Families’ lives are complex. The needs of caregivers and their children are interrelated and aren’t always met by a single service or program. A parent searching for a job may also need reliable childcare. A family’s financial stress might contribute to challenges a child is having in school. Recognizing families’ interconnected and complex needs, Agape Child & Family Services has worked for over 50 years to address poverty’s effects on whole families in Memphis, Tennessee. Its service model, called 2Gen, includes seven initiatives related to school, work, mental health, domestic abuse, faith formation, family strengthening, and basic needs. For organizations like Agape, helping families flourish requires understanding how their challenges intersect, centering family voice, continuous learning, and readiness to adapt.
Over the past five years, Agape, Mathematica, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation have explored what family-centered, responsive support looks like through the REVISE-2G partnership. What began in 2020 as an effort to help Agape adjust its services during the COVID-19 pandemic grew into a broader initiative to strengthen the organization’s ability to learn, improve, and respond to the evolving needs of the families and communities it serves. Mathematica recently published a brief prepared for Agape and the Casey Foundation that offers four lessons for family-serving organizations seeking to build similar capabilities.
1. Start small, but think beyond a single program
Improvement efforts often begin with a specific challenge. Initially, staff working in two Agape programs were interested in new ways to engage caregivers and children during COVID-19. This led Agape to take a closer look at how its programs worked together, which sparked broader thinking in the organization. Mathematica helped Agape adopt its Learn, Innovate, Improve (LI²) framework as a model for continuous quality improvement; Agape piloted a financial management program; and teams worked to strengthen implementation of the organization’s Voice & Choice approach, which empowers participants to lead by identifying their goals and priorities for their families and selecting the supports they need to thrive.
Agape tested ideas on a small scale before considering broader implementation. For example, a pilot of the financial management program with 11 participants uncovered challenges related to engagement and cost. This pilot allowed Agape to refine the program before deciding whether to expand it. By starting small, organizations can identify problems early, make evidence-driven adjustments, and scale programs or practices that work.
2. Put the people closest to families at the center of improvement
The people closest to the work often have the clearest view of what’s working and what isn’t. Throughout REVISE-2G, Agape used the expertise of staff, program participants, and community partners to drive improvement efforts. Managers, supervisors, and front-line staff brought different perspectives to conversations about priorities and helped shape specific improvements. Feedback from staff about specific needs they felt unprepared to address led to greater coordination across Agape’s programs, including enhancements to Voice & Choice. Agape identified staff-level champions and empowered staff to lead these improvements.
3. Use different kinds of evidence to make better decisions
Agape drew on both quantitative and qualitative information to guide improvement. Dashboards helped staff monitor referrals and supported data-driven conversations between supervisors and front-line staff. Surveys, participant feedback, and human-centered design activities provided additional insight into participants’ experiences and program implementation. Drawing on multiple sources of information gave Agape leaders a clearer picture of where programs were working as intended, where implementation needed attention, and where changes could strengthen the participant experience.
Over the course of REVISE-2G, Agape strengthened its administrative data system. By the end of the partnership, Agape was able to use the system to assess the implementation of Voice & Choice and identify improvement opportunities.
4. Learning and improvement are ongoing practices
Agape’s work to strengthen Voice & Choice showed that positive participant feedback can coexist with opportunities for improvement. Although participants reported largely positive experiences, staff identified a need for additional training and reinforcement, particularly to help them understand how their individual programs fit within Agape’s broader two-generation approach.
These findings also highlighted the value of collecting ongoing feedback. Coaching, observation, data reviews, and participant input can help organizations understand how consistently a practice is being implemented, how participants experience it, and where additional support is needed.
Building an organization that keeps learning
One of the most important outcomes of REVISE-2G has been Agape’s improved ability to identify challenges, learn from families and staff, and adapt as needs changed. Agape’s experience offers lessons for other family-serving organizations, researchers, and funders. Organizations can build systems that help staff recognize emerging needs, use evidence to guide decisions, and share lessons across programs. Researchers can develop measures that reflect how services work in practice, while funders can create opportunities for practitioners, participants, and communities to shape improvement efforts.
Agape’s experience shows the value of partnerships between programs, researchers, and funders. The systems and practices that support ongoing learning can help programs remain responsive long after a project ends. Today, Agape’s REVISE-2G experience has informed its evolving work helping families and neighborhoods move toward greater stability, mobility, and flourishing, including as the backbone agency for the Shelby County pilot of Tennessee’s Human Flourishing Initiative.
For more information about REVISE-2G and resources, including a toolkit on how other family-serving organizations can adopt LI2, visit Mathematica's REVISE-2G project page
