South By North Strategies, Ltd.

The economic difficulties stemming from the Great Recession have demonstrated the short-run and long-run  importance of public safety net and work support programs to families with children. At the same time, a variety of administrative and policy factors have constrained the effectiveness of such initiatives, thereby resulting in sizable numbers of low-income people failing to receive all of the assistance for which they are eligible. Heightened awareness of these shortcomings has sparked a variety of state-level reform efforts to strengthen and streamline public initiatives.

To document the importance of public safety net programs and work supports, First Focus, a bipartisan children’s advocacy organization, commissioned South by North Strategies to prepare a report that documented the importance  of eleven federal safety net and work support programs, identified the challenges facing those initiatives, and profiled some of the promising reform efforts underway in the states.

Entitled  A Stronger Safety Net for America’s Children, the report was funded by the Foundation for Child Development, a philanthropic organization in New York City. It also was the subject of a congressional briefing held in June 2013.