The American Public Human Services Association’s Advancing Family Economic Mobility initiative is exploring innovative ways for agencies to dismantle systemic barriers and enable families and the communities they live in to thrive. While families…

In response to the joint memo from the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service where they expressed their awareness of increasing reports of Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT)…

Goal4 It!™ is a participant-…

TANF cash assistance and child support programs, with their restrictive policy environments and historically compliance-focused cultures, have opportunities for growth in how they engage families during continuous quality improvement efforts. To…

States have broad flexibility over the use of state and federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds. Many have used that flexibility to divert funds away from income support for families and toward other state budget areas often…

In 2023, the Department of Labor (DOL) launched the Youth Employment Works strategy to set a clear vision for young people in the workforce system and its public and private sector partners. This work is urgent and necessary to promote high…

There are estimates that between 20 and 50 percent of people eligible for social safety net programs do not access them. While there may be many factors contributing to that gap, recent research has focused on the role that stigma plays. Stigma…

Experiments conducted in the mid-1990s show that a combination of work requirements and work supports substantially increased the employment of cash assistance recipients in Aid to Families with Dependent Children, while having little effect on…

Children rely on the adults in their lives to provide safety and security; unfortunately, this is often difficult for adults living in poverty to provide. As a result, some children living in poverty face developmental challenges that may affect…

Many child support policies disproportionately harm families with low incomes in which nonresident parents have limited ability to pay support. This blogpost outlines six recommendations on how child support systems can equitably serve families…