Human Rights

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic started to spread in the US, many immigrant families were reluctant to access safety net programs, including housing assistance. Fears around the expansion of both the public charge…

Many states exclude license-exempt home-based child care providers from the Child and Adult Care Food Program, which can leave millions of children in need vulnerable to increased food insecurity.

Updated data visualizations illustrate the scale of — and disparities within — mass incarceration.

From underinvestment to burnout, a recently released report details the struggles that women and nonbinary leaders of color face. It also offers a path forward to address these challenges.

Taking dual-credit courses in high school allows students to earn college credits simultaneously.But many undocumented students can’t do so…

Just days after Associate Justice Stephen Breyer announced that he would retire from the Supreme Court, President Joe Biden said that his nominee for the position would be a Black woman. Biden’s…

Young Black men are dying by suicide at an alarming rate. Childhood adversity and racism may hold much of the blame.

Photo by RDNE Stock projectBlack and Brown women are not just starting businesses at an impressive rate. They’re transforming the landscape of entrepreneurship. Despite facing significant hurdles, their impact goes far beyond the bottom line.

Throughout the pandemic, our communities saw the loss of a significant number of child care facilities, as public health actions, falling enrollment, and rising safety costs all took their toll.…

Experts and disability justice advocates say these changes could help more California families with children who have complex medical needs access the care they‘re entitled to.

Indigenous leaders worry when climate change treaties equate “Indigneous peoples” with “local communities” they will lose hard-won rights.

Natasha Marshall, Feedback Labs | March 25, 2024 The Bail Project is a national nonprofit that provides free bail assistance and pretrial support to thousands of low-income people every year while advancing policy change at the local, state, and national levels. It is on a mission to combat mass incarceration by eliminating reliance on cash bail and demonstrating that a more humane, equitable, and effective pretrial system is possible. Through our Community Release with Support model, we provide our clients with return-to-court services including court notifications, free transportation assistance, and referrals to voluntary services. These interventions have helped nearly 30,000 people return to court 91% of the time with none of their own money on the line, preserving the presumption of innocence and demonstrating the efficacy of needs-based pretrial support. Learn more about The Bail Project at bailproject.org. The Bail Project is looking to create more opportunities to receive feedback from the clients we serve with our model, which is known as Community Release with Support. Under this model, The Bail Project’s clients receive free bail assistance and supportive services that help ensure that clients return to court when they are released pretrial. These supportive services include court notifications, travel assistance, and voluntary referrals to services like housing assistance and clinical services to treat mental illness and addiction. We are looking to strengthen our client feedback processes to better understand how our clients experience our services. To be effective, our client engagement and feedback processes must recognize the power imbalances that can often exist between social service organizations and their clients, especially when organizations play such a significant role in a client’s life, such as enabling someone’s release from jail. We also need to consider our remote context when developing feedback processes, as most of our staff engage with clients remotely instead of in-person. Starting at our Cincinnati, Ohio site, we wish to pilot a process for collecting meaningful feedback from clients which can inform a larger client feedback strategy for the organization. Improving Client Engagement & Participation The first question that The Bail Project brought to the LabStorm was how they could improve client engagement and participation in their feedback practices. Some of the suggestions brought up by discussion participants included considering courtesy bias when receiving feedback, considering demographics when collecting feedback and being clear at the start of the relationship that the organization is going to collect and utilize feedback. Others suggested collecting feedback multiple times and creating private online groups so clients are more encouraged to leave honest feedback. Structured Feedback for Meaningful Improvements Another question brought to the discussion was how The Bail Project can implement structured feedback processes in order to continually consider feedback and make meaningful improvements. Participants suggested collecting feedback multiple times so that TBP gets an updated idea of improvements their clients would like to see. They also suggested involving clients as much as possible into the decision making process as they receive services from TBP, that way they are able to provide feedback consistently. Mitigating Against Impediments The final major question was how The Bail Project can work around the biggest impediments to client feedback collection. LabStorm discussion members had ideas including ensuring that a culture of feedback is established within the organization, showing clients how the organization has previously acted on feedback and including people who have previously been incarcerated or received services from TBP sit in on initial discussions with clients to help determine how to implement feedback. Some of the key takeaways The Bail Project had from the discussion were that it’s important to let people tell their own stories so the organization doesn’t shape their experience with the service too much, TBP should focus on ways to make their organization better but not so much that it distracts from their current mission and that it can be helpful to work with client families. This discussion captured not only the importance of collecting feedback, but also working more directly with clients to ensure that they have the best experience possible for them as an individual. Learn More About LabStorms LabStorms are collaborative problem-solving sessions designed to help organizations tackle feedback-related challenges or share what’s working well in their practice. Presenters leave the experience with honest, actionable feedback and suggestions to improve their feedback processes and tools. To learn more about participating in a virtual LabStorm, please visit feedbacklabs.org/labstorms.