Child Welfare Policy & Reform
The child welfare system
needs people who've lived inside it.
Jessie Sicley brings lived experience, independent policy research, and purpose-built tools to agencies strengthening their practice — and to biological families navigating a system that wasn't designed for them.
Systems analysis from the inside out · Policy research · Lived experience expertise · Aurora Safety Platform
About
Built from the inside out.
liveXperience was founded by Jessica (Jessie) Sicley — a systems analyst, policy researcher, and biological family advocate based in High Ridge, Missouri.
Jessie's expertise is not theoretical. She has personal experience navigating the child welfare system as a biological family member. That experience, combined with years of independent policy research and data analysis, forms the basis of everything liveXperience produces.
Her published analysis covers Missouri's child welfare system, adoption funding policy, domestic violence and employment, and the structural gaps that shape how families and agencies interact with the system. Her work translates data into policy insight — not as an outside observer, but as someone who understands what the gaps feel like from the ground.
liveXperience exists because the people closest to a system often have the clearest view of what needs to change — and because that knowledge is most valuable when it can be put to use.
01
Lived experience is a form of expertise, not just a story.
The policy analysis, the systems critique, the design choices behind Aurora — none of it came from a textbook. It came from navigating the child welfare system as a biological family member, combined with rigorous independent research.
02
Child welfare decisions must be documented, not predicted.
Every determination made about a child's safety deserves full documentation — not a risk score with no traceable logic, but a structured determination where every factor is recorded and any party can follow the exact reasoning.
03
Families navigating the system need informed advocates.
Biological families are often the least-equipped people in the room. liveXperience exists, in part, to close that gap — bringing the same policy rigor and systems knowledge to family advocacy that it brings to agency reform.
Services
What we offer.
Our analysis is plain-spoken and practical. We don't produce reports that sit on a shelf.
For agencies & system stakeholders
Policy and reform consulting grounded in primary research, systems analysis, and direct knowledge of how policy translates — or fails to translate — into practice.
- Agency leadership & directors — Policy review, practice alignment, and reform strategy
- Legal & compliance teams — Documentation standards, audit readiness, and defensibility
- Practitioners & frontline staff — Assessment framework support and practice consistency
- Advocacy organizations — Policy analysis, family-facing communication, and legislative briefing
For biological families navigating the system
The child welfare system is not designed to be easy to navigate. liveXperience offers direct support and consultation to biological families who need help understanding what is happening to them, what the documentation means, and what factors matter most.
What this looks like
This is not legal representation. This is someone who has been in the system, studied it carefully, and can help families understand where they stand, what their documentation says, and how to engage with the process more effectively.
Flagship Product
Aurora Safety Platform
Aurora is liveXperience's flagship product — a structured assessment workspace built for child welfare caseworkers in Missouri.
Aurora guides practitioners through all eight stages of a safety assessment, maps to Missouri's standardized child safety and protective capacity factors, and produces a complete, print-ready documentation package — including a form-filled CD-235 referral template.
Not AI. Not a black box.
Aurora is 100% rule-based and deterministic. Every factor documented. Every determination defensible. Every output traceable to a written rule — not a model's guess.
Assessment covers 8 stages
All data stays in your browser. No case notes or personally identifiable information are transmitted to or stored on any server.
Writing & Analysis
On the record.
Jessie's research and analysis is published openly. These articles don't frame the child welfare system as a monolith or a villain — they treat it as a complex system with real gaps, identifiable causes, and addressable problems.
Read on Medium →Missouri's Child Welfare System: A Policy Framework Without Practice
The Government Isn't "Cutting Adoption Funding" — It's Finally Prioritizing Prevention Over Family Separation
Understanding Child Welfare Reporting: Key Terms, Legal Status, and What the Data Actually Measures
Domestic Violence and Employment
Contact
Work with us.
Whether you're an agency looking for policy support, a family who needs someone in your corner, or an organization thinking through how reform actually happens — we want to hear from you.