The child support program serves parents in the context of their community. Child support agencies work with community-based organizations to help meet parent needs,and enhance the success of families in child support programs. This compendium reflects the diversity of child support partnerships across the country; it includes resources and fact sheets on employment, reentry, family violence, responsible fatherhood, homelessness, parental education, and preventing the need for child support services by addressing the importance of being emotionally and financially prepared to support a child.

This announcement from Tanguler Gray, Commissioner of the Administration for Children and Families, Office of Child Support Services (OCSS) notes how whole-family, community based strategies are one of the five strategic goals of the Administration for Children and Families and that State, Tribal, and local child support programs are uniquely positioned to advance these strategies because of their extensive interactions with parents and caregivers. It references several OCSS goals for advancing whole-family strategies, as well as a Child Support Awareness Month webpage with a social media toolkit to help spread the word.

In support of the Administration for Children and Families’ (ACF) mission and strategic plan, ACF has developed a set of materials intended to provide guidance to hard-to-reach populations to increase their awareness and understanding of the array of resources that may be able to assist them. These resources are explicitly designed to be user-friendly and easy to digest. The materials include resources for transition-age youth exiting foster care, families with children ages 0-12, prospective Head Start participants, survivors of domestic violence looking to find and keep housing, fathers looking for benefits programs or parenting tips, and providers supporting those seeking post-disaster housing.

This toolkit, a product from the TANF Data Innovation project, offers practical guidance to agencies on how to create a culture of evidence as a routine part of government operations. The material included was sourced from interviews with practitioners who have successfully built sustainable data use into their everyday practices. The tools were developed to help agencies build the culture and infrastructure needed to apply data analysis routinely, effectively, and accurately. While it was initially developed for State TANF agencies, many strategies may be useful for individuals in a range of agencies, where the challenges and impact are similar.

Given the potential to build a more equitable economy and provide opportunities for upward mobility, apprenticeships have become a key tool in California’s workforce development toolbox. In July 2022, California’s Division of Apprenticeship Standards (DAS) and the Labor & Workforce Development Agency released a five-point plan of action to aid the expansion of the number of apprentices. One point called for expanding youth apprenticeship opportunities and recommended the state convene stakeholders to develop definitions and quality standards to support apprenticeship pilots, provide technical assistance, and take steps to support better alignment of funding. This New America blogpost highlights the creation of the California Youth Apprenticeship Committee and the California Youth Apprenticeship Grant Program.

The COVID-19 pandemic created sudden, substantial hardships for many families with low incomes and unprecedented challenges for the operation of benefit programs. Families combining work and TANF when the pandemic began could have lost earnings, while non-working TANF recipients may have become unable to meet other activity requirements, and families who were previously economically stable and ineligible for TANF may have become newly eligible for cash assistance. Agencies administering benefit programs had to determine how to adjust program rules during state program office closures while continuing to meet families’ evolving needs. This Urban Institute brief provides a graphical overview of selected TANF policy changes states made, including information about changes to work and activity requirements, sanctions, time limits, benefit computation policies, and treatment of unemployment insurance benefits.

Many of the reasons that people with barriers to employment will not show up on the first day of work, quit jobs, or get fired are present with them before they start employment programs. Work brings these reasons to the surface. The Radar Approach to Job Retention model works by providing an early warning system that identifies potential firing and quitting problems before people go to work. It is also an early identification system for building on the retention strengths that everyone brings to the employment process. The National Association of Workforce Development Professionals will host a virtual session on September 26, 2023 at 1:00 p.m. CDT that will highlight various aspects of the approach, including integrating retention into every program component so that it works like radar spotting and addressing the early warning signs of job loss as well as surfacing and enhancing assets to retention. There is a registration fee for participation.

The number of children living in multigenerational households has been increasing steadily since the 1980s, and as of 2021, more than 10% of children share a home with two or more generations. About 30% of children will live in a multigenerational or skipped-generation household at some point during their childhood. This is even more common for children of color and for those whose adult family members are low income. The Institute for Research on Poverty will host a virtual session on September 6, 2023 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET to examine the scope of the issue and its implications for child wellbeing and security, as well as opportunities in policy and practice to support these household members.

Subsidized employment is a policy tool that provides subsidized job opportunities, on-the-job training, and wraparound support. It serves as an engine for economic opportunity, stronger labor markets, and healthier communities. Subsidized employment can mitigate structural barriers to work, such as racial discrimination in the labor market, and be adapted and scaled to meet specific worker, employer, and community needs. This Georgetown Law’s Center on Poverty and Inequality report reviews a half-century of evidence on subsidized employment’s power to increase employment and incomes, reduce poverty, and ensure a more inclusive economy for everyone.

Long-simmering workforce shortages, intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, could undermine job growth, and the manufacturing sector serves as a prime example. Leading up to the pandemic, an estimated 500,000 manufacturing job openings were unfilled. For some legacy manufacturing regions, difficulties with worker recruitment and retention are especially pronounced. This Upjohn brief summarizes how centering workforce development within the U.S. Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) can be the institutional fix by documenting the workforce- and workplace-enhancing strategies that MEP centers have adopted since their inception in the mid-1990s.