Center for Social Policy

at the University of Massachusetts Boston

Recent Projects

Sample of our recent projects

What We Do

Applied Research: Through our Reshaping Poverty Policy agenda, our work produces solid evidence and advances viable policy options that address poverty, homelessness, and workforce development.

Participatory Action Research: We engage participants and participating communities in a process of co-learning to generate evidence that can be used to inform collective actions leading to fundamental changes in the root causes of social and economic inequities.

Strategic Evaluation: Our work can be readily used by practitioners, planners, policy makers, funders, and others for informing policy decisions, replication or expansion efforts, or changes in practice.  

We design these evaluations to answer questions like: What works and for whom?  

Evaluations of Comprehensive Community Change Initiatives: We highlight the results of cross-community, cross-sector and cross-organizational, multi-year initiatives. We design these evaluations to answer questions like: 

• How will short-term and long-term success be measured? 
• Given those success indicators, which implementation processes have been effective and which need to be changed? 
• Which interventions are associated with reaching benchmarks for success in the short and long-term?     

Sample of our recent projects

Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare Foundation Evaluation
Beginning in 2012, the Center for Social Policy is serving as a multi-year evaluation partner to the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation; the center's work is focused on generating solid evidence as to the extent and ways in which the foundation's initiatives—Growing Up Healthy, Culture InSight, and Community Connections—contribute to its goals.

Primary contact: Terry Saunders Lane, Senior Research Fellow

Informing Eos Foundation's Anti-hunger Initiative
In April 2012, the Eos Foundation commissioned research to inform its decision making from the Center for Social Policy, the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center (MassBudget), and the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute (MLRI). The research addresses understanding how the food assistance programs work in Massachusetts and identifies places—leverage points—where improvements to the programs might be usefully introduced through strategic use of the foundation's philanthropic funds.

Research findings
Food assistance programs in Massachusetts
Massachusetts School Meal Data

Primary contact: Donna Haig Friedman, Director

Thrive in Five Initiative
Led by the Center for Social Policy, a team of UMass Boston evaluators  is undertaking  for the United Way and the City of Boston the evaluation of a city-wide comprehensive plan, aligning families, educators, health care and human service providers, the private sector and city departments, to ensure that all children  in Boston will be ready for sustained school success.

Primary contacts:
Donna Haig Friedman, Director
Mary Coonan, Outcome and Evaluation Specialist

The Boston Foundation's Fairmount Initiative
Since 2010, CSP has been the Boston Foundation’s Fairmount Strategy learning and evaluation partner; our evaluation and learning efforts over the next three years will focus on the Foundation’s Fairmount Strategy as a whole, on Boston LISC’s Resilient Communities/Resilient Families (RC/RF) Initiative and on the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) Program.  

At the Fairmount strategy level, the learning plan is designed to inform the next stages of TBF’s investments and activities along the Fairmount Corridor, tracking TBF’s contribution to transformative strategies and/or approaches aimed at changing the life trajectories for low income children/families and their neighborhoods. 

At the program level, the CSP evaluation activities are designed to understand the implementation of the RC/RF and FSS projects in the corridor, including their procedural accomplishments and challenges, community building and relevant family outcomes, and the role of neighborhood context. 

Primary contacts:
Donna Haig Friedman, Director
Brandynn Holgate, Research Associate

Healthcare Technologies Research and Technical Assistance
The Center for Social Policy provided technical assistance to DotWell, a Dorchester community-based organization designed to create a Healthcare Technology Workforce Development Educational Pathway. This pathway is aimed at adult learners who are interested in advancing their education through college credit courses in computer science and information management, and ultimately securing employment in Boston’s healthcare industry. The project was funded through a workforce development planning grant from the Black Ministerial Alliance of Greater Boston.

Primary contact: Brandynn Holgate, Research Associate

Closing the Gap on Healthcare Disparities
With funding from the Blue Cross Blue Shield  Foundation of Massachusetts, the Center for Social Policy evaluated healthcare disparity interventions taking place throughout Massachusetts by identifying outcomes from the experience of 11 coalitions of community organizations, health care providers, and consumers.  

Primary contacts:
Mary Coonan, Outcome and Evaluation Specialist
Terry Saunders Lane, Senior Research Fellow

Alternative Staffing Organizations: Outcomes for Job Candidates and Customer Employers
Alternative Staffing Organizations (ASOs), operated by community-based agencies, integrate the business goal of mainstream staffing services—connecting workers and employers—with the social mission of helping marginalized job seekers find and retain better jobs. Over the period from 2008-11, the Center for Social Policy studied the activities of four ASOs which were part of the Charles Stewart Mott Alternative Staffing Demonstration II. The study explored employment outcomes for workers as well as the motivations of customer businesses.

ASOs participating in the research included First Source Staffing, Emerge Staffing, Goodwill Staffing Services-Austin and Goodwill Temporary Staffing-Suncoast. This study was funded by the C. S. Mott Foundation. (See also Brokering Up: The Role of Temporary Staffing in Overcoming Labor Market Barriers)

Primary contact: Françoise Carré, Research Director

Pathways to Family Success Evaluation
Through the Center for Social Policy's Pathways to Family Success Evaluation, we are exploring the impact of community partnership efforts, in four locations throughout the state, to improve child, adult and family outcomes, through a coordinated 'wrap-around' model of education, workforce development and health/human services. This initiative is funded by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education through its Adult and Community Learning Services (ACLS), Family Literacy division.

Primary contacts:
Berna Kahraman, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
Ghazel Zulfiqar, Research Associate

One Family Scholars Documentation Project
In 2000, the Paul and Phyllis Fireman Charitable Foundation founded the One Family Scholars Program as part of its campaign to end family homelessness in Massachusetts.  Interested in learning how the program impacted scholars’ lives over the long term, the foundation commissioned the Center for Social Policy to document changes attributable to their participation in the program.  

Primary contact: Donna Haig Friedman, Director

Evaluation Planning for the Massachusetts Adult Basic Education Professional Development System
The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE) commissioned the Center for Social Policy to conduct a literature review and develop an evaluation plan for its Adult and Community Learning Services' Adult Basic Education (ABE) program. The team produced three analytical products for the state education agency:

  • Gaps Analysis Report summarizing and synthesizing the most effective practices for supporting high quality ABE instructors
  • Comprehensive Brief on the potential future use of ESE data for the Department’s ABE policy development
  • Outline of an Evaluation Plan of ESE's State Adult Basic Education System (SABES) Program

Primary contact: Evelyn Frankford, Project Lead

Informal Employment in Developed and Developing Countries
As part of a collaboration with the global research and action network WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing), Françoise Carré is preparing analysis and papers on informal (casual, temporary) employment in developed countries, as well as participating in field exposures with poor informal workers in India, Mexico, and South Africa. The research focuses on the relationships between informal employment and poverty.   Writings from this project can be found under Reports and Staff Publications.

Primary contact: Françoise Carré, Research Director

Evaluation of Northeastern University School of Law LSSC Program
Center for Social Policy was commissioned to conduct a three-year, multi-method evaluation of the Legal Skills in Social Context (LSSC) Program, a required course in the first year curriculum of this law school.  This innovative program provides students with the opportunity to conduct research and legal analysis on a specific issue for participating client organizations. The CSP team concluded the evaluation in 2012.

Primary contacts:
Terry Saunders Lane, Senior Research Fellow
Elaine Werby, Senior Research Fellow

Washington Beech HOPE VI Evaluation
The Boston Housing Authority (BHA) commissioned the Center for Social Policy to conduct a four-year evaluation of the revitalization of the Washington Beech public housing development in Boston's Roslindale neighborhood.  Now in the third year of this evaluation, the CSP team is following 25 households through the phases of change—relocation and re-occupancy. Additional evaluation tasks include provision of on-going feedback and recommendations to BHA personnel and the contracted case management and relocation agency staff.

Primary contacts:
Elaine Werby, Senior Research Fellow
Berna Kahraman, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow

Poverty in Massachusetts - May 2011 Fact Sheets
Using American Community Survey five-year data, the Center for Social Policy has created eight one-page fact sheets on poverty in the Massachusetts. Each provides poverty figures by particular demographic groups: age, gender, race, ethnicity, education level, nativity, and family status. The data compare Massachusetts rates to those in the US, by analyzing the distribution of the whole population and the total poor population by the demographic category. Finally, the fact sheets highlight the poverty rate in the ten largest Massachusetts cities.

Primary contact: Randy Albelda, Senior Research Fellow

Family-to-Family Project Evaluation
The Family-to Family Project (FtF) commissioned the Center for Social Policy to evaluate its Family Homelessness Prevention Program during the period 2011-13.  Through this initiative, FtF provides one-time cash grants of $500 - $3600 to 225 families who are at risk of losing their homes. Three partner agencies (Project Hope, Home Start, and Travelers Aid) refer candidate families to FtF for assistance and provide wrap around services such as case management. The intention of the project is to support families to maintain their housing stability with modest cash assistance and to generate solid evidence of the efficacy of this approach for preventing homelessness.

Primary contacts:
Mary Coonan, Outcome and Evaluation Specialist
Terry Saunders Lane, Senior Research Fellow

Retail Work Around the Globe
The retail industry is being transformed by dramatic market shifts and rapid technological change. To better understand the consequences of these changes for the entry level workforce, this project explores schedules, compensation, turnover and retention, training, service levels, and product knowledge in the frontline workforce in the food and consumer electronics sectors. The project examines retail jobs and firm strategies in using cross-national perspective—US, Western Europe, Mexico— paying particular attention to differences in national institutional settings and how these impact job quality.

The study is led by CSP's Research Director Françoise Carré and Chris Tilly, economist and director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Work and Employment. Building upon an earlier study of the US retail trade, this project entails two components:

  • The preparation of a manuscript titled “Retail Work Round the Globe” with support from the Russell Sage Foundation and the UMass Boston Healey Research Grant program.
     
  • A study titled “Short hours, long hours, flexible hours: Hours levels and hours adjustments in the retail industry in the United States, Canada, and Mexico” with support from the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research Policy Research Grant program.

(see also Continuity and Change in Low-wage Work in U.S. Retail Trade (2008))

Primary contact: Françoise Carré, Research Director

Evaluation of Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP)
The Center for Social Policy has been retained by the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership to evaluate its efforts funded by the Federal Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP) to provide housing for families experiencing homelessness. Lessons learned, both in terms of program features and family outcomes, will inform the Massachusetts HomeBase program, the successor to HPRP.

Primary contacts:
Tim Davis, Research Consultant
Terry Saunders Lane, Senior Research Fellow

Evaluation of the Boston-Haifa Learning Exchange
The Center for Social Policy has been commissioned by the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Greater Boston (JCRC) to collaborate with JCRC, Haifa-based Council of Volunteer Organizations, Shatil, and Lead Haifa to conduct a strategic evaluation of their Boston-Haifa Learning Exchange and Study Tours.  These programs bring together leaders from the two cities to develop co-learning opportunities and to enhance partnerships within and across borders with a priority on issues of social justice. 

Primary contacts:  
Miriam Messinger, Research Consultant
Risa Takenaka, Research Assistant