Little 5 / Big 5

Led by San Francisco’s Department of Public Health and supported by the Mayor’s office through HOPE SF, Little 5/Big 5 will bring together cross-sector partners to coordinate care delivery methods for and with families. “It is clear that many low-income families have been shuffled in and out of multiple and only marginally beneficial safety net and regulatory systems,” said Ken Epstein, Ph.D., LCSW, Director of Children, Youth and Families for San Francisco Department of Public Health, “and the patchwork of services meant to help strengthen families remains highly fragmented. To see real benefit for these families, we must better organize and deliver care.”

Knowing that achieving this vision will require a dramatically changed case management and service delivery system, the “Little 5/Big 5” project will begin with a small number of families living in San Francisco public housing to pilot an aligned service delivery method potentially capable of breaking the cycles of poverty and trauma across generations. The project’s name is a description of the collaboration’s intention to start small (the “little 5”) and scale up to support systematic policy changes (the “big 5”) necessary to impact 500, let alone 5,000 families.

Right now, families use a multitude of services, but there is little coordination between departments or agencies. Little 5/Big 5 will coordinate a single, integrated, and family-centered case management plan that builds on HOPE SF, San Francisco’s signature public-private neighborhood development and anti-poverty initiative. Through targeted, responsive, trauma-informed supports that put family at the center of care, the team will create aligned social, educational and economic opportunities for these families, and help them make better use of support services and family and community assets currently available.

The pilot will be rigorously evaluated to allow for real-time changes in service delivery. Little 5/ Big 5 will also ensure that care providers are trained so that signs and symptoms of trauma are recognized early and treated within families. The goal of the pilot is for public and private partners across multiple sectors to develop a new methodology for serving these families.  “Our greatest achievement will be at the pilot’s conclusion,” said Theodore Miller, Director of HOPE SF, “when a new methodology can be taken to scale that changes our educational and social systems for the good of all families seemingly entrapped in cycles of generational poverty.”

The Collaboration

The Little 5/ Big 5 family services pilot builds on the existing HOPE SF Collaborative. It is led by Theodore Miller, Director of HOPE SF in the San Francisco Mayor’s Office, Kenneth Epstein, Director of Children, Youth, and Families in the Department of Public Health, and Ellie Rossiter, Director of the Partnership for HOPE SF at The San Francisco Foundation. With multiple layers of services, there are many partners in the collaboration, including:
  • The San Francisco Foundation (representing 18 philanthropic partners)
  • The Mayor’s Office
  • San Francisco Department of Public Health
  • San Francisco Unified School District
  • San Francisco Office of Housing and Community Development
  • San Francisco Juvenile Justice
  • San Francisco Human Services Agency
  • San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development
  • San Francisco Housing Authority
  • San Francisco Department of Children Youth and Families
  • The Walter & Elise Haas Fund
  • Enterprise Community Partners
  • First 5 San Francisco
  • Bridge Housing
  • Urban Strategies, Inc.
  • Mercy Housing
  • Bayview YMCA
photo: Liz Hafalia, San Francisco Chronicle

The Problem

  • Most residents living in HOPE SF (public housing in San Francisco's Southeast Sector) are young, with limited education, disconnected from formal labor markets, and seemingly trapped in generational poverty.
  • Almost three quarters of able-bodied adults are unemployed, $14,000 is the average annual income, and 53% of students are chronically absent from school.
  • ​Despite a substantial safety net and abundant community organizations in San Francisco, there currently exists no integrated case management model for sustained and systemic family intervention. 
For more information, contact:
Ellie Rossiter
HOPE SF Initiative Officer & Campaign Director
The San Fransisco Foundation 
415-733-8578, ERossiter@sff.org