What reporting on the Family First Act taught me about tackling complex policy stories

When I first stumbled upon the federal child welfare policy I wrote about for my California Health Equity Reporting Fellowship, I didn’t know what I was about to get myself into. The law, called the Family First Prevention Services Act, came up during an interview I had with a lawyer who works on child welfare policy. When she casually mentioned that small community organizations were struggling to tap the major pot of federal money this law created, I had an inkling there was a good story to tell. 

It turns out, the Family First legislation was a really big deal when it was passed in 2018. It changed how foster care is funded in the United States in a big way — by giving money to programs that prevent children from going into foster care in the first place. But through my reporting, I found out that a web of complicated — and expensive — guidelines make it hard for culturally specific programs aimed to preventing foster care involvement from qualifying. Everyone I talked to felt that the law held great promise, but was falling short because of the high barriers to entry the law created.

What was clear from the start of my reporting is that I had a meaty story in front of me. The Family First law is very complex, with a lot of moving parts. If I could go back and do this story all over again, here’s what I would keep in mind from the beginning: 

Nail down the basics

It’s easy to want to jump right into interviewing people before you have your bases covered. But for stories about complicated policy, it’s important to know the basics early on. You’ll sound smarter for it when interviewing experts as well.

The first thing I did was read through the bill text. Then, I read through analyses of the bill conducted by child welfare and foster care organizations. Because the legislation is so important, there was no shortage of commentary and reviews available.

I also spoke to experts about the law and what it meant for children of color, who are overrepresented in the child welfare system. These experts gave me valuable things to consider throughout my reporting.

Think about people first

I’ll be the first to admit that the sheer volume of information I was facing pushed me into analysis paralysis. After I took a deep breath and talked to my editor, I realized that the key ingredient in a story of this depth are real human voices. I needed to find and talk to the people who were being impacted by these policies.

My editor assured me it could take months, so I should start the process early, and reach out often. I hit the ground running. I started by making a list of local organizations I knew were administering programs that qualified for federal dollars under the law. Then I reached out to those organizations and waited. And waited. And waited. 

It took months for some of those organizations to respond, and in some cases it took weeks to organize phone calls or in-person interviews. In the end, I was able to speak to a handful of organizations about their experiences, which informed my reporting even if their quotes didn’t make it into the story. 

Ultimately, I zeroed in on two organizations that were stationed 66 miles away from me, and one based hundreds of miles away in Sacramento. After a couple day trips, I had the people I needed to guide my stories.

Be maniacally organized 

In the early days of my fellowship, the Center held a sessions about how to organize an investigation. While I wasn’t working on a story that exposed wrongdoing per se, l was eager to learn how to keep track of a reporting project that had so many moving parts. The session was led by Kathleen McGrory, local investigations fellowship editor at The New York Times, and was filled with important tips on how to keep yourself (and your editor) on track. 

One thing she mentioned that became especially useful during my reporting was the use of “top lines.” After every interview, I would compile a bullet point list of the top three to five things I learned that were relevant to my reporting. I kept all of these top lines in a single Google document, so when I needed to remind myself of who said what, I could reference this list. 

I also kept a master research document during my reporting. This document held all of my research on the Family First law, backgrounders on the organizations and people I planned to interview, and even a dictionary of important acronyms and their meanings (the child welfare field is full of long acronyms that no one can seem to keep track of). It was my “single source of truth” throughout my reporting.

There is still so much reporting left to do on this legislation, the impact of which will take years to be fully realized across the U.S., but keeping these tips in mind will help me, and hopefully fellow reporters tracking the story, stay organized and focused.