Michelle Haab worked for 10 years with the Parent Success Initiative (PSI), the last five as the program coordinator.
Shortly after this interview with Norma Feldman in the spring of 2011, she was named the Resident Services Director for the Syracuse Housing Authority.
What is the Parent Success Initiative?
In the 1990s, several government and non-profit agencies in the Syracuse area came together to find better ways to meet the needs of non-custodial parents and address gaps in services. The Parent Success Initiative was formed by these partners to coordinate a wide range of services available to non-custodial parents through 11 different community-based organizations. A central part of the PSI model is its case management program, which helps coordinate all the partnering services and provide additional employment support for non-custodial parents, who have traditionally had a reputation for being considered deadbeat dads.
How does the Family Court’s Parent Support Program fit in with what you were already doing?
It fit in ways we never thought it would. We wanted to be a voluntary program because our philosophy was that folks really needed to want our services. However, we also recognized that by not serving court-involved folks who really had to do something or they could be facing incarceration, we were missing a part of the population that was really vital. While we had always had a strong relationship with Child Support Enforcement, we never had that connection with the courts. Over the first six to nine months of the program there were some growing pains, but our partners all agree unanimously now that they can’t imagine their program without the court system involvement.
In the first year of our collaboration with the court system,, we received 300 eligible court referrals into our program, which is tremendous. At any given time, roughly half of our referrals come from the court system, which is huge. Ultimately the legal ramifications that some folks were so concerned about—people were worried that we would end up pushing people into violations or into jail because we were reporting back because they weren’t doing things—it actually worked in the opposite way. Our attorneys involved with the program said they are having better outcomes with our participants because of court our involvement because the support magistrates and in some cases, the family court judges, are aware they’re working with the program. That’s not to say they’re more lenient, but they take that into consideration so the benefit has been for the participants.
The other thing I’ll mention that is unique about our partnership at the front end is that there was no money exchanged between our two grant programs. When we walked into this partnership, we weren’t expecting any part of the Parent Support Program’s funding and it worked both ways. But we ended up getting so many more tangible benefits and it helped us write a better grant the next round because we could reference back to our relationship with the courts and our great recruitment numbers.
Do you see any differences in the behavior or anything else between the mandated and voluntary clients?
Actually, we looked at this. We’ve looked at the outcomes side-by-side and there’s almost no difference because ultimately I believe it comes down to the individual. Whether they are mandated or not, it’s up to them to do it. We have just as many mandated folks not comply as we have voluntary. I always believed that sometimes putting a person in a position where they don’t have a choice will help them, motivate them in a way they would never have been motivated otherwise. I do see some folks who are really reluctant to come from the courts—they’re annoyed. I talk to some of them. They don’t know why they have to do this, “Why do I have to do parenting? I know how to change a diaper.” But once they get involved in the services, a lot of them are just our best, successful participants. I think the fact they were mandated made the difference between them coming and them not coming. Even if that only works for 30 percent of the people, that’s 30 percent of these people that are now productive. They’re paying their taxes; they’re paying their child support; they’re on the road to a career ladder, and that’s huge. They may be “mandated,” yes, but ultimately people still make the choice, whether they’re mandated or not.
How have different cases managers reacted?
That’s interesting. Because of the way our project is structured, it’s got a lot of pros and some cons too. Because we’re collaboration, we subcontract case management. While I coordinate the program, the case managers don’t work for me. They work for their centers. That’s been a struggle for us sometimes because some case managers are more reluctant than others and you have to work with the supervisors to get them on board. At this point in time we’re in good shape, but again initially, there was a lot of reluctance, partly because there was an extra layer of work added onto the case manager’s plates because now they also had to report back to the courts and we’re consistently trying to find better ways of seamlessly reporting back to the courts. We’re putting a new database system in place. Ultimately, the Parent Support Program’s Resource Coordinator will be able to go into our database and track her shared clients and not rely on the case managers. I think the issue with the case managers’ feelings was more about the extra layer of work. Our project office has come up with ways of taking a lot of that off of their plates and trying to do it with a central database system.
Are there any challenges that you haven’t mentioned?
It’s always a challenge to capture what’s really happening with the participant, whether you’re dealing with a paper system or a database. That’s a big challenge. And then, obviously, funding. When the federal program started, we had a large pocket of money we could spend on folks to really enhance their ability to get and stay employed. During the last version that ended in 2009 we could spend $300 or $400 for short-term training. This version of the program, we just don’t have the funding. We can get anyone a job—Wendy’s has open interviews every Tuesday. Getting somebody an entry-level, minimum-wage job is not addressing the problem. We want them in a job that has a career ladder that they can move up, and training is so essential to that. Not being able to easily access training for participants is a huge problem. Even if it’s a two-week welding program, a person coming out of a two-week welding program makes $16, $17 dollars an hour. Right now, we have limited access to training, so we’re looking at a much smaller pool of options for them. And what’s the incentive to work an $8 dollar an hour job when you’re $30,000 in arrears? It’s a hard sell for someone.
If someone wanted to replicate this partnership, what advice might you give them?
This is a very relevant question that has come up recently. I think the biggest thing is communities need to be pro-active and start working together, bringing all the players together to start talking collaboratively about the connections between workforce, training, the court system, the welfare-related issues, the social service issues, because future funding around all of these kinds of workforce development programs relies on collaboration. When communities try to respond to an RFP [Request for Proposal], if they don’t have an existing network that’s working together, they can’t bring that together fast enough.
My advice would be for different communities that have these workforce needs, they need to get literacy in the room, they need to get training in the room, the court system, the community based organizations, social services—those are the players that have to start talking about how they can link together, even if there is no money involved at first. When an RFP comes out, they can demonstrate that they have a working relationship with one another. It’s not easy to give up your piece of the pie for a smaller piece and share it across the table, but that is the reality of the current way grants are being funded. It also has proved to be beneficial for participants, because rather than them just going to one program to meet one need, now they can go to that program, but also access 10 other services because they’re connected with this network, so I think that’s vital. That’s what I would tell any community looking at these economic issues and how it’s impacting their citizens.
Do you have any other thoughts?
It’s been exciting the last few years because it’s shined a light on Syracuse and the work we’re doing with the courts. Since the most recent round of funding started in June 2010, I have had three requests for technical assistance from different sites that received new funding. Most of the technical assistance questions are, “How do we get referrals from the court?” I think this shows that Syracuse has this down and that makes us really unique.
