As part of the multisite Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation Project, MDRC, together with its research partners, is leading an evaluation of parental employment and educational services delivered within Early Head Start (Enhanced EHS). The program model tested here aims to dually address the employment and educational needs of parents who are at risk of unemployment and the developmental needs of their children. The study is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, with additional funding from the U.S. Department of Labor.  The study uses a rigorous random assignment design comparing outcomes for families and  children who were offered Enhanced EHS with outcomes for those who could only access alternative services in the community. This report presents the final impact results approximately 42 months after families and children first entered the study. (author abstract)

This toolkit was authored by the Bridging Refugee Youth and Children’s Services (BRYCS), and provides culturally responsive parenting information to help agencies working with refugees. The toolkit includes information on how organizations can educate refugee parents in maintaining a positive relationship with their children. Authors provide an overview of research on parent education programs for this population and how to help parents access such support services, as well as helping organizations build programs for educating refugee parents.

This report was authored by the Brookings Institution and Urban Institute, with funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and First Focus. Authors review historical and current funding trends of 100 Federal programs, including TANF, Supplemental Security Income, Food Stamps, Section 8 Low-Income Housing Assistance and Low Income Home Energy Assistance, Medicaid, and Children’s Health Insurance Program. Specifically, Federal expenditures totaled $3.5 trillion in 2010, of which 11 percent ($374 billion) was devoted to children.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation released the 22nd annual Kids Count Data Book, which profiles the status of children on a national and State basis and provides rankings of States on 10 measures of well-being. The 10 measures include low birth weight babies, infant mortality, child deaths, teen deaths, teen births, teens not in school, teens not in school or not working, children in single parent homes, children in homes below the poverty line, and children in homes with parents who do not have full-time employment.

The Child Welfare Information Gateway, through the Administration for Children and Families’ Children’s Bureau, authored these tip sheets to provide parenting skills, such as bonding, attachment, dealing with temper tantrums, raising grandchildren, and supporting teen parents. The compilation of tip sheets were created with input from experts in national organizations that work to protect children and strengthen families.

The Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood grant program authorized $75 million in grants for programs to promote responsible fatherhood through three types of activities: healthy marriage, responsible parenting, and economic stability. As such, this resource from the Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation offers a systematic review of impact, implementation, and descriptive studies that have examined responsible fatherhood and related family strengthening programs that target low-income fathers.

From Lawrence Mead and Ron Haskins, through the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution, this article analyzes why low-skilled men typically work in lower level positions and provide little support for their children. Authors argue for a program to tie child support with work requirements, which is an initiative that has previously been shown to increase employment. In particular, authors highlight the Noncustodial Parents Choices (NCP Choices) program in Texas as an example to build work enforcement into the child support system.

One in three children live apart from their biological fathers, and about 40 percent of these children live in poverty. From Seedco, this brief is part of the Learnings from the Field series, and provides insights from a new wave of programs designed to help low-income, noncustodial fathers and their families. The brief highlights Seedco’s comprehensive approach to serving fathers, which includes case management, employment training, parenting classes, and financial literacy programs.

This working paper is through the Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing (CRCW) at Princeton University. With the increased Federal attention toward responsible fatherhood initiatives, this paper uses the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being to predict non-residential fathers' social and emotional involvement with their children. It was hypothesized that child, maternal, paternal, and contextual characteristics would predict father involvement. However, the data show that paternal characteristics and relational factors were the only significant predictors. Significant paternal characteristics include criminal involvement in the past year, number of children in the household and outside of the household, and whether or not he previously lived with the child. Significant relational factors include the mother's report of parental cooperation and relationship quality, the presence of domestic violence, and whether the mother has a new partner.

From MDRC, this report discusses the implementation of an enhanced version of the Early Head Start (EHS) program. Authors provide an overview of challenges to implementation as well as short-term outcomes of the program on children and parents. Understanding that living in poverty can have profound effects on young children’s development and their prospects for the future, the enhanced EHS program was designed to provide formalized parental employment and educational services were implemented within EHS. This evaluation is part of the multi-site Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation Project, sponsored by the Administration for Children and Families and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), with additional funding from the U.S. Department of Labor.