Millions of Americans have had their driver’s licenses suspended at some point because they have not paid legal fines and fees. Having one’s license suspended can make it harder to find and keep a job, can increase one’s exposure to the criminal legal system, and can generally place great strain on one’s life and the life of one’s family. This issue brief examines the causes, consequences, and scope of the practice of suspending driver’s licenses due to unpaid fines or fees. It focuses on the impact of license suspension on employment, while also examining the larger structural factors that facilitate the widespread use of legal fines and fees to generate revenue for municipalities. The brief also highlights He Got Up!, a program based in Florida that works to address the challenges of people affected by this practice.

The Agricultural Act of 2014 authorized $200 million for the development, implementation, and evaluation of pilot projects to test innovative strategies to reduce dependency on and increase employment among Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants. California, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Mississippi, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington received grants in March 2015 and began implementing their pilots between January and April 2016. Resource materials in this post include a summary of findings from these 10 pilots and a set of four issue briefs. These issue briefs present cross-pilot findings that cover participation patterns in selected Employment and Training (E&T) activities, effectiveness of work-based learning, employment patterns after occupational skills training, and how sanctions affect participants in mandatory SNAP E&T programs.

The Child Welfare Information Gateway created a five-part podcast series that illustrated ways that states and tribal jurisdictions have supported kinship caregivers. Part 5 of this series explores a series of changes within New Mexico’s Children, Youth, and Families Department (CYFD) to improve the engagement and support of kinship families. These changes include internal workforce shifts, such as changes in supervisory practices and internal communications to improve how relatives and caregivers are viewed; programs to keep families engaged and involved in children’s lives even if they are unable to serve as primary caregivers; and streamlining the licensing process to be less invasive and more supportive of families facing the abrupt changes and challenges of raising children.

Topics discussed include:

• Which methods increase involvement of other, non-caregiver kin and families in children’s lives and build strength and support caregivers,
• How CYFD changed caseworkers’ and staff perception to improve how relatives and kinship families are viewed and supported within the child welfare system,
• How direct feedback from community organizations and families improved how CYFD delivers services and supports families, and
• How processes and policies changed to make CYFD more “family-friendly.”

This report summarizes the design and implementation of MyGoals for Employment Success (MyGoals), an experimental employment coaching demonstration program, launched in early 2017. The program aims to help recipients of housing assistance in Baltimore and Houston who are unemployed or working less than 20 hours a month set and achieve employment and related goals. Coaches follow a systematic process that focuses explicitly on self-regulation skills—the skills needed to finish tasks, stay organized, and control emotions. Financial incentives are offered for attending coaching sessions and achieving employment outcomes. MyGoals is one of four coaching interventions included in the Evaluation of Employment Coaching for TANF and Related Populations project.

Filing for tax credits does not have to be intimidating, and two successful state programs are proving it. New America Chicago and the New Practice Lab will host a webinar on January 20, 2023 from 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. CT where participants will learn more about two exciting initiatives that are transforming the conversation about access to state tax credits for struggling families. Their efforts show that a simplified filing approach could greatly improve taxpayers’ experiences, while increasing access to valuable tax credits for low-income people and would allow thousands more low-income residents to receive tax credits they deserve but rarely receive.

Child support is an important resource for children who live apart from a parent, but there are many reasons why noncustodial parents may be unable or unwilling to pay. The Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison hosted a webinar on January 11, 2023 where three researchers shared their insights on the current child support context in Wisconsin. Topics in the webinar included: long-term impacts formal child support has on children's economic outcomes; barriers to payment for low-income noncustodial fathers, particularly in light of the COVID pandemic; and how Wisconsin child support agencies connect noncustodial parents with services to help address employment and child support payment barriers.

The U.S. Department of Labor has issued the YouthBuild Funding Opportunity Announcement, which will award grants on a competitive basis to organizations providing pre-apprenticeship services that support education, occupational skills training, and employment services to opportunity youth, ages 16 to 24. YouthBuild supports youth who left high school prior to graduation that also have other risk factors, including being an adjudicated youth, youth aging out of foster care, youth with disabilities, migrant farmworker youth, youth experiencing housing instability, and other disadvantaged youth populations. The YouthBuild program model prepares participants for quality jobs in a variety of careers, including infrastructure, and contains wraparound services such as mentoring, trauma-informed care, personal counseling, and employment – all key strategies for addressing community violence.

Applications are due by February 7, 2023, no later than 11:59 p.m. ET.

This brief examines Latino families’ experiences with North Carolina’s TANF (also known as Work First) and related income assistance programs. The brief summarizes findings from practitioner responses to a survey that included a questionnaire and a series of open-ended questions. Further, it discusses North Carolina’s Hispanic population and how the state’s income assistance programs are administered, and it provides more detail on income assistance program practitioners’ perspectives on Latino families’ experiences with these programs. Implications of the findings for how income assistance programs are administered in North Carolina and in other states with large and growing Latino populations are also presented.

This article describes a community-engaged, mixed-methods research project to identify barriers to TANF among families with young children in Illinois which examined TANF sanctions related to child support enforcement. The study, which used TANF administrative data analysis and included semi-structured interviews with TANF customers, explored demographic differences in sanctioning and sanction types; it found that Black families were more likely than families of other races to be sanctioned. Mothers who were survivors of intimate partner violence voiced particular challenges with child support compliance. The article proposes policy recommendations that include shifting to alternative cash assistance models and removing pass-through funding so that families receive the full child support benefit.

Enacted in 1997 and expanded multiple times with bipartisan support since 2001, the Child Tax Credit helps families manage the cost of raising children. The Child Tax Credit lifted 4.3 million people ― including 2.3 million children ― above the poverty line in 2018 and remains an effective tool for reducing poverty nationwide. This fact sheet outlines how the credit is helping families with low incomes, had been administered under the American Rescue Plan, and has reduced poverty and expanded children’s opportunities.