Improving service delivery for NYC families impacted by foster care and parental incarceration

Brief
The NYC i-team is an interdisciplinary team that collaborates closely with city government leaders, field experts, and local communities to develop innovative ideas for holistic programs, policies, and tools to improve city services in New York City with the goal to reduce child poverty.

One of the population focus are families impacted by foster care and parental incarceration. My project team conducted desk research, user interviews, workshops, and surveys to identify pain points. We synthesized over 100 ideas into 5 areas of program and service intervention recommendations. We also identified partners and project scope to present project ideas to senior leadership.


Role
Civic Designer, working with 2 other team members

Service Design 

Organization: New York City Mayor’s Office Innovation Team (i-team)

Background
Our team decided to reserach transition moments families can fall into deeper poverty if they are not adequately support. Our assumption is that these are the most vulnerable moments where families need the most help from the City.

Methodology: Research, Synthesis, Plan
We conducted desk research and interviews to better understand families’ challenges. We formed a working group for futher ideation and as advising committee.  Next, we synthesized over 100 idea inputs into 5 areas of policy, program, and service recommendations and presented to i-team leadership. After getting internal alignment and identifying potential partners from our working group, we scoped out concrete project ideas.

Journey mapping
We created journey maps to visualize families’ painpoints, the decisions they needed to make, and different city and state agnecy touchpoints to identify areas for futher research.

Interview insights
We interviewed over 18 representatives from government agencies, subject matter expert, and non-profit organizations. These interviews confirmed our initial understanding that there is a huge need in helping families impacted by foster care and parental incarceration. We see that when the City does not proactively or adequately address the needs of systems-involved families, it leads to distrust and under-utilization of City services and programs that could have been impactful.

Themes
We synthesized over 100 ideas shared with us and categorized findings into 8 areas:

Ideation workshop
During the working group workshop, participants ideated on interventions and identified the specific components required for each idea. The framework was inspired Harvard’s Government Performance Lab on child welfare innovation. 

Aside from generating ideas, the workshop facilitated new relationships between city agencies and community-based organizers. Some participants learnt about existing projects in their area of interest while other identified new potential collaborators.

Recommendations
We organized our research into 5 areas of recommendations:

1. Reentry as a Tool for Violence Prevention
2. Maximizing Transitional Housing as an ATI Tool to Keep Children and their Caregivers Together
   
3. Citywide Campaign to Reduce Stigma and Raise Public Awareness around Caregiver Incarceration
   
4. Improve Benefits Access through Peer Navigation and Structured Case Management
   
5. Targeted Universalism Approach for all Children to have Opportunities to Thrive

Making the case
To make the case for each recommendations and get buy-in from leadership, we included data points, case studies, short term and longer terms implementation ideas, potential partners, and potential scope. 

Program & products in development

1. Shifting family support services from the Administration for Children's Services (ACS)

We learnt that ACS services are one of the only few underutilized services in the City. Many families fear using their services will lead their child being removed. We are collaborating with Family Policy Project, with the input from ACS, on a 2 year project to come up with a concrete plan to shift family support services outside of ACS. 

(Area: Program and Service design)

2. Visit Day Pilot

Visits are important to keep families close and reduce the likelihood of re-incarceration. Currently, it is extremely difficult to visit correctional facilities, visits often take up the entire day and is traumatizing. We are collaborating with a social worker at NYC Public Schools to pilot a visit day led by school staff, with dedicated activities, and improvement to visit spaces.

(Area: Program and Service design, Space design)

3. Improving access to mental health practioners

We heard it is difficult to access mental health practioners who accept Medicaid and have experience working with patients impacted by parental incarceration. We are researching how we can leverage the City’s existing mental health database (e.g. NYC 988) and expand it to improve access for this population. 

(Area: Product design, Data-sharing and governance)