WorkforceGPS is hosting a webinar on April 23, 2024 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. ET, where participants will hear about the critical role of family engagement in the success of reentry programs for individuals returning to their communities after incarceration. By involving families in the reentry process, programs can create a supportive environment that fosters positive outcomes, such as employment, for returning individuals. Presenters will feature a representative from a reentry employment opportunity funded program, a participant from the program, a family member of the participant, and an employer.

This Mathematica resource is part of the evaluation of Promoting Opportunity Demonstration (POD), which provided modifications to Social Security Disability Insurance program rules to determine if a benefit offset formula can promote employment, reduce people’s dependence on benefits, and decrease the program’s administrative complexity. This publication is a study of how disability beneficiary work behavior responds to a rule change that replaces a cash cliff, a threshold above which benefits reduce to zero, with a benefit offset ramp. This resource provides an analysis of mechanisms indicating that administrative burden, the limited size of the incentive, and individual and systemic barriers to employment for people with disabilities likely contributed to the limited impacts.

April is National Child Abuse Prevention month. The 2024 theme is "Doing Things Differently: Moving from the Challenge to the Change,” which was designed to encourage Administration of Children and Families (ACF) partners to continue building communities that ensure families have access to fundamental supports, such as housing, food, transportation, and child care. This ACF resource highlights supporting families with a holistic perspective that recognizes the interdependence between parents and children, and offers outreach materials.

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.  

This Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) report examines the link between measures of self-regulation skills and longer-term outcomes among adults with low incomes. OPRE drew on the conceptualization of self-regulation skills from the Goal-Oriented Adult Learning in Self-Sufficiency (GOALS) project and used data from the Evaluation of Employment Coaching for TANF and Related Populations. Using both sets of data, OPRE examined the predictive power of self-regulation measures by examining their link to future outcomes such as earnings and employment one year later.

The National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center (NIWRC) is offering On-Site Technical Assistance (TA) to strengthen, develop, and/or expand the capacity of tribal and native advocacy programs and communities' responses to intimate partner violence, sexual assault, stalking, dating violence, and sex trafficking. The NIWRC staff will collaborate with each selected On-Site TA recipient to create an agenda specific to their program and tribal community. The NIWRC TA application is due April 22, 2024.

On April 2, 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) announced the award of $10.5 million to fund the first year of four, five-year cooperative agreements aimed at developing strategies to assist youth and young adults with disabilities — particularly in underserved communities — in successfully transitioning into the workforce. This DOL news releasee announces that Connecticut DOL, Kansas Department of Commerce, Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, and the New York DOL received the awards.

The application of lived experience to various aspects of program and policy development is ascendant in the social sector, but the evidence base hasn’t caught up. This Center for Behavioral Design and Social Justice report examines the benefits of including people with social service systems experience in designing, implementing and evaluating policies and programs. It highlights the role of “intersectional professionals” — individuals who have both personal and professional experience with the child welfare, juvenile justice and other human service systems.

More than half of community college students nationwide intend to pursue a four-year degree; however, in Texas only one in four community college students transfer to four-year institutions successfully. To improve transfer rates and, ultimately, bachelor’s degree attainment, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) launched the Texas Transfer Grant Pilot Program with money provided by the U.S. Department of Education’s Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund. MDRC evaluated the pilot program to build evidence about its efficacy and help inform future THECB decisions about the program. This brief provides findings about the pilot program’s impact on students’ enrollment and academic outcomes at Texas four-year institutions during the fall 2022 and spring 2023 semesters—two semesters after students initially received the fall 2022 transfer grant.