This blogpost brings together a collection of evidence about the connections between economic and concrete supports and involvement with child welfare. The research findings show that child and family well-being can be promoted through state and federal policies that strengthen families, promote family economic security, and reduce child protective services involvement in the lives of families. A short video provides a high-level overview of Chapin Hall’s approach to this work.

This article outlines lessons learned from a study that looked at workforce development programs serving 16 to 24-year-olds that were convicted, adjudicated of, or charged with serious crimes in the juvenile or criminal justice system. Insights include the importance of strategic job placement to help youth explore their career interests while working toward stable and lasting employment, building partnerships with employers who are willing to hire young people with system involvement and subsidizing employment for employers who are hesitant to do so, and recognizing that young people are entrepreneurial and want to explore opportunities in fields like information technology and business.

The statutory language authorizing HPOG provides that funded grants should be “designed to provide eligible individuals with the opportunity to obtain education and training for occupations in the health care field that pay well and are expected to either experience labor shortages or be in high demand.” This report provides empirical analysis focusing on the first of these HPOG goals: training for healthcare jobs that “pay well.” It explores the prevalence of two possible training patterns that might lead to such jobs: direct entry into training for occupations requiring more/longer preparation (referred to as “Above-Entry-Level Training”), or a sequence of trainings, in a scheme consistent with the career pathways framework (referred to as “Follow-On Training”). Both rounds of HPOG (HPOG 1.0 and HPOG 2.0) emphasized utilizing a career pathways framework.

This brief shares lessons from four employment coaching programs that made major changes to their operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The discussion provides employment programs information about modifying service delivery and meeting client needs. The lessons learned from the programs in this study may help other programs provide coaching during a public health crisis or other type of emergency.

This report details the rate of youth unemployment by racial demographic during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study described in the report includes unemployment trends by age group and racial make-up using both state and national level data. Among its findings was that while unemployment decreased during the second year of the pandemic as businesses reopened and the American Rescue Plan was implemented, Black youth continued to have the highest unemployment followed by Latinos and, further, that recoveries in the labor market did not lessen racial and ethnic disparities.

This brief outlines how New York City’s Human Resources Administration (HRA) successfully restructured its upfront assessment process for individuals receiving Cash Assistance by utilizing data-driven reflection. In particular, HRA used a method called Learn, Innovate, Improve, an approach that supports rapid agency changes and ongoing improvement through the incorporation of data-informed reflection into the process of evaluating and refining solutions. HRA found that implementing this collaborative, evidence-based decision-making technique is both feasible and effective.

Though the tech industry offers opportunities for high-quality, rewarding jobs, traditional pipelines of workers seldom meet employers’ growing demands. Meanwhile, workers with tech aptitude have found it challenging to break into the industry if they lack formal credentials or direct job experience. In recent years, one promising solution for this mismatch has been registered apprenticeship.

The Urban Institute will host a discussion on June 22, 2022 from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. ET where employers, apprentices, and educators will share what they learned about launching tech apprenticeship programs—including an innovative degree-based apprenticeship led by a consortium of historically Black colleges and universities—and discuss where the field is headed.

This evidence snapshot summarizes what rigorous research tells us about 17 interventions that used subsidized employment or transitional jobs as their primary service and the interventions’ impacts on earnings, employment, the receipt of public benefits, and education and training. The data come from high- or moderate-quality studies that began between 2004 and 2015 and were reviewed by the Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse. The snapshot can guide program administrators, policymakers, researchers, and the general public on how they can apply the evidence to their context and the questions that matter to them.

To serve jobseekers effectively, employment and training programs may need to incorporate essential supportive services. These three Workforce System Strategies resources – Local Workforce Development Boards and Child Care, Evaluation of SNAP Employment and Training Pilots, and Implementing Healthcare Career Pathway Training Programs in Rural Settings – document supportive services such as childcare, training materials, transportation assistance, rental assistance, and work clothing to increase jobseeker abilities to access, prepare for, and obtain employment.

This brief is designed to help state apprenticeship expansion teams and workforce system partners understand the structure of each other's work, consider five dimensions of system alignment, and explore strategies to strengthen alignment. These dimensions are strategic planning, policy, and governance; business engagement and Registered Apprenticeship Program development; apprentice recruitment and support; funding; and data and outcomes. The report also includes a System Alignment Checklist, which is a tool to help states identify areas of strength and opportunities to better align the Registered Apprenticeship and workforce development systems.