This brief by the Corporation for Enterprise Development outlines a Household Financial Security Framework. This tool helps to illuminate what a household needs to start to build security. The goal of the Framework is to provide a better understanding of the factors that contribute to or detract from a household’s financial security and how the many components are interrelated.

This guide, offered by the ASSET Initiative Partnership of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Community Services (OCS), provides tools and guidance for organizations seeking to add and/or improve financial capability services to their programs. The guide includes 13 tools for guiding organizations in integrating services that build financial capability, and features seven key strategies to help build financial capability so that families can maximize available resources, reduce expense, and save for the future:
• Financial education
• Financial counseling and coaching
• Credit counseling and credit building
• Free tax preparation assistance
• Access to federal and state benefits
• Access to safe and affordable financial products
• Matched savings and asset-building programs

The guide is organized into phases, which walk users step-by-step through designing a program. Each phase includes actionable steps, including program examples from existing organizations. At the end of each step, the guide provides assessments and planning tools to ensure the financial capability strategies are sound.

Associate Commissioner Joo Yeun Chang of the Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth, and Families, Children's Bureau released a letter to Child Welfare Agencies and providers highlighting the importance of financial capability. This letter also identifies resources available to support financial capability work with children, youth, families, and the child welfare workforce.

This webcast from Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity features Dr. Yvette Jackson, the author of The Pedagogy of Confidence: Inspiring High Intellectual Performance in Urban Schools. She discusses the importance of focusing on students’ strengths to inspire learning and high intellectual performance, especially for low-income students. The discussion is led by Anthony Rebora, Editor of Education Week Teacher and the Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook.

This update to Maryland’s legislatively-mandated Life after Welfare research study describes the characteristics and post-welfare outcomes of 9,788 families who left Maryland’s welfare program, Temporary Cash Assistance (TCA), for at least one full month between January 2004 and March 2014. The report presents information on clients and their cases at time of exit, tracks employment outcomes and welfare utilization over time, and analyzes the use of work supports.

This resource from FindYouthInfo.gov consists of an interactive mapping tool to locate federally supported youth programs in communities across the United States. Users are able to search by full address or zip code, and then can click on the program markers to see the program title, CFDA number, department, funding agency, recipient name, and full address.

Iowa’s Reliable Employment and Child Support Help program, or REACH, aims to improve the financial well-being of children by increasing the engagement of non-custodial parents in Polk County through different service offerings. The non-custodial parents are provided with job development, child support assistance, and parenting and financial education training.

On Tuesday, April 21, 2015, the Office of Family Assistance, in partnership with the Administration for Children and Families’ Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Early Childhood Development, hosted a webinar for Tribal TANF and Tribal TANF-Child Welfare Partnerships grantees titled “Addressing Toxic Stress and Trauma in Native Communities: The Promise of Tribal Home Visiting.” Toxic stress results from exposure to strong, excessive, and/or prolonged adversity in childhood without the buffer of stable environment and supportive relationships with caring adults. American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) children face unique circumstances and disproportionate exposure to adverse childhood experiences, necessitating a discussion of how best to address toxic stress, trauma, and detrimental health effects to promote resilience among AIAN children. The webinar included an overview of toxic stress and how it affects AIAN child health, followed by an overview of the Tribal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program, and a presentation from a Tribal Home Visiting grantee that is actively working to address toxic stress in one tribal community.