On October 17, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) issued a joint Information Memorandum (IM) to all ACF programs emphasizing the importance of meaningful father involvement to better serve children and families. In particular, this memorandum highlights research findings that demonstrate the value of fathers’ involvement in the lives of their children and families, as well as identifies promising practices to promote and sustain fathers’ engagement, regardless of their physical location or extent of custodial participation.

This blog post from Clarence H. Carter, Director, Office of Family Assistance, announces the release of an information memorandum that details efforts to prioritize and enhance father engagement in ACF-funded programs. The memorandum was signed by the leadership of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, including the Children’s Bureau, the Family and Youth Services Bureau, the Office of Child Support Enforcement, the Office of Family Assistance, the Office of Child Care, and the Office of Head Start. ACF affirms its commitment to fathers and families and encourages paternal involvement in family support and child welfare programs.

This 20-minute podcast mediated by National Resource Center for Healthy Marriage and Families Project Director Robyn Cenizal and former Colorado Human Services Provider Mary Roberto discusses Ms. Roberto’s previous role and experience, family violence options, and the importance of outreach for survivors and the community. The podcast serves as a proactive resource for programs when expanding their outreach and building educational resources for the community on family violence.

This article features a nationally representative study of safe, stable, nurturing relationships among children and youth in the United States ages 1 month to 17 years. Researchers discovered that almost 1 in 4 children and adolescents resided in family environments with just modest levels of safety, stability, and nurturance, while approximately 1 in 15 experienced consistently low levels of these factors. Lack of safe, stable, nurturing relationships seems to most strongly affect older adolescents and children in nontraditional family structures and appear to have critical implications for future functioning of these youth. The article includes a discussion of the associations among the indicators of safe, stable, and nurturing relationships and their implications for policy and practice.

To learn how parents prefer to receive information on early childhood development and parenting, Child Trends conducted diverse focus groups of first-time parents and then created a research-to-practice brief. The brief highlights five points the parents raised about their information-seeking preferences and behavior and the link between what parents know about parenting and child development and their behavior with their children. The study found that parents desired high-quality knowledge on early childhood development and parenting skills, and it noted their clear preferences on how they wanted to receive this information.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance (OFA) Regions I through IV hosted the OFA Regions I-IV East Coast TANF Directors’ Meeting, Leveraging Partnerships to Help Families Achieve Economic Stability, on July 24-26, 2018 at the Westin Boston Waterfront in Boston, Massachusetts. The meeting convened representatives from TANF programs from Regions I-IV and provided TANF representatives with an opportunity to learn about promising practices, discuss shared challenges faced by TANF programs, and share ideas with peers from other states about how to respond to the needs of low-income families. The meeting also included practitioners and researchers who shared information about their own work, and who looked to TANF representatives and federal partners for future research opportunities. Representatives attended presentations from experts and program administrators, and worked with other states to think of innovative practices during Team Work sessions.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation research-to-practice brief intended for Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) practitioners offers five tips to guide the design and implementation of HMRE programs at secondary schools. The tips can also be used to enhance existing programs and are based on a survey that was part of the Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services evaluation of five Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education programs.

This Urban Institute policy brief reviews the extent that children’s negative behavioral outcomes continue after their fathers have been released from incarceration. The brief compares negative outcomes, such as outward displays of aggression or internalized expressions, including withdrawal or anxiety, among children when their fathers are incarcerated and when they are released with outcomes of those children whose fathers have never been incarcerated.

The National Association of Workforce Boards (NAWB) and Innovate+Educate invite workforce development boards wanting to learn about and integrate two-generation or family-centered approaches into their workforce development services to participate in the Family Centered Employment Community of Practice (FCE CoP). Through the FCE CoP, participating workforce development boards can: learn about family-centered employment strategies, share information and tools, determine strategies on collecting and using data and on leveraging resources to support a whole family approach, and learn how policy affects serving the whole family. Deadline for applications is December 20, 2018, 11:59 p.m. EST.

This blog from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, authored by OFA Director Clarence H. Carter, is part of the Self-Sufficiency Series: Solutions from the Field, which profiles local programs from across the country finding solutions to accomplish the goals of encouraging self-sufficiency and personal responsibility, eliminating barriers to economic opportunity, and supporting strong families and healthy marriage. In particular, Circles USA and Open Table are highlighted for their efforts to boost the social capital individuals need to help them work towards self-sufficiency.