This Child Welfare Information Gateway podcast offers insights from the National Native Children's Trauma Center for caseworkers and agencies that are working or will work with Indigenous communities to support children and families. It also covers why Indian Child Welfare Act provisions cannot be implemented the same way for every tribe or nation with which state and local child welfare professionals work, how historical trauma within Native and tribal communities is strongly connected to intergenerational trauma, and what guidance state and local child welfare caseworkers and agencies can use when engaging with Native families and communities. Additional resources are provided for reference.

Many workers in hourly front-line retail and food service jobs have been subject to low pay and few benefits for decades. More recently, these workers' challenges have been compounded by increasingly unstable and unpredictable work schedules due to shifts cancelled or shortened with little notice, inconsistent days or times of day they are expected to work, little advance notice when schedules are posted, or having to be on-call without a guarantee of being paid. This policy brief illustrates how schedule unpredictability has a direct connection to how often workers struggle to provide adequate food, housing, and medical care for themselves and their families. The brief also notes how instability can also affect workers' ability to access social safety net programs.

This Children’s Bureau resource guide recognizes that there are actions that communities, organizations, and families can take to address the root causes of child abuse and neglect. It highlights innovative ways that communities conduct purposeful prevention work to help children and families thrive using a protective factors approach. This approach focuses on positive ways to engage families by emphasizing their strengths and by identifying areas where they have room to grow with support. The guide includes English and Spanish versions of conversation guides that help to engage parents and caregivers in personalized conversations with service providers about protective factors and how they want to care for their children and themselves.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation summary brief presents updates from 2021’s Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness (HomVEE) review of home visiting program models that serve families with pregnant women and children from birth to age five. The brief presents the review process, a summary of the results, the 21 models determined to meet U.S. Department of Health and Human Services criteria for an “evidence-based early childhood home visiting service delivery model,” and a link to the HomVEE website for more detailed information.

The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) and the Office of Community Services (OCS) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have recently announced the COVID and Safety Net Innovation (CASI) TA Initiative. This new endeavor will delve into the resiliency of the safety net, exploring new approaches that support the economic and social needs of vulnerable families, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Through the COVID and Safety Net Innovation TA Initiative, partnerships between federally funded state, local, or tribal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs and Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) eligible entities or CSBG Direct Funded Tribal recipients will receive Technical Assistance (TA) to develop strategic and targeted action and implementation plans related to a specific safety net concern.

The deadline to nominate or self-nominate to participate in CASI is Tuesday, December 21, 2021. To receive further information about CASI, including instructions for the short nomination process, please email CASIsites@blhtech.com.

This playbook synthesizes lessons learned and recommendations from existing resources, emergency management protocols, and interviews with federal program staff about responding to emergencies and disasters. As federal human services program staff serve populations often experiencing marginalization, economic disadvantages, and disproportionate negative impacts in a disaster or emergency context, this playbook discusses opportunities for federal programs to deliver human services equitably to all populations during and after major emergencies, especially those with multi-state impacts.

Partnerships between child care providers and food access initiatives are a promising approach to supporting young children’s nutrition. This brief illustrates two of these partnerships that received funding from the Walmart Healthier Food Access grant and highlights three promising strategies those partnerships employ: supporting children and families directly, fostering the capacity of child care providers and their ability to support child nutrition in their own care settings, and organizing at a systems level to better coordinate efforts that target families with young children. Evidence-based recommendations are offered for building these partnerships in local communities.

COVID-19 has brought additional attention to the impact of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and trauma across the lifespan, which may be exacerbated by disruption in the lives of families. This case study highlights California’s ACEs Aware and its key elements as a model for other states. Led by the Office of the California Surgeon General and the Department of Health Care Services, California’s ACEs Aware initiative trains and reimburses health care providers to screen children and adults for childhood trauma and respond to the effects of toxic stress, with the goal of reducing ACEs and toxic stress by 50 percent in one generation.

This Action Lab webinar, held on November 4, 2021, focused on leveraging Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Employment and Training (SNAP E&T) to expand access to and support student success in education and training programs that lead to good careers. The webinar included a SNAP E&T 101 session from Seattle Jobs Initiative, a discussion with a USDA Food and Nutrition Services representative, and presentations from the International Rescue Committee, American Public Human Services Association, Council on Adult Basic Education, and National Skills Coalition.

The Casey Life Skills (CLS) Toolkit assesses independent skills youth need to achieve their long-term goals and aims to guide youth toward developing healthy and productive lives. Functional areas that the toolkit assesses include daily living and self-care activities, maintaining healthy relationships, work and study habits, using community resources, money management, computer literacy and online safety, civic engagement, and navigating the child welfare system. The toolkit provides CLS assessments, a Practitioner’s Guide (that includes best practices for administering and scoring the assessments), and a Resources to Inspire Guide (a list of resources that can help strengthen independent life skills).