About Us

History / Role of the Federation / Impacts and Contributions / Strategic Plan

History
The Federation was formed in 1995 by a Governor’s office initiative as one of five ‘learning laboratories’ whose role was to demonstrate a new approach to collaboration between government and community in the implementation of welfare reform. Since that time, our role has evolved far beyond those origins. The focus has appropriately shifted to developing a broad systems of supports for the working poor, and to improving the capacity of the human services system to meet increasingly complex needs.

Role of the Federation
Key community leaders have repeatedly expressed a belief that, if the Federation did not exist, it would need to be invented to focus on developing an efficient and effective system of human services. The fact that we are not providers of direct services permits us to look at the big picture, addressing systemic and cross-categorical problems in human services and crafting solutions that could not be developed by service providers. As an outcomes of the Federation’s work in partnership with other organizations, over 6 million in actual dollars and about 27 million dollars of in-kind services has been gained by DuPage County and local organizations.

We identify issues and problems, then inform ourselves and key stakeholders about the issue, best practices and options. We develop a consensus about the best approach, then advocate for its adoption. We work toward developing the new response, along with the resources needed. The solution is implemented, and then the Federation can exit from the day to day operation of a program, while remaining a key supporter. At each state of this process, the role of the Federation diminishes and the role of our service providing partners increases.