Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This presentation will report on findings from the Work Support Strategies: Streamlining Access, Strengthening Families project. It summarizes changes that six states made in the delivery of work supports, including Medicaid, SNAP, child care and TANF.  The key research question is:  How did states use policy and technology reform and business process improvements to improve service delivery for low-income families?

WSS is a five-year, multi-state initiative to help low-income families get and keep the package of work supports for which they are eligible. Since 2011, WSS has partnered with six states: Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and South Carolina. Through WSS, states seek to streamline and integrate service delivery, use twenty-first century technology, and apply innovative business processes to improve administrative efficiency and reduce burden on states and working families. One goal of WSS is to inform state and federal policy through an evaluation of states’ experiences and outcomes.  

This presentation will report on findings from the WSS evaluation, which used a mixed-methods design, drawing on qualitative data collected through multiple annual site visits, administrative data submitted by states and analyzed by the evaluation team, and client experience surveys and focus groups conducted in selected states. It will summarize three reports (published March 2016) examining changes in policy, technology, and business process, respectively, among the WSS grantee states.  The presentation will draw most heavily on findings about changes in business process improvements.  In the context of delivering work supports to low-income families, “business process” refers to how a social service office organizes the work of greeting customers, accepting applications, making eligibility determinations, and all other aspects of helping individuals and families access and retain the supports for which they are eligible. Social service offices are notorious for having inefficient and archaic processes that overburden staff and create frustration and delay for the families seeking assistance. But it does not need to be this way.  The presentation will also discuss how the policy changes and technology reform were strongly interrelated with business process improvements in states’ efforts to improve the efficiency of delivering work supports.