Location: California (CA)
-
Removing Barriers: Public Benefits and Voter Registration
The GetCalFresh team, the California Department of Social Services, and the California Secretary of State’s office worked together to create a simplified, accessible voter registration experience with clients. When people come to GetCalFresh.org, they are looking to apply for food assistance, so the state of California did not want voter registration to become an obstacle to the goal of getting food assistance. Thus, rather than directing clients to anther website, they offered to text clients a link to the CA Secretary of State’s voter website with directions on how to register.
-
Rapidly Building Unemployment Services During the Pandemic
Nava partnered with California's Employment Development Department (EDD) to rapidly develop two cloud-based digital services, enhancing unemployment benefit access during the COVID-19 pandemic.
-
People Lead the Way: How GetCalFresh has adapted qualitative research during a public health crisis
This article describes how Code for America conducted qualitative research within its GetCalFresh application by asking families to tell them about their familial, housing, and financial situations. From client messages, they gathered information regarding how to make changes to their product to keep their work people-centered.
-
Overcoming Barriers: Helping Self-Employed Applicants Access Their Full CalFresh Benefit
This article discusses how Code for America enhanced the CalFresh application process to better assist self-employed individuals in accessing their full benefits by clarifying self-employment definitions and simplifying income verification.
-
Keeping Students Fed in an Uncertain Back to School Season: What We Learned from P-EBT, and What Comes Next
Code for America describes its work building the P-EBT online application and the consulting it provided to 10 states regarding implementing the program in a quick, effective, and human-centered way. Despite herculean efforts among human services and education agencies to get P-EBT off the ground, there were a few key technological, operational, and logistical barriers that consistently got in the way and hampered a smooth rollout of the program across the country.
-
Helping More Than 1.3 Million Schoolchildren Access Pandemic EBT—in Just One Week
In response to the COVID-19 crisis, the federal government authorized a new emergency program, Pandemic EBT (P-EBT), to replace school meals with money for groceries while schools are closed. Code for America describes its efforts to launch an accessible, online P-EBT application under an accelerated timeline due to to immense demand caused by the pandemic.
-
GetCalFresh Demo Website
Demo website for GetCalFresh—Code for America and the state of California’s efforts to simplify the SNAP application process.
-
Dismantling the Invisible Wall: Breaking down barriers to pandemic relief
This article details California's Disaster Relief Assistance for Immigrants (DRAI) program, which provided $500 in cash aid to undocumented adults affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the collaborative efforts between the state, community-based organizations (CBOs), and Code for America to distribute $75 million to 150,000 individuals.
-
Recommendations to Set Path for Reform at the Employment Development Department
In this report, the Strike Team outlines its recommendations and suggested next steps for the EDD to address the backlog and improve on future processing of unemployment claims.
-
Overcoming Barriers: Finding Better Ways to Ask GetCalFresh Applicants About Income
County workers typically spend most of their time trying to get income information right during eligibility interviews. This article provides several recommendations for asking about income, accounting for cognitive biases, under-reporting, and complexities in reporting income.
-
8 Tips for Governments to Mitigate Call Center Volume
This article describes tangible steps state governments can take to manage call volume.
-
Why Californians need food assistance: The stories behind the numbers
Californians who receive food assistance come from all backgrounds, but many share a similar story: they were barely getting by financially when they were tipped into crisis by an unexpected expense or loss of income. This site shares their stories.