350 SNAP Employment and Training, or E&T, state agencies and other partners from all over the country met in Alexandria, Virginia, last month for the 2022 SNAP E&T National Forum. Stacy Dean, who is the Deputy Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services at the USDA, started the conference with an important reminder.
It’s important to know how hard things are for the people we help in the real world so we can come up with solutions that really work for them (Photo: https://www.alluma.org/)
“This is a great time to be a part of E&T. There are so many chances and options for us in the future. Our president says he wants to build a stronger economy, one that will help the middle class grow and get stronger from the bottom up and the middle out.
When we aim for an economic recovery that helps everyone and we mean everyone it gives those who need it most a chance.”
This year’s National Forum had 32 sessions that covered a wide range of topics, such as supplemental nutrition assistance program E&T policy, building E&T programs in rural areas, and improving E&T programs by looking at them through a trauma-informed and anti-racist lens.
The Food and Nutrition Service, our local and state partners, and others had already done a lot of work to rethink SNAP E&T before the National Forum. Just in the last 10 years, we’ve made SNAP E&T more useful, and more and more states are using it as a powerful tool for developing their workforce.
Over half of state supplemental nutrition assistance program agencies have taken part in the USDA’s supplemental nutrition assistance program to Skills project. This has helped them improve their staffing and make their E&T programs more diverse and widespread.
USDA’s SNAP E&T National Partnership Grants are also building up the capacity of providers across the country. Our grantees have already worked with 142 providers in 31 states to build up their ability to serve more SNAP participants.
In other ways, this event was a new start. This year’s National Forum was the second one, but it was the first time it was held in person. As the country starts to recover from the public health emergency, coming together in this way can help us work together to solve problems and find the best ways to do things, like offering full reimbursements to participants and virtual training.
At the conference, FNS also told people about the 2023 SNAP E&T State Institute. The SNAP Mind the Gap: Building a Bridge from Vision to Outcomes in your SNAP E&T Program will be held in Alexandria, Virginia, on September 20 and 21, 2023, in partnership with the Seattle Jobs Initiative.
This semi-national meeting will give a small number of state supplemental nutrition assistance program agencies a chance to rethink their SNAP E&T program and start making a long-term plan for how to reach their E&T goals.
The goal of this year’s institute is for states to carefully look at their supplemental nutrition assistance program E&T programs and figure out what’s working and where there are holes they can fill. The states will work with their interagency team to come up with more ways to reach their E&T program goals that are based on data.
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