Family Strengthening: Featuring Restore Hope & Padua
Family Strengthening Models that Promote Stability and Success
By Amy Morgan
Grim stories about the downstream results of family dissolution make headlines daily. Crime, drug use, despair, crises in the foster care and court systems. Despite a vast amount of state and federal dollars dedicated to supporting families and children, these problems continue to accrue mounting social and financial costs.
But there are pinpoints of light in this dark landscape — private entities that have reimagined the way they offer and provide services to families in need. Two such organizations have proven track records of stabilizing struggling families and moving them toward self-sufficiency and success. Both have pioneered innovative case management approaches that empower clients and provide them with the accountability and support they need to achieve their goals.
Restore Hope is a public/private partnership designed to stabilize families and reduce their involvement with the foster care and criminal justice systems. The Padua program leverages private dollars to help clients implement a personalized plan to a brighter, client-empowered future. Both programs use motivational interviewing techniques to encourage clients to goal set and then empowers case workers to walk alongside clients, providing needed coaching, services and support.
Restore Hope
Restore Hope is a collective impact solution to reducing foster care and incarceration. When the prison population in Arkansas surged from 2012-2016, and with it, the number of children entering foster care, state policy makers needed a scalable approach that could make a measurable difference in the problem. Clearly, the problem required more than just growing a few non-profit services. Even effective ones were overwhelmed. State leadership was concerned and unsure how best to respond.
They noticed the work of a local task force led by Paul Chapman that was steeped in the collective impact model pioneered by Social Innovation Review at Stanford University. These individuals had been working to reduce incarceration through direct service activities and partnerships to support reentry after prison and foster care based out of Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock, Arkansas.
In 2015 the group recommended a community-driven model rooted in collective impact to strengthen families and build pathways to stability. From the start, its goal was to link government agencies and community organizations and to move struggling families from “crisis to career.” The nonprofit Restore Hope officially launched in 2016 under Governor Asa Hutchinson to implement this collective impact approach, described as “a software and services organization dedicated to helping communities create transformational change.”
Restore Hope created the 100 Families Initiative, and the first community alliance was launched in Fort Smith, Arkansas (Sebastian County), the area with the highest incarceration rate in the state and correspondingly high foster care numbers. At that time, the foster care rate of Sebastian County was 28 children per 1,000, compared to the national average of 5 per 1,000. Chief Operations Officer Karen Phillips, herself a foster parent, joined Restore Hope in 2018 and secured commitments from key professionals and partner agencies to support the 100 Families Initiative.
The collective impact model streamlines access to services for those seeking assistance, reducing barriers to care for individuals and minimizing the need to apply to programs separately. Restore Hope incorporates a holistic assessment to determine eligibility for multiple supports, integrating data across agencies — using a software system it developed called HopeHub and personalized case management.
Since the implementation of Restore Hope’s collective impact response and utilization of its innovative HopeHub software, the foster care rate in Sebastian County has dropped to 11 per 1,000 and has remained under a total of 400 children for several years, Paul reported. The model has been funded through federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds, state general funds, and private donations.
The Restore Hope model blends an approach and a technology to allow a community to achieve better outcomes for their problems. It incorporates the five pre-conditions for collective impact outlined in the Stanford study:
1) Common goal – ensuring all members of the coalition are working together.
2) Shared outcome measures – broad, agreed-upon metrics for success.
3) Overlapping services – appropriate array of providers to meet needs of the community.
4) Constant communication – to ensure coordination of services at the client level.
5) Operational coordination – a backbone organization to support the coalition, advocate for the client and bear the weight of the collaboration.
A major obstacle to implementing a collective services model has always been the limited ability of providers to access and share participant information. In 2019 Restore Hope acquired the HopeHub software code developed by a non-profit in Northwest Arkansas. They invested millions of dollars to further tailor the software. Now HopeHub’s collaborative case management system allows communication across agencies on behalf of a shared participant.
“It is a key part of the model to allow fully HIPPA compliant communication and tracking,” Paul said. The seven or eight professional providers on a person’s support team can collaborate to give families the help they need to move “from crisis to career.”
Each participant who interacts with Restore Hope begins by electronically completing a Human Flourishing Assessment that’s integrated into HopeHub. Providers can send the assessment via email or SMS, and responses are automatically scored and available immediately upon submission. Providers also have the flexibility to complete the assessment on a participant’s behalf or resend it as needed, supporting more complete and timely data collection. The advocate helping a person onboarding can record details. They’ll note if someone is on felony probation, needs job skills training, has no income, hasn’t graduated high school, has a substance use disorder, or is at risk for having their kids removed from the home. All this information is kept in the HopeHub system, so the person doesn’t have to tell their story repeatedly.
The advocate will steer a client toward appropriate providers – perhaps an addiction counselor or driver’s license reclamation. They’ll even accompany someone to court to help them understand and meet what’s required. HopeHub dashboards are updated daily, so all advocates can see clients advancing in real time.
“We have married the technology to the model,” Paul said. But the human connection is always present. The advocate is there to listen and help the client problem solve and build a plan they agree to. “Knowing that someone is there for them – that makes a big difference,” he said. Restore Hope has expanded to 19 counties in Arkansas, served more than 10,500 Arkansans, and is now spreading to communities in Michigan, Iowa, Tennessee, Texas, and even Canada.
“Hope is Fuel for Action,” Paul added. “If you don’t have hope, why try? The dashboard captures momentum that fuels momentum. We are putting points on the board and building little wins. Motivation is a big deal.” In 2025 alone, 1,005 participants moved from crisis to career, with a total of 4,560 participants served. Family reunification rates for children in foster care is more than 68%, with another 16% of foster kids staying with relatives.
Improvements to the HopeHub software system are constantly being made. They’ve also integrated HopeHub with the state's health information exchange. This connection enables authorized providers to securely access and share electronic health data across systems.
Harvard University and the Alliance for Opportunity have studied Restore Hope. “We’re continuously being asked to talk,” Paul said, noting their work has been well received by both secular and faith-based leaders. Restore Hope provides for-profit insight and turns it into performance, he said. What Fort Smith started is replicable and program agnostic.
As of March 2026, Restore Hope counts 1,794 active providers; 1,597 alliance partners; and 575 organizations using HopeHub. They served 2,140 active participants and 4,515 of their children. Families served must be U.S. citizens, have children 18 or younger, and have earnings of less than 200% of the federal poverty level to be eligible to receive TANF funding. Only 25% have open child welfare cases, which highlights Restore Hope’s strong upstream prevention of family fracture. The program is not a free handout; it focuses on walking alongside families toward stability, through motivational interviewing. Participation is voluntary. 82% of those who enroll in the program remain engaged, according to the organization.
Restore Hope is Ready to Scale
Restore Hope has developed tools to build capacity and fundraise. They are ready and waiting to scale through public or private partnerships. Restore Hope helps communities recruit a backbone organization, build an alliance, and then trains them on the collaborative model and software. The organization also has prepared a detailed State Onboarding Playbook that outlines rollout expectations and goals.
Tennessee
Restore Hope has expanded its model into Tennessee under the name Family Flourishing Project, advocated by Clarence Carter, Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Human Services. In 2025, HopeHub introduced state-specific dashboards and consent forms in a dedicated Tennessee region. Through the Human Flourishing Initiative’s use of HopeHub and the Restore Hope Model, enrolled participants are now part of a community-led ecosystem of care — supporting Tennesseans as they move from crisis to flourishing.
Texarkana
Advocates in Texarkana, Texas, noticed a Restore Hope community alliance just across the state border in Texarkana, Arkansas. Two leaders of the Literacy Council in Miller (AR) and Bowie (TX) counties created the Texas Literary Agency in Texarkana. This agency is self-funded and uses HopeHub to facilitate support for at-risk families on both sides of the Arkansas/Texas border.
Iowa
Iowa also contracted with Restore Hope, rolling out Thrive Iowa in 2026 involving 11 counties. A network of navigators helps individuals find immediate support from community organizations, then develop an individualized plan for self-sufficiency and long-term independence.
Alberta, Canada
Grand Prairie launched their alliance in 2026 and already has served close to 200 participants.
Things to consider:
In trying to support a community, it is imperative to enlist a backbone organization, Paul stressed. Seek respected providers in the area who can gather people to work together and are not seen as competitors. The type of services the organization delivers is not as important as their relationships in the community, he added. It could be a school district, university, church, non-profit, community college or public health organization. “It has to be a regular, repeatable, trusted organization,” Paul said, “so I know when I call, I can trust the infrastructure that persists.” Restore Hope can help vet a proposed backbone organization and hire a well-respected coordinator to build an alliance.
A new alliance also needs advocates and case managers who will onboard and walk alongside participants. “It’s helpful if these are people who have done the work before on a social work journey or in a related field like law enforcement or have lived experience,” Paul added. A group also needs a dedicated person to manage collaboration and software.
Restore Hope ensures legal compliance for fledgling alliances. The backbone organization serves as the main recipient of funds and makes sure all services are compliant with TANF. Foundations and private donors receive a report every quarter.
“We ensure that the dollars are spent well and have dashboards set up so associations can monitor in real time,” Paul said.
Costs to Implement – cost share model:
Restore Hope employs a cost-sharing model for participating regions. Participating communities pay a monthly subscription to use the Hope Hub software. This fee helps recover the platform's initial development costs and funds ongoing system enhancements. Restore Hope continues to onboard new contracts which typically cover three communities (or counties) and rollout over the three-year period.
Padua
The Padua program is powered by Catholic Charities Fort Worth. Brendan Perry serves as Director of Padua National, working under President and CEO Heather Reynolds, who returned to take the helm in 2026 after spending seven years as the Managing Director at the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO) at the University of Notre Dame University. Prior to Notre Dame, Heather spent 17 years at Catholic Charities Fort Worth.
The Padua model is a client-empowered, research-backed approach to ending poverty. Launched in 2015, Padua provides long-term case management to clients needing support while also providing regular coaching on skills such as planning, organization and problem solving. Their goal is to help clients maintain financial stability, according to North Texas Catholic. The program was developed to avoid the limitations of traditional community-based services, particularly the cycle of clients repeatedly returning to crisis-based programs.
Padua is primarily funded by private donor dollars to allow for flexibility and preclude restrictive time limits or caps on assistance. The structure was intentionally created as an alternative to traditional case management approaches, which often emphasize short-term crisis response and service provision without achieving lasting outcomes. The intensive team approach to case management supports and stabilizes participants with measurable success, preventing family dissolution that can devolve into juvenile justice, family court or child protective services intervention.
A person must be willing and able to work to be accepted into the Padua program. 77% of clients are single-parent households. 59.7% earn less than $20,750 annually, and 62.9% are female, according to the program.
LEO conducted an independent, rigorous evaluation of Padua. Between 2015 and 2016, 427 individuals joined the study. 193 experienced Padua’s holistic, client-centered support, while 234 accessed standard community services. Participants completed surveys at enrollment, one year, and two years, with long-term economic outcomes tracked through administrative data.
Economic outcomes and client wellbeing for participants in the Padua program greatly outpaced the control. Padua participants saw a 25% increase in full-time employment. Those who began the program unemployed earned 46% more than control group peers. Of those who were unstably housed at the start of the study, Padua participants were 60% more likely to be stably housed 24 months later. Padua participants were also 53% more likely to report improved health outcomes. Now more than 1,000 lives have been transformed, with results validated by LEO.
Padua’s client service model offers an onramp to help people take ownership of their own lives. The transformational approach asks participants to work to achieve their own goals for a “bigger, brighter future,” one that the individual develops with the help of a dedicated team.
Once the person has voluntarily agreed to participate, they are surrounded by integrated support that includes financial resiliency, education, and long-term goal development. Padua’s example seems revolutionary compared to the government sector where people have been conditioned to “qualify and receive.”
The model is based on six essential elements:
1. Padua Mindset
Padua’s attitude is that clients are the experts and have agency in their own lives. A case manager will take each participant through a discovery session where they’ll complete a strengths map to reveal where they are doing well and where there is opportunity for growth. They may identify a need for financial assistance to overcome a barrier, but the case manager will help them think through how to plan to meet that need rather than just providing funds on the spot. Together the case manager and client will develop goals and create a road map to get to their “bigger, brighter future.”
2. Two-person Team
Each client is assigned to a two-person team of a case manager and case worker who collaborate to improve a client’s finances and emotional wellbeing. The case worker also serves as a resource broker, helping to locate housing, employment, training, childcare, transportation… things the client identifies as needs. The professionals use curricula created by Padua to coach on executive functioning skills like planning and coping with crisis. The client and team meet every two weeks to track goal progress. Each case manager is responsible for only 25 clients, case workers for 50 clients. The low case load ensures the case team has time to truly know each client and meet with them regularly.
3. Bi-weekly Staff Training
Internal staff training every two weeks addresses challenges or introduces new techniques, ensuring staff feel supported and enhancing their skills.
4. Ongoing Staff Coaching
Emotional resilience is essential not just for clients — but for staff and the organization. Staff receive up to 1-2 hours of coaching per month from external licensed clinicians to help them overcome their own personal challenges. Coaching and training improve morale, increase job satisfaction and retention in these positions of high burnout.
5. Strategic, Flexible Financial Assistance
Limited cash assistance to clients is provided as a strategic tool. Assistance is contingent on demonstrated progress toward client-defined goals. Will the dollars overcome a hurdle to help them achieve their goal? If yes, the case manager will work toward securing the funds. If not, how can that need be supported through coaching. Financial assistance is used to build long-term planning and to help cope with the unexpected. For example, a client may request support for childcare. The case manager might agree to pay for the first two months if the client agrees to a savings plan to pay for the third month. “It’s based on a longer-term mindset,” Brendan said.
About 76% of Padua clients utilize financial assistance during their time in the program, with an average annual assistance amount of $1,431 per client.
6. Client-led Engagement
The team approach allows case management staff to engage with clients in a transformational rather than transactional way. Instead of telling the client what to do, they help the client define what success means to them, then guide their next steps. The client continues to have agency in determining what they need and how to move forward. It’s not just stabilization, Brendan stressed, it’s the coping and planning and strengthening piece that will position them to move forward.
When asked what makes Padua unique, Brendan pointed to the team partnership of the case workers, small caseloads, emphasis on building emotional resiliency, and ongoing staff training and development. There also are no arbitrary time limits – a client “graduates” when he or she feels her goals have been successfully attained.
Who they serve:
Padua case workers often engage with a client who initially seeks crisis services. The person may be referred directly from Catholic Charities, a parish or another social service agency. The individual may be facing eviction or need childcare or a car repair. While other Catholic Charities services may solve the immediate need – emergency food or shelter – they may recommend Padua for those who want to make long-term changes for themselves and their children.
When aligned with the client’s goals, Padua tries to get clients to a place of stability before their family falls apart, and the kids are removed.
“It is safe to say when people are in crisis or operating from a point of scarcity, it’s impacting family relationships and kids’ lives,” Brendan said. “We make sure they are stable so they can move toward family strengthening.”
Even the coaching and handbook language speaks to personal responsibility and growth. “We are supporting emotional resiliency and building the muscle of long-term thinking,” Brendan said. “We are with you on the journey, but you are the one making the change. We empower the client to feel in control and create the strategy and plan to go forward.”
Building mental resiliency also might look like helping a client examine and understand the relationships in their life, mend family ties and build social support and community connections. Positioning people to achieve their goals is almost like a good parent helping their family achieve their goals.
As described by a participant when asked what Padua means to them: “Padua is the feeling that someone finally has my back.”
Branden’s role is to stand up a national Padua office to create replication teams to bring the Padua program to new communities and achieve similar outcomes. If you are interested in learning more about how to replicate the Padua model, you can contact padua@ccdofw.org.
Similar Success
These two successful programs, Padua and Restore Hope, demonstrate that innovative and intensive case management can stabilize vulnerable families. Although the details of their funding and structure differ — one focuses on an intensive team approach to service, while the other created software and structure to support providers — they both have achieved better outcomes than traditional programs. The two models share the belief that the people they serve will thrive when encouraged to define their own successful futures and coached to set their own goals. Service coordination, caring long-term support, and strategic financial assistance for those willing to take responsibility for themselves can help families achieve self-sufficiency and success. How much more so if funds were directed so they could further scale?
