New Iowa program aims to remove barriers to family support

Thrive Iowa, a new initiative from the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, has officially launched in a number of counties across the state with the goal of helping struggling Iowa families connect with local resources and build a network of support in their community.

On June 23, Warren County celebrated its own program site launch as one of eight initial sites. Other counties that are celebrating their own site launches are Cass, Lee, Black Hawk, Webster, Buena Vista, Fayette and Clayton. A site is officially launched once it has enrolled a minimum of 20 participants, Iowa HHS Director of Communications Danielle Sample said in a statement.

The eight sites serve 11 counties in total, with services also available in Henry, Madison, and Van Buren counties, according to the Thrive Iowa website.

What is Thrive Iowa?

The initiative is focused on serving families, such as parents, caretakers, and pregnant individuals, according to the program’s website. To be eligible to receive help from the program, families must be living in Iowa, be a U.S. citizen or legal resident, and have an income at or below 200% of the federal poverty level.

The 2026 federal guidelines consider a family of four to be at the 200% threshold if they make $66,000 or less annually.

The program also outlines 13 core areas of well-being where it offers support. These include housing, recovery, employment, transportation, education, mental health, physical health, safety, dental, financial stability, food, child care and legal assistance.

The overall goal of the program is to reduce barriers to accessing support for families by doing the work of finding the right organization to meet their needs for them. Instead of having to reach out to multiple sources, a family can visit the program’s HopeHub, a case management system, to create a free account and receive a referral. Once referred, the individual is connected with a Thrive Navigator who will create a personalized plan and build local connections to assist the family.

Thrive Iowa is modeled after Restore Hope, an Arkansas-based nonprofit that began in 2015 to reduce the number of individuals in incarceration and the foster care system through community-based approaches. In addition to Iowa, this model is also used in Tennessee and Canada, according to the organization’s website.

The Iowa program plans to expand to other counties in the near future, Sample said. In July, Iowa HHS will begin onboarding more participating organizations and counties, expanding the program to serve 22 counties.

Warren County launch pledges to take families from crisis to careers

At the Warren County launch, the county’s initiative coordinator, Sarah Downard, was joined by Iowa State Rep. Brooke Boden, Ben Segebart, senior pastor at Indianola Freedom Fellowship Church, Sue Wilson, executive director of WeLIFT Job Search Center in Indianola, and Paul Chapman, executive director of Restore Hope.

Downard said the Warren County site is currently serving over 20 families.

To a room of around 75 community members and local organizations at The Hive event venue in Indianola, the five speakers emphasized the importance of the mission behind Thrive Iowa, which is collective impact and helping build strong communities through supporting the families that live there.

The group also invited the whole room to sign the site’s declaration of participation in the program, which stated the goals of the program and a pledge to work together to help take families from crisis to career.

“When families are struggling, we feel the impact everywhere,” Boden said. “We see this in our schools, our health care systems, our workplace, and our communities.”

Isabelle Foland is a communities reporter for the Register. Reach her at ifoland@registermedia.com.