The Rehabilitation Research and Training Center at Virginia Commonwealth University is launching a Native Outreach webinar series entitled “Voicing Resiliency: State Vocational Rehabilitation Best Practices with Indigenous Communities.” The first webinar will take place on April 3, 2024 from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. ET and will feature Jim Warne and Treva Roanhorse. The speakers will provide insight into the culture surrounding Indigenous Disability and discuss the history of Indigenous Disability services in Indian Country throughout the past and into the present.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is working to strengthen the well-being of children, youth, and their families by integrating behavioral health services into the existing supports they rely on, such as social services and early childhood programs. This ACF announcement highlights the new behavioral health webpage that includes a tip sheet for parents and caregivers and a series of short videos about mental health.

The new behavioral health webpage includes audience-specific pages with resources about mental health and substance use for:

• Teens and young adults
• Parents and caregivers
• American Indian and Alaska Native Communities
• Service providers
• Grant recipients
• Early childhood professionals

The Office of Family Assistance podcast series, “Incorporating Lived Experiences into Decision Making,” provides insights into how TANF agencies can include and involve individuals with lived experience in receiving TANF into agency programming and policy development. The series discusses why including individuals with lived experience is important and highlights various strategies and resources agencies can use to incorporate these perspectives. This first episode explores various strategies agencies have taken to gather and use input from individuals with lived experience to benefit agencies’ understanding, decision-making, and programming. Podcast speakers discuss varying approaches, including gathering survey feedback on program operations, forming participant advisory committees, incorporating participant-led case management practices, and hiring individuals with lived experience into permanent positions. This episode also explores how to engage in lived experiences equitably, including discussions of compensating individuals appropriately for their time and expertise.

This Administration for Children and Families report provides data for fiscal year (FY) 2016 through FY 2021 and presents information regarding TANF expenditures and caseloads, work participation and earnings, the characteristics and financial circumstances of TANF recipients, TANF performance measures, interactions between TANF and child support, as well as specific provisions of state TANF programs. In addition, this report documents current family self-sufficiency and stability-related research, provides national data on non-marital births, and presents child poverty statistics.

The Domestic Violence Resource Network (DVRN) is an essential coordinating network that provides training, technical assistance, and systems-based advocacy to existing grantees or anyone wanting to help survivors. The DVRN’s efforts help ensure that every state, tribe, and community can offer essential services to individuals who experience and are recovering from domestic violence. The DVRN brings a collective voice to advocates, organizations, and programs that work to prevent and address domestic violence with the support of discretionary grant funding. This work is done through national, special issue, culturally specific, and emerging or current issue resource centers and national domestic violence hotlines. This Office of Family Violence Prevention and Services factsheet lists DVRN’s partner organizations that work together to improve domestic violence prevention and intervention for people, families, communities, and the very systems set up to support and respond to this important societal concern.

The Domestic Violence Resource Network (DVRN) is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to inform and strengthen domestic violence intervention and prevention efforts at the individual, community, and societal levels. DVRN works collaboratively to promote practices and strategies to improve our nation’s response to domestic violence and make safety and justice not just a priority, but also a reality. DVRN member organizations ensure that victims of domestic violence and professionals (including but not limited to advocates, community‐based programs, case managers, and government leaders at the local, state, tribal and federal levels) have access to up‐to-date information on best practices, policies, research, and victim resources.

The National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center is hosting a re-watch of a webinar hosted originally in 2023, on February 21, 2024 at 3:00 p.m. ET. In this live re-watch, participants will hear a discussion on how youth advocates can address teen dating violence in Tribal communities. The webinar will include available tools and resources for Native youth; defining violent versus healthy relationships, and empowering the next generation through Indigenous values.

The Office of Planning, Research & Evaluation released an Excel workbook of data collection templates designed as a resource to support current and future Tribal TANF-Child Welfare Coordination (TTCW) grantees in their data collection planning. The included templates are intended to support the planning, collection, and reporting of TTCW program data. This resource includes a data collection template, a client anecdotes tracker, and a reporting planner template.