Social service systems succeed by pairing the right people with the right services. Yet too often individuals who could benefit from a social service receive a referral but never connect with the service.
Our publication, Bottlenecks, Backlogs, and Breakdowns: Using Data to Identify Gaps in Service Referrals, elevates three key questions that program staff can ask of their data to improve their processes:
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What are the key referral steps and where are people dropping off?
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How long does each step take?
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Who are we actually reaching?
In this promising practices brief, we highlight how leaders across the country, from Washington to Rhode Island and Texas to Tennessee, used these questions to identify areas for improvement, and how their small changes made a big difference for the people they were trying to serve.