Not long ago, I found myself sitting on a stage at the American Enterprise Institute talking about one of the hardest realities in child welfare: babies born into addiction. I came to that conversation with years of policy experience and agency leadership. But the story I told that day began somewhere else entirely—with two five-day-old newborn twins placed in my arms, already carrying the consequences of their parents’ addiction.
I’ve spent years working on the policy side of child welfare, but the story I shared that day came from a different place. It came from the exhaustion of feeding a fragile baby every hour through the night; it came from the sound of a newborn crying because she could not find comfort because of the drugs in her body; it came from the fear that a life so small could be overwhelmed by circumstances she did not choose;and it came from watching their brave mother fight her way through addiction, step by step, until she was ready to reclaim the life she wanted. My respect and love for their mother, Katherine, could fill a book.
Today those girls are thriving, and they have been reunited with their parents for a few years. Their story is a victorious story, one that people rarely see in the headlines.
Our story taught me something that continues to shape my thinking about child welfare: addiction is not always the root problem. More often, it’s a signal: one that points to pain, instability, trauma, and the need for real support systems around families.
And it forces policymakers to confront a difficult truth: the way our systems are currently structured often makes recovery harder, not easier.
When a parent is struggling with addiction while caring for a newborn or young child, survival becomes the daily goal. Attachment, stability, and healing are nearly impossible when someone is barely holding their life together. If policymakers want recovery to be successful, not just theoretically possible, they have to design systems that reflect the reality of addiction rather than the ideal of sobriety.
That means building real pathways for parents to choose something else.
During that AEI panel, I talked about three practical shifts policymakers should pursue:
- First, when a mother raises her hand and asks for help—even briefly—policymakers should have programs ready that support recovery during pregnancy and early parenting. Those moments of clarity matter, and the system should be ready to meet them.
- Second, when addiction has reached a point where parenting safely isn’t possible, policymakers should create structured, supportive separation that gives parents the time and stability they need to recover—not as punishment, but as a pathway.
- Third, policymakers should measure recovery not in paperwork or program completion, but in parental capacity: the ability to attach, regulate, provide, and sustain sobriety over time.
These ideas are not theoretical. They are already being tested in communities across the country.
The moderator, AEI’s Naomi Schaefer Riley, was intrigued by a program I mentioned that embodies many of these principles: Life House University in Louisiana. Life House is a residential recovery program that provides time, structure, accountability, and deep relational support for people seeking freedom from addiction. These are things that many centers fail to offer. I have seen how powerful their program is and the results speak for themselves as they are rapidly expanding.
Naomi was curious enough to see it for herself. She traveled to Louisiana, met with the people involved, and spent time learning about how the program works.
The result is a powerful article she recently published highlighting the model and the remarkable success it is achieving.
Her piece, “This Drug Rehabilitation Program Works—and It’s Free,” captures what happens when communities build programs around the real needs of people in recovery instead of forcing them into rigid bureaucratic pathways. Programs like Lifehouse remind us that recovery is possible—and that the design of our systems matters.
At FREOPP, these kinds of solutions are exactly what we are interested in elevating. Too often, conversations about child welfare stay stuck in critique without moving toward practical reform. But across the country, there are programs, policies, and community-driven models quietly producing better outcomes for children and families.
That is why I’m excited to soon launch a new initiative at FREOPP called the Center for Safe and Stable Futures. The Center will focus on identifying and advancing practical reforms that strengthen child protection systems while creating real pathways for families to stabilize and heal.
Our goal is simple: bring together policy, practice, and stories like this one to help states build systems that keep children safe, support parental recovery, and ensure that moments of crisis can become opportunities for stability and restoration.
The work ahead will require honest conversations, careful research, and collaboration across disciplines. But it also requires listening to the families who experience these systems and to the practitioners building better models on the ground.
Sometimes the most important policy insights begin with a story.
And sometimes those stories point us toward the solutions we’ve been waiting for.