This report explores how public benefit systems can better support young adults by addressing the barriers they face in accessing and maintaining vital services like SNAP, Medicaid, and WIC.
This report examines how recent federal spending cuts and policy changes are shifting costs onto county governments, potentially burdening local budgets and services.
This case study highlights how Illinois is modernizing its student data infrastructure and interagency data sharing to increase access to SNAP and Summer EBT benefits for eligible children and families, particularly those facing systemic barriers.
American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
Medicaid and SNAP have reduced racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare access and food security, but some administrative and eligibility policies continue to create inequitable barriers.
This brief provides a summary of potential federal funding sources and programs that can be used to support programs specifically targeted towards young families. While this list is not exhaustive, it highlights major sources that can serve as a starting point for braiding and blending of funding to create comprehensive programming to serve young families.
American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
The Advancing Economic Mobility for Low-Income Families report, published by the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices, provides policy options for governors to strengthen economic security, workforce participation, and wealth-building opportunities for low-income families.
Differing federal requirements for public benefit applications create significant barriers for applicants and complicate state efforts to integrate services.
It is necessary give the public servants who manage safety-net systems the technology tools and incentives to track critical outcomes and meet people where they are.
Though the rhetoric of “waste, fraud, and abuse” is ubiquitous when it comes to welfare programs, low-income households receive little relief from benefits programs. Most efforts to make public benefits systems more “efficient” actually just waste time and money in practice. They instead serve to stigmatize low-income families and chip away at the little assistance that remains available to them.
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.
This study examines how bureaucratic interactions differ among public assistance programs—WIC, SNAP, and Medicaid—highlighting variations in participant experiences and the psychological costs associated with each.
This benefits protection toolkit is a step-by-step guide to develop and integrate a benefits protection strategy into your Direct Cash Transfer (DCT) program design. This toolkit includes a set of customizable templates, letters, and other tools which should be downloaded and modified for your pilot and local context.