Advancing Vulnerable Children and Families in New Mexico: A Collaborative Strategy to Improve Access to Benefits and Integrated Services

A Working Document for Data--‐Driven, Cross--‐Sector Discussion

This report was prepared by Joohee Rand, consultant, for a joint project of the New Mexico Association of Grantmakers (NMAG) and the Center for Philanthropic Partnerships (CPP).  The project was funded with generous support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and The Annie E. Casey Foundation.

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Introduction

New Mexico’s vulnerable families face high rates of poverty, poor educational outcomes, and in some cases isolation in rural communities. Add the often-ignored cultural diversity of a “majority-minority” state, and the challenge is complex and formidable.

But recent examples of promising emerging solutions and partnership initiatives in New Mexico and nationally suggest a possible direction for a positive system-wide change. This paper proposes a potential collaborative strategy for the state’s philanthropic, nonprofit and government leaders and communities to address New Mexico’s issues of poverty and family economic insecurity. Highlights:

• By taking a holistic approach to the needs of families, collaborating across state and national lines, and creating channels for system-wide coordination, we can move crisis-stricken families toward long term self sustenance.
• Access to public benefits and supports for basic needs such as food, housing and health care need to be coordinated and connected to opportunities for advancement such as education, job training, careers (beyond minimum wage jobs), financial skills and asset building.
• While strong programs and improvements in all of these areas are needed, without a system-wide coordination of such efforts to address holistic needs of the families and help advance them in the long term, the impacts of individual programs are likely to be limited or short-lived with higher overall cost to the communities and the state economy.

The strategies recommended in this report are aimed at bringing about that system-wide coordination of programs with a continuum of support and opportunities to achieve collective impact toward families’ long-term advancement. It is not meant to be a prescriptive plan, but instead a data-driven guide for further deliberation.  It calls on philanthropic, nonprofit and government leaders to come together, set aside their individual agendas, and strategize on how to collectively improve their efforts to achieve the common goal: helping New Mexico’s vulnerable families advance.

The Problem

New Mexico continues to lag behind the nation in economic security and wellbeing of its children and families. A wide range of public benefit programs exists in New Mexico to assist its vulnerable families including:

• Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
• Medicaid
• Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
• Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
• Child Care Assistance.

There have also been significant nonprofit and public-private partnership efforts – both statewide and in various communities – to improve the situation for certain population or issue areas such as youth, early childhood, hunger, and healthcare. 

However, many families still struggle to access the benefits and support programs they need, and when they do find them, they discover it difficult to move beyond crisis management to long-term self-sufficiency and wellbeing.