The Office of Family Assistance partnered with the Children’s Bureau to develop the Families Are Stronger Together Learning Community (FAST-LC), which focused on preventing family involvement in the child welfare system through developing, implementing, and enhancing Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)–Child Welfare (CW) partnerships and innovations. FAST-LC was a one-year initiative that involved 10 Tribal and state TANF and CW agencies. 

This video accompanies a reflection guide and tip sheet on Securing Support: Getting Input to Sustain Buy-in for Prevention Partnerships, which highlights lessons from the FAST-LC. The video features TANF and CW representatives from Arizona and Iowa who discuss how they secured buy-in from program staff, agency leadership, community partners, and families to enhance services that help keep families together.

The Office of Family Assistance partnered with the Children’s Bureau to develop the Families Are Stronger Together Learning Community (FAST-LC), which focused on preventing family involvement in the child welfare system through developing, implementing, and enhancing Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)–Child Welfare (CW) partnerships and innovations. FAST-LC was a one-year initiative that involved 10 Tribal and state TANF and CW agencies. 

This video accompanies a reflection guide and tip sheet on Focusing Efforts: Using Shared Data to Define and Advance Prevention Goals, which highlights lessons from the FAST-LC. The video features TANF and CW representatives from Oregon and Michigan who discuss how they use shared data to identify families’ needs and enhance their programs to help keep families together.

While an effective intake assessment helps build an initial impression of each father’s individual situation and needs, fatherhood program staff also know ongoing one-on-one and group interaction is needed to fully understand him and see who he might become. Even then, it can be hard to accurately follow his progress through the program and ensure his needs are met in the best way possible. This National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse brief presents an overview of customer journey mapping, an evidence-based tool that helps program administrators and staff members reflect on a father’s journey through a program and make service adjustments based on the father’s perspective as he progresses through that program.

This National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse publication serves as a resource for program operators seeking information on available curricula designed for working with fathers. While not a comprehensive list, it provides an overview of curricula used by programs funded by the Office of Family Assistance within the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The Administration for Children and Families announced the launch of “A Home for Every Child,” a national initiative aimed at right-sizing the ratio of foster homes to the number of kids in the foster care system. The initiative will focus on both sides of the equation — increasing the availability of safe homes through diligent recruitment, prioritizing kin, and improving retention of existing caregivers while reducing entries into foster care through effective prevention and faster pathways to permanency. ACF plans to leverage all $11.4 billion of its annual federal funding for foster care and child welfare to advance this mission and will come alongside state agencies to give broad latitude, flexibility, and technical support to reimagine community-specific interventions. ACF will eliminate outdated bureaucratic barriers that discourage families from stepping forward, including streamlining foster family licensing, supporting kinship caregivers, and encouraging faith-based partnerships to expand the network of caring families.

A Home for Every Child (AHEC) is a national initiative of the Administration for Children and Families focused on ensuring that every child has the opportunity to grow up in a safe, stable, and loving home.

The initiative is designed to address both sides of the child welfare equation by reducing entries into foster care through effective prevention and by increasing the availability of foster and kinship homes through stronger recruitment, kin-first approaches, and improved retention of caregivers.

At its core, A Home for Every Child is about right-sizing the ratio of available homes to children in need so that there are homes waiting on kids, not kids waiting on homes.

This webpage showcases resources that support the priorities within the AHEC initiative.

The next quarterly Work Outcomes Report is due on November 15, 2025. The following links may be helpful as you complete your report. 

• TANF Work Outcomes Reporting Requirement – What You Need to Know
• TANF Work Outcomes Measures Technical Resource
• TOTAL Office Hours: April 2025
• TOTAL Office Hours: May 2025
• TOTAL Office Hours: May 2025 (Post-Submission for Work Outcomes of TANF Exiters Report)

Coaching is not an approach you bring to supervision occasionally – it’s a set of tools and behaviors you use in some combination daily. The Coaching for Supervisors modules aim to leverage coaching techniques to support supervisors of case managers. These four self-paced modules will help supervisors develop and sustain a person-centered, relationship-based, goal-driven mindset.

The Coaching for Supervisors modules build upon and incorporate the previous modules from the Coaching for Success series designed for TANF employment case managers.

The "Other" category should only be used for expenditures that cannot be reported in another line item. Expenditures reported in the “Other” category must meet one of the four purposes of TANF. OFA regularly follows up on "Other" category expenditures to ensure proper classification. This resource covers the permissible types of "Other" expenditures:

1. Tribal TANF Programs;
2. Expenditures for Compact of Free Association (COFA) States; and
3. Expenditures That Don't Fit Other Categories (Requires strong justification), such as:
   • Programs combining multiple categories that cannot be meaningfully separated.
   • Services with unique aspects not captured in Lines 6-22.

It helps users understand the proper use of the "Other" category to help avoid misclassifications.

Each template in this guide is designed as a standalone resource for specific expenditure categories. State TANF administrators and financial reporting staff can select and use any template that applies to their specific program expenditure. There are four templates:

1. Assistance Authorized Solely Under Prior Law (Lines 7a-7c);
2. Non-Assistance Authorized Solely Under Prior Law (Lines 8a-8c);
3. Other Expenditures (Line 23 - includes Tribal TANF Programs and unique programs); and
4. Estimation Documentation Builder (Any estimated expenditure).