white paper on performance management for community ... - FACA

NASCSP 2013
Housing & Utilities
Food
Transportation
Child Care
Personal & Household Items
Health Care
Emergency Savings
Retirement Savings
Taxes & Tax Credits
Savings for Children’s Higher Education
Homeownership Saving
For information on how costs in each of these areas are calculated, please visit:
http://www.basiceconomicsecurity.org/best/.
STRENGTHS: The CSBG Network is familiar with BEST and many statewide Community Action
Networks contributed funding towards the development of a state-specific BEST that can
accurately captured the context for CAA program participants. The BEST also provides the
ability to measure needs across a lifespan, which is a limitation in many other self-sufficiency
measures. Community Action has a state and local focus and the comprehensive nature of the
BEST preserves that focus as data is accessible for every local community.
CHALLENGES: The BEST Index includes receipt of public assistance which may need to be
separated out and removed based on our definition of self-sufficiency.
The Federal Poverty Guidelines
The federal poverty guidelines are issued each year by the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services. The guidelines are a simplification of the poverty thresholds and are generally
used for administrative purposes such as determining financial eligibility for certain federal
programs. The poverty thresholds are the original version of the federal poverty measure. They
are updated each year by the Census Bureau. The poverty thresholds were originally developed
in 1963-1964 by Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration. Orshansky took the
dollar costs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) economy food plan for families of
three or more persons and multiplied the costs by a factor of three. This was a convenient
measure because food generally comprised the highest portion of a family’s budget at this time
in history.
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