The term “chronic scarcity” was coined by behavioral economist Sendhil Mullainathan and psychologist Eldar Shafir in their book, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much (published by Henry Holt & Company, 2013). This book articulates the ways that scarcity creates and perpetuates poverty and how scarcity leads people to shuffle resources and prioritize for urgent roles. From a policy perspective, the authors present an example of how training programs need to offer alternative meeting times to prevent participant attrition. As well, they suggest that time limits can effectively motivate TANF participants to prioritize identifying and securing employment.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service will host a webinar on July 18, 2019 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. ET to discuss the use of intermediaries in the administration of SNAP E&T programs. Intermediaries are organizations that conduct required administrative tasks and support State SNAP programs by centralizing operations and fiscal reporting. The webinar will include speakers from Goodwill of North Georgia, Portland (Oregon) Community College, and Worksystems (the local Workforce Investment Board in Portland, Oregon) who will discuss the benefits, challenges, and opportunities of each of their models.

This Chapin Hall issue brief reviews: child welfare workers’ perceptions of county-level availability of training and the range of services available for transition-age foster youth; workers’ views about the collaboration between child welfare departments and other service delivery systems; and the correlation between foster youth satisfaction with training and services and outcomes in education, homelessness, employment and health. The analysis relies on longitudinal studies from the California Youth Transitions to Adulthood Study (CalYOUTH) conducted in 2013 and 2015. Report findings point to the need for increased collaboration among child welfare and other systems, as well as connection of foster youths’ satisfaction with offered services to support service delivery.

This Urban Institute report reviews the use of outcomes-based contracts (OBCs), which tie government payments to improvements in service delivery. The report examines the benefit of using OBCs to incentivize performance from external contactors, as well as the challenges and risks in administration and effect on service delivery. Findings are drawn from field interviews and external researchers.

More than half the caseload of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program consists of child-only cases, in which a child receives TANF cash assistance but the parent or caregiver does not. The most common type of child-only case is a nonparent caregiver case, consisting of children being cared for by someone other than their parents, often a grandparent. Research suggests that nonparent caregiver cases are often vulnerable with many unmet needs and that the children in these cases share characteristics with children living in foster care: mental health conditions, school-related problems, and experience with trauma. Kinship navigator programs can be an important tool for supporting these families. Most states are developing or expanding these programs, and the federal government has provided funding in fiscal years 2018 and 2019 to state and eligible tribal child welfare agencies to develop, enhance, or evaluate kinship navigator programs. The Family First Prevention Services Act amended the Social Security Act to allow title IV-E agencies to receive funding for kinship navigator programs that meet certain evidence-based criteria; see ACYF-CB-PI-18-11 for program requirements.

On July 16, 2019, the Office of Family Assistance, in collaboration with the Children’s Bureau, sponsored a webinar that featured kinship navigator programs operating in three states and the services they offer to nonparent caregivers. Arizona Kinship Support Services connects kinship families to government benefits, links them to legal services, and helps them navigate existing community support systems. California’s UWCA-211-iFoster Kinship Navigator Collaborative provides an online, self-service resource portal for kinship families that coordinates public and private resources based on the families’ individual needs and preferences. The New York State Kinship Navigator provides an information and referral network for kinship caregivers statewide. In addition to these three states, the webinar featured a representative from the Children’s Bureau who discussed the federal funding available for kinship navigator programs and a representative from the Assisting Special Populations to Improve Readiness and Engagement (ASPIRE) study team who shared information on TANF child-only cases.

This report identifies the state of current research on the prevalence of opioid use disorder and treatment services among Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) participants and the TANF-eligible population. Additional emphasis is provided on how opioid use disorder negatively affects work-readiness and employment attainment. Funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families, this project aims to improve economic well-being and increase TANF agencies’ knowledge base. This report is based on a literature review of opioid use disorder treatment strategies and information on the effects of opioids in the TANF, TANF-eligible, and low-income populations.

The Office of Family Assistance hosted a webinar on Wednesday, July 31, 2019 showcasing several Social Enterprise Organizations (SEOs) and their unique strengths, challenges, and contexts. SEOs are hybrid organizations that aim to balance business and social missions. They use a profit-maximizing approach to solve society’s challenges and help improve individual and community well-being. SEOs target hard-to-serve populations to help remove barriers to self-sufficiency by offering opportunities such as employment, housing, or mental and physical health services. Various strategies, such as workforce training, job placement, microfinancing, literacy resources, and offering affordable health services, are just some of the approaches used by social enterprises in pursuing their missions. SEOs are unique because they use capital investment to create a social benefit and revenue, which allows the organizations to be self-sufficient. Social enterprises are a promising solution to helping resolve social problems in the future.

This study from the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research analyzed the long-term consequences of severity, frequency, and timing of food insecurity exposure in childhood on health and health care utilization later in adulthood, based on approximately 20 years of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Study findings highlight how young adults experiencing childhood food insecurity have higher psychological distress, even after adjusting for socioeconomic status, parents’ health, overall health during childhood, and food insecurity during adulthood. The study points out how receiving SNAP benefits during childhood reduces the effects of childhood food insecurity on health when these children become adults.

This joint information bulletin, produced by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, provides models to address mental health and substance use disorder (SUD) related treatment services in schools. The bulletin also covers Medicaid state plan benefits that states might use to cover SUD related treatment services, as well as best practice models on implementing quality, evidence-based comprehensive mental health and SUD services for students.

This blogpost, authored by the Assistant Secretary of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), describes the 10 listening sessions that ACF held nationally among key stakeholders to address family homelessness. These stakeholders, who provided input on the latest trends and local innovative programs, included parents with homelessness experience, grantee and non-grantee service providers, faith-based partners, educators, and government leaders. Five of ACF’s program offices either directly focus on homelessness or offer services and resources to move families from homelessness towards self-sufficiency and include: the Office of Head Start, the Family and Youth Services Bureau, the Office of Child Care, the Office of Family Assistance, and the Children’s Bureau.