A national network of funders supporting strategic, innovative, and effective solutions to homelessness

HHS Secretary Highlights Foundation’s Systems Change Work

Posted by 288sc on July 19, 2012

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius gave the keynote address at the National Conference on Ending Homelessness.

On Tuesday, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius gave the keynote address at the National Conference on Ending Homelessness, hosted by the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH).  She spoke in part about work to maximize the impact of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funding, highlighting efforts to which the Butler Family Fund has contributed.

Secretary Sebelius began her speech by enumerating the ways in which her department is working to end homelessness.  First on her list was the effort between HHS and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to put out an “information memo” to every state TANF director in the country on how to use TANF funds to help end homelessness.

The work that Secretary Sebelius flagged has been a key part of the “systems change” work that the Butler Family Fund has supported:  advocacy to align mainstream funding systems to better serve homeless people.  Specifically, the Butler Family Fund has supported NAEH to convene a group of TANF directors and policy experts from around the country to advocate for more effective use of TANF dollars to end homelessness.

Martha_Toll.jpgMartha is the founding executive director of the Butler Family Fund, a path-breaking philanthropy focused on ending homelessness, abolishing the death penalty, and ending the sentence of juvenile life without parole.

We want to share your foundation’s work to end homelessness. If your foundation has been involved in systems change efforts, let us know!

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Very often a lack of jobs and money is not the cause of poverty, but the symptom. The cause may lie deeper in our failure to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack of education and training, in a lack of medical care and housing, in a lack of decent communities in which to live and bring up their children.

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