Flexibility, Ease of Access, and Compassion: What Families’ Experiences with Support Services Teaches Us About What Works

Today, economically vulnerable families in America struggle to meet their day-to-day needs amid a patchwork of support systems. The contributing forces are well-documented: child care is scarce; everything is more expensive, including food, shelter, and other necessities; and neighborhood and community risks are top of mind. America’s safety net is broken—not because supports don’t exist but because they’re not designed around families they were meant to serve. Navigating the support system successfully is more often a test of one’s ability to overcome bureaucratic hurdles rather than a true fail-safe for those in greatest need. Meanwhile, incremental and reactive policy fixes ignore how these pressures intersect and compound, creating novel and widespread challenges for families today.

This approach to policymaking fails to reflect what research and practice identify as vital contributors to well-being, including work and job quality, housing conditions, health, safety, and social connectedness. The result: a patchwork system that tests families’ resilience rather than builds it.

Thriving Families is an ongoing qualitative research effort that aims to center families thriving in policy design and delivery. As part of this research, the New Practice Lab at New America partnered with 22 low-income families with young children (at least one child under age 6) across Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico in an 18-month remote digital diary study. Participants come from a wide range of personal experiences, demographic backgrounds, and family compositions. Through weekly prompts via an app that created an SMS-like experience, respondents shared their stories through text, audio, videos, and photos. We received a total of 1,188 responses to 89 different prompts across the 22 families in Minnesota and Pennsylvania (the New Mexico study is ongoing until May 2026). We also validated findings shared here directly with participants in one-on-one conversations to ensure their experiences were accurately represented.

This window into real family life revealed three essential characteristics that make support services actually work: flexibility, ease of access, and compassion. Families shared the qualities and experiences that determine whether a support service actually improved the material and emotional well-being of their family. When present, these types of supports can give families agency to make decisions aligned with their needs and goals. When absent, families can be forced into tradeoff decisions that undermine their economic security and long-term resilience.

The findings below offer policymakers, program administrators, and community organizations with a starting point and roadmap for designing family-centered policy and programs.

All quotes below are attributed to participant aliases in accordance with the consent given. Some have been translated from Spanish.

Every parent participant reported using at least one government benefit program—most commonly, Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), followed by Medicaid and Head Start. There were also families who participated in the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), housing vouchers, free school lunches, Social Security insurance (SSI), and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Families also reported the use of community resources, such as libraries, local food banks, and nonprofits.

Families seek out these programs and services all while managing life’s transitions: a child starting kindergarten, a new job, or a new baby, among many other things. We heard routines that resembled jigsaw puzzles, with parents narrowly managing to piece together conflicting schedules, changing priorities, and the needs of themselves and their families.

“Yesterday my kids were off school and I [had] to work and it was a little bit complex—like stressful for me—because my husband [had] to work too…He works 2:00 to 12:00, or 2:00 to 11:00. So…he asked for [the] first three hours or four hours [off] and he will go late for [a] half day. So he waits for me, he stays with the kids until I come back and [then he’ll] run to his job.”
—Jamilah

While all families juggle these logistics, we saw the layered effects of multiple compounding stressors impacting the families we engaged, with a limited buffer to mitigate those stressors. Effective support services can play a role in solving this: helping families to minimize or mitigate stressors that other families might handle through more flexible jobs or the ability to pay for help. Services will only be effective, though, if they take into account what a family truly wants and needs.

In our conversations, we were especially interested in the role that programs and services played in raising a family and helping them thrive. We connected with all of our participants through local community-based organizations that the families already engaged with regularly and trusted. We wanted to know what made these organizations so successful, and what made other services burdensome or less appealing.

Through the analysis of our data, three key factors arose that contributed to whether a service, government program, or otherwise, effectively met a family’s needs.

Flexibility

A flexible service for families has responsive schedules and offerings that can adapt to families’ needs and coordinate with other programs to reduce burden or increase eligibility. Today, families patch together resources day-to-day while living in complex systems that are often in conflict, not aligned with families’ realities, or simply not coordinated with each other.

Inflexible programs drive families into impossible choices: missing out on pay from work when children are sick because child care isn’t available, or choosing between work and further education because schedules don’t accommodate both. These challenges can compound. Navigating multiple programmatic, logistic, and financial constraints every day creates a cumulative burden. Families experience episodic acute stress, constantly facing overlapping deadlines, commitments, and crises. As one participant told us about an early learning scholarship:

“The only thing that was hard about being in the program is that you are only allowed a certain amount for the year. Every year, day care cost goes up...The amount that you are awarded for the year does not last the entire year. Once your funds are out, you are solely responsible to cover the cost until next year when your benefits kick back in.”
—Destiny

Many families described working towards long-term security by navigating multiple programs and balancing needs when schedules or requirements don’t match. While each program may contribute to an overall goal or stability, rigid program restrictions can prevent families from receiving the full breadth of support being offered, which in turn stymies their progress toward goals.

One mother ends up splitting her focus and attention between family needs because a service is not responsive to her family’s schedule and doesn’t offer accommodations:

“One thing I’d change about my daily life is I would have assistance with my other children when needing to take [my oldest son with chronic health conditions] to his specialist appointments. I think I could use this to my ability to have more one-on-one time with [my oldest son], and being able to do that in turn would help [him] be less distracted at his services, and I feel that would make him get more out of the services as a whole.”
—Ava

This was a recurring theme for families with multiple children. As such, families appreciated when services they were using let them balance their needs and wants, such as when and how often they got to spend time with family, or being able to schedule things easily. A common issue was scheduling conflicts between work, school, and the doctor’s office hours.

“At one time, I didn’t have dental coverage, and it was hard to even get seen. So I waited a long time to go to the dentist. I haven’t been to the eye doctor in a few years either. My schedule doesn’t match up with having to work during the week till 5:00 p.m.”
—Bianca

Families appreciated when programs worked together without requiring extra effort from parents. One parent praised her backup day care provider who coordinated directly with her regular day care provider, a simple arrangement that eliminated stress for her and other parents. These moments were impactful because parents would otherwise be forced to navigate overlapping program logistics and deadlines alone. Services can alleviate this stress on parents by working together and streamlining processes to ensure that parents’ real needs are being met.

Family lives are dynamic, and their needs shift. Children grow. Jobs change. Cars break down. Kids get sick. There is no single universal family schedule that services can cater to. To truly meet needs, services must be flexible to meet families where they are and avoid adding unnecessary burdens.

Ease of Access

Accessible support services remove barriers—whether related to geography, language, logistics, or finances—to ensure families can actually utilize services that are being offered. Just because a program exists doesn’t mean it is accessible, as many families emphasized.

Families spoke of four key factors that impacted how easy a service was to access:

• Geographic accessibility, meaning physical offices were easy to get to if needed, either through proximity or based on public transit routes;
• Availability and ease of use, meaning the service was easy to navigate through multiple channels, such as phone, website, or in person, and parents could make appointments as needed without difficulty;
• Culturally responsive, meaning services were offered in preferred languages and staffed with people who understood their context and circumstances; and
• Affordable for families, meaning they could access them without making tough tradeoff decisions.

One mother described her positive experience applying for WIC:

“It was in-person, I filled out the entire form, all the documents—and that same day they gave me the card, it’s really helpful. I go every month to tell them my son’s height and weight, and up till now they reload it monthly. The process was very simple and fast since they have trained staff and they speak Spanish.”
—Selma, translated from Spanish

Perhaps the most important of the factors above, as emphasized by our participants, is affordability. As one parent shared, even if the other components of accessibility are in place, if they can’t afford the service, they still won’t use it.

“I remember once I had an emergency surgery, I could not cover the costs. I made payment arrangements since I could not pay everything in full. I enrolled in a program to get the debt repaid since it was an emergency surgery and thank God I was able to get it.”
—Lucia, translated from Spanish

Affordability goes beyond just the price of the service itself. Families described being unable to access even free or low-cost services due to transportation costs or time costs that come from things like difficult-to-understand requirements.

“Honestly, you never know if [community organizations] will help because I have gone to about 20 places to help me fill out applications and they never can, including [City Council Member] offices.”
—Lena, translated from Spanish

Making services easy to access is impactful because otherwise uptake will be low, and families won’t receive the help they need in order to live stable, happy lives. True accessibility requires examining all the ways cost, time, mental energy, and logistics can create barriers, in addition to complying with physical disability standards.

Compassion

Compassionate supports are those that meet emotional needs as well as the material ones. We heard families describe how they feel when receiving services—whether judged, understood, respected, or empowered—shapes their ability and desire to use services. These aren’t just nice-to-haves; they’re essential for effective service delivery.

Compassionate services feature:

• Transparent processes that eliminate the stress of ambiguity and provide clear feedback and communication about processes and outcomes;
• Empowered providers that are encouraged to build trust with clients, in part by seeking to understand and meet the family’s specific needs, expressing a genuine desire to help, and advocating above and beyond expectations; and
• Active, human guidance to help fill in informational gaps and navigate complex support systems.

Reliability also shapes how families experience support services—and many highlighted this as a key part of a trusting and caring relationship when working with someone like a case manager. At a time when a parent may feel overwhelmed or scared about their ability to manage all of the work of raising a family, having a person to rely on can feel life-changing. One parent described her Head Start home visitor:

“She says it every day: ‘Call me. Call me if you need anything. Don’t be afraid to call me’...at the end of her visit. That’s what she always tells me. So having that, knowing that if I was in a place where I couldn’t figure out anything, that I could call her and get the help that I needed to figure it out, that’s huge.”
—Julie

This can lead to families feeling an increase in their confidence around decision-making and even learn about and access more resources they didn’t know existed, because of feeling more comfortable with sharing needs and asking for help.

“I have been really grateful that I have a really awesome doctor that I can go to and say, ‘Hey, I’m not feeling right.’ And she just takes it [and] she doesn’t…write it off, but she doesn’t treat it as if it’s a taboo issue...She just kind of takes me under her little wing and makes sure that I’m safe and okay and then she does get me started on medication, or if I don’t need medication, she finds the right resources for me, which I really appreciate.”
—Ava

Families consistently mentioned trusted relationships and word-of-mouth as a catalyst for them to access services. Investing in relationship-building and working within existing community networks can increase awareness and utilization of programs.

Compassionate approaches may look more like respect or thoughtfulness rather than high-touch emotional support. This could be a status-tracker in an online application or the tone of a letter that is welcoming rather than threatening. The goal is to recognize that families are often under a lot of stress and to design a service that meets them where they are emotionally as well as physically.

When compassion is not present, we heard it has a direct effect on families’ desire to use the service. When we previewed this theme with families, we saw nodding heads while we were describing examples we heard. They added new examples of services they ended up stopping or never starting because they felt so mistreated by the process. For example, one family discontinued their use of SNAP because they described needing to submit monthly paperwork, like proof of income, and the burden outweighed the benefit in their perspective.

Together, these three characteristics allow families to make decisions that match their preferences both in the immediate moment and for their long-term aspirations, instead of being forced to make difficult tradeoffs or accept the only option available to them. The most successful services families talked about ultimately helped them in ways they didn’t expect. Several parents emphasized the importance of being asked what they need as a big driver of agency.

“The only organization that has helped me is [a local Latino coalition-building nonprofit]. They have sent me documents, translated letters that I don’t understand, and even monetarily...The counselor was recommended to me by a woman who helps pregnant women and nursing children. She told me that [the counselor] would advise me on how I could get out of domestic violence and her advice helped me a lot. She also gave me the address of [the nonprofit] and they have helped me a lot. When I went for the first time, I walked in feeling hopeless because, everywhere I went, we would call them, and they wouldn’t call us back, but there it was completely the opposite.”
—Lena, translated from Spanish

Families described wanting to make decisions that made things easier, more familiar, or less stressful—even if those decisions weren’t always necessarily “optimal” in the long term. Comfort, convenience, and emotional ease matter, especially when time, energy, and trust in systems are limited. For example, getting takeout or pre-made food for dinner may not be the healthiest option, but it’s a rational choice when a family is managing stress or busy schedules.

“Right now I am experiencing a lot of depression and stress, and I have noticed that it does affect my daily living. I used to love to meal plan and have a grocery list and stuff like that. Now I find myself relying on fast food or food that can be cooked in the microwave. I can’t seem to focus on meals or what to cook at the moment. I do make sure my kids are fed at all times but as far as being creative with meals, that’s out the window for now.”
—Jenifer

With the stability offered by their supports, families could pursue longer-term goals rooted in their values. When they had that agency, we heard that families wanted to build stability through education and ownership, and to find the space and time to slow down. A number of participants mentioned entrepreneurship, highlighting the benefit of setting their own schedules, connecting back to the need for flexibility.

“With the youngest [child] I work less and I have realized that having a house cleaning business gives you the blessing of being able to manage your own time and thus not neglect your family!”
—Graciela, translated from Spanish

Without flexible, accessible, and compassionate support services, families are forced to accept the only thing available to them or pick the least worst option. Piecemeal supports offer a way to fix the problem temporarily, but does not provide enough stability to be a lasting solution.

Parents know they will eventually need to make a change again soon. As one participant shared with us, in regard to her son’s day care not feeling safe enough for her son:

“I felt like I was a horrible mom because I had no choice but to continue to send him to that day care...I was actively working on it, but in the meantime, I had to work, otherwise I was going to be homeless again with my child again, and that’s not something that I wanted.”
—Destiny

Families described sacrifices they made for their family where they felt they had no workaround or no other options. These dead ends were primarily reached due to a lack of affordable options, but families also described a lack of awareness of options, eligibility, or schedule conflicts.

“I’m still on the waiting list for child care, but I have my parents that take care of my kids for me…[but] I had to come back to work, and I actually went back to work before eight weeks.”
—Evelyn

Families are striving to meet their needs with what they have available to them. The supports made available to them are usually just enough to keep them afloat, often with temporary patches over problems. When one support falls down, parents are forced to compromise in other areas as the need to problem-solve requires time, attention, and energy.

“My work hours are from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., my kids schedule is hectic, and [it] will not allow me to work more hours. I find myself really stressed out during the school year because I am a single parent, and it is hard to have to call into work when my children are sick or for school breaks. Right now, I am looking at options and trying to create a budget that can allow me to go to school full-time and focus on that and my children for the time being.”
—Jenifer

Low-income families navigate a maze of supports from government services, nonprofits, community-based organizations, and private services. What determines their effectiveness is not just ease of use—it’s whether the experience of using them is empowering for families. Participants shared with us how they felt lifted up or held back depending on how the supports they use are structured.

Policymakers and government leaders can do better to support families by ensuring that public benefit programs are flexible, accessible, and compassionate. These qualities may manifest differently across services, but they should be guiding principles to center the family experience in policy and program decisions.