WonkCast: People Power Policy

WonkCast #27: Where You Sit is Where You Stand

Episode # 27: JooYeun Chang Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy. Child and family policy is full of “everybody knows” problems. Individually rational decisions can create policy outcomes nobody argues for [https://www.childwelfarewonk.com/i/194029653/mental-healths-shadow-ticket-when-the-cost-of-care-is-custody], because knowing what to fix doesn’t mean knowing how to fix it. Even the most senior decision makers depend upon and work to shape other leaders’ decisions; laws, regulations, investments, service provision, advocacy, and more. Often the decisions we want other leaders to make can seem obvious to us. Not because they’re simple, but because we’re missing the constraints they’re under and the tensions they’re balancing. Where you sit is where you stand. Moving beyond that changes what we see, making a deeper kind of impact possible. JooYeun Chang has a uniquely cross-cutting perspective on what shapes leadership roles across the child and family policy sector because she’s held so many of them. She led at the federal level, running the Children’s Bureau and the Administration for Children and Families in the Obama and Biden Administrations, respectively. As a state leader she ran Michigan’s child welfare agency. She’s led across philanthropy, at Casey Family Programs, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and now as Managing Director at the Aviv Foundation. And her formation came out of advocacy at the Children’s Defense Fund, with the career shaping mentorship that comes from the inimitable MaryLee Allen. We sat down to talk about why financing is central to policy, how to understand what shapes decisions you care about influencing, and the future of child welfare policy. If you’ve wondered what it will take for our field to do something at the scale of the Family First Prevention Services Act again, this is for you. Bolder Horizon Fellowship Shoutout In addition to running Child Welfare Wonk, I also founded a child and family policy nonprofit called Bolder Horizon, focused on incubating what comes next. We just launched the engine of that work, a new Emerging Policy Leaders Fellowship. Child and family policy frameworks built for another era are failing to meet the crises of ours. Do you or someone you know have bold ideas about how to replace them? We’re accepting applications from now through May 25 to form our first cohort. Learn more at bolderhorizon.org/fellowships [http://bolderhorizon.org/fellowships]. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.childwelfarewonk.com [https://www.childwelfarewonk.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

WonkCast #26: Family Policy's Power Problem

Episode # 26: Elliot Haspel Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy. Child and family policy has a power problem. Why is it that issues that reach into the lives of all Americans are so often an afterthought? Families routinely say these issues really matter, without that translating into sustained political power and impact. When every family faces caregiving needs that can strain their finances and stability, you’d think policymakers would be relentlessly focused on refining solutions. It’s not that issues like child care and paid leave are simple. Far from it. They face significant, legitimate policy differences that require resolving. But that doesn’t happen. Counter-intuitively, issues that affect everyone can face the biggest obstacles to harnessing and leveraging power to shape policy decisions and outcomes. Today’s guest focuses his work on that paradox to prioritize policy for families. Elliot Haspe [https://elliothaspel.com/#about_anchor]l is a nationally recognized child and family policy expert specializing in child care, and a Senior Fellow at Capita, where he works in their Family Policy Lab [https://capita.org/family-policy-lab/]. He’s written multiple books on child care policy, including Raising a Nation: 10 Reasons Every American Has a Stake in Child Care for All and Crawling Behind: America’s Child Care Crisis and How to Fix It. He writes the excellent Family Frontier [https://familyfrontier.substack.com/] newsletter [https://familyfrontier.substack.com/], and contributes to the Wonk, including on child care and maltreatment prevention [https://www.childwelfarewonk.com/i/191111237/how-child-care-access-quietly-shapes-child-welfares-front-door], and domestic violence policy [https://www.childwelfarewonk.com/i/197128530/how-policy-compounds-the-harm-of-domestic-violence]. We talked about what prevents prioritization of family policy issues, how to build and sustain momentum to create change over time, and the deeper power of coalitions. Rather than easy answers or policy prescriptions, Elliot lays out what it looks like to build the power to make an issue un-ignorable, and what it takes to get there. Bolder Horizon Fellowship Shoutout In addition to running Child Welfare Wonk, I also founded a child and family policy nonprofit called Bolder Horizon, focused on incubating what comes next. We just launched the engine of that work, a new Emerging Policy Leaders Fellowship. Child and family policy frameworks built for another era are failing to meet the crises of ours. Do you or someone you know have bold ideas about how to replace them? We’re accepting applications from now through May 25 to form our first cohort. Learn more at bolderhorizon.org/fellowships [http://bolderhorizon.org/fellowships]. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.childwelfarewonk.com [https://www.childwelfarewonk.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

WonkCast #25 NE Child Welfare Commissioner Alyssa Bish

Episode # 25: Dr. Alyssa Bish Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy. Child welfare agency leaders naturally have to think in constraints and tradeoffs. Since 2023, Dr. Alyssa Bish [https://dhhs.ne.gov/Pages/Biography-CFS.aspx] has served as Director of the Division of Children and Family Services in the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. In that role she leads an agency at the intersection of big-picture vision on prevention and kinship care, and operational reality on financing and accountability. We talked about how state capacity is the critical factor determining whether federal policy changes like the Family First Prevention Services Act work as designed. We discussed the way well-intentioned efforts to encode process into policy can lead to bad outcomes with unclear accountability, like undermining kinship care. She also unpacked why Nebraska was a “quick yes” on ACF’s A Home For Every Child initiative, and how they shifted their approach on Social Security survivor benefits. Her insights offer actionable takeaways for anyone who cares about shaping current and future child and family policy. Bolder Horizon Fellowship Shoutout In addition to running Child Welfare Wonk, I also founded a child and family policy nonprofit called Bolder Horizon, focused on incubating what comes next. We just launched the engine of that work, a new Emerging Policy Leaders Fellowship. Child and family policy frameworks built for another era are failing to meet the crises of ours. Do you or someone you know have bold ideas about how to replace them? We’re accepting applications from now through May 25 to form our first cohort. Learn more at bolderhorizon.org/fellowships [http://bolderhorizon.org/fellowships]. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.childwelfarewonk.com [https://www.childwelfarewonk.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

WonkCast #24: When Policy Outruns Evidence

Episode # 24: Dr. Jill Duerr Berrick Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy. In child welfare, powerful narratives cite evidence to drive discussion of major issues. Evidence can add rigor and authority to arguments over how to craft policy. How we talk about policy can undermine the rigor and authority it rests upon. This isn’t an academic exercise; it underpins ongoing debates as varied as whether neglect is just poverty, and whether to abolish the child welfare system. To dig into that relationship between evidence and policy debate, I sat down with a leading researcher in this space, Dr. Jill Berrick [https://socialwelfare.berkeley.edu/people/jill-duerr-berrick]. She’s a Distinguished Professor and the Zellerbach Family Foundation Professor of Social Welfare at UC Berkeley. Her book The Impossible Imperative [https://www.amazon.com/IMPOSSIBLE-IMPERATIVE-BERRICK/dp/0190678143] brings to life the tensions and tradeoffs inherent in child welfare, from front-line work with families to the policy that shapes it. Our conversation unpacks where policy narratives drift from the evidence, how that changes what’s possible, and why it matters for what’s next in child and family policy. Sponsorship Shoutout Special thanks to Binti [https://binti.com] for their foundational sponsorship of WonkCast. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.childwelfarewonk.com [https://www.childwelfarewonk.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

WonkCast #23: Alex Adams 6 Months in at ACF

Episode # 23: ACF Assistant Secretary Alex Adams Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy. ACF Assistant Secretary Alex Adams has moved quickly in six months on the job. He’s rapidly advanced initiatives, reshaped oversight processes, and pushed on the edges of what’s permissible and possible in federal child welfare policy. Our conversation dug into the tradeoffs underneath his decisions, exploring how they’ve shaped his actual understanding and use of federal power across ACF’s: * Rollout of the A Home for Every Child initiative; * Incentives, and looming pressure, for states over Social Security survivor benefits; * Push to expand the reach of the Family First Prevention Services Act; and more. At the center of his strategy is a big bet that policy durability comes not from encoding it into regulation but making it too hard to unwind through buy-in. This is essential for understanding what the first six months signal for what’s ahead. Sponsorship Shoutout Special thanks to Binti [https://binti.com] for their foundational sponsorship of WonkCast. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.childwelfarewonk.com [https://www.childwelfarewonk.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]