December 5, 2017 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Heather Reynolds started working at Catholic Charities Fort Worth when she was studying for a master’s degree in social work. She fell in love with the organization but quickly realized that counselors need patience. “And I have no patience,” she says.
She was named chief executive in 2005. Over time, she became impatient with anti-poverty programs — her organization’s included — that treated only the symptoms of poverty. So Ms. Reynolds set out to end poverty one family at a time by pioneering an innovative, long-term approach to helping people build a solid financial foundation.
Staff with the Padua Project, which began in 2015, work with participants for three to five years, until they have a living-wage job, are off of government assistance, and have three months of savings in the bank. “We are no longer going to be the organization people come to where we Band-Aid their problems, send them out the door, and then wonder why they’re back seeing us three months later,” Ms. Reynolds says.
After doing an in-depth assessment, pairs of staff members help clients find a job, get medical care, create a budget, and more. The staff members and their clients talk, text, and email regularly and meet every two weeks until they get a job.
The number of people in the program is small, but early results are promising. After one year in the program, participants had 30 percent higher earnings compared with a control group. They also reduced their spending by 19 percent and their credit-card debt by 41 percent.
The program isn’t cheap. The average cost for serving each family is $27,000. Ms. Reynolds says that will come down as the charity figures out which elements are essential and which can be jettisoned. She also argues that the savings in government assistance over five years will cover the cost.
The program is notable for the freedom it gives case workers to shape assistance to clients’ individual needs.
One example: Caseworkers helped a woman named Perla find work while her husband studied to become a mechanic. She quit after a few weeks, then again after she landed a second job.
Some programs might have turned out Perla, but Padua caseworkers discovered she was worried about the quality of her son’s child care. They made a deal with her: Find child care you’re comfortable with, and we’ll pay part of the cost; stay on the job for six months and we’ll reimburse you for what you paid.
A year and a half later, Perla is still at that job. And the reimbursement? She put that in her family’s savings account.
