A three-year, $9-million grant will give D.C.’s needy families expanded access to rent, food and cash assistance, city and nonprofit leaders announced Monday.
The funds will specifically help families who are reported to the Child and Family Services Agency but do not meet the criteria for an investigation of child abuse or neglect. Too often, officials said, these families fall off the radar of agencies tasked with helping them, and their situation escalates into a crisis that ends with separating children from their parents.
“The system that we currently have is not working,” said Robert Matthews, director of the city’s Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA). “I hope that as we continue to build the infrastructure and support for these families, that they will be less likely to need to come through the front doors of CFSA.”
Families will be connected to the 211 “warmline,” the District’s new hotline to connect children, families and community members to social services. The program soft launched last October and received more than 2,000 calls in its first three months. Requests ranged from assistance for housing and utilities to food and health.
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The funding for further developing the warmline comes from the Doris Duke Foundation’s Opt-in for Families initiative, which stands for Opportunities for Prevention and Transformation. The $9 million will be invested in developing the design, implementation and research for the new 211 system and direct assistance to struggling families, said JooYeun Chang, Doris Duke’s program director for child well-being.
The District was chosen as one of four sites, including Kentucky, Oregon and South Carolina, to demonstrate how investing in preventive measures, like increased cash assistance, can help families avoid the child welfare system, Chang said.
“We wait for families to come back to us when they’re in crisis. It just became clear there was such a missed opportunity for the system to respond,” said Chang, who formerly led Michigan’s child welfare system. Leaders hope these increased funds lead to fewer repeat referrals and investigations, as well as a reduction in children placed in foster care over time, she said.
There were more than 20,000 child welfare referrals in the District in fiscal 2023, but nearly 74 percent were screened out, according to city data. A case is screened out when it does not meet the requirements for an investigation, including if it does not concern child abuse or neglect or if the youth in question is older than 18.
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Matthews, of CFSA, views launching the warmline as a success, but he questions if the city will have the budget to support the families calling in.
“As we elevate concerns and the needs of families,” he said, “will the District be able to respond in kind, in terms of ensuring that we can resource those supports so that families will have what they need?”
Of the more than 2,000 calls the warmline received in its first three months, about half resulted in an actual service request, according to CFSA data. The program was able to address 854 of those requests through a referral, providing information or resources, or was in the process of working through the case.
For Dana Ebiasah, dialing 211 late last year saved her from falling behind on rent.
The 40-year-old, who has permanent custody of her 11-year-old nephew, became ill with the coronavirus, but had run out of sick leave. She missed 10 days of work — unpaid — and wasn’t sure how she would be able to pay her bills or the rent for her two-bedroom apartment in Northeast.
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Ebiasah, who was in foster care as a child, and her nephew previously lived in Woodland Terrace, a public-housing complex in Southeast. She said they would hear gunshots every night and pass people doing drugs in the hallway.
Now, when they walk in the front doors of their building, there’s a receptionist who greets her nephew by calling him “Mr.” It’s clean, and there’s even a rooftop pool. She said her nephew’s jaw dropped when he saw where they would be living. She didn’t want to lose the apartment and with it, an opportunity to show him another kind of life.
Ebiasah, who is a part of a Child and Family Services Agency’s advisory council that helped inform and co-design the warmline program, dialed 211 for help.
She told the call taker she couldn’t keep up with her bills, including rent, utilities and renter’s insurance. In less than a month, Ebiasah said she received emergency financial assistance of about $2,700 through the city’s Kinship Navigator program.
“With the 211 warmline, that kind of takes away that guilt and shame of saying ‘hey I’m trying to do the best I can right now, but I need a helping hand,’” Ebiasah said. “To this day, I would have still been trying to cover it … I’m very thankful.”
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