Philly Uses Text Messaging to Help Ex-Offenders Find Housing and Jobs
‘[I]f you send them right when someone needs help, they have the opportunity to change behavior and improve citizen experience.”
The Philadelphia Mayor’s Office of Reintegration Services is working to find jobs and housing for the city’s 30,000 ex-offenders returning from federal, state or county corrections every year. And it’s not easy when most lack Internet access.
Adding to the difficulties: A single case manager with Reintegration Services—better known as RISE—can have around 100 clients.
The City of Brotherly Love opted to import the cellphone numbers of those ex-offenders into GovDelivery’s Interactive Texting platform.
That allows Philadelphia’s city government to send automated text messages and updates to ex-offenders via the St. Paul, Minnesota-based communications company’s system and converse with them one-on-one.
“These are not very complex messages,” said Michelle Lee, GovDelivery’s product manager, in an interview. “But if you send them right when someone needs help, they have the opportunity to change behavior and improve citizen experience.”
Messages might ask how work is going or remind clients about educational workshops and job fairs.
Used to seeing only 35 to 40 people show up to the first day of RISE class, out of the approximately 60 invited, case managers have witnessed as much as a 40 percent increase in attendance with the new system.
“This has revolutionized case management,” Khalil Morrison, a RISE case manager, said in a statement. “People respond to a text much quicker than to a voice message.”
Caseloads are down with the system, which makes it easier to track high-risk clients when low-risk clients are in regular contact.
Text messaging can give case managers the ability to measure usage performance outcomes across multiple accounts and agencies, so they can learn from each other and collaborate to lower recidivism while boosting enrollment.
RISE recently began accepting pictures of paystubs and other verification documents via photo message, when clients previously had to show up in person or pay to fax materials. GovDelivery is working on pairing its text and email solutions.
GovDelivery was one of three companies selected to partner with various city agencies through the Bloomberg Philanthropies-funded FASTFWD accelerator program, beginning its work in January 2015 and ending in December.
“Philadelphia is big enough to have some of the hardest challenges in a municipality,” Lee said. “But small enough to be nimble and provide lots of support.”
Dave Nyczepir is a News Editor at Government Executive’s Route Fifty.
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