The practitioner
I’m Matthew Hudson. For most of my career I’ve worked on the systems states use to keep track of the children in their care — the federal data systems, the compliance behind them, and the procurements that pay for them.
I came to this work from three directions: as a teenager I went through foster care myself; years later I reviewed how states ran their programs as a federal program specialist at the Children’s Bureau; and for most of a decade since, I’ve been the person agencies and their partners bring onto a build to do the child welfare work itself — the part that needs someone who knows what the data is for.
Most people in this field have one of those vantage points. I’ve had all three.
most of what makes these systems hard isn’t the law — it’s the manufactured complexity layered on top. taking that back out is the work.
What I do on a project
Brought onto a build to do the child welfare work.
Federal compliance, translated
CCWIS, AFCARS, NCANDS, NYTD, Title IV-E and IV-B, CAPTA, ICWA. I turn the federal requirements into something a development team can build to — and defend in a federal review.
Procurements that survive contact
RFPs, evaluation and demonstration processes, Advance Planning Documents. The documents a project is graded on, drafted by someone who has sat on both sides of the table.
Analysis a developer can build from
Requirements, process maps, gap analysis, data mapping — business analysis grounded in how child welfare casework actually works, not how a template says it should.
The change work that gets under-scoped
Readiness, stakeholder engagement, training, sustainment. The part that decides whether a system gets used — and the part most contracts price too thin.
The work
Where the work has been.
Two decades in child welfare, in two eras — the systems work, and the youth-development work the belief came from.
- Child welfare IT & federal compliance
- Youth-development & advisory work
- Both eras
Seven states and a tribal nation.
Two decades of work, in two eras. Hover a state — or a line below — for what the work was.
Eight years as Hudson Consulting and Training. Two decades in child welfare. One specialty.
Reach Matt
If you’ve got something real, email me.
A procurement to respond to, a system to build, a federal review to prepare for. It comes straight to me — and you’ll hear back from me.
matthew@hudsonct.comDenver, Colorado