The Proximity Process 14th Street Studios
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- Society & Culture
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This is a show about how child welfare transformation actually starts with personal transformation. Follow Matt Anderson, a former child welfare executive with 20 years of experience, as he goes deeper into his own process of becoming who he needs to be. Matt has conversations with creative disruptors who help us see how systems can harm and oppress people. Each episode is an invitation to go deeper into your own process of being in service of people rather than systems.
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Episode One Reboot: My Proximity Problem
We're doing something new! We decided to bring back episode one, which goes into a bit of my origin story! We've added a lot of new listeners over the past couple of months and I thought it would be a good idea to reintroduce myself and the inspiration for the show. And, quite honestly, it's helpful to take a pause from producing new episodes every week. We'll be back with a new episode next week. Episode one gets into some of my process and how I came to realize that I had a proximity p...
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From Agent to Advocate to Activist with Dr Jessica Pryce
I'm excited to bring you this week's conversation with Dr Jessica Pryce. Dr Pryce's new book, Broken: Transforming Child Protective Services, gave us a great backdrop to a wide-ranging conversation. At the beginning of the book, she lays out a framework or process of moving from being an agent of the child protection system to becoming an advocate and then activist. We talk about what these terms mean, the process of moving from one to the other, and how this has played out in Jessica's caree...
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My Journal: Am I Afraid to Address Racism Publicly
This episode is a follow up to the previous journal episode, Am I Biased? One of our ambitions with this show is to build community and engage the community in a conversation. So, the series of episodes about termination of parental rights led to some feedback that prompted the episode about my biases. And that episode prompted past guest Corey Best to send me a journal prompt that I used for this episode. I do have fears about addressing racism publicly, and I believe that I need to have con...
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Ask Me Anything with guest host Kathleen Creamer
I'm super excited to bring you the first ever (but not the last) Ask Me Anything episode. We put out a call for questions and you all came through. We received more questions than we could get to in one episode. We also asked the Proximity Podcast Club if someone wanted to guest host. Again, lots of interest but there could only be one host. Kathleen Creamer is a parent defense attorney but has a real talent for hosting. Maybe she'll have her own show soon. Kathleen curated your questions, an...
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My Journal: Am I Biased?
In this week's episode I start with the journal prompt, am I biased? This was prompted by some of the feedback to our most recent episodes on Termination of Parental Rights. I thought I would let you all into my process of how I try to approach feedback that is critical or raises questions about my intentions. Rather than defending anything that is being said on the show my hope is to ask myself some questions about what I can learn from the feedback. You'll have to listen to the episod...
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Termination of Parental Rights with Vivek Sankaran
This week's episode continues our series of conversations about Termination of Parent Rights. I wanted to talk to Vivek Sankaran because he has a unique depth of knowledge to bring to the thought experiment that we've been bringing to these episodes, which is to imagine what if TPR was no longer an option. Vivek directs the Child Advocacy Law Clinic and the Child Welfare Appellate Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School. We talked about TPR from the perspective of its morality, necess...
Customer Reviews
Hooked
I identify with Matt and Episode 1 of the proximity process and ready for episode 2.
Radical doesn’t mean right
Just because an idea is radical doesn’t make it inherently good. This podcast presets ideas without engaging other perspectives and without offering facts in support of claims. There is o question the foster care system is 100% failing kids and is getting worse every year but denying children the right to safety and permanency and ignoring the voices of adult adoptees that do not agree and do not echo these “radical” ideas is not the way to achieve meaningful change. Dismissing and refusing to discuss issues with anyone who doesn’t fully agree with Matt’s perspective is not the was to bring about meaningful change. Change needs to come by putting the focus back on the child in child welfare and to stop using kids lives as Guinea pigs for someone’s “radical” ideas.
Disappointing
This podcast advocates for extreme ideas without providing any peer reviewed data and evidence to support assertions or offering differing perspectives. One sided opinions are presented in a biased manner. That is not good a good approach for catalyzing discussion around child welfare reform.