Episode #43: Ali Caliendo
Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy.
Over the past 5 years, we’ve seen entries to foster care decline by nearly one-fifth.
The stock story our field assumes about that decline is prevention, making the debate about whether that’s progress to celebrate or a growing safety risk.
But should we be so sure that data point is measuring what we think it is?
Today’s guest thinks our kinship care and prevention policy debates bypass a bigger question; are we separating fewer children from their parents, or merely moving them outside the categories we typically track?
Ali Caliendo is a kinship care expert, social entrepreneur, and professor whose work spans policy, research, and direct service delivery.
In wondering “where did the children go?”, she raises an uncomfortable question; is kinship care primarily prevention, to avoid foster care, or an intervention, for children who can’t remain with their parents?
We dug into what shaped her perspective, the gap between formal policy and its implementation, and how she decided to pass the baton at Foster Kinship after founding and building it over 15 years.
