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