This newly revised toolkit from the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration now aligns with the new vision and requirements of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). Additionally, it incorporates promising practices in the career pathways field from throughout the past five years.

The Office of Family Assistance recently published the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) caseload and application for the third quarter of Fiscal Year (FY) 2016. During that quarter, an average of 1.5 million families were receiving TANF and Separate State Program (SSP) assistance per month. This indicates a decrease of about seven and a half percent from the same time period in FY 2015.

The Family Violence Prevention and Services Act (FVPSA) is the primary federal funding stream for State and Territorial Domestic Violence Coalitions, which coordinate state- and territory-wide improvements within local communities, social service systems, and programming regarding the prevention and intervention of domestic violence. Every Coalition provides comprehensive training and technical assistance on a multitude of social, legal, and economic issues that affect victims’ safety and well-being. Each state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa, have a FVPSA-funded Domestic Violence Coalition. These coalitions are connected to more than 2,000 local domestic violence programs receiving FVPSA funding across the country. Every coalition provides comprehensive training and technical assistance on a multitude of social, legal, and economic issues that affect victims’ safety and well-being. Coalitions collaborate with government, private industry, non-profit organizations, faith-based communities, and other stakeholders to effectively coordinate and improve the safety net of services available to victims and their dependents.

The National Indigenous Women's Resource Center, Inc. (NIWRC) is a Native nonprofit organization that was created specifically to serve as the National Indian Resource Center (NIRC) Addressing Domestic Violence and Safety for Indian Women. Under this grant project and in compliance with statutory requirements, the NIWRC seeks to enhance the capacity of American Indian and Alaska Native (Native) tribes, Native Hawaiians, and Tribal and Native Hawaiian organizations to respond to domestic violence.

The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) published an Information Memorandum (IM) about opportunities for state and tribal TANF agencies to incorporate career pathways approaches, including how they can count toward the agency’s work participation rate requirement. The IM shares examples of TANF agencies that have partnered with community colleges and other stakeholders to provide TANF recipients with the education, training, and support they need to obtain careers in high-demand fields.

Work-based courses use jobs as learning labs, essentially bringing colleges to the production line. This toolkit from Jobs for the Future was created for community colleges that are interested in incorporating a work-based course model into their institutions. The toolkit includes the six steps of implementation, tools and resources, and videos that support program design and implementation process.

On September 23, 2016, Mississippi held its first state data summit, “Advancing the Use of Data for a Bright Mississippi Future.” The focus of the summit was how state policymakers can use cross-program data tools to better align workforce and education programs with employer needs and help people advance their careers. This blog post from the National Skills Coalition recaps the event.

This research brief, from Portland State University, uses data from the Longitudinal Study of Adult Learning (LSAL) to determine the impact of participation in adult basic skills (ABS) programs on General Educational Development (GED) attainment. The study found that GED attainment rates for all groups surveyed appear to have been elevated substantially by program participation.