Unprecedented levels of burnout and turnover are an unfortunate reality for many human services organizations today. Agencies are feeling the effects of staffing shortages and a shrinking pool of quality candidates to fill their vacant positions. Solving this crisis will require stakeholders – agencies sharing ideas and best practices, vendors, and consultants – to collaborate with one another. This brief cites examples of how states are employing multi-pronged strategies to address these issues.

This research brief shares findings from new analysis of income data of Black and white households who participate in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) program, a refundable tax credit that serves as the primary income support for low- and moderate-income families in the United States. The brief notes that because the EITC is conditioned on a household's employment and work hours, its benefits to Black workers and families may be tempered by persistent structural barriers to employment and labor market discrimination. The findings also recognize that take-up of the EITC depends on workers’ awareness of the benefit and the decision to file an income tax return. Community-based organizations and tax assistance programs have an important role in promoting awareness of the EITC and providing tax filing assistance so more eligible families can receive the program’s benefits.

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is a federal nutrition program that offers nourishing foods, nutrition education, breastfeeding support, and referrals to health care for nutritionally at-risk infants, children up to 5 years old, and pregnant and postpartum women from households with low income. WIC enhances individuals' nutritional consumption, birth and health outcomes, and general health. The program also promotes learning and growth, lessens food insecurity, and aids in the fight against poverty. This brief details the change in WIC participation and benefit redemption food costs during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020 through February 2022) and provides recommendations to strengthen WIC now and beyond the pandemic.

Largely due to the opioid crisis, the federal government has increased its focus on and funding for programs that address both treatment and employment outcomes for people with substance use disorder (SUD). Programs that combine employment services with SUD treatment or recovery efforts aim to achieve the dual goals of sustaining recovery and improving economic well-being. This report documents five programs that combine SUD treatment and recovery services with employment services. It also offers recommendations for those already implementing similar programs or interested in developing them.

The Aspen Institute’s Financial Security Program’s two-part Financial Resilience series will highlight the foundational role benefits play in supporting household financial resilience, elevate the insights and work of benefit leaders, and discuss the opportunities for scale and innovations needed in public benefits and workplace benefits. Part 2 of this webinar series, Modernizing Workplace Benefits to Support Financial Resilience, will take place on November 17, 2022 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. EDT. This webinar will highlight a new framework for financial resilience which showcases the importance of workplace benefits in holistically supporting households to manage and mitigate the impact of financial shocks. Speakers will explore commitments by private sector leaders to support workers’ financial resilience and elevate the benefit innovators: investors, benefit providers and administrators, employees, and fintech. These innovators are currently leading the way to modernize workplace benefits and scale innovations to ensure all workers and their families are financially resilient. The first webinar occurred on October 13, 2022.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Clearinghouse for Labor and Evaluation and Research (CLEAR) has been the agency’s flagship clearinghouse for the past 10 years with a mission to make labor research more accessible for use in decision-making. The CLEAR team conducts independent systematic reviews designed to identify and summarize high quality labor-related evaluation and research studies, answer “what works?” questions, and support evidence-based decision making on labor policies and programs.

In recognition of its 10-year milestone, the Department’s Chief Evaluation Officer will be conducting a series of three webinars which are designed to introduce or refresh stakeholders on what CLEAR is and how to use it. The first webinar in this series, CLEAR 101: An Introduction to CLEAR, will be held on October 25, 2002 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Webinar panelists will guide participants to learn CLEAR fundamentals and how to navigate CLEAR’s website and information. Subsequent webinars will be held on November 16, 2022 and December 13, 2022; updates will appear in upcoming PeerTA newsletters.

When it comes to cash transfer programs like welfare for single parents and especially mothers, most of the evaluation and economic modeling efforts have focused on how those programs impact the amount of paid work single parents do. However, there has been less attention to the value of parental time and how that matters for children’s development. This podcast from the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison features Joseph Mullins, an economist at the University of Minnesota, who developed an economic model for U.S. cash transfer programs that attempts to place an accurate value on parents’ time when assessing cash transfer programs.

Healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs aim to support the well-being of families by teaching them skills to improve communication and conflict management, how to recognize the characteristics of healthy romantic relationships, and how to strengthen existing relationships. HMRE programs may pair a relationship skills curriculum with other services, such as individualized job development or instruction on financial planning, that aim to promote economic stability or content on parenting skills. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief describes typical patterns of participation in three programs that were part of the Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services (STREAMS) evaluation, a large multisite evaluation conducted from 2015 to 2022 to identify strategies for improving the delivery and effectiveness of healthy marriage and relationship education programs. The brief identifies distinct patterns of participation in each of these programs and provides profiles of the clients who participate in these distinct ways.

Domestic Violence Awareness Month (DVAM) was launched nationwide in October 1987 as a way to connect and unite individuals and organizations working on domestic violence issues while raising awareness for those issues. This toolkit from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) provides information, background, messaging, templates, and content to promote involvement in #DVAM2022 and express a commitment to seeing a national culture where we are all safe, empowered, and free from domestic violence.

The #WeAreResilient toolkit includes:

• Details about NCADV and DVAM
• Information about Domestic Violence (including graphics, links to blog posts and fact sheets, and online resources)
• Samples and Templates
• More Ways to #PowerUp with NCADV