Case management assists patients with substance use disorders (SUDs) by addressing other needs while allowing patients to focus on their SUD treatment and recovery. This Advisory is based on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) 27, Comprehensive Case Management for Substance Abuse Treatment. The Advisory surveys case management principles and models, explores why SUD treatment providers might consider implementing or expanding case management use, and lists case management resources and tools.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief summarizes findings from three different demonstration projects that are designed to support noncustodial parents: the Enhanced Transitional Jobs Demonstration (ETJD), Parents and Children Together (PACT), and the Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration (CSPED). The evaluations assessed whether employment and other supportive services to disadvantaged noncustodial parents affect participants’ earnings, parental engagement, and ability to make child support payments. Findings from these projects showed significant impacts on improving noncustodial parents’ employment and earnings compared to prior evaluations of similar programs. ETJD and CSPED examined child support payments, and neither study found an impact on the amount of child support paid. However, unlike previous evaluation studies, PACT and CSPED, which had parenting workshops as a core service, generated positive impacts on father-child contact.

The Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison will hold a webinar on February 10, 2021 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET to discuss research findings on how COVID-19 has affected the mental health and well-being of essential workers and parents with children who are distance learning. Jevay Grooms of Howard University will discuss her research on the mental health of essential workers, particularly among persons of color, and whose children are learning remotely. Anna Gassman-Pines of Duke University will present results from a survey on hourly workers with children and the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of these workers.

Partnering with state leaders, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices compiled a State Roadmap for Workforce Recovery, which provides a framework to organize workforce response and recovery activities to meet four important goals toward a more equitable future post-COVID: expand access to needed support services for low-income populations, quickly connect job seekers to work, increase digital access and skill development, and improve job quality for all. Included in the report are case studies from Hawaii, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Rhode Island.

This report highlights findings from a process evaluation of the Urban Alliance’s High School Internship Program in Washington, DC, Baltimore, Northern Virginia, and Chicago. The Urban Alliance program model aims to empower economically disadvantaged high school seniors to aspire, work, and succeed. The program provides youth participants with workplace skills training, opportunities for internships to gain work experience, mentorship at the internship site, and coaching support from case managers during youths’ participation in the program as well as for program alumni. The findings of this first of three reports are drawn from interviews, focus groups, and surveys of participating students, case managers, and employers as well as a review of program and secondary data.

The Office of Family Assistance hosted a PeerTA webinar on Addressing Intergenerational Trauma among TANF Families on January 26, 2021. Understanding trauma and its transmission among families are critical considerations in human service delivery. Human services programs, including TANF, have a role to play in helping to mitigate and address the negative effects of intergenerational trauma through programming.

During this facilitated webinar, presenters defined intergenerational trauma and explored the ways in which trauma is transferred from parents to their children. Participants learned how TANF programs can minimize the impacts of intergenerational trauma, as well as heard about current research initiatives and from programs that are working to address intergenerational trauma in their communities. Presenters also examined the ways in which COVID-19 exacerbates trauma and strategies for TANF programs to identify and lessen these effects.

Presenters included Dr. Jessica Dym Bartlett and Dr. Dana Thomson, Child Trends; Dr. Mariana Chilton, Drexel University and Center for Hunger-Free Communities; Dr. Marla Conwell and Amber Hoyt, South Puget Intertribal Planning Agency (SPIPA); Alie Huxta, Associate Director of Partnerships and Strategic Planning; and Kevin Thomas, Jr., Associate Director of Operations and Asset Building, Building Wealth & Health Network. Dr. Nicole Bossard from ICF and TGC Consulting, Inc. facilitated the webinar.

This toolkit is a synthesis of a blogpost, reports, and links to previous webinars to offer health and human services leaders guidance as they design and evaluate programs targeting young families. The resources offered in this compendium are divided into several topics, including economic well-being, education, foster youth, mental health, pandemic response, policy, program design, and youth voice.

Developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy, the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework impacts how child- and family-serving programs operate and support healthy development and well-being. This brief highlights survey findings from organizational partners and members of the Strengthening Families National Network that may use the framework in their own community-based approaches. The survey results capture their viewpoints on community conditions that support child and family outcomes, including equal access to essential/basic needs, social support and connection, racial and social justice, and a change in the “social contract” toward involving community in bettering child and family well-being.

This research-to-practice brief discusses implementation of the Individual Placement and Support (IPS) employment model by the Family Service League in New York and Asian Human Services in Chicago during the COVID-19 pandemic. The IPS model was initially developed to provide employment services to individuals with serious mental illness, but is now used for a broader range of populations who have significant barriers to employment. Four core components of the IPS model are rapid job search, coordination between employment services staff and mental health providers, identification of client preferences in the types of jobs, and smaller caseloads for case workers. According to interviews with organization leaders, IPS implementation included embracing remote communications and video conferencing, offering initial help to the most vulnerable to support their health and safety, developing new employment plans, and actively matching employees and employers.

This U.S. Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime webpage discusses vicarious trauma and contains suggestions for coworkers and supervisors who may be experiencing vicarious trauma, as well as family members of victim service providers and first responders, who are also often affected by work-related trauma exposure. The webpage also highlights the Vicarious Trauma Toolkit (VTT), which introduces a new model for examining and conceptualizing the impact of vicarious trauma and the reactions and experiences of victim service providers and first responders. Included on the webpage is a sample of the 500 tools and resources from the VTT Compendium of Resources, which covers Education and Awareness, Prevalence and Risk Factors, and Impact. These resources are intended to support those working in victim services, emergency medical services, fire services, law enforcement, and other allied professions.

(See also Resources on "domestic violence" in the Resource Library)