Benefits Journey: Outreach + Awareness
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What Happens When People Feel Ownership Over Their Benefits
An interview with Wendy De La Rosa, assistant professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. De La Rosa discusses how the concept of “psychological ownership” can encourage people to take up benefits they are eligible for.
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Hawai’i’s Coordinating SNAP & Nutrition Supports Impact Report
This report documents best practices and lessons learned from project streamlined data sharing between SNAP and WIC, enhancing cross-enrollment processes
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CSNS Kansas: Forming Connections Between SNAP and WIC to Tackle Food Insecurity
Together, the Kansas Department for Children and Families (DCF) and Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) are working to design and build a sustainable process to improve cross-enrollment for families eligible for both the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). This report outlines how Kansas will integrate data matches between SNAP and WIC—as well as targeted outreach— within the ongoing business processes of the agencies to help streamline the experience of accessing nutrition supports for clients. These functions will contribute to the agencies’ shared goal of reducing rates of food insecurity in Kansas.
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Want to design policies that really work? Test them on the users who need them first
A step-by-step guide to how New Jersey used plain language and user-testing to improve the state’s paid family and medical leave program
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LIFT Voices Describe Hardships Among Black and Latina Mothers in Pandemic
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) report highlights the disproportionate hardships faced by Black and Latina mothers during the COVID-19 pandemic, exacerbated by systemic inequities.
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Spanish Translation Guide for Unemployment Insurance
Guidelines and resources to help improve Spanish translations for unemployment insurance (UI) content
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The CUTGroup Book: Civic User Testing Group as a New Model for UX Testing, Digital Skills Development, and Community Engagement in Civic Tech
The CUTGroup book explains how civic user testing (paying residents to test civic apps) can allow for more community engagement in civic tech. This book covers how to do UX testing, community engagement, and digital skills in one civic tech system.
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Unemployment Insurance Email Template Kit v1.0
This kit contains a collection of styles, components, and building blocks to quickly create action-forward emails for Unemployment Insurance programs within the U.S.
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Aligning Systems to Advance Family and Community Well-Being: A Partnership Playbook for Community Action and Human Services Agencies
This playbook outlines the ways Community Action and human services agencies worked together to meet the pandemic challenge—what worked well, obstacles and difficulties, and lessons learned to inform the path forward, partnering to achieve a more equitable recovery. It also explains how communities have leveraged opportunities to partner on approaches that hold the promise of deeper, longer lasting changes for families—work shaped by families’ wishes and strengths and designed to advance both family-level and systems-level change.
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Theory of Change (ToC) Resource Appendix
This resource appendix is a compilation of useful resources intended as a follow-on to the DSN’s writing on theories of change for digital transformation in government. Practitioners can use these resources to DIY their ToC after reading our essays.
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Digital Benefit Beacons: Where Policy Meets Practice at BenCon 2024
Michigan's UIA director, Julia Dale, is leading the agency through transition by prioritizing lived experience, hope, grit, and values. Virginia's SNAP Program Manager, Michele Thomas, highlighted the success of Sun Bucks, a summer EBT child nutrition program that fed over 700,000 kids in its first year.
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Community Navigators Can Increase Access to Unemployment Benefits and New Jobs While Building Worker Power
Evidence from the Maine Peer Workforce Navigator program shows that workers and government can benefit from well-designed community partnerships.