Introducing Wonk Intelligence Quarterly
Welcome to Wonk Intelligence Quarterly (WIQ) — a premium strategic intelligence resource for leaders, policymakers, and decision-makers navigating an increasingly complex child and family policy landscape.
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Each edition identifies the key trends shaping the environment in which you're operating and provides clear guidance on how to navigate it effectively.
Our 2025 year-end piece, Three Quiet Constraints Shaping Child Welfare Policy, gave a map of the terrain we are all navigating now:
● Fiscal federalism grinding along its fault lines;
● State capacity as a strategic bottleneck for reform; and
● A scarcity of clear theories of change that artificially limits debate;
What this showed is that constraint is not failure; incrementalism is not a moral outcome but an environmental and architectural one.
Fiscal federalism, state capacity, and vision scarcity are load-bearing forces that contribute to that reality.
This edition of WIQ provides strategic guidance on how to move through and navigate this terrain.
We've structured this Quarterly around those three constraints: Washington explores the implications of fiscal federalism's limits, States addresses how capacity and readiness down throttle reform, and Field examines the scarcity of clear theories of change.
This is not a forecast of specific events. It's a high-altitude analysis for decision-makers in a world where:
● Volatility is a permanent operating condition;
● Sustainable architecture is the fundamental unit of durability;
● State capacity for delivery determines optionality in navigating the policy environment; and
● Vision informed by on-the-ground reality must precede the apparatus of policy making.
Leaders at every level and across the child and family policy sector have a role to play in navigating this era effectively and shaping what comes next; this WIQ unpacks how to think about your role and opportunities.
Check out the 2026 Q1 WIQ here.