Parents, extended family, and communities are all responsible for promoting children’s well-being and protecting them from trauma. When children cannot remain safely with their parents, child welfare experts view kinship foster care as a best practice and seek opportunities to promote a “kin first” approach. This Chapin Hall policy brief identifies how kinship families form, details evidence of how kinship diversion programs operate, and offers policy and practice recommendations on how to explore, make meaning of, and implement changes to child welfare agencies’ kinship diversion practices.

Working with previously untapped community partners helps kinship-serving agencies to better empower and sustain kinship families. The Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network will host a webinar on June 13, 2023 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET featuring a panel representing national organizations, including Family Resource Centers, that have local programming in communities across the country. Speakers will share how and why they began supporting kinship families and provide strategies for approaching untapped collaborators and working with them to serve local communities.

Child poverty is associated with both short- and long-term health and well-being. Poverty affects child health directly through the experience of deprivation, such as through food insufficiency or lack of housing, but also indirectly through the availability of parental or community resources. Economic resources also shape children's access to health-promoting policies, like education, child care, parental leave, and health care, which affect both current and later-life health and mortality. Many income support policies also reduce poverty and improve economic well-being, which in turn improves child health. This free open access article reviews the evidence on income support policies in the United States and their effects on child health. This paper is not an exhaustive literature review but paints a broad picture of findings related to income support and child health. It also outlines policy considerations and areas where additional research is needed to understand how income support and poverty reduction might best support child health.

Research has suggested that people living in higher poverty areas experience more acute systemic problems than people in lower poverty areas (e.g., limited access to medical services, healthy and affordable food, quality education, and civic engagement opportunities). Government agencies and researchers have previously identified counties with high rates of poverty over an extended period as targets for increased level of support. While definitions vary, counties are typically considered to be in persistent poverty if they maintained poverty rates of 20 percent or more for the past 30 years. This Census Bureau report expands upon the persistent poverty literature by examining subcounty geographies (specifically, census tracts) and comparing those results to county results. By using this smaller geography, additional populations that may benefit from targeted intervention are identifiable.

Youth Thrive, a research-informed framework on youth well-being and an action-oriented initiative of the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP), is designed to better support healthy development and promote well-being for youth with partners across the country. For the past eight years, Youth Thrive has focused on strategies to improve systems that serve youth who are most marginalized in society, specifically focusing on child welfare and juvenile justice systems and the service system that supports youth who are at-risk of homelessness. CSSP will host a webinar on June 8, 2023 from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET to discuss new resources from Youth Thrive which organizations can use to help young people build their protective and promotive factors. Participants will learn about resources such as new graphics and animated videos, a practice blueprint with many tools and guides, an interactive professional development workshop for staff on social connections, and an instructional video on the Youth Thrive Self-Assessment Survey.

According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, 45% of rural adults say they have been impacted by the opioid epidemic, and 74% of farmers and farmworkers have been directly affected. Rural communities encounter unique challenges when combating substance misuse in the community and the workplace. Rural areas typically have a high poverty rate, are sparsely located, and lack access to healthcare, mental health, and recovery services. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Workforce Investment (OWI), in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Appalachian Regional Commission, and the First Tennessee Development District and its partners, will host a webinar on May 31, 2023 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET that will highlight how opioid addiction has impacted the rural workforce and the resources, promising practices, and grant opportunities available to support recovery through the workforce system.

State and local benefits agency staff are invited to join a training with Kristi Thornton of the Federal Communications Commission on May 26, 2023 at 1:00 p.m. ET to learn about relevant law concerning SMS messaging to engage with public benefits applicants and recipients. This training will describe a declaratory ruling issued by an FCC Bureau in January 2023, and other guidance public benefits programs should consider (including non-health and integrated delivery models).

After registering, registrants will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

It is estimated that 20 million youth are estimated to currently have a mental health disorder. Further, increasing rates of depression, obesity, gun violence, and sexual and emotional abuse are among the many factors harming children and having an impact on their mental health. Black, Hispanic, Native, American Indian, and LGBTQ+ children also experience disparities in many areas, including access to treatment. This National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation infographic explores these threats to child health as well as expert recommendations for improving child health and well-being.

With the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, states are now required to provide case management to all Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Employment and Training (SNAP E&T) program participants. The purpose of this study was to help the Food and Nutrition Service better understand how states are implementing the SNAP E&T case management requirement. The study had four objectives: describe states' approaches to SNAP E&T case management; describe states' responses to the new program requirement for case management; provide a comprehensive picture of states' approaches to SNAP E&T assessment; and document states' approaches to offering participant reimbursements. This report summarizes state survey and case study findings and highlights promising practices and lessons learned that can be used to support states as they work to provide case management services aligned with their participants' needs, available resources, and program priorities.

The U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration will host the third webinar in a series focused on trauma, healing-centered care, and the public workforce system on May 30, 2023 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET. This webinar will provide an overview of healing-centered care and its importance for fostering a supportive and caring environment for youth program participants and workforce staff. Healing-centered care is a strengths-based approach to working with youth that acknowledges the trauma of an individual without defining them by their experiences. Webinar presenters will also share best practices for applying this knowledge to service delivery to better support youth program participants on their healing and their mental health.