“Concrete support in times of need” is a cornerstone of family well-being and a critical protective factor in the Strengthening Families framework from the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP). CSSP will host a webinar on November 10, 2022 from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET where Clare Anderson and Yasmin Grewal-Kök from Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago will share recent research about how economic stability affects children and families and will illustrate how this research can bolster our efforts to ensure that all families have access to the concrete supports they need to thrive. Other presentations will include updates from CSSP staff and the Children’s Trust Fund Alliance about new resources and opportunities.

Approximately 20,000 young adults in foster care transition to adulthood and independent living each year. A majority of these young people want to pursue postsecondary education, but they are less likely to enroll in postsecondary institutions than their peers who have not interacted with the child welfare system. To address this gap, federal and state programs have been implemented to address barriers and provide supports to pursue a college degree. In 2001, as an amendment to the Chafee Foster Care Independence Act, the Education and Training Voucher (ETV) program became the first federal program aimed to assist young adults in or formerly in foster care with their postsecondary educational needs. This report uses administrative data from 10 states to describe how ETV programs operate, who receives ETV vouchers, how and when they are used, and the educational outcomes for young adults who receive ETVs compared with their peers who do not receive ETVs.

City and community leaders from government, philanthropy, and practice can make a difference in residents’ financial lives. They have the tools, policy and program levers, and decision making power to influence financial well-being at the local level and help narrow the racial wealth gap. This dashboard illustrates financial health and wealth across cities and states and by race and ethnicity, where data are available. Users can search by city or zip code to select a PUMA (Public Use Microdata Area) or area containing no fewer than 100,000 people. Data for each PUMA can be filtered to identify data on: median net worth; percent of residents with delinquent debt; percent of residents who are student loan holders with delinquent student loan debt; percent of low-income households with housing-cost burden; percent of households with at least $2,000 in emergency savings; median credit score; percent of resident who have had a foreclosure in the past two years; and the percent of residents with health insurance coverage.

This report details how states across the country are using flexible State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) to boost income security, particularly for those who face structural barriers to building wealth and income and have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. States have used some of this federal aid to expand income security programs, for example by increasing cash benefits provided through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), savings accounts for children from low-income families and people with low incomes, and one-time cash payments targeted to those with low incomes. By strengthening and expanding these programs with FRF, states can continue to improve the current and long-term well-being of individuals and families.

Service providers, policymakers, and researchers need to know how likely specific interventions are to improve employment and related outcomes if implemented in a particular setting with clients. In practice, most employment interventions offer a combination of services that are designed to improve labor market outcomes (e.g., employment, earnings, education and training, and public benefit receipt). The Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse has undertaken a series of research syntheses to explore what one can learn by looking across all the data the Pathways Clearinghouse has collected. This report uses an approach that synthesizes relationships across multiple studies to provide new evidence on the likelihood that specific interventions will improve labor market outcomes and which combinations of services are most likely to be effective for different groups of people.

Unprecedented levels of burnout and turnover are an unfortunate reality for many human services organizations today. Agencies are feeling the effects of staffing shortages and a shrinking pool of quality candidates to fill their vacant positions. Solving this crisis will require stakeholders – agencies sharing ideas and best practices, vendors, and consultants – to collaborate with one another. This brief cites examples of how states are employing multi-pronged strategies to address these issues.

This research brief shares findings from new analysis of income data of Black and white households who participate in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) program, a refundable tax credit that serves as the primary income support for low- and moderate-income families in the United States. The brief notes that because the EITC is conditioned on a household's employment and work hours, its benefits to Black workers and families may be tempered by persistent structural barriers to employment and labor market discrimination. The findings also recognize that take-up of the EITC depends on workers’ awareness of the benefit and the decision to file an income tax return. Community-based organizations and tax assistance programs have an important role in promoting awareness of the EITC and providing tax filing assistance so more eligible families can receive the program’s benefits.

Largely due to the opioid crisis, the federal government has increased its focus on and funding for programs that address both treatment and employment outcomes for people with substance use disorder (SUD). Programs that combine employment services with SUD treatment or recovery efforts aim to achieve the dual goals of sustaining recovery and improving economic well-being. This report documents five programs that combine SUD treatment and recovery services with employment services. It also offers recommendations for those already implementing similar programs or interested in developing them.

The Aspen Institute’s Financial Security Program’s two-part Financial Resilience series will highlight the foundational role benefits play in supporting household financial resilience, elevate the insights and work of benefit leaders, and discuss the opportunities for scale and innovations needed in public benefits and workplace benefits. Part 2 of this webinar series, Modernizing Workplace Benefits to Support Financial Resilience, will take place on November 17, 2022 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. EDT. This webinar will highlight a new framework for financial resilience which showcases the importance of workplace benefits in holistically supporting households to manage and mitigate the impact of financial shocks. Speakers will explore commitments by private sector leaders to support workers’ financial resilience and elevate the benefit innovators: investors, benefit providers and administrators, employees, and fintech. These innovators are currently leading the way to modernize workplace benefits and scale innovations to ensure all workers and their families are financially resilient. The first webinar occurred on October 13, 2022.

When it comes to cash transfer programs like welfare for single parents and especially mothers, most of the evaluation and economic modeling efforts have focused on how those programs impact the amount of paid work single parents do. However, there has been less attention to the value of parental time and how that matters for children’s development. This podcast from the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison features Joseph Mullins, an economist at the University of Minnesota, who developed an economic model for U.S. cash transfer programs that attempts to place an accurate value on parents’ time when assessing cash transfer programs.