Many jurisdictions are considering unconditional direct cash transfers (DCTs) to youth and young adults to bolster housing stability, transitions to adulthood, well-being, and racial justice. DCTs offer a promising source of support and a safety net. The benefit of participating in a DCT program, though, is diminished if the payments increase tax obligations or reduce eligibility for public benefits or other financial assistance. Informed by collaborative community engagement with youth experts, local jurisdictions, nonprofits, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers through an interactive webinar series, this toolkit presents in one place the tax, public benefits, and educational aid implications for young people participating in DCT programs. Collaborators in the design of the toolkit also identified strategies to mitigate adverse effects on young people and maximize the positive effects of DCTs on young people’s well-being and investments in their personal goals.

More than 3,000 Family Resource Centers (FRCs) in 36 states and the District of Columbia work with more than 2 million people annually, and because they have emerged organically without dedicated federal funding, they are often described as "America’s best kept secret." FRCs work with families in a strengths-based, multi-generational, family-centered approach to enhance parenting skills, foster the healthy development and well-being of children, youth, and families, prevent child abuse, increase school readiness, connect families to resources, develop parent and community leadership, engage males and fathers, support healthy marital and couples relationships, and promote family economic success.

The National Family Support Network will hold a webinar on December 14, 2022 from 2:30 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. ET and will address the following three questions:

• What are FRCs and how are they networked across the country?
• What does research show about the positive outcomes FRCs have achieved for children and families?
• Why are so many public and private funders at the state, county, city, and community levels choosing to invest in FRCs?

The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) and 2M Research will host a webinar on December 13, 2022 from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET which will share lessons learned and practitioner recommendations from the Human Services in Rural Contexts Project. The webinar includes findings drawn from more than 100 interviews with human services staff in rural communities and data on how needs are being met by program services in rural counties.

State and local leaders at TANF agencies have been increasingly focused on using administrative data from TANF and other state agencies to better assess how well programs are working, inform policies and practices, and improve the lives of families with low incomes. Economic mobility through employment retention and advancement is of particular interest to TANF leaders, but administrative data on TANF recipients’ earnings are often difficult to access except for the purpose of investigating noncompliance. This toolkit was created to help TANF professionals develop more robust, data-driven practices using administrative data on earnings. It offers practical guidance to state and local TANF agencies on how to access, link, and analyze employment data from unemployment insurance systems for program monitoring, reporting, and evaluation. The toolkit may also be useful to other state human services agencies (for example, SNAP and Child Support) that want to expand their data use, as well as policymakers interested in supporting improved workforce outcomes.

This report provides a new annual snapshot of the direct care workforce, including its demographics, occupational roles, job quality challenges, and projected job openings. It also provides detailed overviews of three segments of this workforce: home care workers, residential care aides, and nursing assistants in nursing homes.

Apprenticeships are structured work-based training programs that combine classroom instruction with on-the-job learning provided by a mentor at the employer’s worksite. The U.S. Department of Labor under the American Apprenticeship Initiative (AAI) sponsored an evaluation to build evidence about the effectiveness of registered apprenticeship for apprentices and employers and generate lessons for developing and operating apprenticeship programs, particularly in nontraditional occupations (occupations not related to construction). This report describes the characteristics, program experiences (e.g., occupation, wage progression), and post-program employment and earnings outcomes of participants in an AAI-supported apprenticeship or pre-apprenticeship program.

There have been over a million drug overdose deaths in the United States since 1999. While this crisis is national in scope, there is considerable variation by both geography and subpopulation. One area of interest is in how changes in the labor market may be connected to increases in addiction and “deaths of despair” and, at the same time, how rising rates of drug use may be lowering overall labor force participation. This webinar recording from the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty includes presentations on trends in the U.S. opioid crisis and overdose cases related to other drugs. The presenters also examined how differences in state-level policy responses to the crisis may be leading to different labor market outcomes, and how automation and other changes in manufacturing employment may be connected to increases in working-age mortality.

In 2018, change agents within the Camden County (New Jersey) Department of Corrections introduced a five-pronged community engagement strategy to reduce the use of jail and improve reentry outcomes for people released from incarceration. Central to this strategy are the County’s NuEntry Opportunity Specialists, previously incarcerated individuals who serve as credible messengers to people released from incarceration and who work to reduce the stigma of incarceration through community education and outreach. This case study describes Camden County’s community engagement strategy and examines its implementation and reported impact. Lessons and recommendations derived from implementation of the county’s community engagement strategy and its sustainability efforts are also discussed.

Video recordings of the plenary and concurrent breakout sessions are now available for the Virtual Research and Evaluation Conference on Self-Sufficiency (RECS) 2022, convened by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation in the Administration for Children and Families, held June 1 - 3, 2022. The conference recordings include sessions on the following topics:

• Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Programs, Policies, and Populations
• Employment and Mobility in the Labor Market
• Youth Well-Being and the Transition to Adulthood
• Strengthening Families, Fatherhood, Marriages, and Relationships
• Evaluating Social Programs, Building Evidence, and Using Data
• Approaches to Alleviate Poverty and Expand Opportunity

The American Public Human Services Association has published a blog series entitled, The Core: A Cutting Edge Blog Series Getting to the Core of Modern TANF Reform. This series takes a detailed look at TANF and the ways in which TANF agencies, aligned systems, and community voices are thinking differently about TANF programs and how they can help families succeed long-term and get to the root of barriers communities face to promote opportunity for all. This blog entry, authored by Erin Oalican, Director of Reach Up (Vermont’s TANF Program), examines Vermont’s process in focusing Reach Up’s mission, vision, and practice on joining Vermont families on their respective journeys.