A Call To Be Change Makers

"Hope is not pretending it's not hard. Hope is clear-eyed about how unfair it can be and then driving on anyways."

With those words, Jared Brown captured both the reality and promise of child welfare work. Speaking to supervisors from the Arkansas Division of Children and Family Services during their annual conference, he acknowledged the weight they carry every day and thanked them for taking on one of the most demanding jobs in public service.

He urged them to become change makers—leaders willing to rethink how child welfare works.

"The question I want us to sit with today is not, 'How do we run this system a little bit better?' The bigger question is, 'How do we change the water we've all been swimming in? How do we change the system we've all been living in?'"

Brown brings a unique perspective to child welfare. Before focusing on domestic child welfare, he spent a decade working in international child development across 28 of the world's poorest countries. He watched communities solve difficult problems with few government resources, relying instead on collaboration, innovation, and local leadership.

Today, Brown serves as EVP of Strategic Partnerships for For Others, a nonprofit dedicated to helping solve America's child welfare crisis through systems innovation, data, and community partnerships. His organization works alongside states across the country to improve outcomes for children and families by helping leaders better understand the complex systems that influence foster care, prevention, and family stability.

That broad experience has convinced him that lasting change doesn't happen through isolated programs or harder work alone. It happens when leaders are willing to rethink the way entire systems operate.

Brown acknowledged that child welfare professionals spend much of their time responding to immediate crises. Caseloads must be managed. Emergencies arise. Families need help now. But he encouraged supervisors to occasionally stop, lift their heads, and examine the larger system surrounding them.

"The better you are at your job," he explained, "the easier it becomes to keep your head down and simply keep doing it." Yet meaningful change begins when leaders ask a different question: "Is there a better way?"

Brown emphasized that improving outcomes for children requires more than refining policies. It requires examining the assumptions, beliefs, and relationships that shape the entire child welfare system.

He argued that today's human services system is still largely built on assumptions and funding structures established decades ago. He said that despite numerous policy changes, the underlying framework has remained largely unchanged over the past decades.

"The reason being a change maker is so important is it has eternal weight. The stakes are not just your quarterly reviews or your annual outputs and what you get from those outcomes. They are generational to communities, to your families, and the kids that carry all the things that we do or fail to do. It will carry on for generations," said Brown.

He said political division has no place in child welfare and must never prevent strong collaboration.

"A house divided can not stand. I am going to be blunt with you. I do not care about your political leanings or anyone's political leanings. People are suffering over political divide. Our house isn't standing. And the people that suffer are communities and families."

"We will never argue someone into our side. I actually think it really happens when we take a posture of serving and loving someone and pouring into them. Love people until their minds change. Serve first. When the minds have moved, policies and practices are going to follow."

Sua Sponte: Of Your Own Accord

Borrowed from the Army Rangers and popularized in Admiral William McRaven's leadership writing, the Latin phrase "Sua Sponte" encourages people to act without waiting for permission.

Brown shared the story of a young Navy SEAL who acted with honor and speed when a situation called for it. At a ceremony in Hawaii honoring retired Navy SEAL Philip “Moki” Martin, Martin approached the microphone in his wheelchair to address the crowd. But the microphone had been positioned too high, and people could not hear him.

Before anyone else could respond, a young Navy SEAL standing in formation at the back of the room stepped out, walked to Martin, saluted him, lowered the microphone, saluted him again and returned to his place in formation.

Afterward, retired Admiral William McRaven asked the young SEAL why he had broken formation to help. His answer: something needed to be done, and no one else was doing it. McRaven uses the story to illustrate Sue Sponte and the idea that leadership sometimes means taking responsibility for doing something without waiting to be asked.

"There's a plainer way to say the same thing: 'Do the thing you know needs to be done.' We don't wait for someone else to fix it. So what's this thing you already know or I already know or see that needs doing that you could own of your own accord today? This week?"

He spoke candidly about discovering that he often turned simple conversations with his wife into debates because he wanted to be right. Eventually, he realized that real leadership wasn't about winning arguments but about listening, serving, and loving people well.

That lesson, he said, applies just as much in organizations as it does in marriage. People rarely change because they lose an argument. They change because someone serves them with compassion.

Another powerful story came from Brown's years planting a church in Alabama. A mother asked whether her two sons could stay with Brown's family "for a couple of days." Those few days became an entire year.

Without formal training or resources, Brown and his church community helped the family pursue housing, education, employment, and stability while keeping the boys close to the people they knew and loved.

The experience reinforced his belief that communities often possess untapped capacity to support vulnerable families before they enter deeper crisis. The challenge is not always a lack of resources, but a lack of coordination that makes those resources difficult for families to find and access. By bringing people and organizations together around shared goals, he says, communities can build stronger systems of support that address needs earlier and help families move toward lasting stability.

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