SNAP Certification Notices Technical Assistance for FNS’s Mountain Plains Regional Office
Project Overview
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) certification notices are central to a client’s ability to obtain and maintain SNAP benefits. These notices must give clients enough information to understand the reasons for the state agency’s actions and should be written in easily understandable language. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) contracted with Insight to provide technical assistance and training to 10 states in FNS’s Mountain Plains Region. FNS’s overarching goal is to help these states draft, review, and continuously improve their notices, while creating models for all SNAP state agencies.
Insight developed and delivered in-person and virtual training technical assistance over 12 months; reviewed more than 50 state SNAP certification notices; developed recommendations to ensure compliance with federal program requirements; trained and coached teams on rapid cycle improvement; and recommended best practices for meeting policy requirements while fostering comprehension, readability, usability, and presentation and identifying elements that should be improved, streamlined, or eliminated.
Specifically, Insight—
- Developed best practices for SNAP certification notices
- Facilitated a 10-state learning collaborative to develop and share improvements to SNAP certification notices and the business process for developing and revising them
- Provided direct technical assistance to states on reviewing and improving SNAP certification notices to ensure federal compliance and conformity to common standards
- Provided training to federal staff in process improvement techniques (e.g., Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles, value stream mapping)
- Led the development and national rollout of the SNAP Model Notice Toolkit
Products
Model notice toolkit (including notice review tools and sample notices), as-is (current state) and to-be (future state) process maps, reviews and evaluations, in-person learning session, presentations, training agendas, handouts, webinars, written reports, briefings