Dawn, a single mother with three kids between five and 13, first went to Cope Family Center in Napa when she needed help for her nine-year-old son, who was struggling emotionally. In the two years since, Cope staff have helped her connect with housing vouchers, child care subsidies, and other economic supports.

"Cope has been a great advocate for me," says Dawn. Because of the child care and housing subsidies, she's been able to put some of her income each month into a special Family Self-Sufficiency account maintained for her by her county housing authority. The goal is to save money for a down payment--she hopes to be a homeowner in the next five years. "It's really cool," says Dawn who works as an office manager. "I can only save about $200 a month but it adds up."

Cope's mission is child abuse prevention, says development manager Michelle Grupe, and Cope provides family support services. But the Cope staff also works hard to help people access all the economic supports they're eligible for, from low-cost health insurance to tax credits to child support. "The best way we know to help a family focus on positive parenting," says Grupe, "is by making sure their basic needs are met."

Families losing out
According to some analyses, only about one-third of low-income families receive all the economic supports for which they are eligible; the others lose an estimated $3,000 to $5,000 per family per year. "Many low-wage workers don't know what supports they're eligible for, and others are overwhelmed by the hassle. (Filling out) multiple applications, seeing a variety of workers, (keeping track of) renewal periods, and (finding) documents can all be overwhelming, especially for someone who's working during the day," says Frieda Molina, senior operations associate for MDRC, a non-profit research organization which studies family economic policy.

Some programs, like the Earned Income Tax Credit and Medi-Cal, are available to everyone who's eligible. Others, like child care and housing subsidies, have waiting lists because funds are limited. But community agencies can play a crucial role in helping families connect to any of these economic supports.

The whole picture
At Cope, "when families come in, they sit down with a resource specialist and we do a comprehensive assessment," says Grupe. In addition to Cope's own services, she says, "if they're not accessing one of the subsidy programs we know about, we can help them do that--filling out forms, making calls, whatever it takes."

At Communities United for Families (CUFF), a family resource center in Stockton, most families who come in are already receiving some aid, says Pastor Amelia Adams, who works at CUFF. "But it's not enough," she adds, "and the families have other things going on," from housing problems to unemployment to health problems.

So the resource center figures out what programs a family might be eligible for, then convenes a team of service providers to meet with the family and let them know what supports are available. "What we've experienced," says Adams, "is that families have gone other places and felt very helpless because no one extended to them the information that could help them."

Safety-net-working
The most important thing about helping parents get connected to benefits, says Grupe, is making connections with other organizations--knowing what they provide and what the eligibility guidelines are. "One of the strengths of Cope," says Grupe, "is that we work with everyone, so we don't have to do it all for a family." CUFF, says Adams, has "over 150 partners we work with."

Understanding the web of available economic supports is no easy task, says Sid Gardner, executive director of the nonprofit Children and Family Futures. There are 20 different funding streams for child care in California and more than 15 for drug and alcohol treatment. No one, says Gardner, can understand it all. For community agencies, "the important thing is understanding the best possible route for someone to get help with something," says Gardner. "You have to make a good referral, you have to make a good hand-off to someone who understands how best to help."

Benefits kids
When families receive economic supports, kids benefit. "Income supports provide the family with the basics that help them move on to (programs such as) parent education," says Gardner. "If the parenting problem is that the parent isn't there because she has to work two-and-a-half jobs to make ends meet, you can't counsel that away."

This article originally appeared in the September-October 2004 edition of the Children's Advocate, published by Action Alliance for Children. It is part of a series titled Family Economic Success, supported by the Friedman Family Foundation, Walter and Elise Haas Fund and Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation.

This article is also available in Spanish at the Action Alliance for Children web site.