This University of Maryland report, a part of the annual Life After Welfare series, reviews the outcomes of households that are no longer on TANF caseloads. The report examines the characteristics, employment, and earnings outcomes of 12,597 families who left Maryland’s Temporary Cash Assistance (TCA) program between January 2004 and March 2017. The findings suggest that these families improved their financial situations after exiting TCA, compared to their circumstances before TCA enrollment. However, these families still struggle to maintain independence from cash assistance following exit from the program.

This MDRC evaluation report assesses a Transitional Living Program that targets youth in foster care or involved with the juvenile justice system. Youth Villages, a social service organization, created YVLife Set to provide individualized and intensive clinically focused case management, support, and counseling to help secure positive outcomes for young participants as they move to adulthood.

This Child Trends infographic presents analysis from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting System (AFCARS) data. It presents a graphic of the United States that illustrates 39 states that experienced an increase in FY 2017 in the number of children and young persons in foster care. According to the latest data, 5.8 of every 1,000 U.S. children were in foster care in 2017.

This Jobs for the Future issue brief includes data and infographics that outline Federal programs designed to serve opportunity youth in poverty by bridging improved educational and economic outcomes, including TANF, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and Pell Grants.

This Annie E. Casey Foundation-supported study, authored by Brookings and Child Trends, identifies three factors that contribute to future economic progress among low-income youth: a post-secondary education (potentially equalizes young adults searching for high-quality jobs), labor market experience at an early age (predicts higher wages and job quality later in life), and relevant high school work-based learning experiences (involve positive relationships with adults and have a positive effect on job quality).

This fact sheet by the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research on Poverty reviews the challenges of low-wage jobs and identifies factors of economic instability; these factors include irregularity in work schedules and monthly income. The fact sheet considers how unpredictability can be a complicating issue for safety net program eligibility and affects the workers’ well-being.

This webinar, convened by the Florida Housing Coalition on January 9, 2019, will provide guidance to nonprofit board members and executive leadership on building capacity and professional development for organizational self-assessment. The webinar is a pre-requisite training for nonprofit organizations planning to attend a later workshop on adding or expanding affordable housing to their set of programs.

This blog post from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is part of the "Self-Sufficiency Series: Solutions from the Field" and highlights the Jeremiah Program, a nonprofit organization that strives to put families on the path toward self-sufficiency by using a family-centered approach with both parents and their children. Primarily funded by private donations, Jeremiah helps low-income single mothers complete their education and at the same time provides access to high-quality early childhood education for their children. Participants may be eligible for federal and local child care and housing subsidies. This two-generation approach reports that 81 percent of children who attended a Jeremiah child development center are performing at or above grade level in elementary or middle school.