Child support programs across the country serve millions of families with low incomes. They establish paternity and child support orders, and they collect child support payments that can help increase family financial stability and contribute to positive long-term outcomes for children. However, many parents with child support obligations struggle to make regular payments. This can result in less financial support for their children, strained parenting relationships, and a potentially substantial accumulation of debt. This Building Evidence on Employment Strategies brief describes the efforts of two county child support agencies in Ohio to increase the availability of supportive services to parents who owe child support, with the goals of improving their employment outcomes, increasing their ability to meet their child support obligations, and improving their relationships with their children. This brief is a part of the BEES Project, which is studying a range of approaches to improve economic mobility and stability for families.

The Child Welfare Community Collaborations (CWCC) initiative is designed to mobilize communities to develop and evaluate multi-system collaboratives that address local barriers and provide a continuum of services to prevent child abuse and neglect. In 2018 and 2019, the Children’s Bureau awarded 5-year cooperative agreements to a total of 13 states, non-profit organizations, and Native American tribal organizations. This Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation brief provides a high-level description of each of the 13 CWCC projects and is one of a series of products the evaluation team will produce as part of the cross-site process evaluation. This brief contains a one-page description of each project, including its geographic catchment area, population of focus, key partners, prior experience with community-level collaboration, timeline, and local evaluation.

The 100% New Mexico Initiative is a community-led, data-driven approach to ensure all New Mexicans have access to vital services, including job training, transportation, and parent supports. Local communities are guided by a seven-step process to survey community members, assess results, and target evidence-informed solutions to resolve barriers to all community members accessing vital services. This Chapin Hall research brief series describes the baseline results from 6,549 local community members from 11 counties about barriers they face accessing vital services.  

The Minnesota Department of Human Services' internal workgroup to address the needs of Minnesota teen (minors and 18-19, year-olds) parents on TANF submitted a TA Request to the Welfare Peer TA (WPTA) Network. The Minnesota team's Request involved bolstering the in-State research being conducted in spring 2011 by including research on promising models from other States. In response to Minnesota's TA Request, WPTA conducted an initial literature and program scan and identified (1) State-supervised, county-administered programs (such as in Minnesota), or (2) State or local programs that were not State-supervised or county-administered. Working hand-in-hand with Minnesota, WPTA developed structured discussion guides to gather background information on individual programs. This information was used to create program profiles and a summary analysis. Thirty-four programs were contacted; after finding that some programs were not applicable to Minnesota's TA Request, information- gathering discussions were completed with 21 programs.  

Most recently, the Peer TA Team released a report including information regarding funding for low-income pregnant and parenting teen programs as well as other related youth programs related to the Minnesota TA Request. This information was gathered via contact with specific programs, federal Web sites, grantmaker Web sites and funding databases. Its purpose is to assist the State of Minnesota in identifying possible funding streams and partners as they move forward in their desire to work with pregnant and parenting teens who access the TANF program.