Thank you for your interest in attending today's webinar, TANF and the Transition to a Remote Workforce. We are currently attempting to increase capacity due to the overwhelming response. We are recording the webinar and will provide a link to all registrants as soon as possible.

This issue brief from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services offers guidance on how to implement virtual case management in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic guidelines for social distancing. These considerations include how to identify appropriate technology, how to provide training to caseworkers and clients on the use of the identified technology, and how to incorporate privacy concerns and information sharing among systems in a virtual environment.

This issue brief from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) defines virtual technical assistance (TA) and illustrates the types, use, and effectiveness of virtual TA across HHS programs. Included are programs delivered and managed by the Children’s Bureau, Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, and Offices of Child Support Enforcement, Refugee Resettlement, Head Start, Regional Operations, and Family Assistance. While covering emerging practices in designing and delivering virtual TA, the brief offers guidance on how to choose technology tailored to the audience’s access and expertise, administration of virtual assistance to ensure recipient satisfaction, and how to supplement virtual TA with in-person meetings.

This TANF Program Instruction (PI) provides program guidance on TANF administration in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This PI offers questions and answers about the use of TANF funds, work participation rates, flexibility in case management regarding TANF participant requirements, and overall TANF administration.

This Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation report assesses the impact and outcomes of the employment coaching model. Key questions in this evaluation include analysis about the intermediate outcomes related to pursuing goals and employment and economic security outcomes for low-income people and whether the impacts of the coaching interventions change over time or differ among the diverse groups of participants. The report also examines how employment coaching models were implemented and what contributes to how and whether employment coaching is implemented.

The Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison will host a webinar on April 1, 2020 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. CT to discuss the relationships that human services programs develop with the participants they serve, as well as the relationships that programs help participants develop outside their organizations. Speakers from the Yale Schools of Medicine and Public Health, the School of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will discuss the measurement and evaluation of building program participants’ social capital and the value of logic models for documenting social capital inputs, activities, and outputs. The webinar will also feature a program that tracks social capital to support programming in human services administration.

Human services and workforce agencies face complex, systemic challenges in serving families receiving TANF and other low-income families. Such challenges include bureaucratic program requirements, program leadership and staff entrenched in a compliance-focused mindset, limited financial and staff resources, and a mismatch between what customers need and what programs can provide. The Office of Family Assistance will host a webinar on March 24, 2020 from 12 noon to 1:30 p.m. which will describe the successes, challenges, and opportunities for getting good, evidence-informed interventions to stick in human service and workforce programs.

During the webinar, we will hear from Dr. Michelle Derr, a leading implementation researcher who has studied TANF and workforce programs for more than 20 years. Additional presenters include exceptional program administrators who have rolled out science-informed strategies across programs within their respective service delivery systems who can share their day-to-day experience with getting good interventions to stick!

This practice brief shares strategies human services programs can use to improve customers’ experience and make their engagement in programming more meaningful. Drawing on Mathematica’s experience working with Philadelphia Works, Inc., the administering workforce development board for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA)-funded services in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, this brief provides a step-by-step guide to reduce the burden of paperwork and procedures for customers and staff while continuing to meet program environments. Mathematica staff used the Learn, Innovate, Improve (LI2) framework—a series of evidence-informed program improvement activities enabled by collaboration between practitioners and researchers—to learn about how information is collected and used; innovate to eliminate, redesign, and streamline paperwork; and improve processes through iterative, small-scale pilot testing.

This practice brief introduces three foundations for improving services for children and families in a human services environment that has become more complex and challenging. Investments in reducing complexity and bureaucracy, building skills of supervisors and staff, and putting humans back at the center of human service delivery can help programs meet the needs of families facing challenges like low educational attainment, unemployment, criminal records, mental and physical health issues, and children with special needs.