As LIFT has grown and evolved over the years, we have continued building our network of services to better support families in need of it. Notably over the last decade, we shifted our approach from supporting any individual that walked into our brick-and-mortar sites to focusing on influencing systems to provide long-term coaching for ALL parents of young children. With our expanded our Technical Assistance (TA) program, we provide partner organizations with in-depth training and support tailored to their unique clientele and provide holistic economic mobility coaching services directly into their existing programs and amplify their impact.
This model allows us to expand our highly successful coaching model beyond our own capacity and scale impact in early childhood education, higher education, healthcare, and government agencies.
Early Childhood Education
Since 2019, LIFT has partnered with the National Center for Parent Family and Community Engagement (NCPFCE) as the Family Economic Mobility expert for the National Office of Head Start. Through this collaboration, LIFT supports 1,000 community-based organizations with webinars and training and together, we revamped the Family Economic Mobility (FEM) Toolkit to enhance its user-friendliness for frontline staff and families.
Higher Education
Through a pilot partnership with CUNY’s Bronx Community College EDGE program, LIFT adapted its TA model for community colleges and extended it for all 18 CUNY schools. Recently, LIFT established a new TA partnership with Dallas College and University North Texas-Dallas, training student advisors in the LIFT coaching model to enhance support for student parents’ academic completion.
Healthcare
LIFT’s longest TA partnership is our Medical-Financial Partnership with Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where we provide training and support for coaches to integrate financial coaching within the LADHS clinics’ prenatal and pediatric services. A third-party study published in Pediatrics in February 2023 highlighted the impact of LIFT’s financial coaching on pediatric preventative care, revealing a significant reduction in missed visit rates and improved vaccination rates among economically stressed low-income families.
Government
In 2021, LIFT-DC launched a TA partnership with the Department of Human Services to train TANF case workers and staff in transitioning from traditional case management to a holistic coaching approach. Thanks to LIFT, TANF case managers can now confidently engage in discussions about finances with families and prioritize relational engagement on parents’ aspirations.
Following success within TANF, the SNAP Employment & Training team sought a similar TA partnership with LIFT-DC in 2023 and In Richmond Virginia, we launched successful work with the city’s Office of Community Wealth Building to help them adopt a holistic model.
Through these partnerships in Nevada, California, Texas, Georgia, Virginia, New York, Illinois, and Washington, D.C. we have supported over 3,000 families. We have also seen a coaching and organizational mindset shift amongst our partners, with 77% of staff increasing a coaching mindset and 83% of staff demonstrating a shift in their organizational culture.
“Out of all the professional development and training I’ve ever done, I have enjoyed and gotten the most out of what LIFT’s presentation style provides,” said a staff member at Dallas College. I’m looking forward to implementing and already have ideas of how I am going to use what I’ve learned.”
As our TA program continues to grow, we hope to deepen the connection between TA, our own direct service, and our policy advocacy at all levels. We will also strengthen and refine our criteria for selecting new partners that align with our mission and values and continue to measure the impact on staff and clients.