National Alliance to End Homelessness
Thanks, Sharon, and to the Alliance for the invaluable work you do. Thanks to my fellow panelists and to all of you here today. In the next few minutes, I’m pleased to talk with you about the efforts of the Administration for Children and Families in support of the goal of ending family homelessness. In today’s session, and after today, we welcome your thoughts and suggestions for what else we can and should be doing to support your state and local efforts.
As you may know, ACF has responsibilities for a broad array of programs supporting low-income children, families, and communities, including Head Start, Child Care, child welfare, child support, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, refugee assistance, unaccompanied children, and others.
At ACF, one of our cross-cutting priorities is to support the effort to end family and youth homelessness. We also work closely with HUD and other inter-agency partners in the work coordinated by the Interagency Council. I’m pleased to be continuing as co-chair of the federal interagency working group on ending family homelessness.
Our family homelessness work is cross-cutting for a number of reasons. First, we understand that many families experiencing homelessness are similar to other very low-income families, that they need both affordable housing and stable employment to help them avoid or exit homelessness.
Second, we recognize that domestic violence is a major contributor to homelessness among families, and that closer coordination between domestic violence programs and other homelessness is essential.
We recognize that early childhood programs can play a key role in both helping families reduce the risk of homelessness, and in providing essential services to children who are at risk of or who have experienced homelessness.
And, we understand that increasing the number of successful transitions for families in the foster care system and for young people leaving foster care can reduce both youth and family homelessness.
So, the efforts have broad implications across our work. In the next few minutes, I’ll talk about how several ACF programs support efforts to address family homelessness, describe guidance we have provided to grantees and communities, and share some examples. Specifically, I’ll talk about potential partnerships with TANF, Community Action agencies, domestic violence programs, and early childhood programs. We’re seeking to encourage these, and others. I hope this overview will be helpful, and hope you can attend other conference sessions that address some of these topics in more detail.
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
First, TANF: Every state receives a Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grant each year. A very wide of services and supports for homeless families and families at risk of homelessness can be funded with TANF and state maintenance of effort funds.
Last year, we released an Informational Memorandum discussing how TANF funds can be used in support of state and local efforts to help families at risk of or experiencing homelessness.
We’re seeking to encourage awareness of how TANF funds can be used, and how TANF agencies can be partners.
In brief, there’s great flexibility in using TANF funds, and they can be used to provide short-term rental or mortgage payments, security and utility payments, case management, financial and credit counseling, legal services, housing search and placement services, and related administrative costs.
TANF funds can also be used for employment services in connection with rapid rehousing strategies. In many cases, rapid rehousing will only succeed if parents can quickly connect with stable employment, and TANF funds can be used in those efforts, and we’re encouraging TANF agencies to partner in providing these employment services. We also encourage states to use TANF funds for subsidized employment initiatives, and families experiencing or at risk of homelessness can be included or prioritized in such initiatives.
In a few minutes, you’ll hear about Mercer County’s efforts. We highlighted others in our IM. And a workshop tomorrow morning will include ACF and local staff discussing innovations in Washington, Los Angeles, and Idaho.
Community Services Block Grant
We’re also encouraging creating and building on local partnerships with community action agencies. ACF also works closely with the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) Network—a Network of over 1000 local organizations covering 96% of U.S. counties. Many community action agencies are actively engaged in local efforts to address homelessness, and in many communities, the CAA is the lead agency for the local Continuum of Care. If your local Continuum is not partnering with your local CAA, we encourage you to do so. Your CAA's comprehensive community needs assessment could be a helpful source of information as Continuum members draft plans and strategies to address homelessness in your community, and CAAs often see and work with families experiencing or at risk of homelessness.
In June, ACF issued an information memorandum urging CSBG-eligible entities and other homeless service providers to strengthen their collaborations, and clarifying that CSBG funds may be used to match McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance programs provided that any activities and services supported by the CSBG funds are consistent with all CSBG requirements.
We’ve heard from local communities that the guidance in the IM has been useful, and we’ve heard from CAAs who are supporting homelessness efforts in their communities in states such as Kentucky, New Hampshire, and Virginia. CSBG funds are being used to build and support capacity, to pay for staff and case management, and sometimes for rent or mortgage payments. To support efforts like these, the Office of Community Services is working with the Community Action Partnership to develop a CSBG learning community on effective practices for reducing family homelessness.
Early Childhood Development
We also encourage local partnerships with early childhood programs. We know that children experiencing homelessness are disproportionally at-risk for a host of negative developmental and educational outcomes. They also face many barriers to accessing early care and learning programs that could provide foundational supports to overcome the negative impacts of homelessness.
In January 2013, we released an early childhood education letter and resources on serving homeless families. This letter recommends that state child care and Head Start programs prioritize access to service for homeless families (already a requirement for Head Start), provide grace periods, where appropriate, to give families experiencing homelessness sufficient opportunity to gather required documentation; coordinate with homeless education state coordinators and local liaisons to connect children and families with needed services, and to work with homeless coalitions to ensure the needs of young children are well represented.
This March, we released housing and shelter provider’s guide to developmental and behavioral screenings, and two weeks ago we released Building Partnerships to Address Family Homelessness, a resource paper that highlights efforts by local Head Start and Early Head Start programs to connect with public housing programs, emergency shelter providers, local education agencies, and other community service providers.
Around the country, Head Start and Early Head Start programs are engaged in partnerships to make their services more accessible for children experiencing homelessness. The Connecticut Head Start State Collaboration Office coordinated eight Head Start programs who teamed with 11 Department of Social Services Family Shelters to ensure that shelters were safe and developmentally appropriate for children. They worked together to enroll children in Head Start or other early childhood programs. Together, each team completed a Head Start-Family Shelter Self-Assessment Checklist that focused on seven key areas: physical environment, policies on young children and families, qualified workforce, programming, funding, tracking and evaluation, and building awareness.
Using Connecticut’s pilot work, ACF is developing an Early Childhood Self-Assessment Tool for Family Shelters that is presently in review. HUD, other ACF offices and the Alliance are providing feedback. We hope to release this in late Fall.
Domestic Violence
As you know, domestic violence is a major cause of homelessness for families with children. The most critical need among homeless survivors of domestic violence exiting emergency shelter is safe, affordable, permanent housing. We think it’s crucial to strengthen linkages and coordination between domestic violence service providers and homelessness providers and advocates in communities.
ACF’s Family and Youth Services Bureau administers the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act which supports more than 1600 domestic violence programs across the country. This network of shelter and supportive services addresses a homeless survivor’s need for safe shelter while offering trauma-informed programming. This conference will include presentations from domestic violence programs implementing innovative strategies to move beyond congregate shelter to safer housing alternatives. Given the unique challenges faced by domestic violence survivors in transition, these innovative models include flexible options such as emergency shelter, transitional, and permanent housing. Communities need integrated housing first and supportive services models to increase positive outcomes for homeless families impacted by domestic violence. ACF and FYSB are committed to increasing partnerships with homeless service providers as well as offering training to assist with the implementation of trauma-informed homeless services. Increased implementation of collaborative planning with domestic violence providers will greatly improve the health and safety for families living with the constant threats of fear, coercion, and poverty.
Regional Efforts
In each of the areas I’ve talked about, we’re using program guidance, technical assistance, and federal leadership to encourage and support local partnership efforts. We’ve also asked our Regional Offices to actively engage and help in efforts to bring together local partners. And, within ACF, we’re seeking to better coordinate our family homelessness work and our work around youth homelessness, recognizing that in many cases, the same family might be placed in the family or the youth category depending on where they appear in need of assistance.
I want to close with two requests for those of you here. First, let us know about successful, or for that matter, unsuccessful, partnership efforts involving ACF programs. It’s helpful for us to be able to point to the examples, we can share them with others, and we can learn from their experiences. Second, let us know where else guidance might be helpful, and what else you wish ACF was doing in support of your efforts. We may or may not be able to do it, but we can look at it and try. Again, thanks for your efforts, and we look forward to our continued work with you.