The Administration for Children and Families announced a new Technical Assistance Center to help states, Tribes, and territories implement Fostering the Future Accounts, a program designed to help eligible young people build financial security as they transition into adulthood. Once launched, the center will offer training, tools, and individualized support to help jurisdictions successfully establish and manage these accounts. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) practitioners who work with youth and young adults can access this resource to learn about new opportunities that promote financial well-being and strengthen pathways to long-term economic independence.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs rely on accurate information to ensure benefits reach eligible families while maintaining program integrity. The Public Assistance Reporting Information System (PARIS) helps states identify duplicate public assistance participation across state lines and verify information that may affect eligibility. For TANF practitioners, understanding how PARIS works can support more accurate eligibility determinations, reduce administrative burden, and strengthen coordination with other public assistance programs while helping safeguard limited program resources.

In December 2025, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) sent letters to 39 governors, calling for immediate action to protect vulnerable foster youth in their states. The letters highlighted the pressing issue of state child welfare agencies diverting foster youths’ earned Social Security survivor benefits. These agencies were intercepting federal benefits, such as Social Security survivor benefits earned through a deceased parent’s lifetime contributions, that were intended for a child in foster care. The agencies then used these funds to reimburse their own costs.

ACF has notified the governors who allowed this practice and is working with states to end it. The goal is to ensure these earned benefits are no longer taken from foster youth and are instead preserved to support them as they transition out of state care.

The MIT Living Wage Calculator estimates the income families need to cover basic expenses based on where they live and family size. It helps clarify a common disconnect in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) work—employment alone does not always equal economic stability. Practitioners can use it to ground conversations about self-sufficiency in local reality, making it easier to connect job planning and financial goals to actual household needs and improve family stability.

The Administration for Children and Families announced the launch of “A Home for Every Child,” a national initiative aimed at right-sizing the ratio of foster homes to the number of kids in the foster care system. The initiative will focus on both sides of the equation — increasing the availability of safe homes through diligent recruitment, prioritizing kin, and improving retention of existing caregivers while reducing entries into foster care through effective prevention and faster pathways to permanency. ACF plans to leverage all $11.4 billion of its annual federal funding for foster care and child welfare to advance this mission and will come alongside state agencies to give broad latitude, flexibility, and technical support to reimagine community-specific interventions. ACF will eliminate outdated bureaucratic barriers that discourage families from stepping forward, including streamlining foster family licensing, supporting kinship caregivers, and encouraging faith-based partnerships to expand the network of caring families.

This Executive Order by the Trump-Vance administration announces that they will dedicate Federal support, technology, and strategic partnerships to provide young Americans in or transitioning out of the foster care system with the tools they need to become successful adults.

Every child deserves a safe and nurturing home where they can learn, grow, and reach their full potential. Adoption makes that possible by opening the door to stability and belonging for children who need a family. This proclamation by the Trump-Vance administration declares November 2025 as National Adoption Month throughout the United States and encourages all Americans to support children in need of a safe and loving home, uplift the families who welcome them, and help strengthen the bonds of family and community.

States have broad flexibility over the use of state and federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds, and many have used that flexibility to divert funds away from income support for families and toward other state budget areas often unrelated to TANF’s goals. In 2021, states spent only about a fifth of the funds on basic assistance to meet essential needs of families with children; yet research shows that investments in cash assistance can improve academic, health, and economic outcomes for children in families in poverty. This Center on Budget and Policy Priorities resource consists of fact sheets for every state, detailing how each spends its TANF funds.

As a result of the novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the United States is amid a national emergency. In addition to the urgent public health crisis underway, families across the country are struggling to find work and access benefits as a result of business closures, stay in place orders, and social distancing measures. In addition, TANF agency business processes are upended as workers adjust their work schedules while working from a new location, caring for themselves or a sick relative, navigating the absence of childcare, or simply adapting to what is a stark contrast from previous expectations for everyday working and living. As more states adopt policies to combat COVID-19, TANF agencies and other human services providers are required to reimagine and adapt previous expectations, behaviors, and communication styles for a digital and dispersed environment.

In this facilitated webinar hosted by the Office of Family Assistance on April 9, 2020, presenters discussed the operational aspects of transitioning agency and frontline staff to remote work such as use of technology, data security, staff expectations and support, and communication. The webinar focused on sharing strategies for how TANF agencies can adapt to support their workforces, and in turn continue to address the growing needs of families across the country. Presenters included: Gerrie Cotter, Ohio Department of Job and Family Services; Susan Pugh, Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation, Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities; Maria Wortman-Meshberger, Nevada Department of Health and Human Services; and Beth A. Heinen and Joe Raymond, both of ICF.