As in many states, Black and Native children in Washington are overrepresented in the child protective system. To reduce these disparities, the Government Performance Lab (GPL) is working with the Washington State Department of Children, Youth & Families (DCYF) to provide more culturally specific and responsive services for Black and Native families. With the GPL’s support, DCYF is developing and testing promising practices to procure culturally responsive programs and contract with providers serving local Black and Native communities. These new contracting practices have the potential to spread to other jurisdictions that are trying to reduce racial/ethnic disparities in their child welfare system through improved social service arrays. To date, DCYF has released a pilot solicitation for Federally Recognized Tribes, Recognized American Indian Organizations, and other Native Serving Organizations to provide family support services that incorporate the cultures of specific Tribal Nations.  

Although the number of people experiencing homelessness in Seattle has risen over the past few years in part due to structural factors such as housing affordability and inadequate mental healthcare, the city’s increased spending on homeless services has had a limited impact on the problem. The city of Seattle held a conglomeration of contracts with service providers, but it renewed almost any contract that complied with requirements and rarely evaluated the effectiveness of the services themselves. The GPL worked with Seattle’s Human Services Department (HSD) to consolidate its contracts, allowing staff to shift their focus from compliance to performance. After consolidating these contracts, HSD held its first competitive procurement for homeless services in over a decade. This project has allowed HSD to reevaluate its spending on homeless services and fund the programs with the highest impact.

Connecting at-risk families with high quality early learning programs and family home visiting services