New Opportunity: Wonk for Public Agencies

Whether you’re leading a child welfare agency or making it run, you know what it’s like to operate in a complex and highly scrutinized decision-making environment.

We hear all the time from leaders in child welfare agencies about how that work is now becoming even harder amid rising risk, uncertainty, and volatility in public policy.

We’ve been listening, and have created something to help you move through those challenges with confidence. It includes:

• Targeted briefings for leadership teams making and executing on key decisions;

• Strategy sessions to pressure-test upcoming high-stakes interactions with leaders and policymakers, to maximize the strength of your approach;

• Monthly conversations with other public sector leaders and the Wonk team;

• Agency access to our premium Wonk Briefing Room resources; and more.

If you’re interested in learning more, you can reach out here.

And no need to feel left out if your organization is not a public agency; we’ve still got you covered, too! Reach out here to learn more about our organizational partnerships.

From the Founder’s Desk

September is Child Welfare Workforce Development Month. These recognition months often get some generic platitudes and the occasional baked goods.

Maybe you get stoked to see a box of donuts in the break room, only to find they’re sad and stale because your colleagues have inexplicably cut them into quarters.

The vital workforce assuring child safety and promoting child and family wellbeing deserves better than a pat on the back and a yoga session at lunch break.

The child welfare workforce is a core component of state capacity and execution capability, but often unfairly assumed out of those relevant policy debates.

Here at the Wonk, we’re not going to give you stale donuts, deep breathing exercises, or a water bottle that will disintegrate in your dishwasher.

Instead, this month we have a series for you taking this workforce and its role in safety seriously, and exploring how policy can too.

Through a collaboration with the team at the Center for the Helping Professions, we’re digging into the deeper tensions and what they mean for your work.

Relatedly, last week’s WonkCast with Mike Leach explored the well-intentioned ways we design policies and institutions to reduce risk that paradoxically exacerbate it.

Let’s get into it.

Wonkatizer

The latest signals worth watching.

ACF Prevention Infrastructure Funding Drops

What Happened

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) has awarded $7.3 million in Title IV-E Prevention Accelerator Grants ranging from $600,000 to $750,000.

These funds target capacity to implement the Family First Prevention Services Act. This includes targeted direct service expansion and also approaches like claiming systems, referral pathways, data infrastructure, and provider capacity.

The funds are going to Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, and South Carolina.

Why it Matters

While these are relatively small awards, the framing of focus points to an ACF recognition of the need to deepen the state capacity for delivering prevention.

We’ve highlighted this dynamic before, and later this week premium Wonks will see more on it from Senior Contributor Laura Radel, building on her recent finding that expanding the Family First Clearinghouse barely budged the contents of state plans.

What to Watch

What role one-time awards like this can play in building sustainable infrastructure, and whether these projects surface strategies other states can use with new investments.

Weekly Wonk Deep Dive

The Oxygen Problem: What Workforce Conditions Reveal About the Limits of What We Can Ask

By Michael Cull, PhD, MSN

We have come to expect safe performance from systems we have allowed to become structurally depleted.

Child welfare agencies today operate under chronic vacancies and persistent frontline turnover.1

Documentation and administrative requirements consume substantially more of a caseworker’s time than contact with children and families.

Nearly half of caseworkers in the most recent nationally representative federal workforce survey reported at elevated levels.2

At the same time, public and political expectations for safety continue to rise. Those expectations are legitimate.

But each tragedy resets the standard on the same depleted system, widening the distance between what we ask of the workforce and what we provide it.

Workforce conditions cannot be separated from child safety. They shape whether agencies can deliver practices as designed, recognize emerging risks, exercise sound judgment, and act when it matters.

Staffing, workload, supervision, and organizational climate are not merely operating conditions. They are part of the system’s safety infrastructure.

September’s Child Welfare Workforce Month offers an opportunity to examine that connection more closely.

This piece opens a four-part series on what workforce conditions reveal about the capacity of child welfare systems—and why building safer ones requires more than asking individual workers to become more resilient.

Who Supplies the Oxygen?

The field has adopted a familiar metaphor for this problem, borrowed from the instruction to put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others.

Workers cannot give what they do not have, and so we remind them to attend to themselves first.

But it is worth considering what that metaphor actually describes, and where it diverges from the reality it’s meant to represent.

No passenger is expected to bring oxygen aboard, and none is asked to demonstrate the personal fortitude required to manage without it.

The mask is already installed, and it is released without anyone having to request it. The instruction was never about self-reliance.

Commercial airlines fly at around 35,000 feet, a height similar to the summit of Mt. Everest. If a cabin loses pressure, oxygen becomes essential.

But ensuring that oxygen is available is not the passenger’s responsibility; it is engineered into the system.

Child welfare adopted the reminder without designing for the standard and automatic provision.

Conditions in the field have been deteriorating for years, and the response has consisted largely of encouraging staff to manage their own depletion more skillfully: wellness programming, self-care messaging, and resilience training.

These supports can matter on the margin and with a solid foundation of support.

But when they are offered without corresponding attention to workload, staffing, supervision and organizational conditions, they risk treating endurance as a personal attribute than a function of how work is organized, supervised, and resourced.

No yoga pose, however well held, will fix an unsustainable caseload.

When we focus on building the resilience of individual professionals instead of building resilience into the system, we place responsibility back on those professionals.

We aren’t deploying their oxygen masks to match the situation, but asking them if they remembered to bring one from home, and maybe an extra to share.

Depletion is a Safety Condition

Workforce research offers some indication of what depletion looks like from the inside.

In the most recent nationally representative federal survey of child welfare agencies, supervisors identified job stress and worker burnout as the leading reasons staff had left their units—more often than compensation or workload.

Findings of this kind are typically categorized as human resources concerns: matters of retention or morale to be managed alongside the substantive work of the agency.

That interpretation misses the point.

Three decades of organizational research suggest these conditions are more accurately understood as indicators of system safety, with attendant implications for children and families.

Drawing on seven years of national longitudinal data, Glisson and Green (2011) found that maltreated youth served by systems with more engaged organizational climates had significantly better outcomes, and that climate shaped both the quantity and the quality of the casework services delivered.3

Williams and Glisson (2014) subsequently found that organizational culture and climate together explained the large majority of system-level variance in youth outcomes across a national sample.4

More recently, a statewide analysis of roughly 373,000 screened-in reports found that the odds of substantiation, case opening, and timely assessment all declined as caseworkers approached departure from the agency.5

Workforce conditions, in other words, are already shaping the decisions that determine which children are seen, which cases are opened, and how quickly.

They are measures of whether a system has the capacity to notice risk, exercise sound judgment, communicate concerns, and act when it matters most.

The research points to two consequences of sustained depletion that deserve more attention than they ordinarily receive.

What Depletion Breaks

First, workforce instability presents a problem of fidelity, not simply one of staffing.

Every practice model, assessment protocol, and evidence-informed intervention in this field assumes a trained, stable, and adequately supported workforce capable of delivering it as designed.

I have written previously about the limits of the evidence base for many of the outcomes child welfare is asked to produce, even under favorable conditions. Under chronic vacancy and turnover, that base grows thinner still.

When a family’s third caseworker in twelve months administers an assessment on which she was trained the previous month, the agency may no longer be delivering the intervention that was originally designed and evaluated.

The model may be the same on paper. The intervention reaching the family is not.

Depletion can erode even our better practices into ones we have never actually tested.

What Depletion Silences

The second consequence is that depletion undermines precisely those behaviors on which early identification of problems depends.

Caseworkers who are exhausted and carrying unmanageable caseloads may have less capacity to surface near misses, raise concerns about a case, or acknowledge their own uncertainty.

This is not a matter of commitment. Each of those actions requires available time and a reasonable expectation of a fair hearing. Depleted systems tend to supply neither.

That means the agency loses its peripheral vision at the moment it has the greatest need for it.

When a case does end badly, reviews often narrow to the actions of individual workers rather than the conditions surrounding them. The workforce learns again that candor is expensive. Fear finishes what depletion started.

Workforce Conditions As Safety Infrastructure

This is the paradox at the center of the field.

We continue to demand more from the system while underinvesting in the basic conditions people need enough of to do the work safely and well: time, support, and stability to make careful work possible.

Naming the tension is considerably easier than resolving it. Budgets are real, competing priorities are legitimate, and funding alone cannot create a stable workforce.

A productive start is reconsidering what we count as an investment in child safety.

Practice models, technology, and oversight structures are funded as safety infrastructure. Staffing levels, supervision quality, and manageable caseloads are treated as operating overhead— and are too often the first items reduced when resources contract.

That distinction is not well supported by what is known about how this work actually gets done. It persists because workforce conditions are difficult to point to, while a new tool or a new reporting requirement is more visible in the aftermath of a tragedy.

But visibility and safety are not the same thing. The choice before the field is sharper than our policy debates usually acknowledge.

We can continue to demand near-perfect safety from systems we have allowed to become depleted. Or we can treat the conditions of the work as inseparable from the safety of the children that work is meant to protect.

We cannot coherently do both.

For some time, we have tried to demand without providing the second. The strain has become visible in the only place it could: among the people we keep asking to hold the whole thing together.

If we are serious about safer systems, the conditions that make safe performance possible have to become part of the safety strategy itself.

That’s it for this week.

Stay sharp, Wonks.

~ Z

Partners Making Your Weekly Wonk Possible

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.

Welcome to the latest Weekly Wonk, and we hope you had a relaxing holiday weekend.

First, some brief Wonk news. Today we’re launching something new and exclusive for public-sector agencies.

Leaders within child welfare agencies have long faced a complex and highly scrutinized decision-making environment.

What has changed is the rising risk, uncertainty, and volatility in public policy.

We’re offering public-sector partners strategic insights and resources to navigate it confidently. Interested public agencies can reach out here to learn more.

Not a public agency but looking to benefit from what Wonk offers? We’ve still got you covered too; reach out here to learn more about our organizational partnerships.

Now back to your regularly scheduled Weekly Wonk programming.

In May, the U.S. House unanimously approved the bipartisan Fostering the Future Act (H.R. 7432), to update the older youth-focused Chafee Program.

While the bill would not materially change the financial picture of Chafee, it would make broadly supported changes to how its funds and programming target housing, education, and workforce preparation.

These reforms look increasingly likely to pass this year; the question is whether Congress will find funding to accompany them.

As policymakers work their way through updates to the Chafee program, we have a new Deep Dive for you that looks at the services states select, and why that matters.

On our most recent WonkCast, I sat down with paid leave policy expert Vicki Shabo to talk about paid leave, policy design, and coalition development.

Let’s get into it.

Wonkatizer

New ASPE Brief on Title IV-E’s Declining Eligibility

What Happened

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) has a new brief on a key child welfare financing trend.

The brief looks at the Title IV-E foster care program, finding that eligibility rates continue to decline, even as the cost of determining eligibility keeps rising.

Why it Matters

This tracks with what Laura Radel has recently written for us about declining federal match rates for the program, and elevates the issue of deeper financing reform.

In addition to its cost, the brief also raises questions about state compliance with the eligibility determination process.

What to Watch

Administration for Children and Families Assistant Secretary Alex Adams and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Cody Inman co-authored the report with ASPE.

Since briefs like this tend to precede ACF action, and the brief itself notes that prior presidential budget requests have floated finance reforms, it would be worthwhile to presume the administration will lay down a marker on finance reform.

Trump Admin’s Draft Proposal on Stay-At-Home-Care

What Happened

The Trump Administration has a draft proposal to offer married, stay-at-home parents access to funding through the Child Care Development Block Grant.

Why it Matters

This specific proposal, coming right before the midterms and framed narrowly for married parents, arrives as a politically inflected Rorschach test.

Child care policy wonk Elliot Haspel has noted the proposal would likely contradict the plain language of the law, meaning only Congress could make such a change anyway.

The draft has also drawn pushback from conservative child and family policy thinkers like Patrick T. Brown (whose Family Matters newsletter is worth reading), for not adding any new funding, thereby creating more competition for fixed funds.

What to Watch

While this reported effort to use CCDBG funds to support parental care looks legally and fiscally constrained, it’s surfacing a deeper cross-partisan policy discussion on expanded options for parents, which Elliott touched on in his WonkCast appearance.

Beyond this proposed rule, it’s worth watching the broader underlying debate, and whether further ideas for supporting families financially garner bipartisan support.

Weekly Wonk Deep Dive

Chafee’s State-by-State Service Divide

National data on how many youth receive various independent living services mask substantial variation among states in what forms of assistance are emphasized.

By Laura Radel, Senior Contributor

The John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for Successful Transition to Adulthood — usually referred to as the Chafee Program, or by its former title, Independent Living — is the primary source of federal funding for services that help older youth prepare for life after foster care.

The program distributes $143 million to states by formula. But it gives states broad discretion over how to spend their share, producing strikingly different Chafee programs across the country.

With limited funding and a wide range of allowable services, states must decide what to emphasize: education, housing, financial assistance, classroom-based life-skills training, or some combination thereof.

Where a young person lives can shape not only which services are available to them, but what kind of transition support the state’s program is built to provide for them.

Data from the National Youth in Transition Database (NYTD) make those differences visible. States report how many eligible youth receive services across 14 categories.

The national totals suggest a program without a dominant focus.

The state-level data tell a different story that matters for national policy deliberations: many states have made clear — and sharply divergent — choices about where to concentrate their limited Chafee resources.

THE NATIONAL PICTURE

Nationally, no single type of Chafee service dominates. In 2023,the most recent year available, the share of eligible youth receiving the 14 reported services ranged from 12 to 44 percent, as shown in Table 1.

Independent Living Needs Assessment, Academic Support, and Budget and Financial Management reached the largest shares of youth.

Supervised Independent Living and various forms of financial assistance, such as Room and Board and Educational generally reached fewer.

This partly reflects cost, as direct housing and financial assistance are typically more expensive per youth than assessments, academic support, or the range of classroom-based skills classes.

But that lack of focus nationally masks the choices states are making. For each service category except Educational Financial Assistance, at least one state provided the service to over half of its eligible youth.

There is also at least one state that reported providing the service to no youth at all.

The national picture therefore looks more balanced than many state programs actually are. Beneath the averages are states concentrating their limited resources on very different forms of transition support.

FIVE WAYS STATES USE CHAFEE

The state-level data reveal five broad approaches to using Chafee funds. The groups are based on the services reaching the largest shares of youth in each state.

Because assessments commonly accompany other services, they are not used to define the categories.

These profiles do not capture every feature of a state’s program. They show where states have chosen to concentrate their limited Chafee resources.

Education-Centered Programs

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia place the greatest emphasis on Academic Support. Some also provide classroom-based life-skills, mentoring, or financial assistance, but education remains the center of the service array.

States in this group:

• California

• Delaware

• District of Columbia

• Georgia

• Idaho

• Illinois

• Kentucky

• Minnesota

• Missouri

• Nebraska

• New Hampshire

• New York

• North Carolina

• Ohio

• South Carolina

• Washington

• Wyoming

Housing-centered Programs

10 states focus their Chafee funding on housing. These programs emphasize Supervised Independent Living, Room and Board Financial Assistance, and/or Housing Education and Home Management Services.

Some also provided academic other forms of financial assistance, but housing predominated.

States in this group:

• Arizona

• Connecticut

• Hawaii

• Maryland

• Michigan

• Mississippi

• Montana

• Rhode Island

• Tennessee

• West Virginia

Classroom-Based Programs

Eight states rely most heavily on classroom-based instruction, particularly Budget and Financial Management, Housing Education and Home Management, Health Education and Risk Prevention, and Family Support and Healthy Marriage Education services.

Some of these states provided other forms of educational support such as Career Preparation (also often a classroom-based endeavor) in addition to the classroom services that predominated.

States in this group:

• Colorado

• Indiana

• Louisiana

• Maine

• Massachusetts

• New Mexico

• Texas

• Wisconsin

General Financial Assistance Programs

Eight states concentrate their resources on financial assistance not tied specifically to housing or education. Some pair that assistance with extensive Academic Support.

States in this group:

• Alabama

• Alaska

• Nevada

• Oklahoma

• Oregon

• Utah

• Vermont

• Virginia

Broad-service Programs

Eight states spread their Chafee resources across a wide range of services rather than allowing any single type of service to dominate.

States in this group:

• Arkansas

• Florida

• Iowa

• Kansas

• New Jersey

• North Dakota

• Pennsylvania

• South Dakota

These program emphases are mapped in Figure 1.

WHAT DECISION MAKERS NEED TO KNOW

National figures provide broad-brush information about national service utilization but mask important differences in how states choose to provide services funded by the Chafee Program.

Broad federal rules establish what states may fund, but limited dollars force states to decide which needs to address and which youth to reach.

Those choices create a tradeoff between breadth and intensity.

Classroom-based services can likely reach more youth at a lower cost per person. Housing and direct financial assistance may provide more substantial help but generally reach fewer youth.

A state’s service profile therefore reflects not only what it considers important, but how it allocates scarce resources across competing needs.

The practical consequence is that where a youth lives makes a big difference in what transition services are available.

Youth in one state may encounter a program centered on education; a similarly situated youth elsewhere may receive housing assistance, financial support, or a broad menu of life-skills classes.

NYTD makes those differences visible, but it does not establish which strategy works best.

The data show what services states provide and how broadly they provide them—not their quality, intensity, or effect on youth outcomes. Future articles will address Chafee program outcomes and spending.

From the Wonk Briefing Room

The latest in premium Wonk intel is an analysis of three years of all approved state plans for prevention under the Family First Prevention Services Act.

The takeaway? Even as the clearinghouse expanded, the inventory of programs states have in their plans to draw down funding has barely budged.

That doesn’t just matter for conversations about revising Family First; it’s also instructive for thinking about the purpose and design of future financing policy.

Here’s an excerpt of what our premium community is talking about.

The Clearinghouse Expanded. State Prevention Plans Barely Budged.

Dozens of programs have become eligible for federal reimbursement since 2023. Most have gained little traction in state prevention plans.

BY LAURA RADEL, SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR

The Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse governs what services are eligible for financing through the Family First Prevention Services Act (Family First). Over the past three years, it has expanded the universe of programs it permits, but that has led to little change in what states have included in their Family First plans.

Since January 2023, the Clearinghouse has added dozens of programs, and 10 additional states have received approval for prevention plans.

Since those plans must list the services for which states will claim federal funds, that expansion provides a useful opportunity to examine whether more federal options have translated into more varied state choices.

This analysis compares state plans in 2023 and 2026. It finds that most new states selected programs already used elsewhere. States updating existing plans also favored familiar interventions, particularly those rated well-supported.

Programs added to the Clearinghouse in recent years rarely appeared in state plans. Notably, no new addition was adopted by more than one state.

These findings do not resolve why Family First implementation has been slow. But they clarify where the narrative on Family First implementation holds up and breaks down.

The number of programs eligible for federal reimbursement has grown substantially while the range of programs states are preparing to deliver has not. That narrows the search for the law’s real limits.

Read the full brief here

To read the full brief and access all our premium resources, join the Wonk Briefing Room. Individuals can sign up here, or get the team membership rate here.

Organizations interested in going even deeper can reach out to learn more about our partnerships for public and private organizations to integrate our intel in your strategy.

That’s it for this week.

Stay sharp, Wonks.

~ Z

Partners Making Your Weekly Wonk Possible

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.

Welcome to the latest Weekly Wonk.

As we examined last week, caregiving is interwoven throughout our lives and the economy, with outsized impact on families who may come into contact with the child welfare system.

Our exploration of paid leave policy last week included Rachel Anderson’s Deep Dive on the missing side of paid leave policy and my WonkCast conversation with Paid Leave For All Founding Director Dawn Huckelbridge on building policy advocacy infrastructure.

This week, we’re going further down the rabbit hole with a Deep Dive by first-time Wonk contributor Jason Kanter, on coordination of state paid leave programs.

Jason’s background included a staff role on the House Ways and Means Committee, where he played a key role in shaping paid leave policy proposals.

His piece looks at a question whose importance only grows in the absence of a federal paid leave policy, as states continue developing their own paid leave programs; how do you coordinate across those different state approaches?

Differing state approaches to paid leave have been a font of policy experimentation and innovation.

Those differences also create interstate complexities with implications for state leaders, employers, workers and their families, and anyone working on caregiving policy.

We’ve also got an excerpt from our latest premium brief unpacking what’s missing from debates about reforming family first when we misread bargains underpinning its origin.

Let’s get into it.

Weekly Wonk Deep Dive

The Next Frontier in Paid Leave Policy: State Coordination

By Jason Kanter

In 2021, Congressional Democrats led a budget reconciliation effort to create a national paid family and medical leave policy that ultimately did not advance.

Since then, the congressional debate around the issue has shifted.

This shift reflects a maturing state policy landscape that illustrates the core tension of state-by-state policy design: states acting in the absence of federal policy can create momentum for a federal framework, but that very action can also make a federal framework more challenging to enact when state designs diverge drastically.

Whether the federal government should create a national paid leave benefit remains a contested policy question.

Focusing on it exclusively misses another one that its resolution relies on. How can a growing number of state paid leave programs work together in a labor market that does not stop at state lines?

The Interstate Paid Leave Action Network (I-PLAN) Act, H.R. 3090, is one concrete congressional expression of that shift.

Bipartisan House Working Group on Paid Leave Co-Chairs Reps. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) and Stephanie Bice (R-OK) authored the bill, which is also included in the Working Group’s broader More Paid Leave for More Americans Act (H.R. 3089).

This effort has gained additional momentum with the recent introduction of a Senate companion by Senators John Boozman (R-AR) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), S. 5017.

The legislation is just one signal of a broader structural problem that has grown as more states enact paid leave programs: fragmentation without a coordinating framework.

PROBLEM: A STATE PATCHWORK

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have enacted paid leave programs. That state-by-state growth has generated momentum for the national conversation, and is increasingly its constraint.

While state programs are generally similar in purpose, each reflects different policy choices on core program elements, including eligibility, levels, and administration.

They also each have technical variation in terms, timing, and processes. While these differences vary in importance, each state’s aggregate of choices reflects a series of compromises and commitments that made its program possible.

At the same time, harmonization presents an opportunity to build something stronger from these experiences.

What began as a state innovation story is increasingly producing an interoperability constraint. For employers, particularly those operating in multiple states, the challenge is operational.

A uniform paid leave benefit becomes harder to administer when each state program operates under different rules, timelines, and standards.

Employers may offer robust, nationwide benefits, including in states without paid leave programs, yet still run into barriers aligning those benefits with state requirements.

For workers, the issue shows up as access friction. That matters most for workers whose employment spans multiple states, who hold multiple jobs, or who move to another state for work.

It also affects workers who have existing access to paid leave through their employers, as new state programs can add financial and administrative burdens and may reduce the benefits available to them.

That is where patchwork becomes a coordination problem that raises deeper questions about the pathway from state to national policy.

WHAT COORDINATION IS ACTUALLY TESTING

Coordination enters the conversation because the problem is no longer just state variation. It is interstate interaction.

Interstate interaction can involve many things:

• shared definitions;

• aligned claims processes;

• data-sharing standards;

• portability rules;

• employer-equivalency frameworks;

• interstate agreements;

• federal grants; or

• a convening entity with authority to help states work through technical conflicts.

The point is not that any one state version is inevitable. It is that once separate state systems begin interacting, some mechanism has to create interstate coordination.

There is historical precedent for this kind of problem. After state unemployment compensation laws were enacted, states developed interstate agreements to address workers with employment across state lines or those who moved for work.

One longstanding example is the 1938 Interstate Benefit Payment Plan, which remains in effect today.

Paid leave faces a similar question: how can separate state systems be made easier to navigate and understand?

In fact, Congressional report language enacted in FY26 and additional pieces included in the House Appropriations Committee’s Labor-HHS mark for FY27 recognizes challenges that varying state programs can create for workers, states, and employers, with a modest step to create a unified federal list of key policy terms and spend up to $1M convening states to discuss coordination.

TRADEOFFS: WHAT COORDINATION CAN’T DO

A coordination-centric model comes with limits. It does not instantly resolve underlying differences across state programs—and is not intended to.

Greater uniformity could come over time through collaboration, and it could offer a foundation for addressing challenges that no single state can solve alone.

Coordination could address practical pressure points, like harmonizing how states evaluate the equivalent value of employer-provided leave programs.

Yet some states may also resist coordination efforts they view as constraining their legitimate policy experimentation. But not engaging in that conversation ignores the potential for progress and success.

Effectiveness will also depend on participation.

Coordination mechanisms are as strong as the willingness of states and administrators to meaningfully engage, but there are early examples of collaboration on program integrity, technology, and data sharing. Incentives like federal grants can also help foster successful coordination.

LOOKING AHEAD

As more states enact paid leave programs, shared infrastructure has become harder to treat as a technical afterthought.

Access is no longer only about how to create a program. It is also about whether programs can work together when workers, employers, payroll systems, and family and medical needs intersect.

That does not necessarily make coordination the entire answer to the national paid leave debate. It makes coordination the next national implementation problem and design question created by state expansion.

Much of the paid leave debate is understandably focused on a prospective policy question, of whether and how to create new national benefits.

The outcome of that debate depends at least in part on whether the benefits already being built can function as a coherent system.

Wonkatizer

ACF Signal to States on Tightening Adoption Subsidies

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is signaling a push to curtail adoption subsidies for caregivers who have ceased caring for a child.

What Happened

On Friday, ACF sent a letter to states announcing updates to the child welfare policy manual related to adoption subsidies under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act.

The new guidance highlights existing authorities states can use to regularly renew or recertify agreements, to ensure adoptive parents are still actively caring for a child.

The move aims at reports of adoptive parents receiving subsidies despite permanently sending a child back to foster care or ceasing to care for them.

Why it Matters

We’ve previously covered how the Title IV-E foster care program has morphed from one financing foster care to one predominantly financing adoption subsidies.

That also inevitably brings new scrutiny to where those funds are going.

What to Watch

Guidance to states reminding them of an authority they already have does not on its own make for a decisive policy shift.

It’s worth watching whether there are further ACF moves that point to a changing posture toward oversight of adoption subsidies writ large, or efforts to make voluntary guidance like this more binding through mechanisms like inclusion in grant criteria.

From the Wonk Briefing Room

For this week’s premium brief, Doug Steiger examined the origins of Family First’s prevention policy design in the context of the bargain behind it.

We often misread policy when we look at it in the abstract.

Technical glitches and inartful drafting do happen.

But more often, what seems like a mistake or oversight is actually a heavily negotiated compromise upon which the rest of the policy depended for its survival.

The construction of legislation is where policy makes contact with power. Not just the vague power of well-resourced “interests”, but that of:

• The skeptical lawmaker is willing to listen if it can also fix an atypical edge case she heard about from a constituent;

• The trusted advocacy group willing to withhold essential support over a priority;

• The narrative setting media leader with an unusual connection to the topic; or

• The local nonprofit with outsized influence because they’re represented by a Member of Congress in an influential post on a key committee or in leadership.

When you have access to this kind of intel and insight, you’re able to understand and do more to shape what’s possible in policy. Without it, you’re in the dark.

To See What’s Next for Prevention, Look at the Bargain Behind Family First.

What the history of the prevention services in Family First tells us about the prospects for expanding or redesigning federal prevention financing.

BY DOUG STEIGER, SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR

The Family First Prevention Services Act (Family First) was a breakthrough in federal child welfare financing.

For the first time, states could claim open-ended Title IV-E funding for services intended to prevent children from entering foster care.

The first piece in this series examined how pairing prevention services with congregate care reform helped make that breakthrough politically and fiscally possible.

This piece looks more closely at the prevention side of the bargain.

As Child Welfare Wonk has widely covered, nearly eight years later, the results have been more limited than many anticipated.

States face a narrow menu of eligible services and a burdensome approval process, and federal spending remains modest.

It is tempting to treat those limitations as mere flaws to be fixed, but that would be a fundamental miscategorization.

Many of the core constraints that have made Family First difficult to use were the carefully negotiated compromises and design choices that made federal prevention funding politically credible and fiscally possible in the first place.

Changing those constraints therefore means reopening the foundational questions they originally answered:

• What’s the appropriate role for federal child welfare financing in preventing child welfare involvement?

• How should policymakers determine which services should such funding pay for?

• Who comprises a viable coalition of lawmakers sufficiently supportive to enact that change?

Our deliberations often treat these as technical questions of efficiency with obvious and correct answers. But they’re vision and governance questions that never stay constant, and which advance into policy only through debate, negotiation, and accommodation.

Many of what are often portrayed as technical drafting errors within Family First serve as a functional Rosetta Stone for understanding what it takes for policymakers to agree on expanded financing of services for families.

Read the full brief here

To read the full brief and access all our premium resources, join the Wonk Briefing Room. Individuals can sign up here, or get the team membership rate here.

Organizations interested in going even deeper can reach out to learn more about our partnerships that help you leverage and apply our intel in your strategy.

That’s it for this week.

Stay sharp, Wonks.

~ Z

Partners Making Your Weekly Wonk Possible

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.

Welcome back to your latest Weekly Wonk after last week’s summer break.

Caregiving is interwoven throughout our lives and the economy. All of us require it, and nearly all of us provide some amount of it.

These are issues that touch all families, and whose policy design can have an outsized impact on families who may come into contact with the child welfare system.

We’ve highlighted how child care access is related to child welfare, and how our fragmented policy systems struggle to see the complexity of families fully.

On the paid leave front, we’re continuing the topical exploration we kicked off earlier this year, with a Deep Dive from first-time Wonk contributor Rachel Hope Anderson.

Much of the paid leave policy conversation understandably focuses on what makes leave work well for families.

Rachel’s piece digs into the policy design dimensions that matter for employers operationalizing the policy, which matters for both buy-in and last-mile policy delivery.

It’s a valuable vantage point for anyone interested in why issues with broad support encounter structural barriers to enactment and implementation.

On our latest WonkCast, I talked with C.A.S.E. co-founder and CEO Debbie Riley about how policy misunderstands ambiguous loss, child welfare, and mental health.

This past Saturday marked the 30th anniversary of "ending welfare as we know it.”

Child welfare financing has been frozen in time ever since, one of many reasons we Wonks won’t let it go. Laura Radel’s latest premium analysis maps the impact by state.

Let’s get into it.

Weekly Wonk Deep Dive

The Missing Side of Paid Leave Policy

Paid leave policy has focused heavily on benefits for families. Its effects on employers—and the operational problems employers actually face—remain far less developed.

By Rachel Anderson

A key hurdle to securing paid family leave in the United States, despite the policy’s popularity and well-documented benefits, is its reach into two domains: family life and the workplace.

Paid leave supports families and children, but it also requires employers to manage workers’ absences.

Yet the employer side of paid leave policy remains less developed relative to the beneficiary side.

Employer concerns are often framed primarily as opposition to costs or workplace mandates, leaving practical questions involving staffing, continuity, compliance, and administrative capacity with less attention.

That is a missing piece of the paid leave debate, and an opening for policy innovation.

WHY BUSINESS OPPOSITION PERSISTS

Paid family leave offers value to employers by enhancing worker recruitment, retention, and job satisfaction.

Nevertheless, many business groups have declined to champion policies that would make paid family leave common across the workforce.

State chambers of commerce, restaurant and retail associations and other business federations routinely oppose legislation that guarantees paid family leave for private sector workers.

For these organizations, opposition reflects more than a weighing of the costs and benefits of paid leave. It also reflects a longstanding resistance to government intervention in the workplace more broadly.

An institutionalist lens helps explain why: for repeat players in policy debates, “the legacies of previous conflicts set parameters on current policy.”1 Opposing one policy effort may be partly about preventing the next one.

Smaller employers may have different considerations.

Public paid family leave programs could help them compete for talent with larger firms, but many have not yet championed these policies.

Recent research on the politics of small business owners suggests that accumulated regulatory burden has a measurable impact on their political posture.2

Their reluctance to endorse paid leave is therefore less about opposition to this particular policy than about the accumulation of compliance demands and legal risks created by various programs over time.

Business associations and small employers may arrive at the same position for different reasons.

The former often resist workplace regulation as an institutional priority; the latter may be responding to its cumulative operational burden.

WHAT EMPLOYERS ACTUALLY STRUGGLE WITH

Not all employers are alike, and many face problems related to paid family leave that the current policy debate does not fully address.

Organizations engaged in human services – social work, counseling – face the challenge of replacing workers who have a personal relationship with their clients.

Rural employers may struggle to find replacement staff at all. Health sector employers have a workforce with substantial licensing and credentialing requirements that make securing temporary staff operationally complex even when financially possible.

Organizations whose workforce consists disproportionately of individuals in caregiving roles and life-stages may experience higher-than-average leave-taking.

Educational institutions, health care organizations, and other human services providers may have more leave-takers in any given year than, for example, a trucking firm.

Small and mid-sized organizations also face compliance and implementation challenges. These employers typically operate with smaller, less specialized human resources departments.

Compliance with payroll and eligibility rules can be time-intensive or involve costly accounting and legal services. For small employers with remote workforces dispersed across several states, those complications can multiply.

These are not arguments against paid leave itself. They are operational problems created when workers take leave—and they vary considerably by employer, industry, and location.

WHAT THE CURRENT POLICY MENU MISSES

To date, paid leave policy proposals have sought to address employer concerns through several tools: employer tax credits, authorizing private insurers to issue family leave coverage, exemptions from payroll contributions or participation in state programs altogether.3

It’s a policy menu with multiple dishes but a few predominant flavors; voluntarism and exemption. Neither of these directly addresses employers’ core operational concerns about managing leave.

In some cases, the existing menu may exacerbate these problems.

Creating a private market for paid leave insurance, for example, places another set of tasks on small business owners’ plates: finding, vetting, and monitoring an insurance provider. The result is a mismatch.

Current policy proposals largely focus on whether employers must participate and how benefits are financed.

Employers may be more concerned with what happens after an employee takes leave: who performs the work, how continuity is maintained, and how the rules are administered.

BEYOND VOLUNTARISM AND EXEMPTIONS

There is an opportunity for policymakers to look beyond voluntarism and exemptions by considering how to build employers’ capacity to manage leave, rather than merely finance and administer it.

This might mean support for skilled staffing pools - a task potentially suited to unions, trade associations, or professional groups.

Grants to state nonprofit and small business incubators could help employers navigate accounting and tax requirements.

Policymakers could also consider whether workplaces with unusually high rates of leave-takers require additional or different support.

One approach might adapt the unemployment insurance system’s experience rating model in reverse, providing payroll tax credits to employers whose workforce uses parental leave at higher than average rates.

Those resources could support job-sharing, cross-training, or other practices that make employee absences easier to accommodate.

These approaches might come with trade-offs.

For example, some tools may be appropriate for several but not all components of the traditional paid leave bundle: parental, caregiving, and personal medical leave.

State capacity matters as well.

States that run their own paid family and medical leave programs need sufficient staffing and infrastructure to process claims quickly, administer rules consistently, and provide employers with the technical assistance needed to comply.

These ideas remain largely untested. But they shift the policy question from whether employers should be required to participate to what they need to make participation workable.

WHAT THIS CHANGES ABOUT THE DEBATE

Employer-sensitive policy design tends not to receive primary focus among those already convinced of the merits of paid leave.

That’s understandable as a strategy to avoid an emphasis on workplace burdens detracting from the business case for leave or distracting from the family values that drive the issue.

But taking employers’ operational challenges seriously does not require retreating from paid leave.

It may instead reveal why the existing policy debate has struggled to build broader business support.

Recent interest among progressive leaders in reducing regulatory burdens suggests there may be room for a different approach—one that pairs paid leave protections with greater attention to employers’ administrative and staffing capacity.

The employer side of paid leave is not simply a political obstacle to overcome. It is a set of policy-design problems that voluntarism and exemptions have not solved.

WHAT DECISION MAKERS NEED TO KNOW

There are active paid family and medical leave proposals in many state legislatures.

Congress may also shift into the role of prompting and coordinating state innovation.

Legislation such as the bipartisan More Paid Leave for More Americans Act (H.R. 3089/S. 5017) would direct competitive grants to states to establish public-private partnerships related to paid family and medical leave.

Were these grants to become available, policymakers could test new ideas such as enhancing states’ technical ability to deliver paid leave and novel approaches to supporting employer capacity to implement and accommodate leave.

Longstanding robust discussion has focused on designing paid leave policy to optimally serve families.

Employers also routinely face employees taking leave; an expanding focus on crafting policies that are equally attractive to firms and families would meaningfully change the paid leave policy debate.

Rachel Hope Anderson is a coalition-builder, facilitator, and policy advisor with a background in law as well as faith and community affairs. She is the Principal of Hope& Consulting.

From the Wonk Briefing Room

We recently explored how the echoes of 1996 remain with us in the transformation of the U.S. safety net created by the 1996 welfare reform law.

Our latest premium brief looks at another key structural tension from 1996; that lingering long shadow looming over child welfare financing known as the lookback.

Federal child welfare financing bases a key eligibility standard on a defunct program’s 1996 income test, with no inflation adjustment.

It’s a policy frozen in time, to when Tupac’s California Love was topping the charts and Independence Day was dominating theaters, before a combined release on VHS and DVD.

With each passing year, there’s a rising structural tension in how that shapes financing. Laura’s latest must-read analysis maps it and unpacks why it matters.

The Legacy of the Look-Back Date

From the day the “look-back” provision was inserted into federal child welfare law 30 years ago, it was clear that freezing income eligibility criteria without adjusting for inflation would undermine the foster care program.

However, as with so much in child welfare, states have been differentially impacted.

BY LAURA RADEL, SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR

30 years ago, Congress created the Title IV-E “look-back” provision as part of the last-minute compromise necessary to pass welfare reform.

This “look-back” provision permanently tied foster care income eligibility to state welfare rules from 1996. As inflation has eroded those income thresholds, fewer children qualify for federal reimbursement — driving down states’ effective federal match rates.

Those differences mean the look-back does more than reduce federal funding over time. It creates winners and losers among states based on policy choices made three decades ago in a program that no longer exists….

Read the full brief here

To read the full brief and access all our premium resources, join the Wonk Briefing Room. Individuals can sign up here, or get the team membership rate here.

Organizations interested in going even deeper can reach out to learn more about our partnerships that help you leverage and apply our intel in your strategy.

That’s it for this week.

Stay sharp, Wonks.

~ Z

Partners Making Your Weekly Wonk Possible

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.

Welcome to the latest Weekly Wonk.

Thirty years ago this month, then-President Clinton claimed “we are ending welfare as we know it” as he signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.

The president’s pen stroke punctuated a period of significant safety net policy debate and experimentation, replacing the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

TANF represented a bipartisan consensus shift on the fundamental purpose of the safety net, which policymakers redesigned to prioritize connection to the labor force.

Changes to cash assistance, child care, and more aimed at effecting a vision of the safety net as a mechanism for promoting family stability and economic mobility through work.

That has meant a shift away from direct economic assistance, which today is about a fifth of the total $37.5 billion in annual federal and state TANF spending.

Thirty years later, the unignorable structural tensions encoded in that bipartisan compromise created cross-partisan convergence on the need for a new approach.

TANF rests upon workforce participation rate metrics that create downward pressure on caseloads, and broad spending categories.

The program has seen high-profile misuses of funding. Total unspent funding equals 60 percent of its annual federal allocation.

The debate typically centers on policy design, administrative mechanics, and oversight. Those matter, but they flow from resolution of claims on competing visions for purpose.

As we enter this milestone year for the current safety net, Wonk pieces from leaders and thinkers across the ideological spectrum will highlight what they see as the core tensions and tradeoffs that matter.

Kicking us off is a Deep Dive from Clarence Carter, who currently serves as Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Human Services and oversaw the TANF program for the first Trump Administration.

His piece focuses on the importance of starting from the question of the safety net’s purpose.

We’re actively sourcing more views like this from leaders across the political and policy spectrum; if you’re interested in offering yours, drop us a line.

We’ve also got a new premium brief on what the overlooked origin of Family First means for your strategy, and a signal of looming changes to what that law funds.

Also worth watching; the Senate approved a bipartisan funding deal through December 11th. That would punt a funding fight, pending House action.

Let’s get into it.

Weekly Wonk Deep Dive

Thirty Years Later, TANF's Next Generation Should Begin with a Different Question

Thirty years after welfare reform, the central challenge is no longer how we administer public assistance, but whether we have clearly defined what the safety net is ultimately intended to achieve.

By Clarence H. Carter, Commissioner of Tennessee Department of Human Services

Thirty years ago, the creation of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program marked one of the most significant shifts in American social policy.

The reforms of 1996 established enduring principles that remain important today: work matters, public assistance should be temporary, families should be strengthened, and states should have the flexibility to innovate.

Those reforms answered important questions for their time. But after three decades of experience, it is becoming clear that one fundamental question remains unresolved:

What is the purpose of the American safety net?

DEFINING SUCCESS

In my view, the safety net should exist to reduce economic, social, and developmental vulnerability while creating pathways for individuals and families to move beyond public support.

The objective is not simply to administer benefits successfully. It is to promote greater stability, stronger families, increased opportunity, and ultimately the freedom for people to act in their own best interest.

That distinction matters because it changes what we measure.

Too often we evaluate programs based on outputs rather than outcomes. We measure eligibility determinations, participation rates, compliance, and transactions.

Those measures tell us whether a program is operating. They do not necessarily tell us whether families are better off. The next generation of reform should ask different questions:

• Are families becoming more stable?

• Are children more likely to thrive?

• Are parents moving toward sustainable employment?

• Are communities becoming stronger because public supports are working together rather than independently?

These questions are harder to answer than whether benefits were delivered or requirements enforced.

But they are closer to what the safety net is ultimately intended to accomplish.

BEYOND MORE GOVERNMENT OR LESS

For years, our national debate has centered on whether government should provide more support or less. That framing often divides people into familiar camps before the more fundamental conversation begins.

Yet after working in human services at the federal, state, and local levels, I have become convinced that it is the wrong place to start.

Americans care deeply about families experiencing hardship. That is not a partisan value. It is part of who we are.

We demonstrate that commitment through substantial public investment and through thousands of organizations, communities, and individuals committed to help others.

The question is not whether we care enough. The question is not whether we spend enough.

It is whether the safety net is designed to translate that commitment into meaningful results.

TANF reshaped the framework of public assistance. It established expectations around work, created greater accountability, supported family strengthening, and empowered states to develop solutions suited to their citizens.

What it did not fully resolve was the overarching purpose of the safety net itself. If we cannot clearly define what success looks like, we should not be surprised when our programs struggle to produce it.

FLEXIBILITY AS A TOOL FOR LEARNING

That is why I continue to believe state flexibility is essential; not as an end in itself, but as a means of continuous learning.

State experimentation helped produce the 1996 reforms, but innovation should not be viewed as a single chapter in TANF’s history. It should become a continuing feature of how we public policy develops.

Flexibility also creates a challenge: states can use the same authority in very different ways, producing wide variation in access, spending, and outcomes.

Innovation therefore requires meaningful accountability, for how states use federal funds and also whether families are better off.

The federal government should continue establishing broad national objectives and measures of progress.

Within that framework, states should have the opportunity to test new approaches, evaluate results, share what works, and continue refining how we serve families.

The goal is not flexibility alone, but a system capable of learning from it.

ORGANIZING AROUND A COMMON PURPOSE

As we consider the next generation of TANF, we should resist reducing the debate to a choice between expanding or shrinking government.

That framing obscures a more fundamental question whether existing resources are organized around a common purpose.

Answering those questions also requires us to think differently about the structure of our safety net.

Today, public supports are distributed across more than one hundred federally authorized programs administered by numerous agencies and overseen by multiple congressional committees.

Together these programs represent an enormous public investment. Yet too often they often function independently, even when serving many of the same individuals and families.

Families do not experience their lives one program at a time.

Employment affects housing. Housing affects child well-being. Family relationships influence workforce participation. Physical and behavioral health affect economic opportunity. Human lives are interconnected.

Our public systems should be organized around that reality.

That is why I continue to believe state flexibility is essential—not as an end in itself, but as a means of continuous learning.

Do our policies strengthen families? Do they reduce vulnerability? Do they expand opportunity? Do they create pathways toward independence and flourishing?

These questions do not eliminate ideological differences. They clarify what those differences are—and focus the debate on what public assistance is intended to accomplish, not simply how large it should be.

WHAT DECISION MAKERS NEED TO KNOW

Thirty years after welfare reform, the next TANF debate should begin by defining what the safety net is intended to accomplish.

That means looking beyond the size of government— and beyond whether programs successfully administer benefits— to ask whether families are becoming more stable, children are thriving, and parents are moving toward sustainable employment, and reducing their need for public supports.

TANF also leaves policymakers with a central structural tension: states need flexibility to test different approaches, but that flexibility must operate within a framework capable of measuring results and learning from variation.

The next generation of reform will therefore require more than new policies or administrative changes.

It will require clearer national objectives, meaningful accountability, and a shared understanding of what success looks like.

THIRTY YEARS LATER, A DIFFERENT QUESTION

Thirty years ago, welfare reform challenged the nation to rethink how assistance was delivered. The next generation of reform should begin one step earlier: by defining what the safety net is designed to achieve.

That answer will not eliminate political disagreement or make the policy choices simple.

But it will give policymakers a clearer basis for deciding what to measure, how to hold programs accountable, and where state flexibility can produce meaningful learning.

Once we answer that question together, the policy choices before us become much clearer.

From the Wonk Briefing Room

Before the ink signing Family First into law was even dry, conversations shifted from the possibilities it represented to the limitations it encoded.

That’s typical with a new law.

At the same time, the narrative around the law hyper-focused on its prevention components. What talk remained of congregate care reform mostly focused on how hard it would be to operationalize.

As our latest premium brief makes clear, a myopic memory of family-first origin story is warping our field’s understanding of how to craft and advance major policy reform.

How Congregate Care Reform Helped Make Family First Possible

BY DOUG STEIGER, SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR

Family First is often remembered as a prevention services law. That shorthand obscures how the legislation became politically and financially possible.

Congregate care reform did more than generate savings to help pay for prevention.

It brought Republican leadership, offered a response to concerns about poor outcomes and high costs, and gave skeptical lawmakers a system reform to support alongside new federal spending.

Prevention and congregate care appealed to different political interests. Together, they created a bill that could move. That is the more useful Family First lesson.

Major federal child welfare legislation is rarely about one policy. Each of us often misremembers it that way because we remember the one policy that specifically brought us through the door.

Family First became possible because congregate care reform and prevention services brought different priorities, constituencies, and fiscal effects into the same package.

Looking back at that combination is useful because no comparable coalition has yet emerged.

Read the full brief here

Be on the lookout for the forthcoming companion piece on a different way to understand seeming contradictions in the prevention parts of Family First, and why it matters for your strategy.

To read the full brief and access all our premium resources, join the Wonk Briefing Room. Individuals can sign up here, or get the team membership rate here.

Organizations interested in going even deeper can reach out to learn more about our partnerships that help you leverage and apply our intel in your strategy.

Wonkatizer

Who Wins When the Statute and Handbook Argue?

What Happened

On July 31, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) published a brief questioning a key element of Family First implementation.

The brief argues that the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse handbook, which drives its approach to evaluating programs, is more restrictive than the Family First statute requires.

Why it Matters

The brief’s core argument is that the handbook is a form of policy guidance that is more restrictive than the law requires. That matters as a signal of policy making to come.

While it’s possible to read this as a technical evidence brief, it’s part of a larger pattern of analysis like this serving as the evidence that forthcoming policy announcements reference. The brief gestures of this in discussing potential revisions or replacement.

What to Watch

The question isn’t whether ACF revisits the handbook, but when. It’s worth being ready when that foreseeable shift happens soon.

That’s it for this week.

Stay sharp, Wonks.

~ Z

Partners Making Your Weekly Wonk Possible

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.

Welcome to the latest Weekly Wonk.

Over the past two weeks, our Deep Dives have looked at patterns in discretionary grants at the Children’s Bureau.

Laura Radel’s analyses so far looked at how those grants shifted over three years, and the way grant awards are increasingly piling up to the final weeks of the fiscal year.

Rounding out the series, this week’s Deep Dive looks at their geography.

Given the Trump Administration’s shift toward centralized political oversight of funding decisions, a reasonable question has been whether these discretionary grants are shifting in ways that map to political geography.

Laura’s analysis digs into that question over the most recent three years for which there are data, with some surprising takeaways.

In addition to patterns for federal funding, we’re also always on the lookout for the deeper patterns across the intel we analyze for you.

Our newest premium resource, the latest Wonk Intelligence Quarterly (WIQ), gives you a wealth of actionable insights in deeper patterns and trends we’re seeing.

On our most recent WonkCast I talked with think tank executive and former agency leader Aly Rau Brodsky, about child-centric policy design.

We’ve got several signals to track this week on health financing, grants, and “hidden foster care”.

Also worth tracking: yesterday Senate appropriators released a bipartisan deal to fund the government through December 11.

On top of punting a funding fight until the lame duck, it would delay implementation of a proposed rule to codify centralized political control of grants and contracts.

The Senate may vote this week; much remains up in the air and challenges remain.

Let’s get after it.

Weekly Wonk Deep Dive

The Geography of Children’s Bureau Discretionary Grants

To date there has been little geographic shift in Children’s Bureau grantmaking, but that could change with FY 2026 awards.

By Laura Radel, Senior Contributor

Federal discretionary grants are not designed to be distributed evenly across states. Their geography reflects who applies, which organizations are equipped to compete, and where large national grantees are based.

Even so, the distribution is worth watching.

From FY 2023 through FY 2025, Children’s Bureau awards were divided relatively evenly between red and blue states.1

The dollars were not — largely because most large technical-assistance and Quality Improvement Center awards, the largest layer of discretionary grant funding, went to organizations in blue states.

This final installment in our three-part series examines that geographic pattern and establishes a baseline ahead of a potentially consequential round of FY 2026 awards worth watching closely.

WHEN POLITICS ENTERS THE GRANT PROCESS

Unlike entitlement or formula programs which distribute funds in geographic patterns prescribed by Congress, competitive discretionary grants are distributed following expert reviews using statutory and agency criteria.

Agency leaders also have some authority to depart from review scores.

In recent months, the Trump Administration has proposed giving political appointees greater influence over grantmaking, and moved to withhold child care funding from several Democrat-led states.

Ahead of the FY 2026 awards, this analysis explores and establishes a baseline for the geographical distribution of Children’s Bureau discretionary grants in recent years.

That geography is shaped by more than federal decision-making.

Most grants go to local nonprofits or county-level entities rather than to state governments, making the red-blue divide less straightforward than it is for formula or entitlement funding.

Some grants target specific recipients, such as tribal governments.

Others prioritize communities facing particular challenges, like child trafficking or high rates of maltreatment related to substance misuse, or applicants well-positioned to expand the evidence base.

Matching fund requirements and access to strong university research partners can also affect which organizations apply — and where successful applicants are located.

The composition of the portfolio matters, too.

As Part I showed, the largest awards generally go to technical assistance.

Because the pool of technical assistance providers in the child welfare space is relatively concentrated, those awards further influence the distribution of funding.

WHERE GRANTEES ARE – AND AREN’T

Figure 1 shows the geographic distribution of Children’s Bureau discretionary grantees from FY 2023 through FY 2025.

States in the lightest purple had no grantees during the three-year period.

States in medium purple had one to three grantees in at least one year, while those in dark purple had four or more in at least one year.

The pattern was relatively consistent from year to year, in part because grants generally run for three- to five-years. An award in one year is therefore likely to appear again in subsequent years. Still, the gaps are notable.

Some of the largest states, including Georgia and Texas, had no discretionary grantees in any of these years.

California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota and Washington each had at least four grantees in all three years.

AWARDS WERE DIVIDED RELATIVELY EVENLY

Figure 2 shows how grant awards were divided between states considered red (Republican-leaning), blue (Democrat-leaning) and purple (swing states) in each of fiscal years 2023, 2024 and 2025.

In each of the years, 15 to 16 percent of grant awards went to purple states. The rest were divided relatively evenly between red and blue states, with blue states receiving a slightly larger share in 2024 than in either 2023 or 2025.

These differences were small. With 86 to 101 grants awards each year, a one-percentage-point shift represents roughly one grant.

And because there were few new awards in 2025, that year’s changes largely reflect grants ending rather than new awards beginning.

THE DOLLARS TELL A DIFFERENT STORY

Dollar-wise, the story is considerably different.

As shown in Part I of this series, technical assistance grants are much larger than service grants, representing nearly half of discretionary funding. The organizations receiving those awards are also geographically concentrated.

In FY 2025, 13 of the 14 technical-assistance (TA) and Quality Improvement Center (QIC) grants were in blue states and the 14th was in a purple state, with similar patterns in FYs 2023 and 2024.

As shown in Figure 3, this means that Children’s Bureau grant funding flowed heavily to blue states — 75 percent in FY 2025.

When TA and QIC funding is excluded, dollar amounts are much more evenly distributed: 49 percent went to red states, 41 percent to blue states, and 10 percent to purple states.

WHAT THE THREE-YEAR PICTURE SHOWS

Across the series, the larger pattern is not a dramatic partisan redirection of Children’s Bureau grants. It is a smaller portfolio increasingly concentrated in large technical-assistance and national awards, issued later in the fiscal year.

Service awards remained relatively evenly distributed between red and blue states.

The concentration of dollars in blue states largely reflects where technical-assistance centers and Quality Improvement Centers are based — not a broader geographic tilt across the portfolio.

FY 2026 could alter that balanced picture.

With many new awards expected before September 30, the final weeks of the fiscal year will show whether the recent patterns persist — or whether a new grantmaking approach is beginning to emerge.

We’ll be digging in to see whether the pattern holds, or there are signals of a deeper shift.

From the Wonk Briefing Room

Wonk Intelligence Quarterly, July 2026

BY ZACH LARIS, FOUNDER & PRESIDENT

With so much ongoing analysis and intel, there’s a benefit to stepping back and clarifying some of the bigger-picture trends and dynamics that matter.

To support your work doing that, we’ve released our latest Wonk Intelligence Quarterly.

This one looks across the recurring patterns we’ve been seeing in our written work and WonkCast conversations with leaders.

What emerged is three deeper trends essential to know for your work:

• #1: Plan for federal power to grow more centralized and informal;

• #2: Prepare for the old policy order’s tipping point; and

• #3: Refocus from authority to execution capability.

Decisionmakers share that they get the best use out of Wonk Intelligence Quarterly when integrating it directly into meetings and conversations about strategy and decisions.

We’ve designed this one to make that easy, with a concise analysis of three essential patterns leaders across child and family policy need to be thinking about and guidance for how you can design strategy and decision discussions around them.

To read the full brief and access all our premium resources, join the Wonk Briefing Room. Individuals can sign up here, or get the team membership rate here.

Organizations interested in going even deeper can reach out to learn more about our partnerships that help you leverage and apply our intel in your strategy.

Wonkatizer

Signals of Squeeze on Health Financing

What Happened

As states prepare for less federal Medicaid funding and implementation of reporting requirements related to work, the health system is facing further fiscal strain.

Since 2025, the number of uninsured Americans rose 41 percent, with falling Affordable Care Act enrollment as a key driver.

Why it Matter

This is before federal funding for Medicaid drops, and it has second-order effects that matter for Medicaid.

As hospitals and other health providers face the cash crunch of fewer insured patients, they will be even less favorably positioned to weather those cuts.

What to Watch

Municipal bonds and hospital earnings forecasts.

Rising bond yields will suggest state debt has more risk priced in. Hospitals are already signaling concerns; further expectations updates are worth watching,

Last-Minute Grants for Last-Mile Capacity

What Happened

ACF announced up to $4 million in competitive funding for up to 20 grants to modernize fingerprinting technology.

These are discretionary dollars that jurisdictions can use to secure mobile and office-based fingerprinting equipment. That targets a key rate limiting step in kin licensure.

Why it Matters

Two reasons. First, it’s a demonstration of Laura Radel’s point last week; a 30-day application window for a down-to-the-wire expenditure connected to admin priorities.

Second, it’s aiming at a well-established bottleneck on last-mile policy delivery, a core part of the state capacity needed to operationalize policy.

What to Watch

How many jurisdictions are able to turn around applications and how they deploy new capacity to break licensure bottlenecks,

New Report on Kinship Diversion/”Hidden Foster Care”

What Happened

A new brief from ChildTrends maps which states can actually see kinship diversion in their own data.

Diversion, also known as “Hidden Foster Care”, is a practice where a relative cares for a child the state hasn’t formally placed with them, or necessarily removed from their family.

What they Found

Across interviews with 15 states, nearly all confirmed using some form of diversion. Just over half Data that could reliably characterize cases of diversion.

The report connects the limits and limitations of this data to policy and legal structures; because parents retain legal custody, these are cases that don’t trigger federal reporting requirements.

Why it Matters

This connects to our series on declining foster care rates.

A frequent narrative around the national decline in children in and entering care is that it reflects prevention and/or timely or permanency.

Diversion complicates that story; our lack of insight into the extent of this practice means we don’t know whether or to what extent a rise in kinship diversion could explain changes in foster care data.

What to Watch

The report’s central suggestion is a voluntary policy guidance on state classification and reporting of diversion.

It’s worth watching how ACF discusses and characterizes this issue in its data-driven approach to the A Home for Every Child initiative.

It’s also worth watching state activity on this, which is more likely to ripen in the near term, including recent policy making in Colorado.

We also have an upcoming WonkCast on kinship care, with relevance for this issue that you won’t want to miss.

That’s it for this week.

Stay sharp, Wonks.

~ Z

Partners Making Your Weekly Wonk Possible

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.

Federal grant programs operate on their own esoteric language and serious standards.

They also have their own equivalent of pulling an all-nighter to submit a paper on time.

The federal fiscal year starts October 1, aligning with neither the calendar nor most state budgets.

Surely that places a premium on lots of lead time for coordinating investment?

Alas no, as you’ll see in Laura Radel’s newest Deep Dive, the second in her three-part look at Children’s Bureau discretionary grantmaking.

Her analysis points to a growing trend that you surely feel if your work has any touch point with those funds; like the proverbial all-nighter to wrap up the semester, these grant awards are increasingly piling up to the final weeks of the fiscal year.

That, in turn, has ripple effects that include:

• reduced predictability;

• less time for grantees to develop quality proposals and partnerships to execute them; and

• compression of the federal review and decision-making process.

On this week’s WonkCast, I sat down with one of the leading thinkers on child welfare financing policy, Dennis Blazey.

Over his 24 years as Ohio’s child welfare budget and fiscal officer and subsequent consulting career, he has shaped your work whether you know him or not.

A key takeaway; don’t sleep on the humble “bed day”, which may sound like a wonky foster care measurement but is his go-to strategic leverage point for financing prevention.

That also pairs well with the latest brief our premium members are reading, in which child welfare and Medicaid expert Uma Ahluwalia unpacks what gets in the way of using Family First and Medicaid together, and how to shift it from barrier to opportunity.

Let’s get after it.

Weekly Wonk Deep Dive

Wait For It: The Children’s Bureau Grant Calendar Is Moving Toward September

A three-year review shows a sharp change in when discretionary awards are being made—and FY 2026 may follow the same pattern.

By Laura Radel, Senior Contributor

Federal grants do not only matter because of how much money is awarded or what it supports.

Timing matters too.

Grant recipients need time to hire, contract, establish partnerships, and begin work.

Federal agencies need enough runway to publish opportunities, review applications, resolve questions, and obligate funds before the fiscal year closes.

The Children’s Bureau’s award calendar has changed considerably over the past three years.

This analysis examines that shift, what may be driving it, and what the unfinished FY 2026 calendar signals as the September 30 deadline approaches.

It is the second in a three-part series on Children’s Bureau discretionary grantmaking.

Part I examined the changing composition of awards. Part III will map where grant funding is going geographically.

What Grants Are Included in This Analysis?

This analysis examines discretionary grants and cooperative agreements awarded by the Children’s Bureau in fiscal years 2023 through 2025.

The data come from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System, or TAGGS.

Cooperative agreements are a type of grant that involves more direct cooperation between the federal agency and the recipient than is possible with a regular grant.

The Children’s Bureau often uses cooperative agreements for technical-assistance activities and knowledge-building Quality Improvement Centers.

Only awards with positive dollar amounts in a fiscal year are included.

Entries with zero or negative amounts—often reflecting adjustments, cancellations, or revisions to prior awards—were excluded.

The Grant Calendar Shifted

The timing of Children’s Bureau awards changed substantially over the three-year period.

Table 1 shows when awards were made in each fiscal year and how many were new awards rather than continuations.

FY 2023 followed a relatively typical pattern.

A small number of awards were made during the first three quarters, while 87 percent of awards were spread across the 4th quarter. Nearly half were awarded in September, the last month of the fiscal year.

In FY 2024, the final year of a presidential administration, awards were made earlier.

Nearly 60 percent were issued before the fourth quarter, most of them continuations of existing awards.

The remaining awards trickled out over the fourth quarter with just 22 percent of awards made in September.

The number of new awards also fell sharply, from 38 in FY 2023 to 15 in FY 2024.

From a Fourth-Quarter Rush to a September Pileup

FY 2025 was markedly different: all 94 awards were made in September.

TAGGS data shows only one new award with a positive balance.

There were some awards listed in the data with zero dollar amounts, but those were excluded from this analysis.

The zero-dollar records may reflect awards made at the end of the fiscal year for which funding had not yet appeared in TAGGS.

That possibility makes the count of new FY 2025 awards less certain than the positive-dollar data alone suggest.

The timing pattern is clearer.

What had previously been a fourth-quarter-heavy process became concentrated entirely in the final month of the fiscal year.

FY 2026 Is Running Out of Runway

The FY 2026 grant calendar is again compressed. As of July 22, TAGGS showed no positive awards for the fiscal year, just several negative and zero dollar awards.

Three grant announcements have closed without awards (yet), eight were still open with applications due in August, and three have been forecast but as of this writing had not been published.

They may yet be published, but the proposal writing and review processes will necessarily be tight.

Funds lapse if awards are not made by September 30.

Together, the pending announcements covered kinship navigation, tribal courts, substance use, adoption, prevention, data systems, and other child welfare priorities.

A complete list of announced and forecast FY 2026 funding opportunities appears in the appendix.

That leaves little time for applications to be submitted, reviewed, and awarded before September 30, when the fiscal year ends and unobligated funds may lapse.

The pattern resembles FY 2025, when all 94 positive-dollar awards were recorded in September.

The late schedule does not necessarily mean the awards will not be made.

But it does mean that the review of grants will be rushed on a compressed schedule and there will be little time to negotiate any issues with applicants before grants are awarded.

It also increases the likelihood of another year in which grant decisions are concentrated in the final weeks of the fiscal year and may initially appear in federal data as zero-dollar or incomplete records.

Also unclear is whether more than usual political or other considerations will go into awards.

Typically grants are awarded to those applicants whose review scores are highest, with occasional exceptions to award to a high scoring (but not absolute top scoring) proposal that ensures reasonable geographic distribution and that an appropriate representation of high priority issues are covered (for instance when multiple priority topics are included in a single grant announcement).

What the Calendar Signals

Late awards are not necessarily lost awards.

The Children’s Bureau can still obligate funding through September 30, and federal data may take time to reflect the final form of awards made near the deadline.

But an increasingly back-loaded calendar changes how the grant process functions.

It gives applicants less predictability and less time to prepare quality proposals. It compresses federal review and decision-making.

And it leaves less room to resolve problems before unobligated funding lapses at the end of the fiscal year.

The key question for FY 2026 is therefore not simply whether the Children’s Bureau makes the awards.

It is whether another year of September-heavy grantmaking is becoming the new operating pattern.

Part III of this series will turn from what is funded and when awards are made to where the grants are going geographically.

Appendix: FY 2026 Children’s Bureau Funding Opportunities

From the Wonk Briefing Room

Splitting the Check: Who Pays When Child Welfare and Medicaid are Both at the Table?

BY UMA AHLUWALHIA, MSW, MHA

Every Friday, members of our premium community — the Wonk Briefing Room — get our latest brief. Where the Weekly Wonk maps the terrain, our premium resources are about how to navigate it.

This week, Uma Ahluwalia goes inside one of the most consequential financing puzzles in prevention policy: why Family First’s promise keeps stalling at the seam between Title IV-E and Medicaid.

We’ve all been there. You’re out at a meal with friends or colleagues, having a wonderful time when the check arrives. What do you do?

The most operationally smooth approach is an even split; clean, simple, and fast.

But often there’s resistance, whether it’s the colleague with a more restrictive expense policy, or that friend who ‘totally didn’t even eat any mozzarella sticks!”

At that point, everything moves at the speed of the person coordinating and spreading the costs appropriately. That’s what’s often happening with Family First and Medicaid.

Uma Ahluwalia’s expertise spans both child welfare and Medicaid, making her well positioned to explore the opportunity at their crossroads.

She lays out four structural barriers and gives leaders a sharper way to diagnose where their own system is quietly absorbing costs it could be claiming.

To read the full brief and access all our premium resources, join the Wonk Briefing Room. Individuals can sign up here, or get the team membership rate here.

Organizations interested in going even deeper can reach out to learn more about our partnerships that help you leverage and apply our intel in your strategy.

Further Reading and Listening:

• Family First, Light on Families by Zach Laris

• Family First and the Limits of Policy First Reform by Lynne Tiede

• Is Family First Delivering on Its Promise? by Zach Laris

• WonkCast #19 An Insider View on Family First with Laura Bernsten

Wonkatizer

Reconciliation 3.0, Meet the Senate Stall

What Happened

After their own party had shut down the floor and effectively shut down business for days, House Republican leaders moved a budget resolution unlocking a third party-line reconciliation bill, “Reconciliation 3.0.”

The roughly $95 billion budget resolution centers on a Pentagon funding boost tied to the war with Iran, with $60 billion for Armed Services and $15 billion for Intelligence.

The bill would also provide $12 billion in relief to farmers facing rising fertilizer prices, largely resulting from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz resulting from the war.

The bill also has up to $10 billion for the SAVE America Act’s voter-ID provisions.

Don’t expect a steady march to enactment, though; Senate Majority Leader John Thune has signaled he won’t take up the House blueprint until the chamber resolves the September 30 government funding fight.

Why it Matters

This Senate stall pushes any reconciliation bill toward the post-election lame duck, the brief session before the new Congress is seated, if it moves at all.

That’s Senior Contributor Doug Steiger’s recent analysis playing out in real time; the fault line to watch is less about partisan differences and more about structural misalignment within the GOP right now.

What matters goes beyond the horse race. For child and family programs, the central question is whether any potential bill would use spending cuts to offset the new funds, which could mean more safety net cuts.

A slip to the lame duck expands rather than erases that exposure, by circumventing the political cost of touching safety-net programs.

What to Watch

Whether reconciliation survives to the lame duck at all will be a function of whether Congress can fund the government beyond September and how the midterms play out.

Also key to watch is the $12 billion in farm aid tucked into the House resolution.

Part of Senate GOP leadership’s reticence to revisit reconciliation is that this provision would open up a new front for simple-majority SNAP amendments aimed at reversing cuts to the food assistance program last year.

That’s it for this week.

Stay sharp, Wonks.

~ Z

Partners Making Your Weekly Wonk Possible

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.

Welcome to the latest Weekly Wonk.

Last week we zoomed out, with Wonk Senior Contributor Doug Steiger walking through what the fraught politics of funding this fall mean for child and family policy.

This week, our Deep Dive zooms in, on discretionary grants at the Children’s Bureau.

Looking at three years of public data, Wonk Senior Contributor Laura Radel surfaces the discretion administrations can exercise on discretionary spending.

Spending related to kinship care and prevention declined the most, reflecting both changes in appropriations and programmatic decisions beyond those changes.

Discretion goes beyond a mere technical exercise, providing leeway to shape policy into a defined agenda. That matters because it’s taking on greater significance.

You can see it in the big bet ACF Assistant Secretary Adams has made, using incentives, including leveraging discretionary funds for competitive grant funding, to encourage states to voluntarily lock in on administration priorities.

For this week’s WonkCast, I sat down with renowned child welfare financing expert Don Winstead for a wide-ranging discussion on what actually shapes policy behavior.

Let’s get into it.

Weekly Wonk Deep Dive

What Children’s Bureau Grantmaking Reveals About Federal Priorities

The agency has broad discretion over a small but strategically important pool of child welfare funding. A three-year review shows how it has been used.

By Laura Radel, Senior Contributor

Discretionary grants are where federal priorities become visible.

Unlike entitlement and formula funding, these awards give the Children’s Bureau meaningful control over what kinds of activities receive support—from direct services and tribal capacity building to technical assistance and national initiatives.

That makes the composition of the grant portfolio worth watching.

This analysis examines Children’s Bureau discretionary grants and cooperative agreements from fiscal years 2023 through 2025.

It looks at how much funding was awarded, how it was distributed across grant types, and what shaped the changing mix.

It is the first in a three-part series on Children’s Bureau grantmaking.

Part II will examine when awards are being made and the increasingly compressed federal grant calendar. Part III will map where the funding is going geographically.

Why This Small Pool of Money Matters

The Children’s Bureau distributes funding through three basic mechanisms.

Entitlement grants reimburse states for eligible spending according to matching rates set in the law.

Formula grants distribute funds using statutory formulas often based on a state’s share of the nation’s children or low-income children.

Discretionary grants work differently.

They are awarded through competition, with eligible applicants submitting proposals to carry out activities addressing priorities identified by Congress or the Children’s Bureau.

As the name suggests, discretionary grants are those over which the Children’s Bureau has most control.

Some are used to build knowledge and develop evidence in a particular area, while others aim to direct resources towards communities with a particular need and at a sub-state level.

They can also catalyze work on an administration’s priorities.

Because the agency has greater control over how discretionary funds are targeted, these grants can reveal changing federal priorities.

What We Counted

This analysis examines discretionary grants and cooperative agreements awarded by the Children’s Bureau in fiscal years 2023 through 2025.

The data come from the Department of Health and Human Services grants database, Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS).

Cooperative agreements are a type of grant that involves more direct cooperation between the federal agency and the recipient than is possible with a regular grant.

The Children’s Bureau often uses cooperative agreements for technical assistance activities and knowledge-building Quality Improvement Centers.

Only awards with positive dollar amounts in a fiscal year are included.

Entries with zero or negative amounts —often reflecting adjustments, cancellations, or revisions to prior awards—were excluded . Because several of these programs also support formula grants and other activities, the totals reported here do not represent the full amount appropriated to each program.

The Portfolio Got Smaller

The number of Children’s Bureau discretionary grants and cooperative agreements varied over the three-year period, while total funding declined steadily.

The agency made 101 positive-dollar awards in FY 2023, 86 in FY 2024, and 94 in 2025.

Total funding declined from $93.5 million in FY 2023 to $84.2 million in FY 2024, and $80.1 million in FY 2025—a 14 percent decline over three years.

Awards range widely in size. In FY 2025 the smallest award was less than $100,000 under the Tribal Court Improvement Program, while the largest was nearly $11,000,000 for AdoptUSKids, the national adoption photolisting service.

Technical assistance grants or cooperative agreements each generally ranged from $2 million and $5 million, while service grants were more typically between $200,000 and $750,000.

Figure 1 displays the dollar amounts of the awards in the following topical categories:

• Technical Assistance (TA) Centers and national initiatives.

  • This category includes national TA Centers such as the National Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention, the Child Welfare Workforce Institute, and the National Child Welfare Capacity Building Center for the Courts, as well as national initiatives including AdoptUSKids and the National Electronic Interstate Compact Enterprise.

• Quality Improvement Centers.

  • These grants support organizations that test and evaluate service models on priority child welfare topics, often through partnerships with multiple subgrantees.

• Tribal Capacity Building Grants.

  • This category includes the Tribal Court Improvement Program grants and other awards to tribes focused on tribal child welfare, such as the Indian Child Welfare Act.

• Regional Partnership Grants.

  • These grants address parental substance use and co-occurring disorders. Tribal RPG awards are included in the tribal category above.

• Service Grants, Primarily on Prevention and Kinship Care Topics.

  • This category includes direct service grants focused primarily on prevention and kinship care.

  • The two topics are combined because grant titles did not always allow them to be separated reliably.

Figure 1 shows a clear shift away from prevention and kinship care.

Compared with FY 2023, funding for those grants was lower in FYs 2024 and 2025 while funding for grants to tribal entities increased somewhat.

Other grant categories remained roughly the same over the time span.

Where the Money Moved

Figures 2 and 3 show how the distribution of awards changed across those five categories.

Figure 2 shows each category’s share of the number of awards, while Figure 3 shows its share of total funding. Key takeaways here are:

TA Centers and National Grants accounted for a relatively small and stable share of the number of awards—between 10 to 12 percent each year.

However, because these awards are each relatively large, they represented the biggest share of funds, ranging from 42 and 49 percent of total dollars.

The clearest shift was in prevention and kinship care service grants.

Between FY 2023 and FY 2025 their share declined from 51 percent to 33 percent of all awards and from to 34 percent to 19 percent of total funding.

As discussed further below, part of this decline reflects changes in appropriations for the programs that support these grants.

It may also reflect the timing of multiyear grant cycles, since the number and mix of awards in any year depend partly on when earlier grants end and funding becomes available for new competitions.

Why the Mix Changed

Technical assistance and other national initiatives now make up nearly half of Children’s Bureau discretionary grant funding. Their share grew partly because funding for prevention and kinship care service grants declined.

Changes in appropriations help explain some of that shift:

Funding Decreases

• Funding for Kinship Navigator Grants decreased from $20 million in FY 2023 to $10 million in each of FYs 2024 and 2025.

• The discretionary portion of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program (only some of which goes to the grants described here) decreased from $87 million in FY 2023 to $73 million in each of FYs 2024 and 2025.

• The CAPTA Discretionary Grants Program decreased from $38 million in FY 2024 to $36 million in each of FYs 2024 and 2025.

Funding Increases

• The Child Welfare Research, Demonstration and Training Program increased from $19 million in FY 2023 to $22 million in each of FYs 2024 and 2025.

• The Adoption Opportunities Program increased from $51 million in FY 2023 to $53 million in each of FYs 2024 and 2025.

Level Funding

• Regional Partnership Grants remained stable at $20 million per year.

• The Community Based Child Abuse Prevention Program was level at $71 million.

Appropriations are only part of the story.

Many discretionary grants last three to five years, so the number and mix of awards in any one year are shaped by decisions made several years earlier.

New competitions generally depend on either additional appropriations or the expiration of existing grants that frees money for new awards.

That helps explain why FYs 2024 and 2025 produced far fewer new awards than FY 2023.

What The Portfolio Signals

No single year of discretionary grantmaking provides a clean statement of federal priorities.

Appropriations, multiyear grant cycles, and the expiration of earlier awards all shape what money is available and when.

But the three-year pattern still matters.

The Children’s Bureau’s discretionary portfolio became smaller, while a greater share of the remaining funding flowed through relatively large technical-assistance centers and national initiatives.

At the same time, prevention and kinship care service grants accounted for a smaller share of both awards and dollars.

That does not necessarily reflect a single policy decision. It does show how funding mechanics can change the practical balance between building national infrastructure and financing services in communities.

Part II of this series will examine another dimension of the portfolio: when the awards are being made.

Part III will look at where they are going.

From the Wonk Briefing Room

When the Clock Runs Out

Every Friday, members of our premium community, the Wonk Briefing Room, get our latest Wonk premium brief.

Where the Weekly Wonk gives you a map of the terrain child and family policy faces, our premium resources aim at how to navigate it.

Parental incarceration can lead to child welfare involvement even in the absence of abuse or neglect, especially when the incarcerated parent is a mother.

This week’s brief from Kimberly Martin, exploring the structural tension that exists between the criminal justice and child welfare systems.

It would be easy to turn this into a story with a villain. But instead, her brief unpacks what can happen when two public systems each pursue their own legitimate objectives, but without a design or timeline that accounts for their counterpart.

For anyone working reunification, permanency, or the criminal-legal interface, it maps where the gap actually opens and how to get conversations started that bridge it.

To read the full brief and access all our premium resources, join the Wonk Briefing Room. Individuals can sign up here, or get the team membership rate here.

Organizations interested in going even deeper can reach out to learn more about our partnerships that help you leverage and apply our intel in your strategy.

Wonkatizer

Reconciliation, The Threequel

What Happened

House Republican leaders unveiled a framework for a third party-line reconciliation bill — “Reconciliation 3.0” — which the House Budget Committee marked up last Thursday.

The roughly $95 billion budget resolution centers on a Pentagon funding boost tied to the war with Iran, with $60 billion for Armed Services and $15 billion for Intelligence.

The bill would also provide $12 billion in relief to farmers facing rising fertilizer prices, largely resulting from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz resulting from the war.

The bill also has up to $10 billion for the SAVE America Act’s voter-ID provisions.

Why it Matters

Current deliberations suggest not offsetting the Pentagon funding the White House has requested. That is likely to encounter pushback from fiscal conservatives, though.

Offsets would raise the possibility of health and human services funding reductions.

What to Watch

Whether the framework survives its own coalition.​ The same intra-GOP factors thatare complicating end-of-year legislating will be present here.

The real thing to watch is timing. The closer this gets to the midterms, the harder it will be to secure support with a razor-thing majority in Congress.

ACF Formally Rescinds “Designated Placement” Rule

What Happened

Last week, ACF formally rescinded the Biden-era regulation Designated Placement Requirements Under Titles IV-E and IV-B for LGBTQI+ Children.

That rule had established requirements for child welfare agencies to provide “safe and appropriate” placements for LGBTQI+ children in foster care.

Why it Matters

While a court injunction had blocked the rule’s implementation and its repeal was expected, it was one of the centerpiece regulations of the Biden Administration.

What to Watch

Administration messaging has connected the rescission to its A Home for Every Child initiative.

While the net policy effect of repealing a never-implemented rule is de minimus, It’s worth watching whether further actions are forthcoming that do change policy related to LGBTQ children and families.

That’s it for this week.

Stay sharp, Wonks.

~ Z

Partners Making Your Weekly Wonk Possible

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.

The factors that most shape what’s possible in child and family policy are often seemingly unrelated to it; political dynamics, media cycles, relationships, and more.

Political conflict is a great example. It drives what’s possible, opening and closing windows in which policy can move. Tracking and understanding it is essential.

A risk appears when that read gets sharpest. Seeing that conflict clearly makes it seem like there are ways to redirect it more favorably to move a policy priority.

Back when I was an advocate, I had a great mentor and boss whose uncanny read on the politics and psychology of power made him adept at avoiding that risk.

I’m reminded this week of his go-to refrain when discussing the possibility of entanglement in a conflict between rival policymakers:

It’s a trite truism that Republicans and Democrats can barely agree the sky is blue. The emerging dynamic that requires a fresh look is growing fissures within the GOP.

We’ve previously covered how intra-party policy differences created complications as far back as last summer’s reconciliation legislation. This is different.

Our Deep Dive this week unpacks where differences previously percolating in private are now driving open confrontation, flagging what to watch as you assess the risk of policy uncertainty and volatility for your priorities, and emerging openings for impact.

Our most recent premium brief looks at another key area of policy; the role of philanthropic investment in financing the infrastructure that makes advocacy possible.

For our latest WonkCast, I got to talk with Here Now Health founder Michelle Turner about Medicaid, child welfare, and what she’s seen firsthand of“custody for care”.

Let’s get into it.

Weekly Wonk Deep Dive

Why Congress Won’t Do Much Before November

The core driver for Congress for the next four months is the election.

By Douglas Steiger, Senior Contributor

Every election year, Congress slows down. This year it may stop altogether.

The difference isn’t the election, but the diverging incentives it creates for Senate Republicans and President Trump, compounded by pressure on Democratic leadership to take a firm line.

Senate Republicans want November to be a referendum on the One Big Beautiful Bill’s tax cuts and on Democrats’ ascendant left flank.

President Trump wants tighter voting rules before Election Day, even if it means jettisoning the filibuster.

Those are not compatible asks, yet every must-pass bill this fall has to route around both of them.

Democrats, by contrast, have clear and significant internal divisions on strategy, but aligned incentives to not be a barrier to routine must-pass funding if it doesn’t contain extraneous policies.

That makes them a more predictable negotiating partner.

Republicans and the President are not predictable partners with each other, which is the core factor that should be driving your risk assessment this fall.

Why Can’t Congress Do Its Job?

The back half of an election year is always hard for legislating: partisan tension spikes and members would rather be back home campaigning than on the Hill.

Anything not finished by the August recess usually waits for the lame duck session…or dies.

The would-be third reconciliation bill is the first casualty, and it’s dying for familiar reasons. It was supposed to focus on defense spending, but Republicans can’t agree on what’s in it.

Key Senate Republicans are withholding support because it would fund defense items outside of the traditional appropriations process, while moderates are concerned by cuts conservatives would demand in exchange.

Different Theories for Winning the November Elections

This leaves the appropriations bills – or at least a CR – as the last major “must do” item before the election.

But the President has a different “must do” priority.

His strategy for winning in November centers on tightening voting rules, particularly through the SAVE America Act. He wants Senate Republicans to end the filibuster to pass it.

The Senate Republican strategy for November is to remind voters of the tax cuts in H.R. 1 and paint Democrats as too far left. They want to keep the filibuster for when they are back in the minority.

House Republicans, notably, don’t have a comparable unified strategy of their own,which is part of why they’re more of a follower in this negotiation thana party to it.

Meanwhile, Congressional Democrats want the election to be about the economy and the perceived corruption of the Trump Administration.

The Democratic base, still furious at the party leadership for failing to check Trump, has already cost incumbents their seats.

Primary losses in New York and Colorado this cycle are the clearest signal of discontent.

That anger points towards Democrats being tough negotiators this fall, which means a lower likelihood of providing crossover votes to pass a CR if Republicans insist on adding things to it without sufficient votes to move it on their own.

To Appropriate or Shutdown?

The appropriations process is already behind schedule.

Last year it was immigration enforcement funds that were the flashpoint in appropriations brinksmanship; this year it appears it will be defense spending

President Trump has requested a 42 percent increase in regular defense appropriations, plus a separate supplemental that includes $67 billion to cover the costs of the war with Iran— a war that nearly three in five Americans express opposing in aggregated polling

Democrats oppose both asks.

As of yet, Senate negotiators have not even agreed on an overall spending topline, largely because Republicans are proposing a much larger increase for defense than for non-defense programs, mirroring the Administration’s request.

The possibility of moving some military spending into a third reconciliation bill has complicated things further.

If that bill does not happen, it puts more pressure on Republicans to secure a large defense increase through appropriations instead.

Also slowing the process is that Congressional Democrats want to kill certain Trump priorities once and for all, like the “weaponization fund,” and the White House ballroom.

Many Republicans privately express a desire to block these projects, but fear the President’s wrath if they do so openly.

An October Surprise?

Usually, election years produce simple CRs that punt issues until November so members can go campaign.

This year’s tangle of defense spending, reconciliation uncertainty, and a President at odds with his own party’s strategy may produce something worse: a shutdown in October.

Democrats’ willingness to force last year’s shutdown over immigration policy, plus the anger inside their own base, suggests they will take a hard line again, further increasing chances of a repeat shutdown.

The President Trump-Senate Republican misalignment compounds the chances of a shutdown further; would the President refuse to sign a CR if it doesn’t include his election rules demands?

His abrupt refusal to sign the bipartisan housing bill unless the SAVE America Act passed first suggests he might.

Beyond October, expect a post-election negotiation on spending, with its own shutdown risk.

If Democrats do well in November, they will be emboldened to insist on changes that Trump will fight. If they don’t do well, their base will be furious and push them to fight him harder anyway.

Getting the President’s support for a post-election deal will likely mean putting his personal priorities ike the ballroom on the table, which Democrats will resist.

And his active buy-in will likely be necessary to get House Republicans to support any deal. Some open questions worth tracking for your own work:

Will retiring or defeated Senators, especially Republicans, act as free agents and form one of the Senate’s bipartisan dealmaking blocs to close things out?

Will 2028 Democratic presidential hopefuls stake out positions against compromise before the primary race even formally starts?

None of this resolves cleanly; expect persistent volatility.

What Decision Makers Need to Know

Even if a shutdown is looming, what gets into the current appropriations bills this summer and fall matters for the prospect of your priorities.

Whenever the window opens for a deal, that will be the raw material to build it; nothing substantial gets added from scratch later.

If your priority is not an appropriations item, it may still be in play as an add-on to a year-end deal.

Making that happen means lining up champions now, whether your goal is to get something attached or to keep something else off.

The Farm Bill is a live example of this mechanism: if it becomes part of a year-end negotiation, it’s a vehicle for changes to the H.R. 1 SNAP cuts— for those pushing to restore them and those defending them alike.

The vehicle matters regardless of which side is using it.

This is also a good moment for an advanced assessment of your exposure to extended shutdown risk this fall.

If a shutdown would hit key programs you care about, it helps to have a clear way of communicating those stakes in advance and as it happens.

House and Senate Democrats are already planning for a possible majority next year.

If you want a place in those conversations, that window is open now; those who help shape an agenda before power is certain have a far different standing than those who arrive after the election.

Republicans may very well hold one or both chambers. Have a plan for that, too

Smart advocates aren’t waiting to find out which playbook wins. They’re assessing risk and honing strategy now, while the politicians stay focused on November.

From the Wonk Briefing Room

If you work in philanthropy, you’re probably tired of receiving pitches for things that seem to clearly or nearly cross the lobbying line.

If you work in advocacy, you’re probably tired of seeing critical policy work sit seemingly just out of reach, and wondering how you can fund it.

Those are two sides of the same coin that point to a deeper inefficiency in our field.

In our latest premium brief, seasoned chief fundraiser Christine Bork digs into that deeper inefficiency and offers new ways for our field to think about and act on it.

She sees three constraints reinforcing each other to starve the specific infrastructure that makes later legislative wins possible, like policy research timed to live issues, coalitions built before a bill exists, relationships with Hill staff formed years in advance.

Then she maps out what’s actually fundable inside those constraints today, and specific moves you can make that sustain and expand that infrastructure.

To read the full brief and access all our premium resources, join the Wonk Briefing Room. Individuals can sign up here, or get the team membership rate here.

Organizations interested in going even deeper can reach out to learn more about our partnerships that help you leverage and apply our intel in your strategy.

To read the full brief and access all our premium resources, join the Wonk Briefing Room. Individuals can sign up here, or get the team membership rate here.

Organizations interested in going even deeper can reach out to learn more about our partnerships that help you leverage and apply our intel in your strategy.

Wonkatizer

50 for 50: A Home for Every Child Goes Nationwide

What Happened

Last week, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) announced that all 50 states plus D.C. and Puerto Rico have joined the A Home for Every Child initiative.

Participating states receive streamlined alternate data reporting and oversight in exchange for tracking key data related to the ratio of licensed foster homes to children in care, currently 57 per 100 nationally.

ACF is backing the push with a $7 million Innovation Challenge and a to-be-released monthly public data dashboard tracking each state’s ratio.

Technical instructions released June 17 show the pilot isn’t just the ratio: states must also report four monthly “chaser measures” related to kinship placement rates, use of congregate care, repeat maltreatment, and placement disruption.

Why it Matters

No state has ever hit full CFSR conformity in 25 years of reviews — every state, every cycle, has landed on a PIP.

Universal participation speaks to states’ desire to reduce reporting requirements.

It’s also central to ACF Assistant Secretary Alex Adams’ big bet on buy-in making policy reform more durable than formal regulatory change.

What to Watch

The chaser measures matter are ACF’s answer to the “mirage” problem Laura Radel’s series on A Home For Every Child flagged — that a rising ratio alone can’t tell you whether new homes are stable, well-matched, or just a raw supply number moving in the right direction.

With every state now in, it’s a great opportunity to revisit our four-part series on HFEC by Senior Contributor Laura Radel:

Part 1 (open-access) maps where every state stood on the ratio goal

Part 2 (premium-only) tracks how those ratios moved from 2020 to 2025

Part 3 (premium-only) breaks down what actually drove each state’s change, and

Part 4 (premium-only) models how far each state still has to go to hit 1:1.

That’s it for this week.

Stay sharp, Wonks.

~ Z

Partners Making Your Weekly Wonk Possible

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.

Welcome back to the Weekly Wonk, and we hope you had a good July Fourth.

Here at the Wonk we’re fundamentally focused on the strategic capacity of the child and family policy field. It’s the difference between being at the table, and on the menu.

A clear and compelling vision for where to go is essential. Equally important is literacy in power; how politics and process shape what’s possible in policymaking.

The workings of Congress can seem like an arbitrary imposition that blocks obvious solutions when your expertise is research, pure policy, or direct impact.

Even when you're steeped in politics and process, an understandable cynicism can emerge that sees the whole thing as predetermined Kabuki theater.

But seeing the machinery of Capitol Hill from the perspective of someone who has operated part of it unlocks clarity around how to approach it strategically.

Wonk contributor Kristen Torres staffed Rep. Judy Chu, and in this week’s Deep Dive she pulls back the curtain on the important gatekeeping function of Congressional Committees, digging into:

• How they actually work;

• Why bills with bipartisan support can disappear into purgatory; and

• What you can do differently when you see this machinery.

Whether you’re a neophyte or a seasoned advocate who has left shoe leather all over the Capitol complex, these are important tactics for turning strategy into impact.

For our latest WonkCast, I sat down with Oklahoma Child Welfare Director Michael Williams. We talked about the role of data in decision-making, custody relinquishment for behavioral health access, and why Oklahoma was all in on A Home for Every Child.

Let’s get after it.

Weekly Wonk Deep Dive

The Hidden Gatekeeper: How Committees Channel Congressional Power

What the Hidden Mechanics of Committee Gatekeeping and Mean for Influencing Policy

By Kristen Torres

If you’ve spent time around federal policy, you know the frustration.

A bill is introduced with bipartisan support and eclectic endorsements. Then … nothing happens.

The bill is referred to a committee and seemingly enters policy purgatory. Forget about a vote; it doesn’t even get a hearing or markup.

For advocates, it can feel like a failure of the system. If a proposal has support and solves a real problem, why wouldn’t Congress act?

The reality is that legislative success depends on timing, priorities, relationships, and political opportunity.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in committee.

Understanding how committees operate can help explain why some bills move while others stall.

More importantly, it can help advocates think differently about what meaningful policy progress actually looks like.

Committees Decide What Gets Attention

Members of Congress introduce legislation, but committees, especially their Chairs, decide which proposals receive serious consideration.

Every bill gets referred to a committee, but only a small percentage ever move beyond that point.

Committees hold hearings, debate legislation, make revisions, and determine whether a bill advances.

Those are the visible activities, which are the outcomes that commemorate decisions and negotiations behind the scenes.

Committee Chairs drive the work. They manage the input and particular views of their down dais members.

As the chair’s minority party counterpart, the ranking member has less direct power but can wield influence, especially when the vote margin is tight.

Committee work revolves around key questions that occur before a hearing notice ever drops:

• Does this fit within our jurisdiction?

• Does it align with current party priorities?

• Will leadership support it?

• How does it map to the priorities of down dais Members and their state politics?

• Is there a path to implementation?

What are the budget implications?

And committees rarely operate in isolation. Their work is shaped by broader party priorities, congressional leadership, and the agenda coming from the White House.

When an issue aligns with those larger conversations, committees can dedicate time and attention to it.

A proposal can be well-designed, widely supported, and urgently needed, yet still fail to gain traction if it does not fit within the committee’s current agenda or peculiar politics.

The Mistake Many Advocates Make

The biggest gap in advocacy is between what people want policymakers to do and what is politically possible at a given moment.

We’ve all heard the reactions: “That bill doesn’t include any new funding.” “It doesn’t go far enough.” “This is just a small fix.”

Those criticisms are often accurate, but hitting the wrong target; political feasibility and policy excellence are not always the same thing.

Most transformational reforms are not the result of a single legislative victory. They are the result of years of groundwork:

Relationships built, champions cultivated, new ideas gaining credibility, and policymakers becoming more comfortable engaging on an issue.

Ultimately, small policy wins create momentum for larger ones. What looks incremental today may be laying the foundation for something much bigger.

The strategic question is not about whether a bill achieves everything advocates want.

It’s about optionality; how many degrees of freedom does it open or foreclose for reaching long-term policy goals.

A Child Welfare Example: Chafee Takes the Stage

Consider the current package of Chafee-related bills designed to improve outcomes for young people transitioning from foster care.

None of these bills represents a sweeping overhaul of the child welfare system.

They work within the existing structures and funding streams of workforce participation, educational access, and administrative flexibility.

They also largely sidestep the question of whether older youth ultimately need greater federal investment not just policy refinement

From one angle, the package may seem modest or incomplete. From another, it may be creating more champions for future action.

Each proposal aligns with priorities that committees are already working on. Each connects foster care to broader conversations happening in Congress.

Each creates opportunities for members to become champions for older youth in foster care.

The issue has also drawn attention from the Office of the First Lady, adding visibility and momentum.

The value of the package may not lie in policies alone, but in its capacity to to elevate the issue, cultivate champions, and create an set up the future fight over investment that the current window won’t allow.

That doesn’t make their policy content irrelevant, but it does require advocacy analysis that can shift between different time horizons.

How Advocates Can Improve Their Chances

Get in the Room

Engage committee staff early.

Unlike personal office staff, they tend to have a narrower set of issues to work on, which means they often combine policy expertise with political acumen.

By the time legislation is formally moving, many key decisions have already been shaped by conversations happening behind the scenes.

If you’re responding to the Chairman’s mark, you missed the chance to inform what went into it in the first place.

Read the Room

Understand what committees are already working on and how your priorities relate.

Legislative opportunities are often connected to broader party priorities, leadership agendas, and administration initiatives.

If you don’t know the context your issue has to move through you won’t see risks or opportunities.

Clear the Room

Think carefully about how your issue fits into the committee’s lane if you want any chance to move on to the Floor.

Good policy is table stakes.

The strongest proposals are often those that clearly connect to existing priorities rather than asking policymakers to create entirely new ones.

The workings of Congress shape what policy windows open, and how wide.

Moving accordingly does not mean lowering expectations or settling for less. It means recognizing that policy change is often cumulative.

Each hearing, briefing, relationship, and legislative win creates additional opportunities for future progress.

Good ideas matter. Strong evidence matters. Bipartisan support matters.

But if an idea never becomes part of what a committee is working on, it may never get the opportunity to move.

Incremental advancement toward major change matters. Insisting on perfection perpetuates the “everybody knows” problems that stay stuck.

Kristen Torres is the Founder & CEO of Torres Consulting. She previously worked for U.S. Representative Judy Chu (D-CA).

From the Wonk Briefing Room

Do We Have a “Legal Orphan” Problem?

Every Friday, members of our premium community, the Wonk Briefing Room, get our latest Wonk premium brief.

Where the Weekly Wonk gives you a map of the terrain child and family policy faces, our premium resources aim at how to navigate it.

The latest from Senior Contributor Laura Radel tackles a question that’s shadowed federal permanency policy since the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA):

Have the law’s timelines for terminating parental rights created a significant population of children who lose their legal family ties, then age out without gaining new ones?

The national data say that a feared buildup of that outcome hasn’t materialized — but that’s not the whole story.

At the end of FY 2025, about 46,300 children in foster care were legally free for adoption nationally, with significant concentration in a handful of states.

Laura explores why the variation across states can’t be explained by federal law alone, and unpacks what else can explain it.

To read the full brief and access all our premium resources, join the Wonk Briefing Room. Individuals can sign up here, or get the team membership rate here.

Organizations interested in going even deeper can also reach out to learn more about our partnerships that help you leverage and apply our intel in your strategy.

Wonkatizer

Medicaid Work Requirements Hit the Courts

What Happened

Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration over its interim final rule implementing reporting requirements on work for Medicaid.

The law requires most non-pregnant adults ages 19-64 to demonstrate that they’re engaged in at least 80 hours per month of employment, education, job training, or community service.

The rule expands on those requirements.

For example, while the law waives the requirement for those deemed “medically frail”, under the rule a diagnosis alone is insufficient; you have to prove it precludes work.

Why It Matters

We’re a year out from enactment of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that created this policy. Litigation over partisan reconciliation was practically inevitable.

Beyond the partisan atmospherics, there’s also a federalism fault line; states that planned based on a narrower understanding now have to shift their setup.

What to Watch

Whether the courts block anything before the January 1 implementation deadline, or if CMS issues any further guidance.

That’s it for this week.

Stay sharp, Wonks.

~ Z

Partners Making Your Weekly Wonk Possible

Welcome back to the Weekly Wonk.

We’re taking a break from new publications this week in honor of the semiquincentennial.

For a Deep Dive this week, we’re sharing the full version of one of the pieces from our most recent member-only Wonk Intelligence Quarterly.

It’s about vision, purpose, and opportunity as we look at the future of child welfare policy.

For our latest WonkCast, I sat down with Oklahoma Child Welfare Director Michael Williams.

We talked about why custody relinquishment for behavioral health access persists even when everyone involved agrees it produces bad outcomes at high cost, why OK was the first state to join A Home for Every Child, and more.

We’ll be back with your regularly scheduled releases on July 6th.

Let’s get into it, and Happy 4th, Wonks.

Weekly Wonk Deep Dive

Child Welfare’s Artemis Moment: Where Are We Going & Why?

Debating the structure and apparatus of policy while deferring debate on purpose yields drift.

By Zach Laris, Founder & President, and Andrés Argüello, Founding Director of Narrative Intelligence

Policymaking and advocacy may not be rocket science, but they have more in common with rocketry than is apparent at first glance.

Launch day is the moment of maximal excitement, with sky-high stakes and rapt attention on what will be an awesome spectacle or colossal failure.

It also offers the least opportunity for influence.

On launch day, no amount of heroic effort will overcome poor design, inadequate fuel, or the choice of poor conditions for launch.

That’s what makes it stressful for those involved; it’s not a real-time performance, but a public test of the cumulative effort and prior performance that carried the work to that moment.

The real leverage and progress compounds in the unglamorous months and years before: designing, refining, stress-testing, and iterating in service of a bold, visionary goal.

Policymaking and advocacy follow a similar trajectory.

The big, visible moments – hearings, votes, executive actions – are not a performance of capacity and capability.

They’re a technical demonstration and test of what the work has built.

Now is an essential moment for surfacing the competing visions that can motivate an ambitious mission across the field.

Going Boldly Back, & Beyond: What is it For?

We have a serious and solvable design problem in child welfare policy.

Over the past few decades, policymakers have made significant reforms to child welfare policy and financing– Family First, IV-E Waivers, Fostering Connections. So, what’s the problem?

Much of the drift in child welfare policy today is an outgrowth of structural tensions that emerge when we focus on policy structure and apparatus over purpose.

That’s not for lack of trying. People are making serious purpose arguments right now.

There is genuine, substantive deliberation over whether child welfare should be first and foremost a child protective services system, or a broader child and family well-being system.

You see it in momentum around key ideas: ensure a home for every child in care, stabilize families before a crisis, prevent fatalities, achieve permanency.

Each of these is defensible. None of them is the same goal.

A problem emerges when these foundational arguments become equally weighted policy inputs.

They don’t get resolved, but translated, into policy structure fights over financing mechanics, eligibility rules, and administrative flexibility.

This is how we get the “Entitlement to what?” debate, missing that Title IV-E foster care is now overwhelmingly a state capacity-focused administrative financing tool while we argue over it as though it is focused on specific children and families.

This isn’t a knock on our field; it’s a surmountable design constraint. What’s missing is the infrastructural capacity to convert substantive deliberation into frame-setting momentum.

Launchpads Without Targets

When a field can’t agree on purpose, structural debates absorb energy.

The cumulative result is a system that is the encoding of compromises, each layer rational in its moment, yet incoherent as a whole.

That’s why child welfare policy conversations keep circling back to the same financing mechanics and eligibility rules instead of the outcomes those levers are supposed to produce.

And here’s the paradox: the overemphasis on structure without clarity on substance also makes the field worse at delivering structurally.

We get a process-oriented approach averse to risk, where it’s safer to deliver a bad outcome with a good process than a good outcome through a risky new process.

This is also how policy debates that could be about purpose start from the premise of making marginal modifications to existing structures.

Getting There: See You on the Dark Side of the Moon

Our field has abundant capabilities in domains that matter for policy.

Leaders and front-line staff across agencies, service providers, advocacy, and philanthropy are innovating and finding effective approaches.

What’s missing is the infrastructure connecting those domains at scale. This is not about building a better coalition or slightly sharpening a message. The key work ahead includes:

• Surfacing what’s working and what’s breaking at every level;

• Defining problems effectively through debate and deliberation;

• Identifying what works and testing whether it can successfully scale;

• Translating competing visions into novel, long-term, stress-tested policy frameworks;

• Converting novel ideas into strategic, multi-level campaigns that make momentum; and

• Creating capacity for concrete delivery of policy to people.

The lack of this infrastructure isn’t always immediately obvious. Good ideas and good work are able to percolate and generate some effective action.

The tell is that it’s not durably sustainable.

Meeting Our Artemis Moment

We don’t need a unifying theory of everything. We need several credible visions for the future that can compete and generate a consensus on what the next era should look like.

Importantly, those visions won’t work if they gloss over the tensions, constraints, and trade-offs policy makers face.

They have to surface those and make the case for how to address them.

Growing cross-partisan interest in financing reform and the structural tensions accumulating since PRWORA are creating real conditions for the purpose argument to gain traction.

Starting from structure will yield drift. Starting from purpose can lead us through deeper space to bigger goals.

This window is open. The moves you’re making now are what will determine where the rocket goes next time everyone gathers to watch the launch.

That’s it for this week.

Stay sharp, Wonks.

~ Z

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