The New York City Department of Education (DOE) knows that students who are missing school regularly or whose essential needs are not being met — from going hungry to not having glasses to read — face critical obstacles to learning in the classroom.
At the same time, many families and students who are eligible for public benefits programs–such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)–do not apply. An evaluation commissioned by the Robin Hood Foundation estimated that about 560,000 eligible New Yorkers were not receiving SNAP benefits – also known as food stamps – in 2014 (Civis Analytics, 2016).
The New York City Community Schools Initiative is a central strategy of the DOE to achieve an equitable education system where all students have the resources they need to succeed. Each of the 227 Community Schools is paired with a lead Community-Based Organization (CBO). These Community School partnerships not only ensure that students receive high-quality instruction, but also connect their families and neighborhoods to social services and helpful resources.
Recognizing that hunger and housing instability are major causes of stress in students’ lives, the New York City DOE partnered with Single Stop, a national benefits-enrollment-navigator, and the Public Policy Lab to explore how Community Schools might offer benefits enrollment on-site so that families can get the help they need and students can learn without impediment.
The outcome was Benefits Access, a program that connects families to benefits in public schools by equipping school staff with a strategy and toolkit to consistently refer families to benefits. The long-term goal of Benefits Access is to increase 1) staff referrals to benefits and services and 2) family enrollment in those benefits and services.
Schools visited
Staff and families engaged
Research Approach
Over seven months, we visited 21 schools across the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. We talked to nearly 200 people—including community school directors, principals, guidance counselors, parent coordinators, teachers, school staff, and families—to learn what schools do to connect families to benefits and services. In 30- to 60-minute research sessions with school staff, we discussed topics such as their current roles and responsibilities, top needs among families in their school, effective strategies they have used to engage with families, and the preferences and barriers within their school to connecting families to services.
PPL staff traveled to 21 schools and spoke to over 200 people, including teachers, families, and staff.
Following fieldwork, we analyzed the rich information from our research by identifying which needs were shared among families and staff and what best practices were already in place. We observed that teams move through similar steps when working with families to connect them to benefits and services—staff become aware of a family’s need, they work together to determine who in the school can best serve their need, and then they do the necessary research to connect that family to a service provider. With this in mind, we created a set of concepts—materials, tools, and processes to further explore and refine with staff and families.
PPL staff traveled to 21 schools and spoke to over 200 people, including teachers, families, and staff.
Co-Design
We invited six schools to participate in collaborative design sessions with us to assess the functionality and usability of our initial concepts. During these co-design sessions, we asked staff to prioritize our ideas from most useful to least useful and most meaningful to least meaningful. During co-design, we also explored how teams plan together and distribute work. With these lessons in mind, we asked the six schools to run a brief two-week field test, where they put the concepts into practice. The goal was to quickly identify any challenges or staff insights, then improve the materials before we shared them with all 21 participating schools during the pilot.
The Benefits Access Strategy & Toolkit, developed by the NYC Department of Education’s Office of Community Schools (OCS) and the Public Policy Lab (PPL), equips school staff to refer their families to public benefits and local services. Benefits Access empowers staff to prepare, reach out, and connect families to benefits and services through a set of tools that can be adapted to their school community and team capacity.
Benefits Access Strategy
The Benefits Access Strategy is a three-phase approach (prepare, reach out, and connect) that schools can incorporate into their ongoing work throughout the year.
Benefits Access Toolkit
The Benefits Access Toolkit is a set of ten flexible tools designed to support schools in preparing their teams, reaching out to families, and connecting families to benefits.
This suite of tools helps schools prepare by planning activities for the year and learning about benefits and services.
This suite of tools helps schools reach out to families about accessing benefits and services.
This suite of tools helps schools connect families to benefits and services, and then follow up with them about their experience.
After the field test, we refined the concepts into stand-alone prototypes and the 21 schools tested them during a four-week pilot period. Each week of the pilot included new activities to test, including: planning their strategy, attending webinars to learn about city benefits and services, surveying families about which benefits and services they would like to access, sharing outreach flyers with families, scheduling one-on-one conversations with families to explore their options, and reporting feedback.
During this period, we also attended six schools’ Community School forums and conducted a total of 70 surveys and interviews with families. In these interactions, we asked families which benefits and services they would like to access, whether they’d approached their school for benefits help, and what kind of support they’d prefer. Families were most interested in housing, employment, and health benefits. They said they’d most appreciate referrals to organizations, help figuring out their eligibility, and coaching on benefits applications. However, most had never reached out to school staff about benefits, either because they were not aware they could or because they didn’t feel comfortable asking for assistance.
After gathering feedback from participating pilot schools, we refined the tools once more, and designed the final “Benefits Access How To Guide” to aid school staff in making referrals. We launched the full program across the network of nearly 300 community schools, serving more than a quarter million low-income students and their families.
PPL is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3)
nonprofit organization.
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