Workforce GPS will host a virtual session on September 11, 2023 from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. EDT that will provide an overview of the many professional development resources available to veteran service providers through National Veterans’ Training Institute. Staff from the Employment and Training Administration, the Veterans’ Employment and Training Service, and Management Concepts will provide a refresher on the roles and responsibilities of workforce development staff to ensure effective, integrated, and seamless service delivery to veterans.

The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 introduced changes that require states to report on specific employment and education outcomes for people after they stop receiving TANF cash assistance.  Mirroring the Department of Labor's Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act programs, these measures cover employment, employment retention, employment earnings, and attainment of a high school degree. This Urban Institute fact sheet is a resource for states, federal staff, and agency leaders implementing the new law.  Drawing insights from the 2018 report called Measuring Employment Outcomes in TANF, the fact sheet helps explain the challenges and opportunities of measuring and interpreting employment outcomes.

An apprenticeship is an “earn-and-learn” model that combines classroom instruction with on-the-job learning provided by a mentor. It provides training in a specific occupation and delivers occupational skills that are recognized and transferable across employers. Traditionally focused on training for occupations in the building trades, the U.S. Department of Labor aims to expand registered apprenticeship as a workforce training model, including nontraditional industries such as health care and information technology. Although registered apprenticeship programs share key elements, they vary in terms of occupational focus, length, registration agency, and approach. This Urban Institute brief focuses on the three approaches (time-based, competency-based, or hybrid), their considerations, and insights from program sponsors using each approach.

Northwest Wisconsin Workforce Investment Board (NWWIB) serves 10 counties across 10,000 square miles in northern Wisconsin, and administers WIOA and discretionary grant programs. Since NWWIB serves a rural region, the staff like to stay innovative on their outreach strategies, such as adopting social media campaigns on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram, and Facebook. This WorkforceGPS resource highlights a Q&A with NWWIB, exploring their innovative and fun social media outreach strategy and why innovation is important to the organization.

Employers have a vested interest in retaining high-quality employees and improving their productivity; in the past, many employers developed strategies to address these two issues without formally engaging youth workers in the process. In today’s economy, young adults are the fastest-growing group of workers, and their voices or perspectives are important to include in decisions that impact the workforce. These two Child Trends tipsheets are designed to help workforce development program staff facilitate proactive, constructive conversations between employers and young adult employees.

Research shows that economic supports are critical to family well-being and prevention; programs including child support, SNAP, Medicaid, and TANF play a pivotal role. These programs intersect in complex ways impacting the lives of children and families. In 2022, the American Public Human Services Association partnered with the National Child Support Engagement Association and the National Council of Child Support Directors to establish a forum for TANF administrators and child support directors to improve collaborative ties across programs. Since the initial creation, this forum has expanded to a Technical Working Group of administrators in child support, TANF, SNAP, and child welfare, parents, and other national partners to identify foundational principles for coordination and collaboration in economic supports inclusive of child support programs. This publication highlights key practices and policy levers that can better support the families they serve.

Many child support policies disproportionately harm families with low incomes in which nonresident parents have limited ability to pay support. This blogpost outlines six recommendations on how child support systems can equitably serve families with low incomes to emphasize healthy child development, encourage parental support in all forms, foster parent-child and co-parenting relationships, and assist parents who struggle to pay support. These recommendations include the need to emphasize support for the entire family; establish and modify child support orders according to parents’ ability to pay support; identify and address the causes of noncompliance and limit punitive enforcement; transfer all child support collected by the state to TANF families; collect a wider range of demographic and outcome data and evaluate policy impacts on diverse family types; and provide government support to children in poverty whose parents cannot provide meaningful financial support.

The Child Support Enforcement (CSE) program was enacted in 1975 as a federal-state program and served to reduce public expenditures for recipients of cash assistance by obtaining ongoing support from noncustodial parents that could be used to reimburse the state and federal governments for part of that assistance. Over the years, CSE has evolved into a multifaceted program. While public assistance cost recovery remains an important function of the program, its other aspects include service delivery and promotion of self-sufficiency and parental responsibility. This Congressional Research Service summary explores how the CSE program has different rules for assistance families (e.g., those receiving cash benefits under TANF) and non-assistance families. Additionally, the summary highlights each of the CSE program’s seven major services -- (1) parent location, (2) paternity establishment, (3) establishment of child support orders, (4) review and modification of child support orders, (5) collection of child support payments, (6) distribution of child support payments, and (7) establishment and enforcement of medical support – and discusses how they impact TANF families.

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.