WonkCast: People Power Policy

Zach Laris, Founder & President, Child Welfare Wonk
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Conversations with Child Welfare Wonk Founder & President Zach Laris, spotlighting the people, ideas, and tensions shaping child and family policy. www.childwelfarewonk.com

  1. Aug 12

    WonkCast #38: “It’s just loss”

    Episode # 38: C.A.S.E. Co-Founder & CEO Debbie Riley Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy. What does a system misunderstand when it treats all forms of loss as the same? Policy and practice are quick to label children as “complex” when they’ve had contact with the child welfare system. It’s worth asking ourselves how much of that complexity we’re creating when we connect them to a mental health system whose response to unique grief is often “it’s just loss.” Today’s guest has spent her career building an institution with scalable approaches to serving the foreseeable impact that child welfare involvement has on families. Debbie Riley is the Co-Founder and CEO of the Center for Adoption Support and Education, or C.A.S.E., an institution building the field of adoption competent mental health. We talked about the structural barriers and opportunities to coordinate mental health and child welfare systems, what role Medicaid can play, and how to design an understanding of ambiguous loss into how we serve children and families in the child welfare system. This is essential for anyone interested in creating the tactical roadmap from where you are to your future vision for how it could look different. 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

  2. Aug 5

    WonkCast #37: Zach Laris on Community InSite

    Episode # 37: Valerie Frost x Zach Laris Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy. For this week’s WonkCast, we’re mixing it up with a crossover conversation. Community In-Site host Valerie Frost invited me on her show to talk about a fundamental question our field has to grapple with; what do we mean by“prevention”? The term prevention is so pervasive that it can seem like everyone must agree on what matters in child welfare policy. That covers over that we don’t all mean the same thing when we say it. Our conversation began with a discussion of the Family First Prevention Services Act and my recent analysis, Family First, Light on Families. What emerged was an exploration of the way implementation and policy design challenges ultimately point to deeper questions of vision for future policy. This is a moment where there’s real opportunity to shape the future of child and family policy, but only by first surfacing contestable claims to the vision to do it. I really enjoyed the chance to sharpen my thinking by talking with Valerie, and I hope it does the same for you. 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

  3. Jul 29

    WonkCast #36: Aly Brodsky & Child-Centric Policy

    Episode # 36: Aly Rau Brodsky Our debates often focus on what the statute says, how the program works, or what the top line data suggest. What we measure typically emphasizes the experiences of adults. What gets lost is the fundamentally different way children experience the child welfare system; in time that passes more slowly, during disorienting experiences with strangers and disrupted family relationships. That surfaces an uncomfortable question; how would we design policy differently if we defined its success by the actual impact it has on the children experiencing it? This seemingly simple premise is an organizing principle across the work of today’s guest. Aly Rau Brodsky is a leader whose state and national safety net leadership changed what she sees as a serious policy idea. She’s currently the Executive Vice President And Chief Strategy Officer at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREEOPP). In that role she also founded and leads the Center for Safe and Stable Futures. Before that, she was Deputy Secretary of the Department of Children and Family Services and also Louisiana Works, where she oversaw the One Door to Work initiative. We talked about why she sees the administrative design of policy as being equally important to its architecture, how she thinks about child-centric development of policy, and the way clarity creates capacity to scale a policy vision. This one sharpened a lot of my thinking around the intersection of federal and state policy, and I know it will for yours too. 🎙️ We’re Hiring: WonkCast Production Assistants As we produce more conversations like this, we’re expanding the team behind the microphone. We’re looking for WonkCast Production Assistants to help transform conversations with the people shaping child and family policy into thoughtful, publish-ready episodes. If that sounds like your kind of work, we’d love to hear from you. Email maria@childwelfarewonk.com with a brief introduction and any relevant experience. 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

  4. Jul 22

    WonkCast #35: Dennis Blazey Wants You Talking About Bed Days

    Episode # 35: Dennis Blazey Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy. Financing is the foundation of policy reform. Today’s guest thinks our conversations about it need to get more entrepreneurial, starting with a focus on “bed days”. For 24 years, Dennis Blazey was the Budget & Fiscal Officer for the Office of Children and Family Services at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. He was integrated into the program office, developing and managing the budgets for Ohio’s child welfare, child care, social services, and adult protective services programs. Whether you’ve met him or not, his ideas have shaped your conversations about child welfare financing policy; from his central role shaping the Title IV-E waiver program to his impact on state and federal discussions since retiring in 2007. What stood out most is how his perspective on financing policy is fundamentally about visionary leadership. Rather than asking what federal funding allows, he urges state leaders to experiment based on their vision for impact, without waiting for permission to innovate. We talked about the limits of incentives, what he sees as the enemy of child welfare reform, and why the “bed day” is central to his prevention financing approach. If the uncertainty and fiscal pressures of this moment seem to be impeding your space to think creatively about deeper reform, you won’t want to miss this. 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

  5. Jul 15

    WonkCast #34: Financing Policy Pop Quiz

    Episode # 34: Don Winstead Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy. Have you ever wondered why states may balk at seemingly obvious opportunities to draw down federal funding? When Congress is so divided and polarized that renaming a post office is no small feat, it can feel like passing legislation is the biggest step. But in federal financing, what matters more than the size, scope, or ambition of legislative change is the gap between existing capacity and what’s possible under new authority. As one of the leading national thinkers on child welfare financing policy, today’s guest spends a lot of time exploring that gap. Don Winstead has over four decades of state and federal experience in health and human services policy, including as Deputy Secretary of the Florida Department of Children and Families, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Services Policy at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under George W. Bush. We discussed why a minor administrative change can shift spending as much as a landmark law, where our models for how financing changes incentives are inaccurate, and what the Title IV-E waivers can teach us about future child welfare financing reforms. If you want to understand what actually matters for determining whether a new policy changes practice and makes an impact, this conversation is for you. 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

    WonkCast #34: Financing Policy Pop Quiz

  6. Jul 8

    WonkCast #33: When Foster Care Unlocks Medicaid

    Episode # 33: Here Now Health Founder & CEO Michelle Turner Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy. Something we’ve been exploring across our work is the issue of custody for care. This is when children enter foster care not because of abuse or neglect, but because parents have no other way to access behavioral health services for their child. We’ve previously analyzed how seemingly unrelated and rational policy design decisions combine to make this inevitable, and heard from child welfare agency leaders about it. Today’s guest has a unique vantage point because she’s encountered this issue as a foster parent and as a telehealth company founder. Michelle Turner is the founder and CEO of Here Now Health, which provides virtual mental health services for children and young people who experienced foster care. We discussed the policy barriers that impede access, why there’s still so little collaboration across child health and child welfare policy, and how future health financing policy design could make the custody for care conundrum obsolete. This conversation surfaces new ways to start thinking about the future of mental health policy for anyone who works in children’s health or child welfare. 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

  7. Jun 24

    WonkCast #32: Why Custody for Care Continues

    Episode # 32: Oklahoma Child Welfare Director Michael Williams Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy. Five percent of children entering foster care nationally do so not from abuse or neglect, but because it’s the only way to unlock Medicaid financing for behavioral health care. Custody for care is not a quirk or conspiracy. Instead, that datapoint reflects the distortions of tacitly designing child welfare policy as a backstop system of last resort. It also captures key tensions constraining child welfare leaders: * What’s the appropriate role of data in decision-making, especially when it inherently collapses complexity? * Where’s the boundary line between insufficient accountability controls and ineffective process theater? * How can states upgrade their partnerships with the federal government amid simultaneously declining investment and rising expectations? Today’s guest makes decisions shaped by these constraints every day. Michael Williams currently serves as Oklahoma’s Child Welfare Director, and previously was Deputy Commissioner of Operations for Connecticut’s child welfare agency. We talked about why Oklahoma was the first state to join the Administration for Children and Families’ A Home for Every Child initiative, and why he takes the approach of data informing and influencing decisions, rather than driving them. If you wonder why a policy like custody for care persists when everyone involved decries its poor outcomes and clear cost inefficiency, this is a look behind the curtain. 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

  8. Jun 17

    WonkCast #31: What Keeps Popular Ideas from Becoming Policy?

    Episode # 31: Michelle Feit Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy. There is often a significant gap between the way issues poll with the general public and how they move through policy-making institutions. That often gets vaguely characterized as “political will”, obscuring its origins. Child and family policy has many high-salience issues that are popular in general and encounter friction in moving through the legislative process. The finite resource that matters is political capacity; the coalition power required to simultaneously align on a workable policy design and assemble the votes to move it. Paid leave is emblematic of this dynamic, and we’re going to be exploring perspectives from an array of thinkers grappling with those questions of coalition and policy strategy. Today’s guest has led advocacy campaigns on paid leave at every level of government, from a successful initiative in DC to a federal proposal that came quite close in 2021. Michelle Feit is the Director of Congressional Relations for Economic Justice at the National Partnership for Women and Families, where she leads paid leave campaigns. She previously worked on the Hill for Representative Jackie Speier and Senator Barbara Mikulski. We talked about how unified government constrains coalitions, the tension between state and national policy development, and how family policy moves through Congress. Amid cross-partisan deliberation over what comes next in child and family policy, this is a window into why popular ideas often struggle to become durable national policies. 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

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About

Conversations with Child Welfare Wonk Founder & President Zach Laris, spotlighting the people, ideas, and tensions shaping child and family policy. www.childwelfarewonk.com

Information

  • Creator
    Zach Laris, Founder & President, Child Welfare Wonk
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    39
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Child Welfare Wonk
  • Show Website
    WonkCast: People Power Policy

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