Mindful Communities: Community-led approaches to preventing childhood maltreatment and promoting healing

Conference Theme: Community Empowerment

Session Description

This session introduces the Mindful Communities model, a liberatory, community-rooted framework for preventing childhood maltreatment and promoting early relational healing. It critiques current surveillance-based systems and offers transformative strategies rooted in dignity, equity, and family leadership. The Mindful Communities model centers four actionable pillars: Community-Based Wellness Hubs, Family Leadership Councils, Liberated Workforce Initiatives, and Policy Co-Design Pods.

This breakout session offers practical, replicable strategies for culturally grounded parent leadership models and peer support networks; trauma-informed classroom strategies and collaborative healing spaces shaped by family councils; Systemic Change using participatory budgeting, multidisciplinary governance models, and policy reforms that elevate lived experience over professional hierarchy.

Participants will explore real-world applications and leave with tools to integrate family and youth voices in prevention initiatives. Through storytelling, logic modeling, and a values-based implementation roadmap, this session will equip attendees to transform how communities respond to child well-being, moving from reactive systems to proactive, relational care.

Session Objectives

Participants will

1. Describe how traditional prevention frameworks can unintentionally reproduce family surveillance and mistrust.
2. Apply the Mindful Communities model to create culturally responsive prevention strategies.
3. Identify concrete tools (e.g., Family Leadership Councils, peer-led healing circles) for implementation at the community and school levels.
4. Explore policy and funding levers to sustain early intervention strategies outside crisis systems.

Presenter

Neerja Singh

Neerja Singh is a leader in children’s mental health, youth safety, and trauma-informed systems reform. With over 20 years of experience in government, nonprofit, and international sectors, Neerja currently serves as Area Manager for Children’s Mental Health in Hennepin County, Minnesota, where she leads initiatives focused on equity, system redesign, and community partnership.

She holds a PhD in Psychology, a Master of Social Work, and is a Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselor. As a 2023 Bush Fellow and graduate of the University of Minnesota’s Civic Engagement program, Neerja’s work is grounded in rehumanizing services and empowering communities to co-create solutions. Her leadership spans major projects including high-fidelity wraparound services, culturally responsive care models, and youth-centered safety planning. Neerja is also an adjunct faculty member, a passionate trainer, and a frequent speaker on topics related to child welfare, behavioral health, and immigrant family well-being. Her work honors the voices of youth and families and seeks to bridge systems with compassion and accountability.