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. 3d ago

    WonkCast #42: Sierra Burns on Why Policy Change is Just the Start

    Episode #42: Sierra Burns Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy. Turning an idea into an enacted policy takes years of infrastructure building, hard work, and well-timed luck. When something takes that much time and investment, it can feel like a culmination. By notching some big developments early in her advocacy career, today’s guest has learned that what feels like the peak is often actually just the end of the beginning. Sierra Burns has experienced a high-velocity advocacy trajectory, from successfully advocating to extend foster care in South Carolina, to being a guest of First Lady Melania Trump at the 2026 State of the Union address. We talked about what it takes to turn a policy from advocacy win into reality, what she’s learned from her advocacy for housing vouchers, and what it looks like to approach lived experience as a capability rather than an identity. As federal policymakers continue work on older youth policy, Sierra offers insights to inform current and future conversations, and to equip the next generation of advocates. 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. Sep 9

    WonkCast #41: The Risk of Exercising Judgment

    Episode #41: Mike Leach Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy. Public sector accountability can easily drift into process theater, rewarding caution over outcomes. Today’s guest ascribes this trend in child welfare to an institutional risk aversion that is as rational in the near-term as it is corrosive in the long-term. Mike Leach ran the South Carolina Department of Social Services underGovernor Henry McMaster, and held senior roles in Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services. Today, he’s the Chief External Engagement Officer at Think of Us. We talked about the key role agency leaders play in shaping the decision making environment within their institution, and why seemingly rational decisions to reduce risk can create far worse outcomes in aggregate. We also talked about litigation and consent decrees, and how he sees them as both a symptom of these challenges and an amplifier of them. This conversation illuminates some of the top impediments to visionary leadership for agency leaders, and some of the strategies that have surmounted them. At a moment when Congress is looking to update the older-youth focused Chafee program, it’s especially instructive for anyone looking for new approaches. 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. Sep 2

    WonkCast #40: Policy Design Can’t Construct Coalitions

    Episode #40: Vicki Shabo Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy. As we continue digging into paid leave, it’s a perfect encapsulation of a key question for child and family policy development; is policy design an overture to broker political compromise, or an instrument to memorialize one? Much policy and political debate assumes the former. If you look at the example of paid leave, there’s no shortage of punditry suggesting that the way to widen the tent of support is to channel your inner cattle auctioneer, offering various versions of your proposal that scale back who it covers or with how much until there’s support. Those are the kinds of strategies that are ready at hand when you see policy design as an invitation to compromise. Today’s guest instead presumes that political coalition formulation precedes policy design, treating it as a covenant that captures compromise. Vicki Shabo is a Senior Fellow at New America’s Better Life Lab, where she leads work on gender equity and paid leave and care policy and strategy. She has played a central role in shaping strategy related to paid leave at the national and state level, and the way media narratives portray caregiving. We talked about why moving too quickly to policy design ends up smuggling genuine disagreements over vision and values into the minutia of benefit mechanics. We also discussed how the durability of any policy often emerges from the way it changes people’s behavior over time. Regardless of your policy priorities and preferences, this underscores the central role of offering clear and contestable visions to advance any sustainable child and family policy. 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. Aug 26

    WonkCast #39: Paid Leave & the Infrastructure of Inevitability

    Episode #39: Dawn Huckelbridge Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy. It takes real capacity to turn even the most popular idea into a durable agenda for action. Paid leave encapsulates many of the friction points requiring that capacity to take an idea from popular concept to durable enacted framework. Most Americans can tell you that we’re among only a handful of developed countries without a national paid leave policy, even though the concept has widespread support. Where divergence emerges is on why. There are earnest debates over the best way to develop a policy and why, how to craft engaging messages about it, and the advocacy and political strategy to advance one. What is less debatable is that paid leave has moved from popular idea to credible policy. A national proposal came within a vote of enactment in 2021. 13 states and DC now have mandatory paid leave policies, and another ten have voluntary ones. Whenever you see policy acceleration of that kind, it’s worth looking beyond the individual efforts and organizations to the infrastructure making them possible. Today’s guest plays a pivotal role in building the capacity meant to make paid leave inevitable. Dawn Huckelbridge is the Founding Director of Paid Leave for All, a national campaign advocating for paid family and medical leave. We talked about what infrastructure was necessary to create prominence and momentum for the issue of paid leave, what went into that capacity building effort, and why. The takeaways go beyond paid leave itself to the designing, building, and stewardship of infrastructure for any big policy target, which will be beneficial for anyone who has led or funded an advocacy campaign, or wondered why their powerful policy idea keeps hitting resistance. 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. 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

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. 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

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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
    43
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Child Welfare Wonk
  • Show Website
    WonkCast: People Power Policy

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