New Website Features Tools and Strategies to Help Policymakers Improve the Lives of Children and Families

PolicyForResults.org spotlights proven policies to guide state and local officials in tough economic times

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A group of leading nonprofit organizations has launched a new website that gives state and local policymakers valuable information about proven strategies to overcome a range of problems affecting American children, families and communities.

The site, PolicyForResults.org, offers innovative and effective approaches states and localities can take to help families increase their employment, acquire and retain assets (savings, homes and cars), and ensure that their children are reading well by third grade. For families in crisis, the site focuses on how more children can stay safely at home and not in foster care, and how to reduce the unnecessary and costly detention of juveniles in trouble with the law.

The website also provides up-to-date national data so that state officials and advocates can assess how their state is faring in vital areas such as child poverty rates, third and fourth grade reading achievement levels, and incidence of foster care and juvenile detention rates, when compared to national norms.

Information on the site is critical to policymakers during a recession, when resources are shrinking and state and local governments are working to implement the most cost-effective policies. The site provides information for using the newly enacted American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the federal stimulus package. It also features a blog so that policymakers can share ideas, advice and lessons.

“This website will help governors, state legislators, mayors, county commissioners and other public officials make wiser investments to safeguard the future of their state’s children and families,” said Doug Nelson, president of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the site’s primary funder. “PolicyforResults.org is designed to work for policymakers because it draws on their experiences, ideas, and solutions to identify what works best for kids and families who stand to suffer the most in a recession.”

To view the site, go to: www.policyforesults.org

The site has been developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy together with a number of issue experts and nonprofit organizations, with major funding support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

“When results drive policy decisions about the investment of taxpayer dollars, common-sense solutions and better outcomes for children and families inevitably follow,” said Frank Farrow, director of the Center for the Study of Social Policy. “Both the public and policymakers are determined to identify the most effective ways of addressing longstanding social problems, and this site provides the tools to begin doing that.”

In some cases, the site shows states how to take better advantage of existing federal funding sources.

For example, the site points policymakers to the state of Washington’s use of the Food Stamp Employment and Training Program, an under-used federal program that provides matching funds to states to help Food Stamp recipients train for, obtain and retain jobs. By tapping into additional funding through the food stamp program, the state was able to provide job training to an additional 566 residents through a pilot program, helping them increase their average hourly earnings by 30 percent.

PolicyForResults.org will expand the policy areas covered in the months ahead. The expanded resources will include proven approaches to prevent high school dropouts, reduce teen pregnancy and child abuse, and to help men and women returning to their communities from prison to obtain jobs and rejoin their families.

The Center for the Study of Social Policy has a strong record of promoting public policies and practices that improve the lives of children by strengthening their families, their communities and the public systems intended to serve them.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation is a private charitable organization dedicated to helping build better futures for disadvantaged children in the United States. The primary mission of the Foundation is to foster public policies, human-service reforms, and community supports that more effectively meet the needs of today’s vulnerable children and families. In pursuit of this goal, the Foundation makes grants that help states, cities, and neighborhoods fashion more innovative, cost-effective responses to those needs.