In recent years, many healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs serving couples with low incomes have offered participants economic stability services in addition to traditional HMRE programming focused on relationship skills. The Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services (STREAMS) evaluation included an impact study of Empowering Families, an HMRE program with integrated economic stability services for couples with low incomes raising children together. The program was implemented by The Parenting Center, a community-based social services provider in Fort Worth, Texas. Empowering Families’ core service was an eight-session workshop that taught relationship skills integrated with content on employment and financial literacy. The program supplemented this workshop with one-on-one employment counseling and financial coaching services.

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Data Innovation project and the TANF Data Collaborative (TDC) Pilot were established to expand the routine use, integration, and analysis of TANF and employment data by agency staff to improve program services and outcomes for families with low incomes. The 30-month TDC Pilot offered technical assistance and training to support cross-disciplinary teams of staff at eight state and county TANF programs. This nine-minute video, produced after the completion of the TDC Pilot, features staff members from the California, Colorado, Minnesota, and Virginia TANF agencies reflecting on their challenges, accomplishments, and general experiences during the pilot. Staff describe their research questions and discuss building data capacity, integrating datasets, networking with other states, increasing collaboration between state and county agencies, learning new technical skills, and the benefits of being able to draw from diverse skillsets.

This brief presents six considerations for practitioners who want to try using text message reminders to increase participation at the first session of a voluntary program and regular attendance thereafter. The considerations are drawn from a recent study assessing the effectiveness of text message reminders in promoting couples’ attendance at a voluntary healthy marriage and relationship education workshop in Florida. The study was conducted as part of the Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services evaluation for the Administration for Children and Families.

January is National Mentoring Month—an opportunity to recognize the dedicated mentors whose wisdom, guidance, and positive examples set new workers on a path to success, and to affirm the value of mentorship in the career trajectory of jobs-seekers and workers in our communities. This set of resources provides background information where one can learn more about mentoring and mentoring opportunities.

The Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) program offers education, training, support services, and employment assistance to prepare Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients and other adults with low incomes for occupations in the healthcare field that pay well and are expected to either experience labor shortages or be in high demand. This HPOG 2.0 National Evaluation Implementation Study Report documents how 27 non-tribal HPOG 2.0 grantees designed and implemented their programs, including program contexts, administration, grant expenditures, training and support services, and employment assistance services. It also documents participant characteristics and their engagement in program services and training activities.

The vastly altered societal context since March 2020 has created an opportunity for responsible fatherhood programs to partner with systems such as child welfare, child support, criminal justice, public assistance, workforce development, and others in innovative ways that could lead to program sustainability that the fatherhood field has not seen before. In this National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse information brief, Dr. Andrew Freeberg, Director of Family Stability for Goodwill-Easter Seals Minnesota, draws on his 20 years of experience overseeing the organization’s FATHER Project to provide a case study of leadership, innovation, and sustainability. In the brief, he also shares strategies that other leaders of fatherhood programs might employ.

This brief explores how guaranteed income might address gaps and deficits in policies designed to address America’s housing affordability crisis. Less well documented in the research are the supplementary and comparative advantages of cash infusion vis-à-vis programs restricted to meeting basic needs, such as housing, food, and child care. This analysis of guaranteed income as a strategy to combat the affordable housing crisis cites secondary data from past experiments as well as current demonstrations that have released evaluation data. In addition to using secondary data, interviews were conducted with key stakeholders from three recent municipal guaranteed income pilots in Arlington, Virginia; Austin, Texas; and Chicago, Illinois.

The tables in this resource are a compilation of Federal TANF and State MOE expenditures for FY 2021 as they are reported by states. As a condition of receiving Federal TANF funds, states are required to spend a certain amount of their own funds (MOE) on TANF-allowable categories. Expenditures are grouped into 20 main categories in the accompanying tables. Data is available in PDF and Excel formats.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) is announcing a call for applications for the FY 2023 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) E&T State Institute, which will take place on September 20 and 21, 2023 at the Westin Alexandria in Alexandria, Virginia. The Institute, “SNAP Mind the Gap: Building a Bridge from Vision to Outcomes in your SNAP E&T Program,” will provide an opportunity for State SNAP agencies to build a vision for their SNAP E&T program and begin developing a strategic plan to accomplish their long-term E&T goals. The goals of this year’s Institute will be for states to carefully review the status of their SNAP E&T program, to acknowledge what is working well, and to identify key program gaps and action steps that can be taken to achieve program goals. FNS will cover transportation, lodging, and per diem costs associated with participating in the SNAP E&T State Institute for all individuals from a State agency.

Applicants should submit a letter of interest to the SNAP to Skills Project, Office of Employment and Training, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Food and Nutrition Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture by 5 p.m. ET on February 10, 2023. Letters should be sent as a PDF or Word attachment to SNAPtoSkillsProject@seattlejobsinit.com.

Keeping track of key career and job information is an important activity for workforce system customers. CareerOneStop now offers user accounts to save career and job searches and share information with others. The U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration will host a webinar on January 25, 2023 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. ET which will go in-depth on the new user account functionality and demonstrate new How-to Guides that help customers find and use the best resources to reach their career and job goals.