What Would Help Low-Income Families Most? Results from a National Survey of 2-1-1 Call Center Professionals

Background and Purpose:Nearly half of young children in the United States live in low-income families, many with unmet needs that negatively impact children’s health and life outcomes. 2-1-1 information and referral helplines respond to over 16 million inquiries annually from callers, including millions of low-income parents seeking resources to meet basic human needs such as food and housing.  Staff members at 2-1-1 interact daily with thousands of low-income parents and are therefore uniquely positioned to offer insights about which resources could help low-income parents, as well as the availability of such resources in their communities. We surveyed 2-1-1 staff members to determine which solutions they believed held the greatest potential to improve the lives of children in low-income families.

Methods: 2-1-1 information and referral specialists, resource managers, and call center directors were recruited via email and an online listserv. Respondents (N= 471) from 44 states, Puerto Rico, and Canada completed a cross-sectional survey in 2013 using Qualtrics online survey system. Most respondents were 2-1-1 information and referral specialists (56%) and worked at helplines serving an even mix of urban and rural populations (50%); 17% worked at 2-1-1 helplines in which more than one quarter of callers spoke English as a second language.  Respondents were asked to rank the priority needs of callers with children based on which needs, if addressed, would help families most. For each priority need selected, respondents then rated the importance of 6-8 dimensions of the need, as well as availability of related helping resources in their community.

Results:Each respondent selected three high priority general needs for 2-1-1 callers with children. The needs most often selected as high priority were parenting resources (chosen by 73% of respondents), child health and health care (69%), and child care (67%). Examining only respondents’ top choice, or “most important priority,” child care was ranked most important by 32% of respondents, followed by parenting resources (29%) and child health and health care (23%). Across all six dimensions of child care (e.g., quality affordable care, after-school care, summer care, special needs care), over half of respondents rated existing community resources as inadequate. The same was true for 6 of 8 dimensions of parenting needs and 5 of 8 dimensions of child health and health care needs.

Conclusions and Implications: In order to achieve equal opportunity, equity, and justice for children in low-income families, it is important to understand the community resources that are currently available and work to develop new ones. These findings suggest that many resources currently available to 2-1-1 callers are inadequate to meet the needs of low-income parents across the critical domains of parenting, child care, and child health.  Practitioners working with low-income families should develop brief screeners for needs assessment, prioritize referrals to existing resources, and advocate for the development of additional community resources. Social workers should partner with maternal and child health practitioners, social service providers, and policymakers to generate collaborative solutions with the potential to ensure healthy development for all youth.