The Oklahoma Department of Human Services has adopted an innovative approach to preparing Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) participants for employment: fully integrating relationship skills education into its work readiness program. By transforming its TANF orientation process to focus on soft skills development and navigating workplace relationships, the agency’s integrated approach is laying a foundation for helping TANF participants obtain and sustain employment.

This brief is part of the Emerging Practice Series of the Office of Family Assistance’s Integrating Innovative Employment and Economic Stability Strategies (IIEESS) initiative, which highlights the strategies of TANF agencies and their partners to help low-income individuals gain and sustain meaningful employment. Each brief describes an emerging practice that has been implemented in one site, an overview of the program model, and the results that have been achieved. Compelling stories of participants’ success and suggestions from TANF agency staff to their peers provide actionable insights and on-the-ground perspectives.

This website offers a range of free tools couples can use to strengthen their relationships. TANF programs can share them with participants who are in committed relationships or working toward family stability. These tools can help support communication, trust, and connection, which are often tied to broader economic and social wellbeing for families.

This toolkit from National Marriage Week offers free downloadable materials to help communities highlight healthy, committed relationships. It includes promotional graphics, sample social media posts, print ads, radio scripts, and a guide with ideas for community events and awareness building activities. These resources can be a helpful addition for programs that incorporate relationship skills, family support, or partner engagement into case management or workshops, giving staff approachable tools to encourage strong interpersonal connections that contribute to family stability and economic wellbeing.

The Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network will host a webinar on February 11 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET to focus on how kinship and family support programs are building and sustaining multi-state navigator initiatives. The session will share real-world lessons about effective partnership structures, staffing strategies, data sharing, and funding approaches as well as examples of promising models that have expanded across regions. This is a chance to learn how navigator services can expand for broader reach, strengthen cross-state collaboration, and help connect families to benefits and supports.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation is hosting a webinar on February 25, 2026 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. ET to introduce Functional Family Therapy (FFT) and its use in foster care to improve outcomes for children, youth, and foster parents. FFT is an evidence-based, family-centered approach that helps strengthen relationships and increase placement stability, with research suggesting it can lead to better experiences for kids in care and higher satisfaction for caregivers. For TANF programs, understanding FFT can be useful when considering cross-system partnerships with child welfare and behavioral health providers, especially where family engagement and stability connect to participants’ broader economic and social well-being.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) has launched a new public dashboard that delivers transparent, standardized data on safety and permanency outcomes for children in foster care. The dashboard provides a centralized view of state-level child welfare performance, allowing users to explore key measures, examine trends over time, and compare data across states using information reported to ACF. 

This new tool supports ACF’s broader commitment to transparency, data quality, and performance monitoring. While the dashboard does not include TANF data or introduce new program requirements, it offers valuable context on the service landscape in which multiple ACF-administered programs operate and may inform cross-program coordination and technical assistance discussions.

The Office of Family Assistance partnered with the Children’s Bureau to develop the Families Are Stronger Together Learning Community (FAST-LC), which focused on preventing family involvement in the child welfare system through developing, implementing, and enhancing Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)–Child Welfare (CW) partnerships and innovations. FAST-LC was a one-year initiative that involved 10 Tribal and state TANF and CW agencies. 

This tip sheet accompanies a video on Strengthening Connections: Leveraging Existing Networks for Integrated Prevention Services, which highlights lessons from the FAST-LC. These resources feature representatives from the Chippewa Cree Indians of the Rocky Boy’s Reservation, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, and the California Tribal TANF Partnership, who discuss how they cultivated partnerships with agencies to plan and implement integrated prevention services.

The Office of Family Assistance partnered with the Children’s Bureau to develop the Families Are Stronger Together Learning Community (FAST-LC), which focused on preventing family involvement in the child welfare system through developing, implementing, and enhancing Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)–Child Welfare (CW) partnerships and innovations. FAST-LC was a one-year initiative that involved 10 Tribal and state TANF and CW agencies. 

This video accompanies a reflection guide and tip sheet, Strengthening Connections: Leveraging Existing Networks for Integrated Prevention Services, which highlights lessons from the FAST-LC. The video features representatives from the Chippewa Cree Indians of the Rocky Boy’s Reservation, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, and the California Tribal TANF Partnership, who discuss how they cultivated partnerships with agencies to plan and implement integrated prevention services.

Alex J. Adams, Assistant Secretary for Family Support at the Administration for Children and Families, explains in this City Journal article that a major issue in foster care is a shortage of licensed foster homes relative to the number of children entering care. This shortage leads to children being placed in emergency settings, group facilities, or temporary housing without good long-term fits.

Many families who want to foster face burdens: complicated paperwork, trainings, court involvement, and costs. Streamlining licensing would increase the pool of available foster homes. And by licensing broadly and matching carefully, the system can have “homes waiting for children, not children waiting for homes.”

This is the final video in a three-part series that aims to help Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs incorporate communication skill-building techniques from Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) programs that can promote the maintenance of two-parent families and improve job readiness, skills-building, and employment outcomes among TANF participants.

This video explains how case managers can use Speaker-Listener Technique with TANF participants, as well as how case managers can help TANF participants develop their own skills with this technique.