This webinar, sponsored by the Pathways to Careers Network and presented by Women Employed and the Chicago Jobs Council, reviewed Career Foundations: Making Your Education Work for You. This new tool is designed to connect adult education with careers and increase the number of transitions to postsecondary education. This tool provides low-skilled adults connections to local occupational and academic programs to increase economic opportunity.

This Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) webinar, presented by the U.S. Department of Education and Abt Associates, presents findings from an international assessment of basic skills and provides promising instructional models for adult basic skills education and promising strategies for healthcare training programs.

Jobs for the Future, in partnership with the Education Credit Management Corporation Foundation, convened Competency-Based Education (CBE) experts to explore CBE models that support underprepared adults who are not yet college ready. This report identifies and describes seven key elements of CBE programs that may need to be altered to better meet the needs of underprepared adult learners.

In this report from the Urban Institute, the authors identify and discuss 13 building blocks that they deem fundamental to advancing the economic mobility of low-income Americans. The building blocks include: family formation and stability; parenting skills; high-quality child care and early learning; elementary and secondary education; postsecondary education; employment and training; wages, wage supplements, and work supports; cash or near-cash safety net; asset formation and access to capital; health and mental health; criminal justice and safety; housing; and community building and social capital.

This Information Memorandum from the Office of Community Services discusses and encourages states, tribes, territories, and Community Action Agencies to use Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) funds to support and implement two-generation approaches that aim to increase family economic security and well-being.

Resources developed through the Adult Career Pathways Training and Support Center, part of the Designing Instruction for Career Pathways Initiative, are now available through the Literacy Information and Communication System (LINCS). The resources are designed to help state and local adult education providers deliver services that help low-skilled adults transition to postsecondary education and employment. Online courses, a resource center, issue briefs, webcasts, and newsletters can be found on the website.

The U.S. incarceration rate remains exceptionally high, especially for socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, and the incidence of involvement in child protective services (CPS) is also quite high among disadvantaged groups. This confluence of incarceration and CPS involvement may have various impacts for parents, children, and families as a whole. The authors of this Institute for Research on Poverty brief examined data from Wisconsin to demonstrate and describe the overlap between parental incarceration and child CPS involvement, as well as between adolescent CPS involvement and later incarceration in young adulthood.

The 2016 Systems to Family Stability National Policy Academy meeting was held on July 26-28, 2016 in Annapolis, Maryland at the Historic Inns of Annapolis. The Academy is an initiative that provides training and technical assistance to eight state and county Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs as they work on building internal and/or collaborative systems within and across agencies that improve family stability and economic self-sufficiency. Academy sites are focusing on a range of systems change activities, including two-generation approaches, TANF and Workforce system alignment, and enhanced assessment and case management approaches. The Academy meeting included plenary and breakout sessions across the listed content areas as well as time for participants to work with their own teams and with other teams for additional learning and peer feedback.

This recently released memo from CLASP serves as a reference guide on the WIOA adult program’s priority of service for “recipients of public assistance, other low- income individuals, and individuals who are basic skills deficient.” The guide includes text and citations from the statute, the final rules, guidance, planning requirements, and data collection, as well as recommendations for implementation.