This special collection from the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence offers a variety of resources and approaches to prevent and respond to teen dating violence. These resources include fact sheets, best practices and programs, laws and legislation, and contact information for referral organizations. This menu is targeted for multiple audiences – young people, parents and caregivers, bystanders, men and boys, representatives from pregnancy prevention programs, teachers and school-based professionals, health care professionals, and domestic and sexual violence service providers.

The Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will host a webinar on February 20, 2019 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET to discuss the correlation between involved fathers and positive developmental outcomes for children. The research presented from the University’s School of Social Work on this topic can help service providers to be more intentional in helping fathers improve upon their strengths and communicating this perspective to fathers and mothers.

This policy evaluation from the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison assesses the Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration project. The report covers 18 implementation sites, where half of the 10,161 demonstration project enrollees received enhanced child support services, employment assistance, parenting education delivered in a peer-supported format, and case management. The other half of enrollees were in a control group and did not receive extra services. Report findings suggest that future programs might invest in strong partnerships and communication systems as well as support customer-oriented approaches for enrollees. There are also recommendations on recruiting staff who can manage large caseloads and designing and delivering services to support sustained engagement among program participants.

This MDRC article highlights promising practices for interagency coordination between the criminal justice and child support enforcement systems. It identifies types of collaboration between these programs, suggests how to target program populations, and addresses institutional constraints that hinder implementation of reforms between the two systems. For additional information on reentry, OFA hosted a webinar entitled “Providing Effective Employment and Supportive Services to Low-Income Women with Criminal Records,” which can be found here.

The Children’s Bureau of the Administration for Children and Families produced this toolkit for child welfare agency staff to use with their evaluators. The toolkit presents “formative evaluation” as a way of assessing programs during their early implementation. The toolkit intends to identify areas for program improvement and measure the capacity of child welfare organizations and program readiness at the conclusion of projects.

This Aspen Institute report describes The Opportunity Youth Forum (OYF), an initiative of the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions. Collaborative approaches funded under this program represent multiple stakeholders working together to remove barriers for underserved youth by creating comprehensive pathways for education, family-sustaining careers, and successful adulthood. Launched in 2017, The Youth Entrepreneurship Fund responded to OYF by supporting youth entrepreneurship programs for school age youth; enhancing business development programs that provide educational, financial, and advisory services; and expanding experiential and social enterprise programs.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report is based on interviews conducted with over 80 Enhanced Transitional Jobs Demonstration (U.S. Department of Labor) and Subsidized Transitional Employment Demonstration (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) program participants. The research highlights how participants initially decided to engage in subsidized employment and how they felt these jobs were leading them toward unsubsidized work. The report’s findings contribute to a greater understanding of subsidized employment models and how these programs address participant barriers to the labor market so that these individuals might secure employment without other supports in the future.

This Casey Family Programs brief identifies a practice model for reducing the need for foster care and building permanent families. The practice model draws on input from professional staff, youth, biological parents, resource families, and community partners. The model identifies potential strategies and program interventions that advance legal and relationship permanency and proposes approaches that strengthen families and improve the processes for individualized case management and integrated service delivery.

This Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides a snapshot of the data related to opioid-involved overdose deaths. One key finding, among many other trends this infographic identifies, is that there were 70,237 drug overdose deaths in 2017, of which 67.8 percent involved opioids. This represents a 10.4 percent increase over 2016.