This blog post highlights the recently released final report on the accomplishments of State Advisory Councils (SAC) on early childhood education and care. SACs were authorized in the Head Start Act of 2007, with a goal of promoting partnerships between Head Start agencies, state and local governments, and the private sector.

From June 29 to July 1, 2015, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Family Assistance (OFA), hosted the Systems to Family Stability National Policy Academy meeting in Washington, D.C. at the Loews Madison Hotel. Eight teams (seven states and one county) participated in this kick-off meeting for the dynamic, 18-month policy academy that is designed to build collaborative systems within and across agencies to improve family economic security. The Academy has three primary objectives:
1) Build career pathways through job-driven training and alignment of TANF and workforce systems;
2) Improve business processes and systems coordination; and
3) Enhance case management by understanding brain science and applying two-generation approaches.
Over the course of the three-day meeting, experts presented the research evidence base, and sites had the opportunity to learn from peer programs’ development and implementation across these three objectives. In addition to plenary and breakout sessions, the agenda included eight hours of dedicated team time for sites to receive individualized coaching and facilitation from technical assistance coaches and expert content faculty.

This brief establishes the basics of readiness using the R=MC2 (Readiness = Motivation × General Capacity and Intervention-Specific Capacity) heuristic, examines some of the policy implications of readiness, and identifies directions for future research. Although a scientific body of knowledge about readiness already exists, there is a need to develop more concrete recommendations for federal agencies and practitioners to use when implementing evidence-based interventions.

The Youth Villages Transitional Living program is intended to help youth who were formerly in foster care or juvenile justice custody, or who are otherwise unprepared for adult life, to make the transition to independent living. This report presents key findings of participation levels, staff interviews, and implementation variation across different sites.

Family Rewards 2.0 was launched in July 2011 in the Bronx, New York and Memphis, Tennessee. This report presents early findings on the program’s implementation and families’ receipt of rewards during the first two years. While still offering rewards in the areas of children’s education, family health, and parents’ work, Family Rewards 2.0 has fewer rewards in each domain, offers the education rewards only to high school students, makes the rewards timelier by paying them each month, and includes family guidance.

This final report documents the implementation by eight organizations of the yearlong, multi-component Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) program model of marriage and relationship education services. It presents information about implementation of the programs, the characteristics of couples who enrolled, and their participation in the programs.

This report provides early implementation findings from a study of six Responsible Fatherhood Reentry grantees that provide soon-to-be and recently-released fathers and their families with an array of activities and services in responsible fatherhood/parenting, healthy marriage/relationships, and economic stability. The goals of the programs are to help stabilize fathers and their families, move the fathers toward self-sufficiency, and reduce recidivism.

This brief provides an overview of the strategies that Tribal HPOG grantees have used to implement the HPOG program, challenges encountered during implementation, lessons learned, and ongoing program evolution and adaptation to address unique tribal cultural and programmatic needs. The brief draws upon qualitative data collected from the first year of evaluation activities with the Tribal HPOG programs.

This assessment sought to provide a clear picture of recent changes implemented by local program managers to improve performance, several years after the initial wave of change brought about by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA). The legislation and related regulations included several provisions that strengthened the program’s work participation requirements.

This policy brief from the Working Poor Families Project highlights the importance of college completion for being successful in the American workforce. By 2020, 65% of jobs will require at least some form of postsecondary education; however, today, only 41% of adults have an associate degree or higher. The brief describes the need for policies to focus not only on academic supports, but on non-academic supports targeted toward low-income community college students, especially student parents and first-generation students. These populations are often faced with financial, developmental, or other non-academic barriers.