Episode 6 - Creating Safe Nurturing Environments that Engage Learners and Foster Thriving and Robust Learning - Revised August 26
Updated: Aug 26
The chart includes hyperlinks to podcasts and English and Spanish Transcripts. Biographies of the presenters and reference materials may be found on this page
Making Supports and Opportunities Fit—and Work—for Young People |
Hacer que los apoyos y las oportunidades se adapten a los jóvenes—y funcionen para ellos |
Episode 6: Making Supports and Opportunities Fit—and Work—for Young People
Episode 6 brings together thirteen conversations about how schools, families, communities, and child-serving systems can organize supports around the strengths and needs of young people. The conversations move from understanding individual needs to building coherent systems of relationships, shared responsibility, equity, and opportunity.
# | Podcast Title (as a hyperlink) | Presenter | Short Description | Transcripts (as a hyperlink) |
Intro | David Osher | An introduction to Episode 6 and its central question: How can we organize supports and opportunities around the individual strengths, needs, relationships, and contexts of young people rather than asking young people to navigate fragmented systems? | ||
A
| Rey Saldaña | Rey Saldaña reflects on the importance of caring adults who remain present in young people’s lives, build trust, and provide the relationships and support that help young people stay engaged and thrive. | ||
B
| Rey Saldaña | Moving beyond individual relationships, this conversation explores how trust and caring relationships can become part of a broader schoolwide strategy for supporting young people. | ||
C | CatherineBradshaw & John Lochman | Bradshaw and Lochman explore why behavior must be understood in relation to children’s development, relationships, environments, and circumstances—and why effective support begins with understanding what lies beneath and around behavior. | ||
D | CatherineBradshaw & John Lochman | Evidence-based interventions are not simply inserted into schools unchanged. This conversation examines the importance of adapting approaches to the young people, communities, and contexts in which they are implemented. | ||
E | Eric Bruns | Eric Bruns introduces Wraparound, an approach that organizes individualized support around one young person and family while bringing together the people and systems needed to respond to complex needs. | ||
F | Eric Bruns | Effective individualized support depends on relationships and collaboration among the people surrounding a young person. This conversation explores the human system required to make coordinated care work. | ||
G | Eric Bruns | This conversation examines how coordinated, individualized systems of care can remain committed to young people with complex needs rather than allowing them to fall through gaps between programs and systems. | ||
H | S. Kwesi Rollins | Participation means more than inviting young people and families to the table. This conversation explores how their knowledge, perspectives, and lived experience can become genuine influence and shared power in decisions that affect them. | ||
I | CatherineBradshaw | Rather than continually adding programs, schools need systems in which different approaches work together. This conversation examines how schools can move from disconnected initiatives toward coherence. | ||
J | Jane Quinn | Jane Quinn describes the difference between a school filled with programs and partners—the “Christmas tree” school—and a genuinely coherent community school. She explains how needs and assets assessments, shared structures, community-school leadership, and alignment around student success can turn disconnected resources into an integrated strategy. | ||
K | Jane Quinn | Quinn explores what it takes to move from partners working alongside one another to becoming one team with shared responsibility for results. The conversation emphasizes the whole child, authentic family and student participation, community representation, shared data, joint problem-solving, and collective ownership. | ||
L | Jane Quinn | In the final conversation, Quinn connects community schools to equity, democracy, and the history of schools as centers of community life. She shows how needs and assets assessments, youth voice, family engagement, health, opportunity, and community knowledge can move from the margins to the core of schooling. |
Bios
Eric Bruns is a Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the University of Washington School of Medicine. Dr. Bruns's research focuses on public child-serving systems and how to maximize their positive effects on youth with behavioral health needs and their families. He co-directs the National Wraparound Initiative and the National Wraparound Implementation Center and directs the UW Wraparound Evaluation and Research Team. Dr. Bruns has led multiple federally funded research and intervention-development projects (NIMH, SAMHSA, CMS) to define and evaluate the impact of intensive care coordination models. He is also Associate Director of the UW SMART Center, where he leads the Center's Technical Assistance Core and directs its Institute for Education Sciences (IES)-funded Post-doctoral Research Training Program.
Catherine P. Bradshaw, Ph.D., M.Ed., is a university professor and the senior associate dean for research and is a faculty fellow with the University's vice president of research. She was previously an associate professor and the associate chair of the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her primary research interests focus on the development of aggressive behavior and school-based prevention of behavioral and mental health problems. Her research focuses on bullying and school climate; emotional and behavioral disorders; and the design, evaluation, and implementation of evidence-based prevention programs in schools. She has led more than 10 federally funded randomized trials of school-based prevention programs. She has published more than 335 peer-reviewed articles and chapters. She is currently the editor of the journal Prevention Science and senior associate editor for Social and Emotional Learning: Research, Practice, and Policy. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Education.
John E. Lochman, PhD.; ABPP, received his PhD from the University of Connecticut. Dr. Lochman is the Doddridge Saxon Chair of Clinical Psychology at The University of Alabama. He has primary research interests in examining the short- and long-term effects of prevention programs provided to high-risk aggressive children, and treatment programs for youth with externalizing disorders. These school- and community-based programs (Anger Coping Program; Coping Power Program; Fast Track Program) use cognitive-behavioral, social problem-solving, and social-skill training approaches with children, and behavioral parent training with parents. Ongoing grant-funded multi-site prevention research projects are examining the components of interventions, the additive effects of universal and indicated (targeted) interventions, and comprehensive interventions designed to prevent conduct disorder, substance use, and delinquency. Dr. Lochman’s graduate teaching responsibilities include child psychotherapy and basic practicum supervision. Dr. Lochman serves on grant review committees at NIMH and at several private foundations. He is the editor of the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, is an associate editor for Behavior Therapy, and is on the editorial board for the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.
Rey Saldaña, MS, is the President and CEO of Communities In Schools® (CIS®), the national organization that surrounds students with a community of support, empowering them to stay in school and achieve in life. Saldaña is a CIS alumnus who served as the Regional Advocacy Director for the Raise Your Hand Texas Foundation and the Chair of the San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Agency-VIA. Before that, he served four terms on the San Antonio City Council, where he was first elected at age 24, becoming the youngest council member in the city's history. Saldaña holds a master's degree from Stanford University's Graduate School of Education. In 2023, Saldaña was awarded Stanford University's President's Award for the Advancement of the Common Good.
Kwesi Rollins, MSW, guides the Institute for Education Leadership's portfolio of programs designed to develop and support leaders with a particular emphasis on Family and Community Engagement, Early Childhood Education and Community-based Leadership Development. Kwesi directs the District Leaders Network on Family and Community Engagement and Leaders for Today and Tomorrow. He has years of experience working with local communities and state agencies to improve cross-sector collaboration and service delivery systems supporting children, youth and families. He has been recognized as the Big Brother of the Year in the District of Columbia. He holds an MSW degree from the University of Maryland at Baltimore School of Social Work.
Jane Quinn, Ph.D., is a social worker and youth worker with over five decades of professional experience, including direct service with children and families, program development, fundraising, grantmaking, research, and advocacy. From 2000 through 2018, she served as the Vice President for Community Schools at Children's Aid, where she directed the National Center for Community Schools. She was the principal author of the 1992 Carnegie study entitled A Matter of Time: Risk and Opportunity in the Nonschool Hours and the co-author of three books on community schools, including the 2023 volume entitled The Community Schools Revolution: Building Partnerships, Transforming Lives, Advancing Democracy. Jane has a master's in social work from the University of Chicago and a doctorate in urban education from the City University of New York.
References related to Episode 6
Bruns, E. J. (2008). The evidence base and wraparound. In E. J. Bruns & J. S. Walker (Eds.), The resource guide to wraparound. National Wraparound Initiative. https://nwi.pdx.edu/NWI-book/Chapters/Bruns-3.2-(research-base).pdf
Bryk, A. S., Sebring, P. B., Allensworth, E., Luppescu, S., & Easton, J. Q. (2010). Organizing schools for improvement: Lessons from Chicago. University of Chicago Press.
California Educator. (2021, October 12). The six pillars of community schools.
Chetty, R. (2025, December 15). New research proves personalized student supports improves academic performance and long-term earnings. Harvard Graduate School of Education. https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/news/25/12/new-research-proves-personalized-student-supports-improves-academic-performance
Communities In Schools. (n.d.). William Milliken. https://www.communitiesinschools.org/leadership/profile/william-milliken
Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, Rothenberg, W. A., Lansford, J. E., Godwin, J., Dodge, K. A., Copeland, W., Odgers, C., McMahon, R., & Goulter, N. (2022). Intergenerational effects of the Fast Track intervention on the home environment: A randomized control trial. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
Covello, L. (1958). The heart is the teacher. McGraw-Hill.
Covello, L. (1967). The social background of the Italo-American school child. Brill. (Republished 1972, Rowman & Littlefield.)
Delpit, L. (2006). Other people's children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. The New Press.
Dennis, K. W., Lourie, I. S., & Jordan, D. (n.d.). Everything is normal until proven otherwise: A book about wraparound services.
Fast Track Project. (n.d.). Fast Track Project. https://fasttrackproject.org
Goldman, B., & Gracie, J. (2025). When resources meet relationships: The returns to personalized supports for low-income students. Opportunity Insights. https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/CIS_FullPaper.pdf
Hobbs, N. (1982). The troubled and troubling child. Jossey-Bass.
Karoly, L. A., Kilburn, M. R., & Cannon, J. S. (2005). Proven benefits of early childhood interventions (Research Brief RB-9145). RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9145.html
Kendziora, K., Bruns, E. J., Osher, D., Pacchiano, D. M., & Mejia, B. X. (2001). Wraparound: Stories from the field. In Systems of care: Promising practices in children's mental health, 2001 series.
Learning Policy Institute. (2024). Key practices for community schools transformation.
Lochman, J. E., & Bradshaw, C. P. (Eds.). (2026). Cognitive behavioral interventions for children with aggressive behavior: Applying Coping Power in school and clinical settings. Routledge.
Maier, A., Daniel, J., Oakes, J., & Lam, L. (2017). Community schools as an effective school improvement strategy: A review of the evidence. Learning Policy Institute.
Milliken, B. (2022). The last dropout: A model for creating educational equity (Rev. ed.). Hay House.
Milliken, B. (n.d.). 5 Basics [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/XecU0DSsvZA
National Wraparound Initiative. (n.d.). Innovations Institute unveils PEARLS: A new model for parent peer support. https://nwi.pdx.edu/innovations-institute-unveils-pearls-a-new-model-for-parent-peer-support/
Rogers, J. S. (1998). Community schools: Lessons from the past and present. UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access.
VanDenBerg, J., Vermillion, J., Little, T., & [fourth author not identified]. (n.d.). "Whatever it takes": The evolution and enduring impact of wraparound. National Wraparound Initiative. https://nwi.pdx.edu/NWI-book/Chapters/VanDenBerg-1.3-(history-of-wraparound).pdf
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