we want to get this started and you know, Lynchburg, Virginia then we could help them do that and walk them through from A to Z how to do it. So really we want to be excellent in what we do. We think it is important enough vision that we don't want to just be out here kind of fumbling around trying to figure it out. And so if we can help each other do that. I know I've learned as much from the other organizations in the collaborative way more than I'VE ever been able to teach others. And so there's a real blessing in that. We really love for the families we serve and for ourselves. We really love the verse that talks about two are better than one, for there's good return for their labor.
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B
Yeah, that's good. I worked for another nonprofit that had sort of a bunch of little chapters all across schools and states. And you would feel sometimes a little bit of that competition when it came to donors, when it came to our kids going to go to this, this one mine. Are they going to go to yours? Are we going to get enough volunteers at ours or are they going to go to yours? And so it is neat to hear that you're very intentionally sharing resources. Sharing. Well, not necessarily that you're sharing donors, but your donors are actually supporting then multiple different organizations, which is really neat. Yeah. And Phil, if you have anything to add to that, feel free. But I also just want to hear about your four branches. Either of you could take this, but the four branches that you have listed on your website that are upstream are Pro Life ministries and pregnancy centers for 1, 2 fatherhood initiatives 3. Mentorship and discipleship. 4. Crisis child hosting, which you talked about a little bit. Can you say more about some of those other branches?
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C
Yeah, I could walk through the other three. So we are really excited about being able to grow in these three other areas. Our genesis story really is rooted and founded in the child crisis hosting space. And so and we, we identified these three other branches pretty early on, but have not gained a lot of traction until recently. We're really excited that we've been able to hire a professional that oversees each one of those branches that we think is going to again, bring a level of excellence to each one of those areas. But in the Pro Life space, one thing we've started to do here locally in Columbus, Ohio, with our family preservation ministry called My Village is we have historically partnered with pregnancy resource centers that are identifying moms that can't, that don't have any family or friends to care for their kids while they deliver and recover. And so we saw that there was an opportunity to use the word again to go upstream from that, to support these moms and families even earlier than that. And so one of the leading factors that leads to moms entertaining the idea of abortion is when they are isolated and again, feeling overwhelmed. And so we have worked very closely with these pregnancy centers to say when you identify that mom in that family, that says, I think I want to choose life, but I don't know how I'M going to do it because I feel overwhelmed and alone. They are then pointing them to us and then at that point we are rallying churches to wrap around them to make sure that they're confident in their yes, all the way up to birth and then postpartum. And so again, there's these teams that are wrapping around them, supporting them in material ways, but also most importantly, relational ways, again, all the way up through birth and then postpartum formally. And so there's a unique model that we have there that we've been able to really leverage through some other significant organizations like Care Net, like Heartbeat International, Save the Storks, some pretty big ball players in the Pro Life space. All that to say we're really excited to leverage what is happening there within Upstream collaborative and to be able to help affiliate a model or help other communities that want to launch something like this for the church to actually, I think, finally be engaged in some pretty relational ways where they historically have not in the Pro Life space. One of the things we did early on with this is we asked a lot of local pregnancy resource centers and some of these bigger ballplayers in the Pro Life space, what does church engagement historically look like in the Pro Life space and time and time again, you always heard these as the top three diapers, wipes and money, and that those are all good things. I'm not to knock those things, but we all know that the Lord doesn't use a diaper to change someone's life. He uses relationships. And we are really excited to be able to, I think, mobilize the church in ways that it never has before to wrap around these families that are wanting to choose life and for there to be confidence in their yes, not just during pregnancy, but after. And so that's something that's really unique that's happening in the Pro Life space. But again, we want to gather a lot of organizations that are doing some really phenomenal work in the Pro Life space for them to learn from each other, to collaborate well and for families to be preserved in that way. Then we got the Fatherhood initiative. I think we're all aware of that tragedy that we're seeing in America today with fatherlessness. And so we've got someone again leading that charge. He's got some really exciting ideas that I think are going to help bring a collaborative effort to this space that we have not seen yet. And so there's going to be a lot more information and ideas to come within that within upshift dream. So I can't speak to much of that yet, quite yet. But obviously we know the need behind fatherlessness and so really excited about that. And then finally the mentoring and discipleship space. There's a lot of, I think good national organizations out there. We don't believe that there's a lot that are gospel focused and church driven. And so we're really excited to figure out how we can again collaborate well and to begin to empower the church to think of how they can do that in those and their local communities.
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B
That's great. Melody, do you have anything to add?
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Yeah, yeah, I was just going to add, I think one thing that's really exciting is beyond kind of gathering players in all four branches of the stream. Our goal is that we would in every city see all four branches work together collaboratively. And so that we believe that'll have a drastic impact on families in those cities when we see a fatherhood organization, a pregnancy center, a pro life movement crisis, child hosting and then mentorship or discipleship taking place in a city. Studies show that somewhere between 70 and 76% of the kids in the foster care system are there for preventable reasons like neglect due to the impact of poverty. And poverty is not a reason that families should be separated. In fact, it's having a drastic impact on those families once they are separated. So once a kid is in the foster care system, they have less than a 50% chance of ever being reunified. If they're 12 or older, there's a 91% chance they're going to age out of the system without ever finding a family. And then those, the kids who are aging out of the system. In Ohio it's a thousand every year. In Virginia it's somewhere between 7 and 800. Every state has their own stat, but those kids make up 50% of our homeless population, 60% of our prisons and 80% of death row because of that breaking apart of the family structure that God designed them to have and that social construct of having a family. I have a 19 year old son myself and I know that he's not ready to just be out there being an adult by himself with no, no support, no advice. And so that breaking apart of the family is leading to really most of the downstream impacts we see in our society. Most societal issues are coming from that breaking apart of the family. And so if we could see all four branches of the of the stream working together in unison. And we started to see between 70 and 76% of those kids in the foster care system never entering it and not only never entering it, but their families receiving the community of support from a local church or close friend groups. Even if they never set foot inside of a church, that community coming out to them and meeting their needs practically we believe it could actually have a massive impact on society wide issues. And so it feels like this, it feels like this really big and lofty goal and maybe, maybe I have rose colored glasses on. But man, we've got to try for it. If we're, if the research is showing us we can logically tie together the prevention of families being broken apart from people being on death row. Like we've got to try and we've got to get as many people to line the banks of the stream and keep families from falling in it that we can. And so we're pretty passionate about that. Each, each stream strong on its own. But then on a local level all four working together really well.
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B
Yeah, it really is impossible to separate any societal issue from other issues. Whether it goes it's the one right before it or it's interconnected. And we talk a lot about that at them before us. Obviously our listeners know we talk about fatherlessness particularly around marriage. Like a child has a mother and a father. When those two people are united to each other through marriage and they raise those children, that child has the best outcomes. But then there's so many things you could have married parents where one goes on kind of has a permanent disability and can't work and now they're in poverty and you know, a lot of divorces are because of money issues. The parents, someone gets pregnant and mom and dad never get married. But that, you know, the young man's never been taught this is what it looks like to be a father, this is what it looks like to be a husband. And this is, you do need to go take some responsibility for what's going on. So it is cool to see in your streams it's kind of like, well what comes first that'll really, that's the hard thing. It's you really need everything simultaneously firing to try and catch like I love the stream analogy. We're on these, the banks of this stream and different people with different gifts father, you know, people who are great fathers and men who hey, I want to disciple young men are reaching in there to snag young men and people who you know, can do diapers, wipes and mentorship for young moms and they're going to give her rights to the doctor are reaching into the stream to snag young pregnant women and mentorship and all those things. So that's super cool. What has it been like for you, you guys, in pursuing churches with this? You know, sometimes Christians get the bad rap of, like, you only care about babies before they're born. And yeah, Christians are pro life, but they don't care about all these topics. I've found, especially I've interviewed so many organizations. I think Christians very much want to help, but maybe we feel like, especially when you go to a huge church, they're like, we have a million ministries we're supposed to be doing. We're overwhelmed by what we should be doing. We don't know how to do it. What's it like? Let's say someone is listening and they're like, I want my church to be involved. What would kind of their next steps be? Or what would that look like as they approach their leadership?
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C
Well, I can specifically speak to that in central Ohio. It's hard for me to speak to it on a national scale because every organization is different. But we are uncompromising on this. With my village ministries, again, the local iteration of what we do, we want whole church engagement, not individual volunteerism. And so we've drawn a really hard line in the sand on what that looks like and the reasons behind that. And so if someone is. Someone comes to us individually saying, I'd love to be engaged. We're like, sweet, praise the Lord for that. But we covet to have your whole church engaged. Can we have a conversation with your church leadership as to what that looks like and the reason behind that? And so we have 30 church partners locally here within what it is we do with child hosting. 29 out of 30 of those came to us not by way of a church leader that reached out to us or us making cold calls to churches. But it was someone in that church that said, I'm interested. What can I do? What you know? And then at that point, we follow that lead to the church leaders. And so that really is the, at least locally, I think the best way to get plugged into what it is that we're doing. And I would exhort all family preservation ministries to think about what whole church engagement looks like within what it is that you're doing. Because Melody hit on this really well. Ultimately, we see that one of the greatest crisis within whatever crisis that they're facing is social isolation. And so we don't want to put that burden on one individual or one family. We think a church can and should own that. And when they do, we're seeing some pretty significant things taking place.
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A
Yeah, that's great.
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B
Melody, can you tell us a little bit about your conference you mentioned in February? And then is that something just general people, if they want to hear more about it, can come to, or is it more that people who run different organizations would come to it?
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A
Yeah, so that's a great question. Our conference is coming up February 4th to 6th in Deerfield Beach, Florida. We put it in February in Florida because we know people want to be warm and we want to be warm. So just selfishly planned it there. Got a hotel right on the beach there and Embassy Suites. Very nice place to escape from Ohio. I know some of some of your listeners probably live somewhere fairly nice the rest of the year. But yeah, we have a really unique conference where we have this focus on the coaching and equipping of those who come to the conference, but also on envisioning and launching them back into what they're doing. We've heard the criticism that a lot of collaboratives kind of get together and talk and then don't do anything. And so we intentionally have this session at the end of conference where last year we called it called to act like here's what we're going to do to go home and act on what we've learned here. And to answer your question, anybody can come to it whether you're a member or not. You do get a discount if you're a member, 20% off. But we really reserve membership for organizations that are like minded and committed to the movement because we're sharing resources so freely with one another, including our own paperworks that different organizations have developed. We really want to make sure there's buy in before somebody is a member organization. But you do not have to be a member to come to the conference. We're going to have really solid breakout blocks for three main topic areas for those who come. One is understanding trauma and the impact that it has on the families that we serve. And really doing that from an expert at an expert level. Most of the people who come have some understanding of what it means to be trauma informed, but we want to further equip them to do that.
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B
Well.
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A
Another one is poverty and the impact of poverty. We really love the Chalmers center, the research that they've put together and we'll have Chalmers center representatives there to teach on that. And then a third is soul care. How do we keep serving over the long term, taking care of our own souls and having those the healthy boundaries that we need. Also being willing to be interrupted and inconvenienced and say yes to what God asks us to. And if we burn out quickly, we won't be able to serve for a long time. So we want to make sure we're equipping people in those ways. The name of the conference is unshakable. The gates of hell will not prevail. If your listeners are believers, they have probably heard that verse from the Bible that says the gates of hell will not prevail against God's church. And so we want to equip them well to be on mission and to be in the battle that God has called us to. And so the conference really has that focus. It's a great collaborative time. We actually offer one on one or team coaching while you're there as well. And so, so you can sign up ahead for that coaching or you can, if we have open slots, you can sign up while you're there. And that is just money because you, you don't just have to talk about general things like you hear in a breakout session. You can actually say, hey, our team is really struggling with this dynamic and we need some help with it. And a coach will sit with you and work through that until you reach the other side. They'll prepare well for the time with you down there at conference. And so I don't know if I'm missing anything, feel free to jump in. But we're pretty excited about it. This is our third conference. We're young organization, it's fairly small, so get in at the ground level while it's still super personal. And yeah, we think it's a great equipping conference. No matter how you're serving families from all across the streams, come and be part of it for sure.
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B
Yeah, that's great. Well, in our just final few seconds, where can people find you guys and how can they kind of sign up or see about becoming a member and get involved?
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A
Yeah. So at our website, www.inststreamcollab.org, there's links to sign up for the conference. There's a link to schedule a call with me or one of our other staff members to talk through becoming a member. We don't have kind of like a click and you're a member option because we vet those who join the or the collaborative. But there's lots you can learn on there. We're on Instagram and Facebook as well and we're always putting out articles, talking points promoting the other organizations that are members. Just really trying to increase engagement from the church with this movement for family preservation. So I'm happy to share my email. It's melody. Upstreamcollab.org if anyone wants to reach out and hear more, I love to talk to them.
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B
Awesome. All right, we'll put those links in our show notes as well. Phil and Melody, thanks so much for all the work you're doing with Upstream Collaborative and for joining us today.
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A
Yeah, thanks so much, Jen. It was a pleasure.
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C
Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it.