Episode # 25: Dr. Alyssa Bish
Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy.
Child welfare agency leaders naturally have to think in constraints and tradeoffs.
Since 2023, Dr. Alyssa Bish has served as Director of the Division of Children and Family Services in the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services.
In that role she leads an agency at the intersection of big-picture vision on prevention and kinship care, and operational reality on financing and accountability.
We talked about how state capacity is the critical factor determining whether federal policy changes like the Family First Prevention Services Act work as designed.
We discussed the way well-intentioned efforts to encode process into policy can lead to bad outcomes with unclear accountability, like undermining kinship care.
She also unpacked why Nebraska was a “quick yes” on ACF’s A Home For Every Child initiative, and how they shifted their approach on Social Security survivor benefits.
Her insights offer actionable takeaways for anyone who cares about shaping current and future child and family policy.
Bolder Horizon Fellowship Shoutout
In addition to running Child Welfare Wonk, I also founded a child and family policy nonprofit called Bolder Horizon, focused on incubating what comes next.
We just launched the engine of that work, a new Emerging Policy Leaders Fellowship.
Child and family policy frameworks built for another era are failing to meet the crises of ours. Do you or someone you know have bold ideas about how to replace them?
We’re accepting applications from now through May 25 to form our first cohort. Learn more at bolderhorizon.org/fellowships.
