Maryland’s Lower Eastern Shore job center and its partners have streamlined TANF and WIOA assessment and referral processes, as well as sharing staff, spaces, and resources across programs, to improve service delivery to TANF customers. Job center partners aim to match job seekers with employers through opportunities such as a “reverse job fair,” a job search database, and a regional job developer to specifically work with customers. Maryland also focuses on serving rural populations, with transportation subsidies and a mobile job center that delivers select WIOA services to TANF clients in rural areas.

This brief is organized into sections on joint service delivery, resource sharing, shared learning, and managing collaborative activities. Readers may also access links to the state TANF plan and funding information for more context and resources. This brief is part of the TANF Works! TANF/WIOA Collaboration Series, through which the Office of Family Assistance’s Integrating Innovative Employment and Economic Stability Strategies (IIEESS) initiative seeks to highlight innovative coordination strategies of TANF and WIOA programs to serve low-income or vulnerable populations.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report reviews the effectiveness of using coaches to help low-income individuals move toward self-sufficiency. The evaluation profiles four coaching models: Iowa’s Family Development and Self-Sufficiency (FaDSS); coaching at home visits implemented in Jefferson County, Colorado; LIFT, a national nonprofit organization that delivers career and financial coaching in Washington (D.C.), New York (New York), Chicago (Illinois), and Los Angeles (California); and MyGoals for Employment Success, a model designed by MDRC and piloted in Baltimore (Maryland) and Houston (Texas).

This Annie E. Casey Foundation blogpost features lessons from Maryland MENTOR to illustrate how to improve the quality and quantity of mentoring programs. Also mentioned are projects that Maryland MENTOR has initiated to increase the number of mentors, including convening town halls, building professional development skills for mentors, and creating a database to connect volunteers with young people looking for mentors. While this organization’s scope is limited to Maryland, some findings noted in the blogpost can be used to help grow and support mentoring programs nationally.

This University of Maryland report, a part of the annual Life After Welfare series, reviews the outcomes of households that are no longer on TANF caseloads. The report examines the characteristics, employment, and earnings outcomes of 12,597 families who left Maryland’s Temporary Cash Assistance (TCA) program between January 2004 and March 2017. The findings suggest that these families improved their financial situations after exiting TCA, compared to their circumstances before TCA enrollment. However, these families still struggle to maintain independence from cash assistance following exit from the program.

This report, produced by the University of Maryland, examines characteristics of adults who receive Temporary Cash Assistance (TCA) for children. Maryland’s TCA focuses on the economic stability of entire families by focusing both on child academic success and earning potential of caregivers. However, TCA services differ. Some families qualify for benefits for both themselves and their children, while other adults receive benefits only for children. This report evaluates the different sociodemographic characteristics between recipient and non-recipient adults, and assesses whether these different strategies affect the children under their care. Promoting the well-being of all children – regardless whether a caregiver is a recipient – is an important component of multiple-generation programs.

This study from the Fatherhood Research and Practice Network provides the final evaluation results of a randomized controlled trial of a culturally tailored fatherhood curriculum for low-income fathers residing in Baltimore, Maryland. The program is called “Developing all Dads for Manhood and Parenting” (DAD MAP); study results showed some gains in desired outcomes in the short term, but the gains waned as time passed after program completion.