WonkCast #24: When Policy Outruns Evidence

WonkCast #28: Innovating Amid Aversion to Risk

Episode # 28: Kristi Putnam Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy. It’s often the case that our policy patchwork asks families to fit programs [https://www.childwelfarewonk.com/i/197128530/from-the-founders-desk], rather than fitting programs to families. That fragmentation extends to how we hold public sector systems and leaders accountable, optimizing for avoidance of visible failure even at the cost of coherence. Today’s guest spends a lot of time thinking about and teaching principles for public sector leadership to promote policy innovation. Kristi Putnam has over 25 years of experience working on child and family policy across human Services, early childhood, health policy, and workforce development. Most recently, she was Secretary of the Arkansas Department of Human Services under Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders from January 2023 to July 2025. She also held leadership roles in the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, and the Florida Department of Children and Families. Today, she’s the Dean of the Human Flourishing Academy [https://humanflourishingacademy.us], which recruits, trains, and deploys professionals passionate about policy into public sector leadership. We talked about what blocks or unlocks policy innovation, how family policy systems consider and balance risk, and the tension between state responsibility and family autonomy. We also talked about how her thinking about policy innovation evolved after overseeing the first significant rollout of Medicaid work requirements in Arkansas. I walked away with a deeper understanding of how agency leaders reason under constraint, and I am sure you will too. 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 #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]