| Notes |
Cuyahoga County in Ohio, which encompasses the greater Cleveland area, spends about $50 million a year in foster care payments—the single largest area of the human services budget. That doesn’t even include staff and other support costs.
Making a dent in those costs--and creating a more-effective way to help reunite children in foster care with their parents, while helping those formerly homeless families find housing—are the goals of a new Pay for Success (PFS) project just announced at a meeting held by the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation in Chicago. Also called Social Impact Bonds (SIBs), these financing mechanisms target longstanding social problems through a partnership between government, philanthropies, nonprofits, and private investors aimed at achieving measurable outcomes related to an intransigent issue, like recidivism or homelessness. |