 |
| A full house for our Department's presentation |
The CalFresh Forum, hosted annually in Sacramento by the California Food Policy Advocates (CFPA), brings together hundreds of people to share CalFresh information and best practices. Attendees include staff from federal, state and local government, advocacy organizations, and community based organizations.
At this year's CalFresh Forum on February 1, 2017, Santa Barbara County presented an hour-long breakout session on our CalFresh Utilization Project. Our presentation team included Maria Gardner, Heather Gardner, Dennis Tivey, Marian Acosta, and Aydee Plascencia. The presentation outlined our department's ongoing efforts to improve inreach, outreach, retention, quality assurance, and data, so that more of our hungry neighbors can get the CalFresh nutrition assistance they need...and how those efforts are bearing fruit, resulting in the strongest NA CalFresh caseload growth of any county in the state.
(Non-Assistance or NA CalFresh comprises about 90% of our CalFresh program. Public Assistance or PA CalFresh—the kind which accompanies a CalWORKs case—has not been the focus of this project, as its caseload trends are solely dependent on the CalWORKs caseload.)
Some of the materials we presented, including an abridged version of our slide show with some charts showing our progress, are available on the event webpage at http://cfpa.net/archives/5197.
Following the presentation, our expert panel took questions from the session audience of about 100 attendees. In the weeks following the presentation, numerous counties took us up on our offer to share our resources and answer further questions.
The invitation to present at the Forum resulted from state CalFresh Branch Chief Kim McCoy Wade's visit to our County in December 2016. Inspired by our comprehensive, data-driven approach to improving utilization, she encouraged CFPA to have us present a breakout session on "innovative strategies to increase participation” at the CalFresh Forum. We were the only County to be offered such a session.
At this year's CalFresh Forum on February 1, 2017, Santa Barbara County presented an hour-long breakout session on our CalFresh Utilization Project. Our presentation team included Maria Gardner, Heather Gardner, Dennis Tivey, Marian Acosta, and Aydee Plascencia. The presentation outlined our department's ongoing efforts to improve inreach, outreach, retention, quality assurance, and data, so that more of our hungry neighbors can get the CalFresh nutrition assistance they need...and how those efforts are bearing fruit, resulting in the strongest NA CalFresh caseload growth of any county in the state.
(Non-Assistance or NA CalFresh comprises about 90% of our CalFresh program. Public Assistance or PA CalFresh—the kind which accompanies a CalWORKs case—has not been the focus of this project, as its caseload trends are solely dependent on the CalWORKs caseload.)
Some of the materials we presented, including an abridged version of our slide show with some charts showing our progress, are available on the event webpage at http://cfpa.net/archives/5197.
Following the presentation, our expert panel took questions from the session audience of about 100 attendees. In the weeks following the presentation, numerous counties took us up on our offer to share our resources and answer further questions.
The invitation to present at the Forum resulted from state CalFresh Branch Chief Kim McCoy Wade's visit to our County in December 2016. Inspired by our comprehensive, data-driven approach to improving utilization, she encouraged CFPA to have us present a breakout session on "innovative strategies to increase participation” at the CalFresh Forum. We were the only County to be offered such a session.
 |
| Aydee Plascencia, Maria Gardner, Heather Gardner, Marian Acosta, and Dennis Tivey after presenting at the Forum |