Outreach Coalition Minutes

Highlights from the Jan. 12, 2005 meeting

Attendees:

Location:    Food Nutrition Service
                   Alexandria, Virginia

Moderator: Mark Johnson, Northeast Regional Office, FNS

Highlights:

FNS FSP Media Campaign: The FSP media campaign is moving well along in its second year. There are two new English and Spanish radio advertisements developed for radio buys. These ads will have two flights of advertising: April – May 2005 and August – September 2005 that will run in 31 media markets (English only) and 4 state networks (Arkansas, Iowa, North Carolina and Ohio). There are also two new Spanish radio advertisements developed with the same flights of advertising as the English messages.

The radio spots will run in the following locations:

*Both English & Spanish ads will run in these markets.

Additional activities being developed for the 2005 media campaign are a Spanish cable TV ad; a tool kit for FNS regional employees and State/local food stamp offices and a tool kit for community partners; and an informational video and train-the-trainer sessions. A comment pertaining to the tool kits was that it would be very effective to add the roles and responsibilities of the various persons involved in community outreach.

For additional information on the FNS FSP 2005 Media Campaign please send your request to: FSOC@fns.usda.gov  and in the subject write “2005 Media Campaign”.

Committee Reports:

• Business Interests Committee, Mandy Briggs Chair Person:
  In response to States requests for the development of a document that can be used to promote the economic benefits of the Food Stamp Program to their legislative and business partners; FNS drafted a document entitled “A Business Case for Increasing Participation in the Food Stamp Program” based on the “one-pager” previously developed by the committee. This document provides useful and persuasive information that answers the following questions: Why does increasing participation in the FSP make economic sense for your community? and What can you do to help? It provides detailed information on how the FSP can help businesses have high-performing workers, how the program is an investment in the future of the community as well as providing access to the resources needed to make outreach a part of business practices. The group was invited to share their ideas on whether this paper should replace the previous “one-pager” or serve as an additional informational document as well as to comment on the document.
  
  Please note that this document is in draft form and is not to be distributed. Once the document is finalized it will be made available for order via the web and it will also be posted on the FSOC web site.
  
  For additional information or to provide comments on the draft Business Case document please send your request to: FSOC@fns.usda.gov  and in the subject write “A Business Case for Increasing FSP Participation”.
   
• Hunger Heroes Committee, Dawn Washington Chair Person:
  The Hunger Heroes Program was announced in September 2004. Since the announcement the committee has received 16 nomination forms from across 10 states. (Update: As of February 2, 2005 the Committee has received 22 nominations.) The committee has refined the structure of the program a bit. As before every office nominated will be considered a Hunger Hero, receive a certificate noting their nomination and will be publicly recognized via the FSOC web site. Based on the ranking of the nominations the two offices with the highest ranking/scores will be acknowledged as the Hunger Hero Mentors. Representatives from these offices will receive a plaque recognizing the office staff as Hunger Heroes and will server as the presenters at a Hunger Hero session at the 2005 APHSA meeting in October. This session will be designed around sharing the Mentors success that hopefully those States in attendance can learn some promising practices that may improve their office customer relations and service. It was noted that more publicity is needed for the Hunger Heroes program. Thus we encouraged committee and coalition members to promote the Hunger Heroes Program at every available opportunity.
  
  For additional information on the Hunger Heroes program please send your request to: FSOC@fns.usda.gov  and in the subject write “Hunger Heroes”.
   
• Best Practices Committee, Susan Sheets Chair Person:
  The Promising Practices Subcommittee has as its task the collection of promising practices in Food Stamp Program Outreach around the nation, and the development of methods for sharing and displaying this information on the FSOC website. Progress since the last FSOC meeting consists of a larger collection of promising practices from States. In addition, we have been wrestling with how to display this information in a manner that would be meaningful to our very diverse user populations. FNS staff held open discussions on this subject with FNS Regional Outreach Coordinators at this meeting. One of the highlights that emerged from this discussion was the importance of being inclusive in presenting the information on the FSOC Web site. In the months to come, Sub-committee members will begin to conference on a more frequent basis to discuss development of a searchable database for Promising Practices.
   
• Regional, State & Local Partnerships, Susanne Buggy Chair Person:
  Colleen Pawling of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities reported for the subcommittee on local and state offices. Subcommittee members visited the Loudon Co. Service Center on November 18th. This was the second site visit by subcommittee members. (The first site visit was at a DC office in August.)
  
  The purpose of the visits is to get a better understanding of what, if any, outreach materials are being used by local offices and what can be done to improve the current materials. The subcommittee also wanted to get ideas of what would be helpful to include in the tool kit for EWs that is currently being developed for the FSP national media campaign.
  
  The subcommittee recommended that a few additional meetings with local offices be held in the western and mountain plains regions but that subcommittee members also begin to meet with local advocacy organizations and community groups to better understand how they are using FNS outreach materials and what improvements/changes would be helpful for them.

FNS Regional Updates:

Mark Johnson, Northeast Regional Office: Target Outreach Initiatives: In FY 2005, NERO plans to target Regional FSP outreach initiatives to two States with the lowest Participant Access Rate (PAR). The two States are Massachusetts, with a PAR in calendar year (CY) 2003 of 47.2%, and in New York with a PAR of 54.4%.

In Massachusetts, we plan to work in collaboration with the Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA) in providing FSP training to food banks and food pantries, many of which are run by faith-based organizations.

In New York, we plan to work in collaboration with the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA) to target outreach initiatives in New York City, specifically with the immigrant community. An initial meeting will be held with OTDA, and the Human Resources Administration (HRA) in New York City, then a follow-up meeting will be held with outreach collaborators and advocates to identify additional ways of targeting the immigrant community.

Ann Snell, Southwest Regional Office: New Mexico Partnership for Change: The Southwest Region participates as active partner with New Mexico Human Services Department in “Together We Can Initiative”. This initiative was designed to bring together governmental and private sectors to help end hunger in New Mexico. Committees were formed for brainstorming, and recommendations were made for improvement of hunger situation in New Mexico. The group continues to meet regularly to address issues, and FNS remains an active partner.

This project received a 2004 program access grant, and has four components, which are: (1) hiring an outreach coordinator to recruit outreach volunteers who will in turn provide application assistance; (2) hiring mobile eligibility workers who, armed with laptops, will work in community-based locations to qualify and enroll food stamp applicants; (3) training food stamp champions who will be located in the food stamp offices and who will communicate the value of the FSP to both customers and staff; and (4) continued efforts by the State agency to simplify the application, making it easier for people to use.

Melissa Daigle, Western Regional Office (WRO): Hunger Fellows Project: Melissa provided a wonderful PowerPoint presentation on the work of two Emerson Hunger Fellows from the Congressional Hunger Center working in her region. The project consisted of partners from the WRO (Hunger Fellows included) FoodLink for Tulare County, Community Food Bank of Fresno County, and Fresno Metropolitan Ministries. The goals of the project were to change the image of the FSP by utilizing an earned media campaign (radio, print, TV) and to include non-traditional partners like farmers and businesses; another goal was to build a sustainable outreach system by building county outreach networks, enhancing processing of outreach-generated applications, increasing EBT certification for small businesses and by weaving in Mexican Consulates; and the final goal was to motivate administrative innovation by increasing the use of face-to-face interview waivers, increasing off-site application processing and enhancing the County role in outreach. The project has been very successful and has created a very enthusiastic food stamp outreach buzz in the two California counties.

If you would like more information on the WRO Hunger Fellows Project, please send an email to FSOC@fns.usda.gov  and in the subject line write “WRO Hunger Fellows Project”.

New Business:

The question was posed as to how to make the coalition meetings and the entity itself more useful. Attendee responses were: invite more outside speakers, lengthen the time of the meetings particularly for those who travel; reduce the number of meetings to 2 times a year; continue the use of allowing persons to call in; and rotate the meetings around the country (possibly in the different FNS regions) and not just hold meetings here in the DC area.

It was suggested that a listing of 1-800 State hunger hotlines be compiled and shared as a resourced. Another suggestion was the exploration of the legal issues surrounding liabilities of food demos.

There wasn’t much discussion on much as it relates to new business. However, FNS will consider all of the above responses and report back to the committee.

Addendum:

Special Presentation - Food Access Card Project, Improving Food Stamp Access in New York City; Presenter Rebecca Windom Urban Justice Center: The Food Card Access Project (FCAP) is a citywide partnership, lead by Community Food Resource Center, that sends staff from community based organizations out with lap tops to pre-screen people for food stamps and facilitate their application process. FCAP builds on the pre-screening model of the Community Food Resource Center’s “Food Force” by adding follow-up with clients and a neighborhood focus that includes coordination with local food stamp centers. One thing that makes both FCAP and Food Force unique among outreach projects is that they have a central database with information from the pre-screenings and follow-up that they then match with data from HRA to find out who among their clients have received food stamps.

In one month, FCAP and Food Force identified two thousand New Yorkers who could be eligible for food stamps. The Urban Justice Center has combined data from those pre-screenings, with HRA enrollment records from four to five months after the pre-screenings, and interviews with a random sample of clients. These data create a unique opportunity to describe the administrative hurdles clients face when trying to access food stamps and to make recommendations to remove these barriers. Findings presented here reflect early analysis for a report planned for release in the summer of 2005.

You can download and view the presentation handouts:

   FCAP Newsletter  (.pdf)
   FCAP FSOC Presentation  (.ppt)
   FCAP Contact List  (.doc)

Last modified: 04/30/2009