This guide from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network provides information to parents and caregivers on how the COVID-19 outbreak might affect their families both physically and mentally and how to help them cope. Information is provided on: COVID-19 cause and its transmission, preventative strategies, steps families can take to be better prepared, including information and communication strategies and awareness of community resources and emergency contacts, how to reduce families’ risk, and ways to help families cope with stress including suggestions for parent and caregiver self-care. A chart features reactions that children might have to the outbreak according to age group and the best ways that parents and caregivers can respond.

This research-to-practice brief profiles Kentucky’s Addiction Recovery Care program, which offers workforce development services for individuals with a history of substance misuse. The brief notes how individuals with opioid use disorder often encounter concurrent issues at the time of recovery, including poverty, homelessness, and low-level education attainment. The brief also identifies that workforce development services are not tailored to individuals with opioid use disorder and that these individuals need skills to maintain recovery and support self-sufficiency.

This blogpost summarizes two articles by Annie E. Casey Foundation staffers who focus on two critical facets for youth in foster care. The first article explores adolescent brain science and how child welfare professionals can support and engage these youth in planning their futures. The second article covers entry prevention programs and how they keep families together and reduce removal in cases other than child neglect or abuse.

This report identifies a nexus between the physical, social, and economic conditions of low-income neighborhoods and the health and financial well-being of the people who live in these communities. Included are the importance of aligning these sectors to improve these community residents’ prospects as well as examples of where these alignments exist. The report also highlights opportunities for collaboration and integration across community, public health, and financial sectors and discusses challenges of fostering this alignment.

This brief describes a project highlighting the development and implementation of policies and practices aimed at reducing the impact of Illinois mothers’ incarceration on their children. From interviews with incarcerated mothers, researchers learned how incarceration creates barriers to parenting, and through interviews with program administrators and others, they discovered how programs across the U.S. are addressing these barriers. Ways to help incarcerated mothers maintain relationships with their children included supporting communication between mothers and children via mail or phone, improving visitation policies, and increasing support services’ availability.

This post provides the most up-to-date information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about ways to prevent COVID-19 at home and in the community and answers frequently asked questions. There is also a set of resources about how to discuss COVID-19 with young children and how community- and faith-based organizations can get prepared to address service needs.

This Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation report assesses the impact and outcomes of the employment coaching model. Key questions in this evaluation include analysis about the intermediate outcomes related to pursuing goals and employment and economic security outcomes for low-income people and whether the impacts of the coaching interventions change over time or differ among the diverse groups of participants. The report also examines how employment coaching models were implemented and what contributes to how and whether employment coaching is implemented.

This research article illustrates the origins, processes and strategies of health coaching and motivational interviewing as well as identifies the similarities and differences within these approaches. The article also points how these approaches might be used in tandem or taken individually to support improvements in physical and emotional health.

This blogpost profiles the Louisiana Department of Child and Family Services’ efforts to connect birth families with resource families following child removal, with the hopes of improving child welfare and the likelihood and timeliness of reunification. This shared parenting reflects the Quality Parenting Initiative (QPI), a Youth Law Center strategy to pave a new approach toward increasing reunification outcomes for families. This approach calls for a fundamental culture shift away from an “us-them” adversarial relationship between birth and resource families.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report reviews current Responsible Fatherhood (RF) program approaches undertaken to prevent and tackle intimate partner violence (IPV) and domestic violence. The report illustrates the programs’ strengths and gaps in their services and referrals and promising practices that may improve service provision to address IPV. There is also discussion about new directions for research in IPV prevention, given the success, challenges, and barriers in service delivery that RF programs experience.