Arizona's Department of Child Safety spends close to $1.3 billion a year, most of it on investigation and intervention. Prevention receives a few million dollars of that total. Claire explains why that imbalance exists, how family resource centers connect families to support before a crisis develops, and why she believes prevention is also the fiscally responsible choice.

The conversation closes with a larger idea: a reunited States of America, where individual differences are treated as strength rather than division.

Nobody counts that man.

Carrie is the CEO of The Worker. She's also an Arizona native who spent 14 years of her childhood homeless, then 20 years in commercial real estate — receptionist to COO and partner. She's been on all sides of this issue. We talked about the gap between subsidized housing and market rent, why she thinks homelessness often creates addiction rather than the reverse, and her sister, who won't take a raise because it would cost her kids' medical coverage.

Some numbers: about 9,700 people counted homeless in Maricopa County in January, 53% sheltered. Families up 13% in a year. Arizona is short roughly 56,000 homes. It takes about $87,000 a year to afford the average-priced home here, and about 42% of households clear that.

The Worker: https://www.theworkeraz.org

This first episode is about education in Arizona. I sat down with Kyrstyn Paulat, Director of Early Learning and Education at Children's Action Alliance. She works on this every day, from prenatal-to-three and childcare to early literacy and how our schools get funded.

We talk about First Things First and why the earliest years matter most, what literacy coaching does for reading by fourth grade, what struggling families actually need, the complexities of the ESA debate and what's coming up in the next legislative session. Arizona ranks 47th in the country for education (comparing 4th grade literacy & math proficiency and graduation rates compared to other states), and Kyrstyn helps make sense of our situation.