The Reentry and Employment Opportunities – Adult Program (REO) is designed to strengthen urban communities through an employment-centered program that incorporates mentoring, job training, and other comprehensive transitional services. The REO Community website provides new ideas and tools to do the invaluable work of changing lives and renewing futures of former offenders. The website includes information on:

• Improving program practices, including case management and mentoring
• Supporting transitions for ex-offenders, including program and job retention
• Strengthening partnerships to provide strong supportive services and seamless transitions
• Ensuring sustainability for programs

Youth Thrive’s five protective and promotive factors are five essential elements that research tells us help young people thrive, even in the face of adversity. The five factors are youth resilience, social connections, knowledge of adolescent development, concrete support, and cognitive and social-emotional competence. This video reviews why each factor is important, and how taken together they contribute to young people’s overall well-being.

Holistic support services are critical to increasing skills training access, completion, and connection to quality jobs. This webinar video recording examined how intentional investments in supportive services help to address racial wealth gaps and the unprecedented rates of basic needs insecurity facing today’s students — adult learners who are balancing work, school, and family responsibilities. Speakers also discussed how community college, training provider, and community partner staff can help learners navigate education, public benefit, and resource options to ensure that resources go to those who need them the most.

This blogpost provides an overview of the basics behind extended foster care. Extended foster care is an approach that allows youth to remain in or re-enter care beyond their 18th birthday. The blogpost addresses key questions, including: at what age does foster care stop, what happens when youth age out of foster care, what federal laws help states fund extended foster care, why is extended foster care important, what services are available through extended foster care, are young people helped by extended foster care, and what states offer extended foster care. Links to additional resources from the Annie E. Casey Foundation are also provided.

This practice guide is a resource for a broad range of human services and fatherhood programs striving to be more inclusive of and responsive to fathers. Building on literature from the field and interviews with human services providers that engage fathers in services, this guide outlines the benefits of developing community partnerships between father-focused and other human services programs. It also describes various strategies programs can use to develop partnerships that can increase father engagement in programming and improve outcomes for fathers and their families. The guide’s goal is to help programs develop strategic partnerships that are mutually beneficial and can increase father engagement in their communities.

AdoptUSKids will host a webinar on June 2, 2022 at 3:00 p.m. ET where presenters will discuss the impact of parenting dynamics and expectations on the relationships in families formed through adoption, foster care, or kinship care. The webinar will explore how to engage parents in examining their past and how their actions contribute to family dysfunction and increase the risk for placement disruption. The presenters — child welfare professionals with lived experience — will also offer tips about providing services to the whole family to improve relationship dynamics and prevent unnecessary placement disruption.

The Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) announced the release of the Fiscal Year 2022 Transitional Living Program (TLP) Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO). The Transitional Living Programs implement, enhance, and/or support effective strategies for successful transition to sustainable living for runaway and homeless youth ages 16 to under 22 and/or pregnant and parenting youth ages 16 to under 22 and their dependent child(ren). Grants awarded under this announcement will have a start date of September 30, 2022 and will be for a 36-month project period. Applications are due by June 21, 2022.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief is an overview of how HPOG 2.0 programs adapted during the COVID-19 pandemic and continued to provide services to participants. It examines changes programs adopted during the first 10 months of the COVID-19 pandemic (approximately March—December 2020). Local HPOG 2.0 staff described strategies that helped them continue operations despite unanticipated implementation hurdles. The brief also highlights promising practices that may be of interest to healthcare training providers and policymakers.

Many low-income families are still bearing the brunt of the economic impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic. This qualitative study was conducted to understand the financial impact of the pandemic on low-income households, with a focus on how families used credit and debt to manage financial challenges during the pandemic. Study findings show that many low-income households of color are using credit products such as credit cards and dangerous payday loans to navigate financial hardships. This research also makes clear that struggling families are barely managing and remain stuck in a cycle of financial insecurity.

Economic assistance programs help provide low-income individuals and families with income stability, with benefits accruing not just to the families receiving assistance but to the economy as a whole. This paper reviews how cash assistance programs—the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Child Tax Credit, and TANF—and other in-kind supports, such as SNAP, Medicaid, and housing assistance, serve as a backstop for unpredictable income, low income, and joblessness among low-income households who face economic transitions. The paper also highlights the critical role of the expanded Child Tax Credit, which provided families a monthly cash payment between July and December 2021.