Question from PeerTA

The Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Office for Family Independence (OFI) and the New Hampshire Division of Family Assistance convened a peer-to-peer site exchange funded by the Welfare Peer TA Network in Concord, New Hampshire to (1) provide cross-site networking between the two States; (2) foster dialogue on strategies for improving work participation among TANF participants; (3) discuss strategies for data collection methodologies that improve the calculation of work participation rates; and (4) share dialogue on strategies for integrating education and training opportunities into TANF programming. The site visit included discussions with program, data, and administration staff and a series of site visits to the New Heights Data Management Center and the Combined Services/Community Action Program. During this peer-to-peer exchange, Maine learned about the collection, analysis, and reporting methodologies New Hampshire uses to achieve its work participation rate and to improve the overall data-driven philosophy of their local TANF program.

On June 11, 2014, the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) hosted a brown bag “Doing the Best I Can: Fatherhood in the Inner City.” This brown bag featured Kathryn Edin from John’s Hopkins University. Ms. Edin discussed their research on unwed fathers, fatherhood, and relationship formation. Their presentation featured personal accounts from fathers and their experiences and relationships with their own children and discussed future strategies on how to improve father involvement in a child’s life and promote healthy relationship formation.

The Administration for Children and Families' Office of Family Assistance (OFA) hosted the "Strategies to Assist Noncustodial Parents in Improving Economic Well-Being" webinar. This webinar showcased several programs making headway in this area. TANF programs and their safety-net partners increasingly understand the importance of engaging noncustodial parents while also holding them accountable for the economic and social growth of their children. Barriers such as unemployment, underemployment, or incarceration can hinder noncustodial parents from providing for their children even when many want to do so. The Webinar featured three programs.

1. North Dakota PRIDE is a partnership between North Dakota's Department of Human Services, Job Service North Dakota, the Child Support Enforcement Division, and eight judicial district courts throughout the state. The program refers parents with unpaid child support obligations to Job Service North Dakota for employment support.

2. Kansas Child Support Savings Initiative is a partnership between Kansas Child Support Services and the state Treasurer's Office to empower noncustodial parents to save money for their children's education. Noncustodial parents open 529 savings accounts for their children and for every dollar they put into the account, the State reduces their child support arrears by two dollars.

3. Couples Advancing Together is a program of the Center for Urban Families in Baltimore, Maryland that provides employment development, case management services, and healthy relationship skills training to couples with children who currently receive public benefits through the Maryland Department of Social Services. Completion of the Couples Advancing Together program qualifies participants for a 10% reduction in any child support arrears they owe to the State of Maryland, which is helpful to those who are noncustodial parents to children outside their primary family unit.

The Working Poor Families Project released a policy brief that outlines ways that states can encourage two-generation strategies within programs to continue to help adults achieve economic success while maintaining strong, stable families. The brief includes an in-depth history of poverty and two-generation strategies in the United States, and offers specific recommendations to support and stimulate these efforts within states.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released a spotlight web feature that provides statistics about wages and jobs in the United States. The feature pulls data from the Occupational Employment Statistics program and emphasizes STEM jobs. Users are able to view spotlight occupational data by required educational level.

The Pew Research Center outlines the characteristics of U.S. fathers who lived with their children younger than 18 in 2012 and did not work outside the home. The report juxtaposes this information with counterparts in earlier years and includes Census data about this population since 1989. Authors of the report also compare the characteristics of stay-at-home fathers with fathers who work for pay outside the home, as well as with stay-at-home mothers.

The Federal Reserve Board released a report that explores the ongoing decline of the labor force participation rate in the United States. The report provides analyses of the sources that may have contributed to the decline in the participation rate over the last decade and outlines a number of policy implications.

This study sought to examine the effect of prenatal poverty on the birth weight of infants (as birth weight can be a predictor for a range of outcomes for children) and subsequently, the effect that work-based welfare assistance, such as the EITC and TANF, has on maternal and infant health. The study found that there is a causal link between prenatal poverty and low birth weights, finding that state EITCs relieve prenatal poverty and indicated increased birth weights in babies born to mothers who received an earned income tax credit. However, the study found mixed results for TANF receipt and its effect on birth weights.

This brief from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities provides a broad overview of research and evidence of the positive effect of public benefit programs on poverty rates in the U.S. Programs highlighted include SNAP, Medicaid, and refundable tax credits with a discussion of the current support for low income working families (versus historical policies which did not incentivize work). To conclude, the brief provides research citing improved long-term outcomes for children whose families are supported by public benefit programs. Two appendices provide charts with the number of people kept above the poverty in each state; an interesting and potentially helpful resource for policymakers and program administrators.