This report from Generations United identifies key state laws and policies specifically designed to address barriers and better support grandparents and other relatives raising children. According to the report, almost 65 percent of children living in grandfamilies, or kinship care, are in states that have half or fewer of these key laws and policies. The report provides recommendations to aid the development of supportive federal and State policies and services for grandfamilies.

In this four-minute video from the Center for Poverty Research at the University of California, Davis, sociologist Katherine Jewsbury Conger discusses how poverty and economic hardship impact parents and their children. She notes that early childhood programs are important avenues for parents living in poverty to make connections to their communities.

The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) has posted Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) caseload and application data for fiscal year (FY) 2015. The data includes families receiving assistance through state TANF and Separate State Program Maintenance-of-Effort (SSP-MOE). In FY 2015, there was a monthly average of 1.6 million families receiving TANF & SSP-MOE assistance, representing approximately 4.1 million recipients. This was a slight decline of 1.1 percent compared to the prior fiscal year. The monthly average number of TANF applications received in FY 2015 was 267,650.

This framework outlines how various types of research and evaluation generate information and answer empirical questions related to the human services provided by the Administration for Children and Families. The framework is designed to 1) organize and guide ACF’s decisions about investments in research and evaluation, and 2) provide clarification for potential grantees and contractors about the justifications for, and evidence expected from, each type of study, as well as relevant aspects of research design that contribute to high-quality evidence.

This guidance, developed jointly by the U.S. Departments of Labor (DOL), Education (ED), Health and Human Services (HHS), Agriculture (USDA), and Housing and Urban Development (HUD), provides an overview of the Administration's priorities in relation to the WIOA planning requirements, explains the planning requirements where necessary, and instructs States regarding submission procedures.

This toolkit from Jobs for the Future is a guide for training providers, workforce development organizations, educational institutions, and community-based organizations. The focus is on the integration of employer engagement into the core decision making of programs. The toolkit offers strategies to increase the number of ways employers can participate in program design and development, and is designed to help workforce development organizations and educational institutions develop relationships with employers.

This bill, passed by the General Assembly of the State of Colorado and signed into law by the Governor on June 5, 2015, details the child-support pass through as it relates to the Colorado Works program.

This kit, developed by IDEO, provides tools to help programs engage in human-centered design. Human-centered design is a creative approach to problem solving that starts by learning directly from the people you’re designing for in order to build empathy for them and a deep understanding of their needs to ensure that your solutions suit their needs. The kit includes a field guide, facilitators guide, and case studies. IDEO also offers courses in human-centered design.

These resources collected by the Systems to Family Stability National Policy Academy discuss various tools for assessing family functioning in welfare or healthcare settings. Some of the measures that are used to assess family functioning and relationships by practitioners are also discussed. Additional information is provided about agencies that are using whole-family assessments to take a family-focused approach to service delivery.

This resource from ASCEND at the Aspen Institute discusses the parent engagement part of two-generation programming. Research shows that children engaged with both parents, custodial or not, experience better outcomes in life than children who are only engaged with one parent. This resource, focusing on father involvement, includes an overview of the topic and suggestions for how organizations can take two-generation action to help fathers and families.