Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs frequently serve youth who are moving into adulthood without stable family support; basic planning around housing, money, and daily decision-making can determine whether they stabilize or cycle through crisis. This FosterClub toolkit gives TANF practitioners something concrete to use in those moments. It turns “transition planning” into practical activities that can be used directly in coaching sessions, rather than requiring staff to design their own materials. This toolkit addresses how young people are expected to navigate independence without structured, hands-on preparation. Practitioners can use it to make conversations more actionable and to help participants build real-world readiness step by step.

This Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network tipsheet focuses on how Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs can support children living with relatives or caregivers who are not receiving full family benefits. It fills a key gap for kinship families who often step in without financial preparation. TANF practitioners can use these strategies to design or improve child-only grants, ensuring support reaches the child without creating unnecessary barriers for caregivers. It also helps staff think through policy and implementation choices that better reflect the realities of kinship care.

The National Youth in Transition Database (NYTD) provides data on outcomes for youth transitioning out of foster care, including education, employment, and housing. For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) practitioners, this is a practical tool for understanding where youth are struggling and what supports are working. TANF staff can use this data to refine programs, target services, and make the case for specific supports like employment or life skills programming. It helps shift practice from reactive to data informed and provides insight into achieving long-term outcomes.

The Office of Family Assistance’s TANF Outcomes Technical Assistance and Logistics (TOTAL) team delivers training and technical assistance to state TANF programs and partners responding to the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 (FRA). The team hosted their April office hours on April 29th, 2026 to review the National Directory of New Hires (NDNH), which is a database of individual-level employment and earnings information maintained by the Office of Child Support Enforcement. This session included an introduction to the NDNH and provided an overview of the Administration of Children and Families’ (ACF) Updates on Work Outcomes Calculations. The updates include how ACF calculates the three FRA work outcome measures, how NDNH limitations show up in the data, how to interpret provisional results, and what Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs’ reports look like.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) announced a new childcare reform package aimed at making childcare more affordable, expanding access for families, and increasing parental choice. For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs, this announcement is especially important because childcare challenges often affect whether parents can participate in work, education, or training activities consistently. The announcement helps TANF practitioners understand emerging federal priorities and how childcare policy may continue to evolve to better support working families.

This ACF resource can also help TANF practitioners identify opportunities to strengthen coordination between TANF and childcare systems while reducing barriers that prevent parents from maintaining employment. The reforms emphasize flexibility and accessibility, which may be particularly valuable for families with non-traditional work schedules or limited local childcare options. By staying informed about these changes, TANF staff can better connect families to supports that promote stability and long-term economic mobility.

This Jobs for the Future case study demonstrates how apprenticeship programs can create practical pathways to stable employment for individuals who may not benefit from traditional education or training models alone. For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) practitioners, it offers an example of how workforce partnerships can help participants earn wages while learning skills connected to real job opportunities. The resource is especially valuable for agencies interested in expanding career-focused strategies that lead to long-term employment. The case study also shows how organizations can scale apprenticeship models through employer engagement, structured support, and clear advancement opportunities, giving TANF staff ideas for building stronger employment pathways for the families they serve.

This collection of resources focuses on improving coordination across workforce, education, and human services systems. For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) agencies, better alignment with Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) programs can help participants access job training, career pathways, and supportive services more efficiently. Families involved with TANF may interact with several programs at once, while disconnected systems can create confusion, delays, and duplicated work for both staff and clients. This collection can help practitioners understand how stronger partnerships and shared planning can improve service delivery and reduce barriers to employment. Resources in this collection can also be useful for TANF agencies looking to streamline referrals, strengthen cross-program collaboration, and build more connected pathways to economic mobility.

This Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network tipsheet highlights how partnerships between child welfare agencies, aging agencies, and community organizations can strengthen support for grandparents and relatives raising children. For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs working with kinship caregivers, this tipsheet helps practitioners identify opportunities to coordinate services so that families will not have to navigate multiple systems on their own. The resource also offers practical ideas for outreach and collaboration that can help TANF agencies better engage kinship families, reduce service gaps, and connect caregivers to support that improve stability for both children and the adults caring for them.

Financial instability among older adults is becoming an increasingly important issue for many families served by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), particularly in multigenerational and kinship households. The Institute for Research on Poverty will host a webinar on May 20, 2026 at 2:00 p.m. ET to examine challenges such as poverty, food insecurity, and housing instability among older adults while also discussing policy strategies that can improve their economic security. For TANF practitioners, the webinar will provide helpful context for understanding how financial hardship affects entire family systems, including grandparents and older caregivers raising children. This webinar can also support conversations around cross-system collaboration, benefit access, and service planning for households that may be balancing caregiving responsibilities with economic strain.