The ACF Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) hosted a symposium on the application of behavioral research to programs that serve low-income children and families in July 2010. OPRE released a summary of the event, which included behavioral researchers, social welfare researchers, foundation staff, federal staff, and social service program operators. Stakeholders discussed ways to improve social service delivery and program effectiveness for programs that serve low-income children and families.

On April 26th, 2011, Peer TA hosted a Webinar on a pair of innovative partnerships between TANF programs (or other public systems) and local faith-based or community organizations serving the same low-income families and individuals in their communities. Though these two sectors often work independently at the local level, many TANF officials and program leaders have experienced considerable gains by partnering.

This cross-site analysis examines all 8 of the exemplary FBCO-TANF partnerships described in the project’s case studies, by drawing out important findings related to volunteer management, organizational infrastructure, inter-agency communication, and place-based strategies. Moreover, the 14-page report articulates some of the leading reasons a TANF agency would want to partner with an FBCO, and it describes how effective partnerships can emerge.

Given the weak economy, many nonprofit organizations have been forced to make budget cuts, and often, these reductions are in organizational capacity, rather than direct service funding. The Finance Project authored this report in response to these trends on four approaches for nonprofit organizations serving youth, specifically, and how organizational leaders can support and strengthen their organizational capacity, including building accurate overhead rates into contracts and grants, accessing funding to directly support capacity building, accessing technical assistance to support or improve organizational capacity, and forming partnerships to share administrative services.

Low-wage workers must navigate through multiple social systems in order to access benefits to support employment. The Center on Law and Social Policy, in partnership with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, developed this toolkit to help state and local policymakers, program operators and advocates identify federal funding streams that can be used to support integrated service delivery. The toolkit focuses on integrated service delivery to help organizations offer multiple services to best support participants toward self-sufficiency.

This joint letter was signed by program heads in HHS and Agriculture providing information related to the health insurance exchanges, Medicaid eligibility information technology systems, the advance planning process for information technology procurements and how these and other programs can work together.

This resource is a presentation given by the Keynote speaker, Eugene Bardach, Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley at the National Association for Welfare Research and Statistics 50th Annual Workshop. The meeting occurred September 28-29, 2010 in Los Angeles, California, and the presentation was entitled, "Interagency Collaboration and Coordination in Social Policy Research and Practice."

These resources come directly from the field, and consist of tools used by leading practitioners--both TANF officials and FBCO leaders--throughout the country. Examples include inter-agency Memoranda of Understanding, tracking and referral forms, recruitment tools, confidentiality agreements, and relevant participation surveys. Our tools are available in PDF, but if you would like Word versions of the tools, please email us at: peerta@blhtech.com.
Please note: Though used in the field, these products are not endorsed by the Office of Family Assistance, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services or any other branch of the federal government.

From the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, this brief describes the Wisconsin Poverty Project, and how data have been used to provide a view of both needs and resources on the state and local levels. Researchers have developed a new poverty measure for the state of Wisconsin, which was developed to improve understanding of the level of need across the state and of the efficacy of public programs aimed at reducing economic hardship.

The TANF Faith-Based and Community Organizations Initiative was designed to examine promising partnerships between TANF offices and FBCOs working in their communities. The goal of the initiative was to help low-income participants attain economic self-sufficiency by linking together the unique strengths of faith-based organizations, community-based groups, and intermediary organizations with TANF programs at the state and local levels. The project described some leading practices in partnering organizations nationwide, and makes available a set of on-the-ground tools for interested TANF program leaders and FBCO communities.

There were four primary components of the Initiative:

The initiative’s first phase (2007-08) collected information from 139 grassroots faith-based and community organizations nationwide, resulting in a Compendium of Organizations, which documents core components of 139 local social service organizations. After a careful vetting process, 23 of these organizations with highly promising elements—whether because of their relationship with local TANF agencies, unique approaches to serving clients, existing public support, or evidence of effectiveness—were selected for further study.

The project’s second phase (2008-09) consisted of a refined analysis of the top 23 FBCOs, described in the Snapshots of Success report. The research team followed up systematically with Executive Directors in each of the 23 sites, and using information gleaned from informal phone-based outreach, identified 8 sites that would participate in on-site interviews and analysis.

During the third phase (2009-10), the team conducted two-day site visits with each of the 8 leading FBCO partners, and developed initial case studies about FBCO programs partnering with their local TANF office.

Finally, the initiative’s fourth phase (2010-11) compiled these case studies and other relevant “tools” gathered in the field into an online webpage, for use by a larger number of FBCO or TANF program leaders interested in supporting local public-private partnerships in their communities.