Testing a faster way to keep families informed about child care subsidies

Summary

The challenge

Care 4 Kids helps low- to moderate-income families in Connecticut pay for child care, but the renewal experience had become frustrating and opaque for many applicants. A combination of factors — including the rollout of a new case management system, a 20% increase in new applications, and thousands of reauthorizations coming due simultaneously — contributed to a growing backlog, a high volume of incomplete applications, and widespread confusion about application status.

For families, the problem was fundamentally about uncertainty. After submitting renewal materials, applicants often had no way to confirm whether their documents had been received or what would happen next. Many were asked to resend materials, use multiple submission methods, or wait for long periods without any acknowledgment. Providers were affected too — delays in the subsidy process created financial stress for child care workers who depended on timely payments.

Mailed it in originally. They said they never received it, sent again. They never received it so I did everything at that point — fax and upload. Had to do it all over again after that…still hadn’t received anything back from Care 4 Kids at that point.

Parent

After conducting user research and interviews, we found that communication was the clearest pain point in the renewal experience. OEC and United Way were open to testing a practical, low-risk improvement that could reduce uncertainty for families while also helping the program learn where its communication and process design needed to change.

The solution

The most immediate need families described was simple: knowing whether their renewal documents had been received and what to expect next. We designed a pilot centered on that single, high-value interaction — an SMS-based notification tool that alerted parents when United Way received documents related to their Care 4 Kids application. Participants could also text at any time to request information about processing timelines.

Co-designed with OEC and United Way, the pilot was deliberately lightweight. We built the minimum viable product in four weeks using Twilio and Ruby on Rails, then launched and live-tested it with nearly 180 participants over a three-month period. The rapid timeline reflected a deliberate strategy: rather than building a comprehensive system, we tested whether a focused communication intervention could meaningfully improve the applicant experience.

Throughout the pilot, we collected structured feedback to measure impact. We used phone, text, and online surveys to gather data before, during, and after the intervention — tracking not just whether families found the texts helpful, but whether the pilot revealed broader patterns in how the renewal process broke down.

The approach tested two hypotheses at once. The first was whether text-message updates could reduce uncertainty and improve satisfaction for individual families. The second was whether a lightweight intervention could surface systemic opportunities to improve trust, clarity, and service delivery across the entire renewal process — insights that would be harder to uncover through research alone.

The results

• Built and launched an SMS notification pilot in four weeks, testing a low-risk approach to improving communication for Care 4 Kids renewal applicants
• Increased parent confidence by 19% that renewal documents were being received by United Way
• Improved average satisfaction with Care 4 Kids communication among surveyed pilot participants
• Generated actionable recommendations to address communication gaps, process confusion, and service design issues in the broader application submission workflow

[I] thought messages were very helpful. You never know when Care 4 Kids receives documents, so it was great to know. Very convenient!

Pilot participant