A project team supported by: WRMA’s Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) team
Decades of service:
Office of Community Services and WRMA partner on Social Services Block Grant
Client:
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
Administration for Children and Families (ACF)
Office of Community Services (OCS)
Service Areas
Areas of Expertise
Summary
In 1998, the Office of Community Services (OCS) sought a contractor to develop a data collection system and prepare reports for the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) program. In the decades since winning the contract, WRMA continued to provide OCS with advanced solutions for data collection, validation, analysis, and presentation.
WRMA also supported OCS through the design and development of the SSBG Annual Report. In addition to drafting and producing the report each year, WRMA supported an initiative to make the public SSBG data interactive and more easily accessible to the public with an online dashboard. The dashboard, hosted on the existing data collection site, allows public access to view and download the SSBG data outside of the published Annual Report.
Details
Established in 1981, the SSBG allocates federal funds to states to support services for at-risk children, adults, and families. OCS, a division of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), administers the SSBG. States have broad discretion in the specific programs supported with SSBG funds and may tailor the use of these funds over time to best meet the needs of their populations.
The SSBG program is an important source of federal funds for grantees that supports a variety of social services programs. Facilitating a smooth grantee data reporting process was a priority for the data collection system that WRMA designed and developed. The resulting custom-built data collection website allows SSBG grantees, (all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and US territories), to semi-annually submit required data to OCS. WRMA maintained and improved this system throughout its partnership with OCS.
Streamlining the data entry, validation, and review process allowed OCS Program Specialists to save time when reviewing grantee reports for approval. This enabled OCS to achieve its key objectives—improving grant monitoring and accountability through compliance with federal reporting requirements.
To ensure accurate data entry, WRMA provided extensive technical assistance to grantees and OCS Program Specialists including an email helpdesk, semi-annual training webinars, and a variety of training materials including user guides and video tutorials.
WRMA analyzed the collected SSBG data and composed the SSBG Annual Report to showcase the current utilization of grant funds and reported recipients of the funded social service programs. Additionally, WRMA recommended topics, completed drafts, and produced several smaller focus reports each year on topics selected by OCS.
In 2020, OCS awarded WRMA with a 5-year contract for the SSBG project.
