Many families struggle to meet their basic needs, a challenge that may be exacerbated by increased costs of living, widening income inequality, and ongoing economic uncertainty. Upward economic mobility across generations remains limited; children who grow up in the United States today are much less likely than children born in the 1940s to earn more income than their parents. Research suggests that two-generation (2Gen) approaches can help interrupt the economic and social barriers to many families’ economic mobility and increased well-being and carry long-term benefits. This report provides a current data snapshot of some families in the United States who may be eligible for and benefit from 2Gen supports and services.

Some healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs offer economic stability services in addition to relationship skills education. The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) funds community-based programs that offer HMRE and economic stability services as part of their Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood grant programs. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief offers lessons for HMRE program providers seeking to integrate HMRE and economic stability services and examines two social service agencies that received federal grants from OFA —The Parenting Center in Fort Worth, Texas, and Family and Workforce Centers of America in St. Louis, Missouri—to design and implement such integrated programs.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) will host a virtual training for parents and caregivers on children’s mental health on March 22, 2023 from 6:00 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. ET. The training will provide parents and caregivers with the information and resources to recognize, manage, and support their children’s mental health needs. ACF and SAMHSA recognize that parents and caregivers play a vital role and want to provide training participants all the tools and skills needed to support children.

Event facilitators and speakers will include January Contreras, Assistant Secretary, ACF; Lauren Behsudi, Senior Advisor, ACF; Miriam Delphin-Rittmon, Assistant Secretary, SAMHSA; Dr. Sunny Patel, Senior Medical Advisor, SAMHSA Center for Mental Health; Dr. Gary Blau, Senior Advisor, SAMHSA; Arc Telos Saint Amour, Executive Director, Youth MOVE National; and David Armstrong, parent and caregiver advocate.

The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) hosted a webinar on March 21, 2023 — the second of a two-part webinar series entitled, The Whole Family Approach: How TANF Programs Can Engage Customers in Mental Health Services. In Part I of the webinar series on January 26, 2023, State and Tribal TANF programs discussed the intersection between poverty, trauma, and mental health and highlighted how their programs have helped improve long-term mental health outcomes for families with low incomes.

Part 2 built on the concepts introduced in Part I and the speakers shared the details of their programs’ whole family design and implementation processes, including how they identify services to include in their TANF programs, how they select and coordinate with supportive partnerships, what types of assessments they use when meeting with clients, and funding streams they utilize. They also highlighted successes and challenges they have experienced throughout the process. Participants received insights into the options TANF programs can explore in expanding and improving the mental health care for their TANF customers.

The Promise is a public-private partnership dedicated to meeting some of the goals of the City of Philadelphia’s Poverty Action Plan. Key aspects of The Promise include “community challenges,” wherein community-based organizations receive funding to partner on efforts to improve city residents’ material conditions. Because eligible Philadelphians leave millions of dollars’ worth of public benefits and refundable tax credits on the table each year, the first community challenge launched, called the Family Stability Challenge (FSC), funds service provider coalitions to collaborate on connecting underserved populations with benefits and credits. The Urban Institute was invited to conduct an evaluation of the early implementation of the FSC. As a result, they released this report that provides a scan of relevant literature and contextual information important for understanding the FSC.

Children rely on the adults in their lives to provide safety and security; unfortunately, this is often difficult for adults living in poverty to provide. As a result, some children living in poverty face developmental challenges that may affect their well-being long term. This article discusses how poverty affects children's brain development and mental health. It also covers risk factors that may affect brain development, how a family’s economic status impacts the amount of gray and white matter volumes in the brain (gray matter controls movement, memory, and emotions while white matter helps with the transfer of information within the brain), and medical and counseling recommendations. Further, the article identifies a number of existing anti-poverty programs, including TANF, that may help reduce the financial burden of living in poverty.

The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) provides federal money to states, territories, and tribes to subsidize the cost of child care for working families with low incomes. Policies vary widely across jurisdictions, with states, territories, and tribes establishing different policies for: eligibility requirements for families and children; application, waiting list, and redetermination requirements; family copayment policies; and provider requirements and reimbursement rates. This report describes the ways in which policies vary within the context of the federal program requirements and includes dozens of detailed tables showing each state’s/territory’s policy choices.

Many young adults, ages 18 to 25, have earnings that are typically low at this stage of their lives, and often have trouble meeting basic needs while facing systemic barriers and discrimination that exclude them from crucial resources and supports. Policies and programs, as well as the systems that administer them, can help young adults both meet their basic needs and build a stronger foundation for a healthy and fulfilling future. This report presents the case for a guaranteed income to support young adults.

Almost 16% of men in the U.S. report having a mental health problem, yet only around half receive treatment. This crisis in care has far-reaching consequences for the entire family, as fathers with mental health issues tend to have lower-quality co-parenting relationships and children who struggle to regulate their emotions and behaviors. The National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse will host a webinar on March 8, 2023 from 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET about the mental health needs of fathers and practices and resources to help address them. By attending the webinar, participants will learn:

• The impact of paternal mental health on parenting, children, and relationships
• How the COVID-19 pandemic has opened the door to more discussion about the importance of mental health and treating mental health issues
• Barriers to treatment and ways to overcome them
• Where fathers can access work- and community-based mental health services