UCHRA leaders are pleased with the roughly four-year Empower UC Pilot program, with hopes the state will continue to fund new initiatives designed to reduce poverty.
UCHRA Executive Director Mark Farley said the program was designed as a research-based pilot, with findings expected to help shape future policy. He said a third-party evaluation is still underway and will play a key role in determining what comes next.
“Eventually, they’re going to come out with recommendations to the state of what has worked here in the Upper Cumberland and the other pilots across the State of Tennessee,” Farley said. “Hopefully, the Department of Human Services will take those suggestions and then implement them within the normal funding structures of the state of Tennessee moving forward.”
Farley said UCHRA is taking the lessons learned from the program to be more proactive in addressing regional issues through the agency’s operation. Farley said after working with almost 900 families, one of the lessons learned is that many families initially lack the confidence to improve their financial situation.
“You know, a lot of young working families today and in our region and our neighbors, they don’t have the support system that a lot of families did back years ago,” Farley said. “I know I had parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles who were all the time advising me and encouraging me to do better and to move up that ladder. And too many young families today, they don’t have that support structure. And what they do is they find themselves in a job that is paying them a wage, but it’s not enough for them to really survive and to provide long-term for their family.”
Farley said the program has helped families lay out a plan and gain that needed confidence.
“One of the things we’ve been able to do is sit down with them and almost mentor them as they go through that process of seeing work, an extra dollar here. It may hurt a little bit because you may lose a benefit, a federal benefit somewhere along the line, but long-term, they want to get to a place where they own their own home and have control of their destiny. And when we’ve seen that happen, man, that’s been fulfilling.”
Looking ahead, Farley said he is optimistic the program will continue in some form. He said the extension provides a transition period as officials work toward possibly providing recurring funding down the road.
“I think we’ll probably have to scale back for a period of time,” Farley said. “The state indicates they’re looking at some long-term funding, but it’s just not ready yet.”
Farley said there is enough assistance money out there and that additional funds are not necessarily needed. Farley said the goal is to have Federal and State-level partners to realize that the money needs to be streamlined and used in a new way.
“You know, I say all the time, a lot of our social service safety net programs that you have in place today, they were created back in the late 60s and early 70s, and they’ve not been modernized,” Farley said. “And the family unit today is not what it was 40, 50 years ago.”