Conversations with Child Welfare Wonk Founder & President Zach Laris, spotlighting the people, ideas, and tensions shaping child and family policy. <br/><br/><a href="https://www.childwelfarewonk.com?utm_medium=podcast">www.childwelfarewonk.com</a>
WonkCast: People Power Policy
Claim This Podcastby Zach Laris, Founder & President, Child Welfare Wonk
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33 episodes
Updated Daily
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Podcast Overview
Conversations with Child Welfare Wonk Founder & President Zach Laris, spotlighting the people, ideas, and tensions shaping child and family policy. <br/><br/><a href="https://www.childwelfarewonk.com?utm_medium=podcast">www.childwelfarewonk.com</a>
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Publishing Since
10/29/2025
1 verified contact email on file for WonkCast: People Power Policy
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Recent Episodes
June 24, 2026
WonkCast #32: Why Custody for Care Continues
<p>Episode # 32: Oklahoma Child Welfare Director Michael Williams</p><p>Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy.</p><p>Five percent of children entering foster care nationally do so not from abuse or neglect, but because <a target="_blank" href="https://www.childwelfarewonk.com/i/194029653/mental-healths-shadow-ticket-when-the-cost-of-care-is-custody">it’s the only way to unlock Medicaid financing for behavioral health care</a>.</p><p>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.</p><p>It also captures key tensions constraining child welfare leaders:</p><p>* What’s the appropriate role of data in decision-making, especially when it inherently collapses complexity?</p><p>* Where’s the boundary line between insufficient accountability controls and ineffective process theater?</p><p>* How can states upgrade their partnerships with the federal government amid simultaneously declining investment and rising expectations?</p><p>Today’s guest makes decisions shaped by these constraints every day.</p><p>Michael Williams currently serves as Oklahoma’s Child Welfare Director, and previously was Deputy Commissioner of Operations for Connecticut’s child welfare agency.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://www.childwelfarewonk.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">www.childwelfarewonk.com</a>
June 17, 2026
WonkCast #31: What Keeps Popular Ideas from Becoming Policy?
<p>Episode # 31: Michelle Feit</p><p>Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy.</p><p>There is often a significant gap between the way issues poll with the general public and how they move through policy-making institutions.</p><p>That often gets vaguely characterized as “political will”, obscuring its origins.</p><p>Child and family policy has many high-salience issues that are popular in general and encounter friction in moving through the legislative process.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://nationalpartnership.org/member/feit-michelle/">Michelle Feit</a> is the Director of Congressional Relations for Economic Justice at the National Partnership for Women and Families, where she leads paid leave campaigns.</p><p>She previously worked on the Hill for Representative Jackie Speier and Senator Barbara Mikulski.</p><p>We talked about how unified government constrains coalitions, the tension between state and national policy development, and how family policy moves through Congress.</p><p>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.</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://www.childwelfarewonk.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">www.childwelfarewonk.com</a>
June 10, 2026
WonkCast #30: The Wrong Pockets Problem
<p>Episode # 30: Erinn Kelley-Siel</p><p>Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy.</p><p>Our laws and funding task the same agency with removing children from families when there’s a safety risk, and helping those same families avoid crisis and heal.</p><p>Today’s guest says that asking one agency to hold both is a fundamental problem.</p><p>Erinn Kelley-Siel Spent over thirteen years in public service leadership in the state of Oregon, including four as Director of the Oregon Department of Human Services.</p><p>In 2016 she joined <a target="_blank" href="https://friendsofthechildren.org">Friends of the Children</a>, serving as Chief Officer of Strategy & Innovation to scale a long-term professional mentorship model for children who have experienced multiple Adverse Childhood Experiences before kindergarten.</p><p>She reframes that safety and support tension into shared partnership, with government leading on safety and community supporting families through durable relationships.</p><p>We talked about how this tension shapes the way leaders make decisions, and how the wrong pockets problem complicates sustainable financing.</p><p>These fundamental questions of accountability, governance, and funding are essential for anyone interested in shaping what comes next.</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://www.childwelfarewonk.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">www.childwelfarewonk.com</a>
33 total episodes available
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