The Administration for Children and Families released this resource, which includes frequently asked questions with responses to help programs understand the process when applying for ACF funding and/or managing awards. Topics in this Frequently Asked Questions webpage include Application Process, Application Review Process, and Grants Management.

Section 304 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) of 2023 requires all states to report the data necessary to produce outcome measures for work-eligible individuals who leave Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The interim final rule on TANF Work Outcomes Measures was published on June 28, 2024. The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) hosted a webinar on July 24, 2024, where OFA presenters reviewed the new measures and provided technical guidance for preparing and submitting three new reports for the measures: Work Outcomes of TANF Exiters Report (quarterly), the required Secondary School Diploma or its Recognized Equivalent Attainment Rate (annually), and the Supplemental Work Outcomes Report (annually).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, human services agencies faced unique challenges to adapt services to meet new needs while supporting the staff delivering these services. The impact of this period is still felt today, with families adjusting to ending pandemic programs and communities experiencing human services workforce shortages. However, these challenges also spurred innovation in how people support each other. This Administration for Children and Families resource discusses how ACF catalyzed a new employee-centric program that has helped define their agency culture and advanced their work in communities.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, workforce programs that provide employment and training services faced new challenges as they responded to public health restrictions and shifts in the needs of employers and job seekers. As part of the Building Evidence on Employment Strategies (BEES) project, researchers conducted virtual interviews from November 2021–April 2022 with staff members at 10 such programs to learn about how they used technology to adapt their services during the pandemic. Anticipating the end of restrictions on in-person service delivery as the pandemic slowed, many program staff members intended to maintain some of their newly developed virtual strategies, using a hybrid model that would blend in-person and virtual service delivery. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation snapshot highlights three lessons that demonstrate how workforce programs leveraged a crisis to create important opportunities for streamlining and improving services.

In Monroe County, New York, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and New York State’s Safety Net program work in tandem to provide temporary cash assistance to qualifying individuals who have low incomes. To maintain access to the assistance, those enrolled in these programs are required to attend a series of meetings and activities intended to assess program applicants’ needs and connect them to services the county believes help people move toward economic self-sufficiency.

The Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency-Next Generation (BIAS-NG) project aims to make human services programs work better for the people receiving services by reshaping program processes using lessons from behavioral science. The BIAS-NG team worked with Monroe County staff members to design and test two interventions that aimed to increase the attendance at required activities aforementioned. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report describes the experiences of participants before the interventions, the steps of developing interventions informed by behavioral science, and the implementation and evaluation of those interventions.

States, counties, and tribes are modernizing their child support programs through holistic, family-centered policies and practices that build partnerships with parents instead of adversarial relationships. They go beyond collecting money to address underlying reasons for nonpayment, ensure that children benefit from payments, and facilitate effective co-parenting. Family-centered child support policies put children where they belong: at the center of child support policymaking. The Centering Child Well-Being in Child Support Policy toolkit, developed by Ascend at Aspen Institute, features new analysis of state child support director survey data. The toolkit offers innovations on: 

1. Family Distribution,
2. Reducing Arrears,
3. Right-Sizing Orders,
4. Income Supports,
5. Supporting Healthy Co-Parenting, and 
6. Providing Equal Access to Justice.

The Department of Labor announced up to $40 million in grants available for national out-of-school time organizations to expand local work-based learning opportunities, job training and career pathways for underserved youth during non-school hours. The Workforce Pathways for Youth demonstration grants will help these organizations partner with state or locally operated affiliate organizations that serve historically marginalized and underserved youth, ages 14 to 21. Priority will be given to organizations serving Native American youth.

Through the partnerships, out-of-school time organizations will introduce youth to career-related services, and provide work-based learning experiences and occupational skills training. They will also offer unsubsidized employment placements to increase opportunities for youth to gain the skills they need to be successful in post-secondary education and employment. The program also encourages partners across the workforce system to provide supportive services to address the mental health needs of participating youth.

This MDRC toolkit provides guidance, drawn from learning and experience, on how to use data to inform program improvements. It collects concrete strategies and practitioner-tested tools designed to advance these efforts. These materials were developed in pilot projects with local Temporary Assistance for Needy Families agencies as part of the TANF Data Collaborative (TDC).

It is organized according to the five phases of completing a data analytics project used in the TDC’s framework:

1. Laying the Groundwork
2. Accessing the Data
3. Preparing the Data
4. Analyzing the Data
5. Communicating the Results

The TANF Data Collaborative (TDC) Pilot, an initiative that is part of the TANF Data Innovation project, was designed to expand TANF agencies’ use of TANF administrative and employment data to better improve program services and outcomes for families with low incomes. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation resource showcases some of the tools and resources used to facilitate the “learning by doing” approach of the TDC pilot. The materials in this toolkit offer concrete strategies and practitioner-tested tools designed to inform program improvements using administrative data and to advance these efforts sustainably into the future.

The influence of welfare and family self-sufficiency programs on a range of social well-being outcomes has received limited focus in research and evaluation. Therefore, the Measuring SUCCESS project, funded by The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE), conducted focus groups with 44 caregivers to hear from them on how self-sufficiency programs and policies relate to families’ social well-being. This OPRE brief provides caregivers who contributed to the focus groups with a summary of how the research team incorporated their voice into the project. Several themes emerged from the caregiver focus groups, including mental health, nonfamilial families, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families’ successes as well as challenges.