I took a trip to Washington DC last week and had the opportunity to meet with Kathryn Bayer, the author of the excellent Poverty and Policy blog. Kathryn’s focus is on, as the title of her site suggests, policy, whereas my focus is on direct service providers. The commonality between me, Kathryn, and anyone reading this site is poverty.

Our conversation centered on the relationship between social policies and service provision. On face the connection might not seem obvious. Direct service providers deal with people in need in their communities every day, whereas policy, particular federal policy, is crafted at a high level and often far away from the people it is designed to support.