The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Family Assistance (OFA), Regions IV, V, VI, VII, and VIII hosted the Tribal Technical Assistance Meeting on May 3‐5, 2016 at the Hilton Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport Mall of America Hotel in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The meeting brought together Tribal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Native Employment Works (NEW) stakeholders to discuss innovative strategies and collaborations to promote economic and social well‐being for individuals, families, and tribal communities. During the meeting, tribal representatives engaged in talking circles and listening sessions, shared best practices, and participated in workshops and action planning in order to more successfully serve the program participants in their communities.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program stakeholders and their human services partners increasingly understand the importance of meaningfully engaging noncustodial parents while also holding them accountable for the economic and social growth of their children. A noncustodial parent does not have primary care, custody, or control of the child and may have an obligation to pay child support. It is important to note that many noncustodial parents pay child support and are actively engaged in their children’s lives. However, barriers such as unemployment, underemployment, or incarceration can hinder noncustodial parents from providing for their children, even when many want to do so. Some TANF agencies and their partners have built programs to provide the necessary supports and connections for these individuals to help them achieve self-sufficiency/

The OFA PeerTA Network hosted a webinar on June 9, 2015 at 1:30 PM Eastern, titled Strategies for Building and Maintaining Noncustodial Parent Programs to share strategies for building and sustaining programs to engage and serve noncustodial parents. While previous webinars have focused on strategies to engage noncustodial parents, this webinar focused on the nuts and bolts of program development; it introduced several programs that have supported noncustodial parents for at least 10 years and explored how these sustainable programs were planned and initiated.

At the end of this webinar, participants were able to:

• be aware of three models of TANF programs and their partners creating programs to serve noncustodial parents
• understand how these programs began, including justifying the need for a program serving noncustodial parents, mapping available assets, and identifying a champion; and
• be ready to identify some next steps that they could take within their agencies to start a program that would work for their communities.
Featured presenters:

Ann Marie Winter, Chief Operating Officer, and Margie McGranahan, Employment Services Director, Gulf Coast Jewish Family and Community Services. Established in 1996, Florida’s Noncustodial Parent Employment Program aims to help unemployed or underemployed noncustodial parents establish a pattern of regular child support payments by obtaining and maintaining employment. It is operated through a series of partnerships between organizations such as CareerSource Pinellas and the Gulf Coast Jewish Family and Community Services.

Juan G. Valdez, Parent Support Services Manager, Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services. The Parent Support Services program in Illinois was established in April 1994 to provide noncustodial parents with a way to address their needs and concerns to support their children. TANF dollars are used to provide specific services to qualified noncustodial parents.

Mike Roberts, Human Services Program Specialist for Districts 2, 3 and 6, Alabama Department of Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention. The Alabama Fatherhood Initiative is a joint effort of the Department of Human Resources Family Assistance and Child Support divisions, developed in 2002 to further the welfare reform goal of strengthening families, enhancing child support collections, and addressing other needs of children who are growing up without the involvement of natural fathers in their lives.

The Region IV Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance (OFA); Region IV U.S. Department of Labor (DOL); and Region IV Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) convened a meeting entitled "Sustainable Employment Strategies: A TANF, Workforce, and Child Support Collaboration" in Atlanta, Georgia, from August 14-16, 2013. The meeting provided TANF, Workforce, and Child Support administrators and staff with an open forum for discussing critical issues impacting the collaboration of their respective entities towards sustainable employment strategies for their TANF and hard-to-serve population, and an opportunity to network both amongst themselves and with Region IV leadership. Region IV staff from each agency--ACF, DOL, and OCSE--shared lessons learned and gathered strategies that can improve their own programs' ability to identify and address multiple barriers, and develop pathways to create sustainable employment and career building opportunities for program participants. In addition, the meeting gave participants an opportunity to meet with their individual State teams to develop action plans that support interagency collaboration.

In response to the technical assistance and program needs of States throughout the Southeast, the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance, Region IV, and the United States Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Region IIII, hosted a technical assistance meeting from July 24-26, 2012 in Atlanta, Georgia. This meeting allowed member States to work alongside their peers to outline specific challenges faced by TANF and WIA agencies and the families they serve and posit plausible peer-based solutions for moving low-income and working families toward economic self-sufficiency. State TANF and WIA directors and program staff also discussed ways to promote interagency collaboration. Topics included: engaging veterans and military families in the TANF and WIA systems; leveraging partnerships to strengthen subsidized employment and transitional job initiatives; developing demand-driven career pathways for low-income individuals and TANF participants; maximizing WIA youth and TANF funds to support summer youth employment initiatives; and improving skill-building for low-income individuals and TANF participants with barriers to employment.

To support further progress in this area, ACF is sponsoring a large-scale, comprehensive demonstration and evaluation of programs designed to strengthen relationships and support the marital aspirations of unmarried couples expecting a child: the Building Strong Families project (BSF). To inform the design and development of strong BSF programs, Mathematica conducted a related project (titled Evaluating the Implementation of Programs to Strengthen Families with Children Born Out of Wedlock, or ESF) to identify and study existing programs that have aspects similar to those envisioned for BSF programs. A major purpose of that project was to identify design and implementation issues likely to arise in BSF programs and describe strategies that have been used to address them in similar programs.

One program that was deemed similar to BSF was Family Connections in Alabama (FCA). The FCA was a 12-month project conducted during 2003 that aimed to design, implement, and evaluate a program to provide family life education to low-income unmarried parents of young children. It was selected for study because it was one of very few newly emerging programs that included a focus on couple relationships among  low-income unmarried parents. Although some key aspects of the program differed from those of the BSF program model, several of the goals, approaches, and expected outcomes were similar enough to warrant examination for lessons that could inform the development and operation of BSF programs.

This report describes and develops lessons learned from the FCA program that are relevant for designing and implementing BSF programs. It first describes the overall program design and planning, and then discusses implementation in each of the study sites, focusing on staffing, participant recruitment, curriculum, structure and content of classes, and receptivity of staff and participants to the program. The final chapter discusses implications for developing and operating relationship/marriage interventions with unwed couples—the BSF target population—and discusses how the lessons learned may apply to future BSF program design and content.

This report is not an evaluation of the Family Connections in Alabama program. Rather, it focuses on what BSF program developers can learn from FCA given the underlying differences in program goals and design. A separate report presents findings of an evaluation of the FCA (Adler-Baeder et al. 2004). (author abstract)

The Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance Region IV convened the 2011 TANF Priority Update Workshop in Atlanta, Georgia on August 17-19, 2011 to discuss the status of TANF programs and foster peer dialogue among State TANF directors to discuss key issues impacting their programs and share best practices and lessons learned with their peers. The meeting brought together State TANF directors and program staff from across Region IV to strategize ways to guide low-income individuals and families to greater economic self-sufficiency while providing input and feedback on TANF legislation. Specific topics included asset building strategies for domestic violence survivors, service improvement for refugees and immigrants, career pathways and education, innovative solutions for economic recovery, and collaboration improvement strategies.

In the foreground of reauthorization the Administration for Children and Families Regions I, II, III, and IV convened the first ever 2010 East Coast TANF Directors’ Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 19-21, 2010. The conference brought together 24 State TANF directors and program staff to strategize on ways to move low-income and working families closer to economic self-sufficiency while providing important input on the development of new TANF legislation. Specific topics included subsidized employment, strengthening safety-net partnerships, improving assessments and service delivery for domestic violence victims, and asset development strategies to improve long-term economic development. The conference brought together federal, state, and local partners and stakeholders to develop a new vision for a new decade and to enhance the program options available to low-income families and TANF participants.

The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Administration for Children and Families, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), in conjunction with the National Organization of Black County Officials (NOBCO) convened a two day workshop in Jackson, Mississippi, to disseminate information to county officials in a seven state area about the advantages of participating in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) program.

This report summarizes a national conference that took place in Arlington, VA, on March 20-21, 2003. The conference was jointly sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). This conference brought together substance abuse treatment agency directors and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) administrators from forty States, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands. The conference provided a forum for these policymakers and administrators to share information about their experience and concerns, and their promising strategies used in strengthening the collaboration and partnership of TANF and substance abuse treatment directors.