Urban Partnerships Initiative

The Urban Partnerships Initiative was a project designed by the Office of Family Assistance to improve outcomes for low-income families by facilitating peer exchange among TANF stakeholders in urban centers. This project sought to identify the issues faced by urban communities in moving families from welfare to work, to establish community-level collaborative, and to match technical assistance to community needs. The key purposes of the project were to convene Academies with key stakeholders from urban areas with high TANF caseloads and provide intensive technical assistance to these urban communities to help them develop relationships between systems, to identify and remove barriers to collaboration between systems, and to develop strategic plans addressing the needs identified by the communities during the panel meeting.