Salt Lake County Launches Request for Proposals for Criminal Justice, Child/Maternal Health PFS Projects

The Salt Lake County Pay for Success Initiative has released two Requests for Proposals from qualified non-profits to provide comprehensive services that can improve criminal and other relevant outcomes for high-need populations. The two proposals are focused on criminal justice/recidivism and child/maternal health. Since 2014, the County has been working to assess the viability of implementing Pay for Success projects in the County. In January, Mayor Ben McAdams announced the selection of three issue areas to move forward with Pay for Success contracting: child/maternal health, criminal justice recidivism, and homelessness.

Pay for Success offers the opportunity for innovative, high-impact non-profits to scale services through multiyear, flexible funding provided by commercial and philanthropic funders. These funders are repaid by government if certain pre-determined outcome targets are met. The goal of Pay for Success contracting is to focus government and philanthropic resources on improving outcomes, and to empower non-profits to scale high-impact services that make a difference.

Criminal Justice: The goal of the criminal justice PFS project is to provide comprehensive re-entry services to meet the needs of high-risk, high-need offenders in or being released from the County’s jail system. Specifically, this project will focus on high-risk offenders who recidivate at high rates and have frequent and/or extended lengths of stay in the County jail. The re-entry services provided through this project should be designed to meet the needs of these offenders in a community-based environment, ensuring offenders are able to integrate successfully back into society. Success for this project will be measured by reducing the recidivism and length of stay in jail for these offenders against a similar group that does not receive services. Read the Request for Proposals here.

Child/Maternal Health: The goal of the child/maternal health PFS project is to provide interventions to low-income mothers either during pregnancy or in the first years of the child’s life. The County is interested in services that can provide measurable improvement on birth outcomes, health outcomes for the mother and child, development outcomes for the child, and/or employment and education outcomes for the mother. The services provided through should be designed to meet the needs of Salt Lake County’s low-income mothers and should be able to provide sustainable impact on at least one of the outcomes listed above. The measurement of success for this project will depend on the type of services provided and outcome addressed. Read the Request for Proposals here.