Chicago Department of Family and Support Services

Chicago's Department of Family and Support Services is the largest social services funder in the city, overseeing roughly $349 million of spending each year aiming to ameliorate the lives of vulnerable Chicagoans through homelessness, workforce, youth, children's, domestic violence, and senior services. The GPL has provided technical assistance to Chicago's Department of Family and Support Services in 4 areas:

  1. Results-driven contracting: Implementing outcomes-focused contracting and management practices Department-wide

  2. Homelessness and housing stability: Improving rehousing outcomes for individuals and families experiencing homelessness, establishing emergency shelters in response to COVID-19, and distributing rental assistance COVID-19 expansion funds

  3. Youth violence prevention : Establishing an innovative service coordination and navigation model for youth at a high gamble of interest in violence

  4. Coordinated care : Strengthening coordination across multiple service needs  

Results-driven contracting

Department-wide

In order to shift contracting from a back-office, compliance function towards a strategic tool to advance bureau goals and meliorate client outcomes, the GPL supported DFSS in overhauling the agency'due south approach to contracting and improving functioning, embedding a focus on outcomes across all vii plan divisions, encompassing over 60 program models.

  • Released $294 1000000 of results-driven RFPs and embedded the tools, resources, and processes necessary for contracting to exist treated as a key strategic tool for program staff moving forward. Changes to support this transition included revising RFP development tools, training fifty+ staff in results-driven contracting strategies, centralizing the RFP procedure, and initiating regular leadership meetings to shepherd priority RFPs and address systemic barriers to strategic contracting efforts.
  • DFSS is receiving more and higher quality responses to RFPs. When DFSS surveyed service providers, almost 90% indicated that newly-released results-driven RFPs allowed them to submit better proposals. In addition, the number of responses to RFPs released in spring 2018 increased by 7% over the previous round.

Read more than about our department-broad RDC piece of work

Governing logo Chicago DFSS RDC cover

Workforce services

DFSS'south Workforce Services Partitioning programs complement the larger Chicago workforce ecosystem by providing services for specially vulnerable populations (priority populations are returning citizens, persons who are homeless, and persons with limited English proficiency). Despite an existing payment structure tied to functioning, past operation was lower and less clear (due to poor data quality) than desired.

  • Executed $5 million in results-driven RFPs in April 2018 for the Sectionalisation's three largest programs: Employment Training and Placement; Industry Specific Preparation; and Transitional Jobs.
  • Developed a revised functioning payment structure for 2019 contracts to align payment incentives with key outcomes and stronger data collection. Changes prioritize increasing priority population date, achieving sustained employment, and providing sufficient resources early in engagement.

Homelessness and housing stability

Improving rehousing outcomes through shelter services
The DFSS Homeless Services Division is the largest funder of shelter in Chicago, with this prophylactic cyberspace making upward the bulk of their homeless services funding portfolio. The GPL supported DFSS in its efforts to better rehousing outcomes for clients experiencing homelessness by strengthening cardinal shelter rehousing activities, while avoiding incentives for shelters to become long-term service delivery hubs.

  • Executed a $nineteen million procurement for 3,300+ shelter beds in April 2018, creating a unified spectrum of shelter plan models explicitly focused on quickly and stably rehousing clients.
  • Identified and improved core shelter rehousing activities. Through bimonthly Active Contract Management meetings, DFSS and shelter providers now collaboratively develop and test strategies to ameliorate rehousing outcomes. Early results include increasing the share of chronically homeless or veteran clients in emergency shelters with a complete Coordinated Entry Arrangement assessment (a prerequisite to access most housing resources); and increasing data quality effectually get out destinations from emergency shelters, a priority event metric to determine whether individuals take been continued to stable housing.

Read more most our work on rehousing outcomes

Chicago homeless project feature cover

Rental assistance program
When they received ~$16 1000000 in boosted Rental Assistance Program funds in response to COVID-19, DFSS wanted to ensure that funds were distributed to reflect the disproportionate touch of COVID-nineteen on specific community areas, where the bulk of the population is individuals of color.

  • Identified challenges to achieving disinterestedness goals early through weekly data-driven meetings reviewing progress through applications and funding by community area, by race / ethnicity, and by income. Priority opportunity uncovered was a dramatic under-representation of Hispanic applicants submitting applications.
  • Tested strategies to increment the share of applications from Latinx applicants developed with input from Latinx-serving community partners, including translating communications into Castilian; generating easy-to-access video tutorials; clarifying and elevating messaging that undocumented individuals are eligible for support; and leveraging trusted community partners to do outreach in priority customs areas.

Read more nigh our piece of work on emergency rental assistance.

Cover of RAP Technical Guide

Homelessness COVID-19 emergency response
DFSS asked the GPL to support its homelessness COVID-xix emergency response in the spring of 2020, as this became a top priority for the Department in their response to the COVID-19 crisis. Homeless populations are especially vulnerable to COVID-nineteen—clients ofttimes accept multiple run a risk factors and congregate living settings such as homeless shelters are known to be high-risk exposure sites. During the height of the first COVID-xix wave, DFSS and partners opened 5 alternating shelters that immune for the decompression of existing homeless shelters, facilitating physical distancing.

The GPL supported the DFSS Homeless Services Sectionalisation in ensuring effective daily advice and articulate prioritization across the fast-moving piece of work streams that included outreach efforts, reconfiguring referral pathways to existing and new shelters, establishing the alternating shelters, tracking and monitoring COVID-19 cases, adjusting contracts to accommodate new needs, responding to COVID-19 funding opportunities, and analogous across other stakeholders (e.g. Continuum of Care, Department of Public Health, Mayor's Office). To engagement, these alternating shelters have served more than 1,700 clients.

Youth Violence Prevention

The GPL is supporting DFSS in efforts to reduce youth violence in Chicago through a new model of service coordination and navigation for youth fourteen-24 at the highest chance of violence—such every bit youth engaged with loftier-take a chance gang or street activeness, or a history of abort or incarceration. The new service will target vi of the 15 community areas that account for 24% of the metropolis's population but over 50% of all shootings in the city. The new model will deliver ~$10M of services to ane,100+ youth over two years, intended to stabilize youth, ameliorate their sense of bureau and safety, and ultimately reduce the likelihood of involvement with violence.

The GPL team has supported the DFSS Youth Services Division in issuing an outcomes-based Asking for Proposals, resolving critical design questions about program construction, and establishing an Active Contract Management approach that will allow for real-fourth dimension performance management. Services are scheduled to begin commitment January one, 2021. In preparation, the GPL is supporting DFSS in creating a new case management system that will allow tracking of which services youth are referred to, whether they are successfully engaged in those services, and the outcomes of the services (for example, increased participation in school, increased employment, and decreased contact with the criminal justice system).

Coordinated Intendance

DFSS funds and manages many service areas under ane roof, withal traditionally each Program Division has operated largely as its own silo and detached ready of services. Even so, many of the families DFSS serves experience needs that cross these service delivery silos. GPL supported a small-scale pilot in DFSS' Community Service Centers, working with social workers and clients in an existing case management plan to test strategies specifically focused on coordinating across multiple service needs. DFSS and the GPL identified strategies beyond several key coordination steps, which DFSS is working to integrate in high-priority programs across the department:

  • Systematically defining a priority population in demand of coordination back up, and implementing processes to place that population from within a larger client pool.
  • Supporting clients to initiate engagement with services they are referred to, for example by formally dedicating staff fourth dimension to execute warm handoffs and follow upward, or by adjusting referral forms to better capture and communicate critical referral information.
  • Supporting clients to sustain engagement with those services, for example by dedicating staff time to troubleshoot new barriers to continued appointment, or extending service timelines to offer coordination support until all needs are resolved.