Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab
Disseminating a Digital Self-assessment Tool to Improve Family Well-being
CORE TEAM
Gary Nelson, Beth Lowder, Tanya Jisa, Jonathan Rockoff, Rick Zechman, Iris Cheng
Launched in 2017 as part of the SSW’s Jordan Institute for Families, the Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab (SIEL) is a resource hub that helps students, faculty, and campus and community organizations create entrepreneurial and innovative solutions to social issues. By supporting the exploration, design, and implementation of new ways of addressing complex social problems, SIEL is expanding the possible applications of social work knowledge in meeting clients’ diverse needs.
In recognition of its successful pursuit of social innovations, SIEL has become one of 15 global hubs for Poverty Stoplight: an international poverty reduction methodology used in over 40 countries and recognized in 2017 as one of 11 projects advancing the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Renamed Aspire for use in North Carolina and implemented through SIEL’s Community Aspirations Hub (CAH), this technology-based self-assessment tool helps households evaluate their well-being as well as obstacles that may be holding them back, such as a lack of reliable transportation or access to savings. Based on their responses to the assessment questions, the family receives a color-coded Life Map and works with a trained Aspire coach to create an action plan and to prioritize the goals they want to achieve to overcome barriers to well-being.
“These families are the authors of their own lives, but they are not alone,” said Gary Nelson, DSW, SIEL’s director. “Aspire connects a family’s aspirations and agency to the support and collaboration of others in the community.”
CAH works to empower families and communities to build their self-efficacy and design solutions to poverty at the local level. The hub also aims to create a statewide network of partner organizations willing to collaborate with community members and each other to address barriers to families’ health, well-being, and social and economic mobility.
CAH is partnering with organizations across North Carolina to train staff to use Aspire with program participants and the broader community to reduce poverty and improve community well-being. Because all Aspire data are geocoded, organizations can identify “hot spots” in the community disproportionately affected by specific issues.
CAH’s ongoing community partnership with Cabarrus County’s Department of Human Services (DHS) highlights the tool’s potential to build an organization’s capacity for community support.
The beauty of Aspire is that it empowers the individual to realize and achieve their own goals. They see their own capabilities and possibilities, and they are the architect of their own life going forward.
KAREN CALHOUN,
Director, Cabarrus County Department of Human Services
“Aspire is about reducing duplication of services, and stretching our resources further,” said Karen Calhoun, director of Cabarrus DHS. “But it’s also helping families more strategically and intentionally with the right type of services, as well.”
Calhoun initially piloted Aspire with trained case managers in Cabarrus DHS’s Social Work Prevention Services (focused on child welfare) and Economic Family Support Services (focused on employment, crisis assistance, and childcare). Its Social Work Prevention Services division has conducted over 165 Aspire surveys to date and added a third social worker to meet the county’s growing needs.
“In those two areas, we’ve been successful not only at preventing children from coming into foster care, but we’ve also been able to build out a model for obtaining childcare services, keeping people employed and helping them find a higher living wage job or employment,” said Calhoun.
Looking forward, Calhoun sees potential for Aspire to find community partners in all four parts of Cabarrus DHS’s hub initiative, combining socioeconomic, physical, behavioral, and spiritual health. SIEL has also partnered with Carolina Across 100 to bring Aspire to 37 of North Carolina’s counties in partnership with 13 collaborative teams, ensuring that the initiative will have sustainable, far-reaching community-level impact for years to come.
by Jordan Wingate
Stakeholder Interview
Karen Calhoun, Director, Cabarrus County Department of Human Services
SSW: How has Aspire impacted the support you provide at Cabarrus DHS?
KC: Aspire allows us to provide quality care management with our clients. It shows us how best to wrap them in services more holistically even when they come in seeking one single service. We diminish their level of crisis on the front end by frontloading services, and Aspire allows us to have that impact at the individual level.
SSW: Do you have any success stories about using Aspire in your services?
KC: Absolutely. We had an employed single mother with six children, all seven living out of their car. We connected her with one of our care managers in prevention, who completed the Aspire assessment with her, which identified housing, clothing, and childcare services as key priorities. Using Aspire and our collaborative network, we were able to wrap this family in services, allowing the mother to keep her job, get the younger children in an accredited daycare and find housing. We furnished the home all the way down to cotton bedding and flatware in the kitchen drawers. None of the children went into DSS custody, disrupting and potentially traumatizing their family. We used Aspire to build out her goals one at a time, while keeping her family intact. And it worked.
The Big Picture
- SIEL is one of 15 Poverty Stoplight Hubs globally.
- SIEL has connected with 13 partnering organizations to bring Aspire to 37 counties across the state of North Carolina.
Advancing equity. Transforming systems. Improving lives.
UNC School of Social Work
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Tate-Turner-Kuralt Building
325 Pittsboro Street | Campus Box 3550
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3550