The Seeds of Success: Children’s Savings Accounts and College Enrollment

I’m often inspired by the innovative ideas being developed to help low-income families meet both present and future needs.  One example I recently shared highlighted community gardens that provide fresh food to low-income neighborhoods in Tulsa.  Today, I’m drawing inspiration from the economic seeds being planted through San Francisco’s Kindergarten to College (K2C) program.

Launched in 2011 by the City and County of San Francisco, K2C is the first publicly funded, universal children’s savings account program in the country.  Operated through the city’s Office of Financial Empowerment (OFE), the program ensures every kindergarten student in the San Francisco Unified School District is automatically enrolled in a College Savings Account.  Accounts are seeded with $50 provided by the city-county government, with students enrolled in the National School Lunch Program receiving an additional $50.

Accounts are designed to make contributing as easy as possible by allowing relatives and extended family to deposit money by mail, online, or in person.  There is no minimum deposit amount required, so families can give what they can afford, when they can afford it.  Partnerships with local foundations, organizations and businesses also provide matching funds for promotions that encourage families to save regularly and speed the growth of account balances.

The program is still relatively new but the results so far are encouraging.  As of 2012, over

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2012 CAP Free Tax Prep Information

This is outdated information from 2012.  To view up-to-date information for 2013, please click here.

It is that time of year again!  CAP’s free tax preparation program is in full swing at three sites across Tulsa.  Families who make $50,000 or less are eligible for free tax preparation with our IRS-certified volunteers.  In addition to free tax preparation services two sites, Exchange Center and Pine & Lewis BOK, have checking and savings account enrollment available, which will help you receive your refund faster than using a paper check.  Oklahoma’s Promise enrollment and US Savings Bonds are available at all the CAP tax sites listed below.

The appointment line opens January 13, 2012.  To make an appointment call 918-382-3333.

For list of items to bring to your appointment, click here.

This year’s locations and times include:

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Guest Blog: How we Can Move From Good Child Care to Quality Early Learning

This post was written by Paul Shinn, CAP’s Public Policy Analyst

At Community Action Project (CAP) we provide direct services to Tulsa’s low-income families through high-quality early learning programs and programs that provide families with career, health, and financial supports. Through this work we’ve increasingly appreciated that public benefit programs are an essential support for Oklahoma’s low-income families. As a result, CAP has launched Better Benefits for Oklahoma Families, a series of assessments of Oklahoma public benefit programs.

Our first issue, released in November, looks at the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF). CCDF  is a federal-state program to provide child care subsidies to low-income families with parents who work or are in school. CCDF gives families vouchers to pay for some or all of the child care for children up to age 13. Many families pay some of the cost of care as a co-pay that depends on their income and the number of children in care. In Oklahoma, CCDF is run by the Department of Human Services (OKDHS) and is known as child care subsidy.

There’s good news about CCDF in Oklahoma but bad news as well.

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Spotlight on States

Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity has released an interactive map they are calling Spotlight on States.  According to the email newsletter I received today, the 50-state map includes the following data for each state:

• State poverty data and statistics: A compilation of data, including poverty, unemployment and asset poverty rates, and information on housing. Each data point links to its source.
• State policies: A listing of key state tax, asset-building and work support policies that help support low-income families; includes links to state or national organizations that track the issue.
• Research: A compilation of relevant state research reports on issues related to poverty and opportunity.
• News: A news feed of articles about poverty in a given state.

From the brief time I spent looking at the data for Oklahoma, I found the map really useful.  I like that I can quickly compare Oklahoma with surrounding states on data points such as food insecurity and participation in federal programs like SNAP, TANF, and EITC.

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Fall 2011 OKDHS Practice and Policy Lecture Series

The Oklahoma Department of Human Services Office of Planning, Research, and Statistics and the University of Oklahoma Center for Public Management are once again offering up their Practice and Policy Lecture Series.  Each lecture is from noon to 1:00pm and free to the public.  

In the first lecture of the Fall 2011 series, will feature Lisa G. Klein, Executive Director of the Birth to Five Policy Alliance, presenting “Why Early Childhood Matters: Brain Development Birth to Five.”  The lecture will be August 17, 2011 in the Chesapeake Room of the Oklahoma History Center.

Other lectures in the Fall 2011 Lecture Series include:  

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2011 Summer Food Options in Tulsa

Yesterday was the last day of school for thousands of Tulsa Public Schools students.  No doubt a day many have been looking forward to since the first day of school in August.  But for some, summer is a difficult time because they no longer have the security of free or reduced meals at school.  The Summer Food Service is a federal program to meet the needs of these families.  At Summer Food Service sites any person under 18 can get a free, nutritious meal with no applications or commitments.  Many sites also offer free or low-cost summer activities for kids, such as reading, movies, sports, computer labs, arts & crafts, and field trips. 

Tulsa Public Schools’ summer food program has been rebranded this year as Summer Cafe.  In 2010, the Summer Café served over 53,332 breakfasts, 103,225 lunches and 25,526 afternoon snacks.  This year the program will be offered at more than 70 sites across Tulsa.  The sites are not just schools; they are churches, community centers, apartment complexes, and summer camps.  To find the site closest to you, click here.   

Tulsa Public Schools is not the only provider of the Summer Food Service in the area though.  Other Tulsa area summer food sites include:

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Lessons about Doing Evaluation Research from Howard S. Bloom

Every year the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management awards the Peter H. Rossi Award for Contributions to the Theory or Practice of Program Evaluation.  The 2010 recipient was Howard S. Bloom, the Chief Social Scientist at MDRC.  MDRC is a social policy research organization that evaluates various policies and programs throughout the US.  As part of his acceptance speech Howard S. Bloom shared nine important lessons he learned about evaluation research during his career in academia and at MDRC.  I think these lessons are interesting and important to keep in mind as program evaluation becomes more and more important to non-profits and their funders.

Howard S. Bloom’s nine lessons about doing evaluation research include:

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Getting It Right vs. Getting It Seen

A group out of New Haven, CT called Innovations for Poverty Action is evaluating anti-poverty programs around the globe to determine what works and what doesn’t. In their words:

Innovations for Poverty Action applies rigorous research techniques to test and develop solutions to real-world problems faced by the poor in developing countries.

Great. The anti-poverty world (whether we’re talking domestic or international poverty) needs as much information as it can get about what works and what doesn’t. And their roster of researchers is impressive enough that I trust their findings.

There are quite a few of these sorts of initiatives going on right now. I can name four off the top of my head, without even resorting to Google: MDRC (originally the Manpower Development Research Corporation), Mathematica Policy Research, the Center for What Works, and Edutopia.

It seems to me that the challenge before us has shifted. Access to skilled evaluators has been greatly expanded, as has awareness by funders that they have to start including evaluation costs in their grantmaking. It’s no longer about whether we should, how to, or who can evaluate promising programs. The problem is diffusing that information and enabling replication of successful models.

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What did you say your job was again?

In the tradition of my teammates, I’d like to take a bit of time to introduce myself and my position as Client Relationship Manager with Tulsa Initiative.  (If you haven’t seen their entries from the earliest days of the blog check out Micah’s, Diama’s, and Monica’s.)  Within TI’s commitment to develop research- and evidence-based programs driven by the academic and think tank world as well as the community, my work falls largely in the latter category with a focus on our current and past client families.

Generally this means that as the Client Relationship Manager I’m charged with (1) building and maintaining our relationships with families to support continued delivery of services including after families transition out of early childhood programs and (2) gathering and tracking qualitative data that will inform evaluations of program performance, key drivers of program take-up and client preferences.  The overarching goal is to help us better understand what supports help families provide safe, secure and nurturing environments in which their children can succeed.  No one is better positioned to inform this discussion than the families themselves.

I hope in my future posts to expand on our ideas and plans for this – sharing thoughts and seeking input.  In line with TI’s mission to implement research- and evidence-based programs, I hope those same standards govern our relationship building, qualitative data collection and tracking mechanisms.  Many organizations are modifying and identifying best practices for tracking and eliciting client input and promoting client involvement in the design and evaluation process. I hope to learn about current practices that could be successfully modified to our own communities and projects.  Ideas of special interest within this work include participatory action research, family empowerment, community engagement, social capital, network organizing. I could go on for a while so expect to see future posts on these subjects as well as others.

If you have thoughts on the work I’ve been discussing, please use the blog or contact me offblog (is that the proper term?).  I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts.  My contact information is included under the contact tab and additional information on my background and the team can be found in the Contributors section.  Thanks for taking the time to read this. I look forward to many discussions ahead.

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Single Parents vs. Long Term Unemployed in the Employment Retention & Advancement Demonstration

MDRC has been evaluating a program called the Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) Demonstration. One of ERA’s supported work projects is in the UK, where out-of-work customers could access pre-employment services including training and placement, as well as post-employment support and a financial incentive in the form of a wage supplement. Since this is somewhat similar to one component-in-design of our collaboration with Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child, called the Tulsa Children’s Project, we’ve been keeping an eye on the results.

This particular report was for long-term unemployed individuals who were not parents, mostly males over the age of 25. Results? Not so great:

Although ERA had no effect on earnings, it did lead to a small increase in employment rates in year 2. Still, the findings after two years for the ND25+ group are discouraging, especially when compared with those for lone parents. Less than half of the ND25+ customers in ERA worked at all during the two-year period. Thus, fewer of them were able to benefit from ERA’s in-work supports. This may help to explain the programme’s limited effects for this group.

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