In October 2020, a mayoral initiative created “Families First D.C.” within Washington, D.C.’s Child and Family Service Agency (CFSA). The goal was to empower families, better integrate services, and focus on upstream prevention to potentially reduce child protection services contact.
CFSA provided grants to 10 organizations to create “Family Success Centers” (FSCs) These were places where families could access food, housing supports, parenting courses, or youth programming.
How the GPL Supported:
Helped the Families First team implement data-driven performance management practices, so the agency could review and analyze the data from all FSCs to identify commonalities, trends over time, and places to improve.
This included monthly meetings between the CFSA and their FSC providers so they could share stories with each other of what worked and what challenges they were facing.
Helped CFSA streamline and increase families’ access to food banks and food access organizations after data showed that food had consistently been the number one service requested from families for nearly nine months during the Covid pandemic.
Helped CFSA develop new outreach strategies, including through text messaging, to improve attendance at the FSCs.
Results:
Families served by the FSCs had greater access to food.
For example, CFSA conversations about food insecurity with local hunger-relief organizations prompted one organization to donate a giant food cart to some of the FSCs so families could get fresh produce there.
The FSCs received $500,000 for nutrition and education programming, and an anonymous philanthropist donated $100,000 in grocery store gift cards.
One of the centers, which had before only provided snacks, provided 200 food boxes with fresh fruits and vegetables and a protein.
Meeting individual families where they are has been really key with this initiative: if that means knocking on the door or showing up where families are, for example at a laundromat. Ultimately, our goal is to ensure that families not only have the resources, but they know how to navigate the system.Octavia Shaw
Families First Program Manager
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Our agency is trying to shift to a child wellbeing and family strengthening vision for our work. We want to get away from a mentality of ‘We are the government and we know all’ and shift towards an orientation of ‘Communities know exactly what they need and our role is to help them in navigating the system to get those supports.'Taylor German
Former Families First Program Management Analyst
Meeting individual families where they are has been really key with this initiative: if that means knocking on the door or showing up where families are, for example at a laundromat. Ultimately, our goal is to ensure that families not only have the resources, but they know how to navigate the system.Octavia Shaw
Our agency is trying to shift to a child wellbeing and family strengthening vision for our work. We want to get away from a mentality of ‘We are the government and we know all’ and shift towards an orientation of ‘Communities know exactly what they need and our role is to help them in navigating the system to get those supports.'Taylor German