100 Families-Restore Hope

The Issue

Despite an abundance of community resources and social services, many families continue to cycle through periods of crisis, often dealing with one issue at a time as they confront joblessness, economic instability, interactions with the criminal legal or child welfare systems, housing insecurity and other disruptions that undermine long-term wellbeing. Traditional interventions focus on emergency responses, rather than wraparound support, leaving families without sustainable pathways to stability and upward mobility.

At the same time, communities are full of service providers capable of addressing the many intersecting needs of the populations they serve—they just are disconnected from each other. The 100 Families Initiative combines the strengths of providers across communities and gives them a platform through which they can collaborate on case management and ensure that no client falls through the cracks.

The Intervention

The 100 Families Initiative envelopes struggling families in support by connecting them with a web of service providers all collaborating to comprehensively address the many intersecting challenges faced by families living in poverty. By leveraging existing community resources and providing web infrastructure through which different agencies can communicate about client needs, case managers from several agencies are able to walk beside their clients, ensuring that no one gets left behind.

100 Families takes a “no wrong door” approach to case management. When a client is referred by a state agency, judge or court staff, church or faith group, or even a friend, they are connected with a case manager. That case manager is tasked with completing an intake on a program called Hope Hub that addresses all of the client’s intersecting needs. The Hope Hub web portal then assigns case managers from all agencies that serve a stated need by a client. The initial case manager becomes the primary contact assisting the client through the process, providing warm handoffs to other service providers to meet a particular need. For example, a client at risk of homelessness may be referred to a legal services entity to help with a pending eviction and a housing provider. Once the client is stably housed, the primary case manager will assist the client in connecting with an employer or job training program. Each client’s care is scaffolded based on their individual needs.

100 Families service providers are part of a county-wide alliance that hosts monthly meetings and regular correspondence to discuss client needs, new programs, or opportunities to better serve the community. In addition to the correspondence, each provider has a log-in through Hope Hub, which allows for regular communication about each client they serve.

Research Question

• Does a collaborative support-driven response improve family outcomes vs. a traditional response to case management?
• What is the impact of the 100 Families Initiative on child welfare outcomes for families and how does the initiative impact secondary outcomes such as employment, criminal justice involvement, and housing stability?

Intended Outcomes

Integrated case management, community partnerships, and monthly progress tracking will make a marked impact on the primary outcome of child welfare involvement and secondary outcomes of economic outcomes, health care utilization, educational outcomes, housing outcomes, public assistance use, and criminal justice involvement.

Research Study Design

LEO researchers will perform two separate evaluations of the program. The first is a quasi-experimental study that evaluates the impact of participation in Restore Hope’s 100 Families Program. Between 2016 and 2024, the program rolled out in a staggered fashion across counties in Arkansas, creating natural variation in access to services over time and geography. LEO will leverage this variation using an instrumental variables (IV) approach, which provides a plausibly exogenous way to estimate the causal impact of receiving services from 100 Families on family outcomes.

The study population will consist of families with substantiated child maltreatment investigations. The IV approach will use the timing and location of program availability as the instrument for service receipt, isolating the effect of 100 Families participation from other confounding factors. The valuation will explore a wide range of outcomes, including child welfare involvement, employment and earnings, healthcare use, education, housing stability, receipt of public benefits, and interaction with the criminal justice system, to understand how the 100 Families program influences long-term family stability and well-being.

The second is a randomized control trial (RCT) design that seeks to evaluate the impact of participation in Restore Hope’s 100 Families Program. Restore Hope does not have the capacity to offer all eligible families a spot in the program, so randomization will be used as an equitable way to determine which families will be offered these limited spots.

Individuals will enroll in the study after being screened into Arkansas’ Differential Response. After ensuring the family is not high-risk, they will be placed in the pool for randomization if they are eligible and consent to study. The DR staff will then randomize these families into the treatment and control groups and send a list of consenting families and their assignments to the LEO research.

Families placed in the treatment group will be referred to 100 Families, streamlining access to the case management program and a personalized plan to reduce future child welfare involvement. The treatment group will also receive referrals to specific services designed to assist them in overcoming the issues contributing to instability, such as housing support and employment assistance. Those assigned to the control group will be provided information on other services available to them. If an individual is assigned to the control group, they can receive 100 Families services should they happen upon them by alternate means.

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