Crittenton Women's Union's Bridge to Self-Sufficiency is a theory of change that takes a multi-faceted approach to fostering economic mobility. The theory describes a person’s advancement from poverty to economic self-sufficiency as a journey across a bridge supported by five critical pillars—family stability, well-being, education and training, financial management, and employment and career management. Coaches work with clients to identify strengths and help them cross the ‘bridge” to long-term goals of economic self-sufficiency.

Today in the United States, 57,000 children are living in group placements. This report describes the importance of limiting the role of residential treatment care to its intended purpose, as well as how state and local leaders can work together to enhance family-oriented services. The end goal is to create brighter futures and families for America’s most vulnerable youth.

This issue of Future of Children focuses on two-generation approaches to improving children’s development. A child’s home environment can impact stress, education, health, income, employment, and more throughout his or her life. Two-generation programs serve parents and children simultaneously to improve family wellbeing. The articles within this journal emphasize current programs and identify the many benefits of using a two-generation approach.

From June 29 to July 1, 2015, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Family Assistance (OFA), hosted the Systems to Family Stability National Policy Academy meeting in Washington, D.C. at the Loews Madison Hotel. Eight teams (seven states and one county) participated in this kick-off meeting for the dynamic, 18-month policy academy that is designed to build collaborative systems within and across agencies to improve family economic security. The Academy has three primary objectives:
1) Build career pathways through job-driven training and alignment of TANF and workforce systems;
2) Improve business processes and systems coordination; and
3) Enhance case management by understanding brain science and applying two-generation approaches.
Over the course of the three-day meeting, experts presented the research evidence base, and sites had the opportunity to learn from peer programs’ development and implementation across these three objectives. In addition to plenary and breakout sessions, the agenda included eight hours of dedicated team time for sites to receive individualized coaching and facilitation from technical assistance coaches and expert content faculty.

Family Rewards 2.0 was launched in July 2011 in the Bronx, New York and Memphis, Tennessee. This report presents early findings on the program’s implementation and families’ receipt of rewards during the first two years. While still offering rewards in the areas of children’s education, family health, and parents’ work, Family Rewards 2.0 has fewer rewards in each domain, offers the education rewards only to high school students, makes the rewards timelier by paying them each month, and includes family guidance.

This final report documents the implementation by eight organizations of the yearlong, multi-component Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) program model of marriage and relationship education services. It presents information about implementation of the programs, the characteristics of couples who enrolled, and their participation in the programs.

This report provides early implementation findings from a study of six Responsible Fatherhood Reentry grantees that provide soon-to-be and recently-released fathers and their families with an array of activities and services in responsible fatherhood/parenting, healthy marriage/relationships, and economic stability. The goals of the programs are to help stabilize fathers and their families, move the fathers toward self-sufficiency, and reduce recidivism.

This post highlights recent resources from the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services and Education that can help enrich children’s early language experiences by providing tips for talking, reading, and singing with young children. The resources include tip sheets for families, teachers, and caregivers; a developmental milestone chart; and a fact sheet that highlights the benefits of being bilingual. All tip sheets are available in both English and Spanish.

Over the past several decades, men have been making up a growing share of single parent householders. In 1960, about 14% of single parent households were headed by fathers; today, almost 25% are headed by fathers. This report from the Pew Research Center analyzes this trend and the data about characteristics of these single-father households.

This blog post, written by an analyst at the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE), discusses his new role as a father and the work he does with the Parents and Children Together Evaluation (PACT). PACT documents real stories of dads served by fatherhood programs across the country, as well as identifies innovative and effective new ways to serve this population.