This Heritage Foundation report focuses specifically on how eligibility rules for pre-K education subsidies may affect couple decision-making. It provides an example of how program rules across systems can create complex financial trade-offs for families. For TANF administrators working in cross-system partnerships, this piece underscores the importance of understanding how education, childcare, and other supports align with family economic mobility strategies.

This Heritage Foundation analysis explores national trends in marriage and discusses potential economic and social implications of declining marriage rates. This resource raises questions relevant to TANF programs about how household structure, economic opportunity, and public benefits intersect.

This Administration for Children and Families paper examines how certain means-tested tax and transfer programs may create financial disincentives for marriage. It outlines how eligibility thresholds, benefit phase-outs, and combined household income calculations can affect family decision-making.

The Child Welfare Information Gateway podcast series covers timely topics in child welfare, family well-being, and systems change. These episodes can be a great professional learning resource for TANF staff, partners, and community providers engaged in cross-system work or serving families with complex needs.

The U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services hosted a webinar on March 11, 2026 to provide an overview on Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE). In the webinar, they explained how SAVE works, explain how to register, and offer resources and support.

Supporting families in reunification, which is the process of safely returning children in foster care to their parents, aligns closely with TANF’s mission to promote family stability and self-sufficiency. This California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse webpage highlights promising practices, program models, and outcome data related to reunification services. TANF agencies can use this resource to strengthen referrals, align supportive services, and integrate evidence-informed family support practices into their own workforce and case management strategies.

Families and young people navigating the foster care system often face complex challenges that intersect with TANF goals, from economic hardship to employment barriers and service access. This GovFacts resource list offers supports for parents, relatives, and youth involved in foster care, including legal help, educational resources, and pathways for youth transition planning. Sharing these tools with TANF participants can help enhance case management, improve stability, and connect families with critical supports.

Intergenerational programs are gaining momentum as a strategy to support families, reduce social isolation, and build community capacity. This Generations United toolkit provides step-by-step guidance for TANF partners interested in creating or strengthening shared intergenerational sites, spaces where older adults and children/youth participate together in learning, care, and engagement. With tools for planning, partnership development, and sustainability, this resource supports goals around family economic success, caregiving support, and community engagement.

This U.S. Aging guide offers a practical framework for strengthening collaboration between child welfare and aging networks to better identify and support kinship caregivers, many of whom are older adults stepping in to care for children when parents are unable. The resource outlines action steps to improve cross-system coordination, access to benefits and services, and recognition of the vital role kin caregivers play in family stability. This can help TANF agencies deepen connections with community partners serving older caregivers and reduce barriers to economic support and resource navigation.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs play a critical role in helping families move toward employment, stability, and long-term economic mobility, including through the use of career pathways, which are connected sequences of education, training, and work experiences that help individuals progress through chosen fields. STAR has created a catalog of career pathway toolkits to help TANF programs plan career pathway initiatives. 

To accompany the Career Pathways Toolkit Catalog, these Starter Pathways are designed to help TANF administrators and staff navigate the toolkits more efficiently and intentionally. 

Users can begin with Starter Pathways to identify where to start planning based on their role and quickly access the most relevant toolkit sections based on their career pathways goals.