This Office of Family Assistance Information Memorandum (IM) highlights how Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds can be used to support families with childcare needs, including parents and caregivers who provide care at home. It offers flexible ways for TANF programs to support family stability while recognizing the realities many caregivers face when balancing work, caregiving responsibilities, and economic hardship.

The IM can help TANF practitioners think more broadly about how childcare supports fit into employment and family well-being goals. It also offers useful guidance for program planning, policy discussions, and partnerships with childcare providers and community organizations. TANF programs looking to strengthen support for caregivers, reduce barriers to participation, or expand family-centered approaches may consider how they can apply this information in their own communities.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) announced a new childcare reform package aimed at making childcare more affordable, expanding access for families, and increasing parental choice. For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs, this announcement is especially important because childcare challenges often affect whether parents can participate in work, education, or training activities consistently. The announcement helps TANF practitioners understand emerging federal priorities and how childcare policy may continue to evolve to better support working families.

This ACF resource can also help TANF practitioners identify opportunities to strengthen coordination between TANF and childcare systems while reducing barriers that prevent parents from maintaining employment. The reforms emphasize flexibility and accessibility, which may be particularly valuable for families with non-traditional work schedules or limited local childcare options. By staying informed about these changes, TANF staff can better connect families to supports that promote stability and long-term economic mobility.

Childcare support is a key piece of how Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs help parents work, attend training, and stay on track toward stability. But increased attention on fraud and improper payments can create pressure to tighten rules in ways that may unintentionally limit access. The American Public Human Services Association will host a webinar on June 4, 2026 at 1:30 p.m. ET that will focus on how better system design can prevent issues before they happen, rather than reacting after the fact.

The webinar will walk through where childcare subsidy breakdowns typically occur, such as in eligibility, attendance tracking, or payment processes, and shows how aligning these pieces can reduce errors without adding extra steps for staff or families. For TANF practitioners, this helps address a common challenge: maintaining program integrity while keeping services accessible and manageable. It points to practical ways to build safeguards directly into everyday workflows.

By understanding that many issues stem from system gaps rather than individual behavior, TANF staff can use this resource to strengthen oversight in a way that supports both accountability and access—helping ensure families continue receiving the childcare support they need to stay employed.

The American Public Human Services Association will host a webinar on May 7, 2026 at 2:00 p.m. to explore how childcare systems and TANF programs can better align in a shifting policy and operational environment. TANF programs can use these insights to strengthen partnerships with childcare administrators, improve access to subsidized care, and better support work participation and family stability.

Coordinating services across multiple public benefit programs can significantly improve how families access supports and navigate human services systems. This toolkit, funded by the Administration for Children and Families, was designed to help state and local agencies better align programs and services to support whole families.

The resource provides practical tools and structured guidance for identifying coordination challenges, developing shared goals across agencies, implementing cross-program strategies, and tracking progress over time. By helping agencies move away from siloed service delivery and toward integrated approaches, the toolkit aims to reduce administrative barriers, improve the experiences families have when seeking multiple benefits, and strengthen outcomes for children and parents. For TANF programs, these strategies can support stronger coordination with programs such as workforce services, SNAP, childcare, and child welfare — helping families access the full range of supports needed to achieve long-term stability and economic mobility.

This Heritage Foundation report focuses specifically on how eligibility rules for pre-K education subsidies may affect couple decision-making. It provides an example of how program rules across systems can create complex financial trade-offs for families. For TANF administrators working in cross-system partnerships, this piece underscores the importance of understanding how education, childcare, and other supports align with family economic mobility strategies.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) announced the appointment of Wendy Horman as Director of the Office of Child Care (OCC) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs, leadership within the OCC is closely connected to TANF’s statutory focus on work preparation, employment, and family economic improvement. Access to stable childcare remains a critical support that enables parents to participate in job search, training, and employment activities. As director, Horman will lead the OCC within the Office of Early Childhood Education and work to strengthen the Child Care Development Fund, the United States’ largest national voucher program, which provides states with funding to help low-income families access childcare. Her work will focus on supporting families and improving child outcomes, empowering states and programs to improve alignment with local approaches to services, and eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy to deliver maximum benefit to the families ACF serves.

Families that receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance are often in a state of crisis. They face immediate material needs, and these unmet basic needs put families at an increased risk for investigations in the child welfare system. Addressing unmet material needs among TANF participants, through providing concrete supports, can help prevent child maltreatment and ultimately keep children in their homes.

This tipsheet is intended for state, county, and Tribal TANF leaders who make program-level decisions about the types of resources and services that their programs offer to TANF participants.

The Office of Child Care (OCC) works with Child Care Development Funds grantees to ensure that all program funds are used to the benefit of eligible children and families. This OCC factsheet highlights their efforts to strengthen program integrity by focusing on reducing administrative errors and preventing, detecting, and eliminating fraud.

The Office of Family Assistance published this Dear Colleague Letter to address how states may use TANF funds to expand educational choice and support families who choose educational alternatives to governmental entities, including private and faith-based options. State agencies and other interested parties may find it helpful to review prior guidance, TANF-ACF-PI-2005-01, which provided information about when and how federal TANF and state maintenance-of-effort funds may be used for early childhood education, school readiness, kindergarten, and other public education programs.