The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) convened an interagency workgroup of key HHS experts in overdose prevention and substance use disorders to develop a new strategy to address the evolving nature of the broadened overdose crisis. The Overdose Prevention Strategy includes four priority areas: 

1) Primary prevention, 2)  Harm reduction, 3) Evidence-based treatment, 4) Recovery support

This issue brief discusses the Strategy in greater detail, including the objectives under each priority area, associated activities, and guiding principles. 

For additional resources, see the PeerTA Resource Library for reports, research-to-practice briefs, toolkits, fact/tip sheets, and stakeholder resources as well as webinars that address the overdose crisis, substance use, and related supportive services.

The pressures that mothers of young children have faced over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic have been well documented. While inequities persist in many aspects of women’s lives, some of the stickier problems for women stem from the difficult choices they face in reconciling competing demands on their time. This report reviews trends in women’s labor force participation and document how mothers of children under age 13 have changed how they spend their time. In this set of economic facts, we detail some of the ways in which work, time, and caregiving have changed for mothers with young children from before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic through 2020 until early 2021. This report relies on Federal data and the Survey of Mothers with Young Children.

Women experiencing poverty are more likely to face intimate partner violence (IPV), poor health, and stigma, and IPV survivors are overrepresented among those participating in TANF. This research article explores the impact of TANF on women’s wellbeing through in-depth, semi-structured interviews during the COVID-19 pandemic with 13 women who had TANF experience in three U.S. states. The article concludes with findings to demonstrate how increasing TANF cash benefits and other cash transfers for those experiencing poverty, adopting solely state funded TANF programs, increasing funding for TANF administration, addressing TANF stigma and racialized narratives, and allowing optional child support participation or a larger “pass-through” of child support are important steps toward making TANF more protective against IPV.

This bulletin for child welfare professionals overviews the foundational elements of the family engagement approach and offers strategies and promising practices for implementing it. While the resource is intended to provide information for frontline caseworkers who directly engage families, it also provides information about family engagement at the system, program, and community levels, as best practices are grounded in these higher levels of the child welfare system.

Strengthening Families is a research-based framework developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy over the last decade to increase family strengths, enhance child development, and reduce child abuse and neglect. This approach helps child welfare systems, early education, prevention organizations, and other programs work with parents to build five protective factors that, when present, increase the overall well-being of children and families. They are:

• Enhancing parental resilience
• Providing an array of social connections
• Providing parents concrete support in times of need
• Facilitating knowledge of parenting and child development
• Supporting healthy social and emotional development in young children

This set of resources includes a state profile of Strengthening Families efforts in Missouri.

This fact sheet targeted primarily for young adults offers information on what it means to take care of oneself as well as hotline telephone numbers and links to information on conversation starters and self-care.

This blogpost defines the concepts of caregiver burnout versus compassion fatigue. It also presents how to recognize compassion fatigue by identifying warning signs in family caregivers, and how to use self-care to prevent compassion fatigue.

The National Association of Case Management held a webinar on May 13, 2020, during which participants learned about the symptoms of Caregiver Fatigue, how to recognize Caregiver Fatigue prior to the symptoms becoming problematic, and ways to identify techniques to reduce symptoms of Caregiver Fatigue. The webinar was led by Bridget Thompson, a Certified Health Coach and a Housing Coordinator at Region V Systems, where she manages programs specializing in housing individuals experiencing chronic homelessness, and mental health and substance abuse issues. A webinar recording is available for download.

This toolkit provides leaders overseeing frontline staff, managers, or other unit-based roles with guidance on assessing their staff’s potential risk of compassion fatigue. The toolkit identifies a five-step process for administering a compassion fatigue assessment, and includes a compassion fatigue discussion guide and a compassion fatigue literature guide.

This blogpost addresses several topics related to compassion fatigue. It defines and identifies symptoms of compassion fatigue compared to burnout and primary traumatic stress. The blogpost also graphically illustrates the compassion fatigue process, offers tips for managing compassion fatigue, and presents the ABC’s of Prevention — Awareness, Balance, and Connections.