Families affected by substance use disorders and involved in the child welfare system face a variety of complex challenges. Children of parents with substance use disorder are more likely to be removed from parental care, less likely to be reunified, and experience lengthier out-of-home placements and delayed permanency. This brief provides an overview of the Sobriety Treatment and Recovery Teams (START) program — an evidence-based child welfare service delivery model for families that is aimed at keeping children safely with their parent(s) whenever possible through achieving parental sobriety and recovery, and family stability. The brief also highlights the funding and implementation of the START model in Kansas, Kentucky (which uses TANF to support the model), North Carolina, and Ohio, along with each state’s unique considerations.

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Data Innovation project and the TANF Data Collaborative (TDC) Pilot were established to expand the routine use, integration, and analysis of TANF and employment data by agency staff to improve program services and outcomes for families with low incomes. The 30-month TDC Pilot offered technical assistance and training to support cross-disciplinary teams of staff at eight state and county TANF programs. This nine-minute video, produced after the completion of the TDC Pilot, features staff members from the California, Colorado, Minnesota, and Virginia TANF agencies reflecting on their challenges, accomplishments, and general experiences during the pilot. Staff describe their research questions and discuss building data capacity, integrating datasets, networking with other states, increasing collaboration between state and county agencies, learning new technical skills, and the benefits of being able to draw from diverse skillsets.

Partnerships between TANF-funded programs and Community Action Agencies (CAAs) are the focus of this video series just released by the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) and the Office of Community Services (OCS). Filmed at four sites across the country, the five brief videos each look at how TANF programs and CAAs are working together to help shared customers achieve social and economic success. The videos are one result of the COVID and Safety Net Innovation (CASI) TA Initiative, a joint OFA and OCS initiative that provided technical assistance to TANF programs and CAAs, helping them develop a joint action plan to strengthen the safety net.

Hampton Roads Community Action Program and the Virginia Department of Social Services: Working together to create a whole family approach.

Audubon Area Community Services and the Kentucky Transitional Assistance Program: Partnering to deliver diverse work opportunities.

Maricopa County Human Services Department and the Arizona Department of Economic Security: Planning a holistic approach to anti-poverty efforts.

Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) and MAHUBE-OTWA Community Action Partnership: The first video explores how DHS and MAHUBE-OTWA collaborate to serve families in a rural area. The second video looks at how they are supporting American Indian/Native American culture.

During the continued recovery from and ongoing response to the COVID-19 epidemic, every member of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) families has experienced a growing set of challenges to their mental well-being. Amplified socioeconomic issues such as the rising cost of daily expenses, especially food, gas, and housing; difficulties with finding quality and long-term employment; and challenges with access to healthcare continue to place an increased mental burden on low-income families. In addition, children who previously found stability at school, even when it was not present at home, have had to endure constant changes in school closures, learning styles, and staff fluctuations and shortages.

Due to the heightened need of mental health services for all members of the family, it is vital that health and human service departments and community organizations consider mental health promotion as part of a comprehensive approach to service delivery. TANF programs provide an important touchpoint to low-income families facing mental health challenges and can improve access and utilization of mental health services for parents and children.

The Office of Family Assistance hosted a webinar on January 26, 2023 where speakers discussed the intersection between poverty, trauma, and mental health and shared strategies that could help improve long-term mental health outcomes for low-income families. Webinar attendees engaged with speakers and peers in dialogue focused on building mental health service strategies for TANF families impacted by various traumas.

This brief explores how guaranteed income might address gaps and deficits in policies designed to address America’s housing affordability crisis. Less well documented in the research are the supplementary and comparative advantages of cash infusion vis-à-vis programs restricted to meeting basic needs, such as housing, food, and child care. This analysis of guaranteed income as a strategy to combat the affordable housing crisis cites secondary data from past experiments as well as current demonstrations that have released evaluation data. In addition to using secondary data, interviews were conducted with key stakeholders from three recent municipal guaranteed income pilots in Arlington, Virginia; Austin, Texas; and Chicago, Illinois.

The tables in this resource are a compilation of Federal TANF and State MOE expenditures for FY 2021 as they are reported by states. As a condition of receiving Federal TANF funds, states are required to spend a certain amount of their own funds (MOE) on TANF-allowable categories. Expenditures are grouped into 20 main categories in the accompanying tables. Data is available in PDF and Excel formats.

This brief examines Latino families’ experiences with North Carolina’s TANF (also known as Work First) and related income assistance programs. The brief summarizes findings from practitioner responses to a survey that included a questionnaire and a series of open-ended questions. Further, it discusses North Carolina’s Hispanic population and how the state’s income assistance programs are administered, and it provides more detail on income assistance program practitioners’ perspectives on Latino families’ experiences with these programs. Implications of the findings for how income assistance programs are administered in North Carolina and in other states with large and growing Latino populations are also presented.

This article describes a community-engaged, mixed-methods research project to identify barriers to TANF among families with young children in Illinois which examined TANF sanctions related to child support enforcement. The study, which used TANF administrative data analysis and included semi-structured interviews with TANF customers, explored demographic differences in sanctioning and sanction types; it found that Black families were more likely than families of other races to be sanctioned. Mothers who were survivors of intimate partner violence voiced particular challenges with child support compliance. The article proposes policy recommendations that include shifting to alternative cash assistance models and removing pass-through funding so that families receive the full child support benefit.

This case study report is intended for staff at all levels of government who work within agencies that promote the well-being of children and families. It explains how Montgomery County, Maryland’s Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS) enterprise integrated case management system (eICM) shares data across more than 70 DHHS programs, allowing staff to better understand their clients, more efficiently serve them, and improve their outcomes. The report discusses why the eICM was implemented, how the eICM works, how the eICM team overcame various data privacy and confidentiality challenges, and how the eICM benefits the residents served. It includes several lessons learned and recommendations from the people who developed and use the eICM.

State and local leaders at TANF agencies have been increasingly focused on using administrative data from TANF and other state agencies to better assess how well programs are working, inform policies and practices, and improve the lives of families with low incomes. Economic mobility through employment retention and advancement is of particular interest to TANF leaders, but administrative data on TANF recipients’ earnings are often difficult to access except for the purpose of investigating noncompliance. This toolkit was created to help TANF professionals develop more robust, data-driven practices using administrative data on earnings. It offers practical guidance to state and local TANF agencies on how to access, link, and analyze employment data from unemployment insurance systems for program monitoring, reporting, and evaluation. The toolkit may also be useful to other state human services agencies (for example, SNAP and Child Support) that want to expand their data use, as well as policymakers interested in supporting improved workforce outcomes.