Investing for a Prosperous Future: A Case Study on Alternatives for Girls Childrens Saving Accounts

INVESTING FOR A PROSPEROUS FUTURE:

2023 "You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."

– Martin Luther King Jr.

Amy Good has dedicated her career to helping girls and young women in crisis in her southwest Detroit neighborhood. In the late 80’s, many in her community were engaging in street-based prostitution. They were dealing with homelessness and exploitation, and an absence of health care or basic needs support. Amy, alongside her neighbors, decided they were going to help these girls and young women stay safe and have an opportunity to change the trajectory of their lives. In January of 1988, Alternatives for Girls opened the doors to its first five-bed shelter. Within one week, all five beds were filled. AFG has evolved into a multiservice agency with over 75 employees serving over 2,600 girls and women annually. It is housed in a two-story brick building constructed in 2002.

Alternatives for Girls (AFG) is one of the only non-profit organizations in Detroit that focuses on girls and young women in Detroit who are unhoused or at risk of being unhoused, or at risk of violence, teen pregnancy, or exploitation. Their mission is to help these girls and young women explore support, resources, and opportunities to be safe, grow strong, and make positive choices in their lives.

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AFG’s Mission is Supported through Three Primary Programming Areas The Shelter: Provides a stable home, counseling, support for getting girls’ and young women’s education back on track, job readiness and life skills training to young women experiencing homelessness ages 15-22 and their children. Read more about Shelter here.

Outreach Activities: Helps teens and women engaged in street-based prostitution, drug use, domestic violence, and gang involvement to understand the risks of such activities and transition to safer choices and healthy lives. Read more about Outreach here.

Prevention Programs: Serves girls ages 7-19 who are at risk of gang involvement, abusing drugs or alcohol, early pregnancy, and school truancy. They are engaged through after-school programs, a college prep/asset building program that includes mentoring, and a summer day camp. Read more about Prevention here.

Amy Good, a University of Michigan School of Social Work student at the time of AFG’s founding, received inspiration from professor emeritus Rosemary Sarri. Dr. Sarri mentored Amy, challenging her to do something meaningful as a social worker, to build something that wasn’t there before.

Even after Amy received her Master’s in Social Work, Dr. Sarri continued to inspire Amy and helped her shape the Alternatives For Girls Asset Building Program. In fact, Dr. Sarri was the program’s first philanthropic funder. Until her passing, Dr. Sarri served as one of the program’s many advisors.

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The University of Michigan School of Social Work, through Dr. Sarri’s contributions and the contributions of Dr. Trina Shanks, Dr. Willie Elliott, and Sonia Harb, has engaged with Alternatives for Girls for decades to support the achievement of AFG’s organizational mission.

Drs. Shanks and Elliott engage as advisory board members, and Dr. Shanks and Sonia Harb leveraged a U-M Poverty Solutions grant to strengthen the program by using evidence-based practice and data driven evaluation.

Engaging with communities to support social justice and community change efforts is part of the DNA of the U-M SSW. The encouragement, thought partnership, and technical assistance that these faculty and staff provide Alternatives For Girls is a prime example of how the School works alongside community partners, over time, to address social challenges and promote equity.

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noun: prevention /prəˈven(t)SH(ə)n

“The action of stopping something from happening or arising.”

Instead of waiting for problem behaviors to occur, proactive techniques implemented successfully decrease the likelihood of problem behaviors and promote positive behavioral choices.

There is a 30-year span of research that shows prevention services can prevent behavioral health challenges in adolescents.

The application of policies and programs that build skills and that promote emotional, social, and financial wellbeing has the power to counteract detrimental environmental forces for young people living in low-income communities. (Grand Challenges for Social Work Initiative, Grand Challenge: Ensuring Healthy Development for all Youth, Working Paper 10, April 2015, American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare.)

AFG’s cornerstone prevention effort is its Asset Building and College Readiness Program. Participants in this program benefit from Academic Enrichment and Support, Mentor Support, enrollment into a Child Savings Account (CSA), and Parent Engagement activities. This holistic approach to prevention promotes greater self-esteem, improved grade-point average, rejection of drugs and alcohol, pregnancy prevention, and discovering untapped talents.

The program design, developed in 2015 with the assistance of thought leaders from U-M’s School of Social Work, area financial institutions, and the community, has continually evolved and strengthened over time.

Establishing CSAs is a proven tool to strengthen educational outcomes and asset building behavior in families.

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A KEY FEATURE OF THE PROGRAM IS THE CHILD SAVINGS ACCOUNT (CSA) COMPONENT. MOST OF THE PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS HAVE CHILD SAVINGS ACCOUNTS ESTABLISHED AND ARE PARTICIPATING IN FINANCIAL LITERACY TRAINING AND COACHING TO PROMOTE SAVING AND INVESTMENTS INTO THE CSA ACCOUNTS.

Research on the long-term effects of CSAs show that children with these accounts have improved educational outcomes and build a college-bound identity (1), and that CSAs reduce racial (2) and income disparities (3) and help families build a strong asset foundation for accumulating wealth (4).

CSAs serve as a long-term savings account program and are rooted in the belief that widening access to wealth building will empower youth and their families to break cycles of poverty. CSAs typically provide children with a “seed” deposit. This means that an organization will put an amount of money of their choice into the account with the expectation that it will be matched. Future investments can be made by parents, caregivers, friends, and the child themselves to help build savings for the future. The goal is to promote positive saving habits and engage children and their families in financial education.

CSA account funds are restricted until adulthood, and eligible withdrawals are typically limited to paying for postsecondary educational ventures, like college or trade school.

CHILDREN’S SAVINGS ACCOUNTS ARE HELPFUL TOOLS FOR LOW-INCOME TO MODERATE INCOME FAMILIES TO PROVIDE OPPORTUNITIES FOR THEIR CHILDREN TO ATTEND COLLEGE OR TRADE SCHOOL AND PURCHASE THE NECESSARY ITEMS REQUIRED FOR ATTENDANCE.

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2023 (3/8/2023-present) The Asset Building Program has 60 active middle and high school participants 58% of the girls are Latina, 42% are African American 42% of participants are fully engaged in saving AFG matches each participant’s deposits up to $500.00 The average amount participants have in savings is $513.25 All high school graduates of the program attended college AFG has awarded $8,781.00 match dollars to participants over the last two years

A F G la u n c h e d t h e p r o g r a m in a De tr o i t C h a r te r s c h o o l a s p a r t o f a s ca l i n g p i l o t e f f o r t .

A F G is p r o v id in g su p p o r ti ve se r vi ce s t o 2 1 a lu ms, 1 7 a t t e n d in g co l le g e .

T h e p a r t ic i p a n t in t e r vie w e d in th e o r i g i n a l s t u d y c o n t in u e s to a tt e n d UM in An n Ar b o r . Sh e is ma jo r i n g in P sych o l o g y a n d in t e n d s to a p p ly to g r a d u a te sc h o o l.

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2022 Program Stats The Asset Building Program has 50 active middle and high school participants 82% of the girls are Latina 64% of participants are fully engaged in saving AFG matches each participant’s deposits up to $500.00 The average amount participants had in savings was $538.15 All high school graduates of the program attended college

2021 Program Stats The Asset Building Program has 47 active middle and high school participants 87% participants are fully engaged in saving AFG matches each participant’s deposits up to $500.00 AFG awarded $11,485.00 match dollars to participants The average amount participants had in savings is $267.07 All high school graduates of the program attended college

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SAVING IS HARD FOR FAMILIES IN CRISIS AFG provides an initial deposit of $25 to each participant with a CSA. For the account to be activated, the parent or caregiver must match the initial deposit with an additional $25 so that the account starts off at $50.

Finding the resources to match the initial investment is hard.

Families of the program struggle to make money, and the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic has made their circumstances more dire. When families struggle to make ends meet, they do not prioritize saving.

There is also a disconnect with participants’ understanding of the importance of saving and the value of saving early.

To combat this, program staff stress the benefits of investment into CSAs and provide incentives to encourage more savings. Each day a participant attended after school programs, they received $2 in their CSA. If they attended 90% or more of all programs, they received a $10 bonus. Watching their child’s accounts grow is exciting, inspiring hope and a vision of what might be possible in their child’s future.

The act of saving for the future, and the potential it holds, is always celebrated. Staff work to create energy around the Asset Build and College Readiness Program and CSAs, which in turn encourages positive saving behavior with families.

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FINANCIAL LITERACY IS A FOUNDATIONAL SKILL One of the greatest strengths of the CSA program, as highlighted by the staff, is that they are helping the participants to be more financially literate. One of the staff members mentioned the following challenge: “It’s hard sometimes to teach people why saving money is important when it’s always been important to me.” This staff member found value in really “breaking it down,” piece by piece, to highlight why saving is crucial to a successful livelihood.

VULNERABLE FAMILIES SHY AWAY FROM “INSTITUTIONS” Another challenge for the AFG community is that many of the participants have undocumented parents, so they stay away from banking institutions. Program families also lack exposure to financial institutions in the United States in general and experience language barriers, which increases hesitancy and fear.

To combat this phenomenon, AFG staff are working with the participants to save money and watch it grow in their CSA accounts. Investment income is an exciting alternative to keeping savings at home, where earnings on the principal can never be realized.

They take pride in helping the participants realize that banks don’t have to be scary, and they can be very beneficial when used correctly.

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LOCAL, STATE, AND FEDERAL ENTITIES ARE BEST SUITED TO ADMINISTER CSA PROGRAMS AND MANAGE SAVINGS ACCOUNTS. It is harder for smaller nonprofits to administer CSA programs and have a wide impact. AFG currently supports 47 participants, which is positive, but not as widespread as is helpful for these accounts to have mass impact.

Research has shown that universal access to CSA programs can lift families out of poverty and change the educational trajectory for youth (5). Government is the best entity to take on an opportunity of this magnitude.

Additionally, managing financial accounts is not in the bailiwick of most community-based organizations. The amount of energy and time devoted to this task can be better allocated.

Individual organizations can easily partner with the government to help connect CSA programming with community members and promote wide scale program utilization. These organizations can also provide necessary wrap-around support and are best positioned to address the academic, social, and emotional needs of participants and their families.

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(1) Elliott, W., Choi, E. H., Destin, M., & Kim, K. H. (2011). The age old question, which comes first? A simultaneous test of children’s savings and children’s college-bound identity. Children and Youth Services Review, 33(7), 1101–1111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.02.001 (2) Friedline, T., Elliott, W., & Nam, I. (2013). Small-dollar children’s saving accounts and children’s college outcomes by race. Children and Youth Services Review, 35(3), 548–559. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2012.12.007 (3) Elliott, W., Song, H. J., & Nam, I. (2013). Small-dollar children’s savings accounts and children’s college outcomes by income level. Children and Youth Services Review, 35(3), 560–571. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2012.12.003 (4) Grinstein‐Weiss, M., Williams Shanks, T. R., & Beverly, S. G. (2014). Family assets and child outcomes: Evidence and directions. The Future of Children, 24(1), 147–170. https://doi.org/10.1353/foc.2014.0002 (5) Huang, J., Sherraden, M., Clancy, M. M., Beverly, S. G., Shanks, T. R., & Kim, Y. (2021). Asset building and child development: A policy model for inclusive child development accounts. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 7(3), 176. https://doi.org/10.7758/rsf.2021.7.3.08

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PUBLICATION DATE: SEPTEMBER, 2023 AUTHORS: Dominique Crump, MSW, Center for Equitable Family and Community Well-being; Sonia Harb, LMSW, ENGAGE; and Trina R. Shanks, PhD, MSW, MPh, ENGAGE and Center for Equitable Family and Community Well-being VISUAL DESIGN TEAM: Michael Kloc, LLMSW; Parker Kehrig; Zihui Adams; Saria Bechara CREDITS: This paper was developed by the University of Michigan Center for Equitable Family and Community Well-Being and School of Social Work ENGAGE to recognize the impactful work of AFG, highlight best practices in CSA and Asset Building programming, and to showcase how the U-M SSW can engage meaningfully with community partners. When community-based partners have good ideas, and when they want to do things to drive policy and best practice, they can find School of Social Work faculty, staff, and students to help.

This paper is dedicated to Dr. Rosemary Sarri, 9/13/1926 - 7/25/2022, faculty emeritus at the University of Michigan School of Social Work. Dr. Sarri began engaging with Alternatives for Girls decades ago, inspiring AFG’s founder and helping design AFG’s original Asset Building program. Throughout the lifespan of the agency’s asset building efforts, Dr. Sarri contributed to its growth and improvement. Dr. Sarri’s engagement was driven by her passion for justice, her love of grassroots activism, and her commitment to the empowerment of vulnerable girls and young women in Detroit.

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