This report offers key considerations on how to develop and evaluate direct cash transfer programs (DCTP) for youth experiencing homelessness. In designing a DCTP program in New York City, these considerations include centering on youth, boosting housing stability, flexibility in the implementation of delivery of payment and support systems, and identifying barriers to program success. This report’s findings are based on a literature review of DCTPs; focus groups with youth experiencing homelessness and a range of other stakeholders beyond affected youth; and a co-interpretation workshop with stakeholders, including young people, government agency representatives, funders, and advocates.

This issue brief explores the need for expanding the early care and education workforce. The brief highlights the T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood® Initiative in 20 states, which provides scholarships to teachers and child care providers interested in improving their formal professional credentials. The brief also discusses approaches to increase the wages and benefits that early care and education providers can offer their staff. There is also a section on improving working conditions in the field that includes coaching and professional development for teachers. In addition, the brief offers support to providers in sustaining their child care businesses with curricula on fiscal management, marketing, and personnel management.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report, a summary of the Job Search Assistance (JSA) Strategies Evaluation, compares the effectiveness of different approaches for finding and keeping jobs among individuals applying for or receiving assistance under TANF. The report reviews findings from three sites: Genesee and Wayne Counties in Michigan; New York City; and Sacramento County, California. In each of these sites, TANF applicants or recipients were randomly assigned to one of two programs that provided employment-related services. The study measured outcome differences (in public benefit receipt, employment, and earnings) between people assigned to each of the two programs in each site. The report’s findings address three key questions regarding the frequency, mode, and content of the employment-related services for the TANF recipients in the two programs; the two programs’ impacts on employment and earnings; and the effects on receipt of TANF and SNAP due to participation in the two programs.

This new webinar series entitled Moving Upstream: Transforming Systems to Advance Well-Being will examine structural barriers to and opportunities for moving to a coordinated system of services to support and strengthen families. The first webinar in the series will occur on January 14, 2021 from 1:15 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. ET. The webinar will examine how housing and economic mobility programs can coordinate to promote child and family well-being. Presenters will include representatives from Mercy Housing, Casey Family Services, Compass Working Capital, and Abt Associates.

The U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (ETA) will host a webinar on December 14, 2020 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. ET which will cover the agency’s vision for implementation of the Training and Employment Guidance Letter (TEGL) 07-20. The TEGL describes the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) requirement that individuals who are basic skills deficient, low-income, or public assistance recipients must receive priority when receiving individualized career services training under the WIOA Adult program. ETA staff will highlight the requirements in TEGL 07-20, ETA’s method of monitoring these requirements using performance data, and how other resources can be leveraged to support WIOA adult priority populations.

This guidebook intends to support agency and organization leaders in setting goals and creating progress measures for their 2Gen approaches. The guidebook starts with definitions and a history of the 2Gen approach with lessons learned that inform current “2Gen 2.0” initiatives. The guidebook presents the 2Gen Organizational Change Measurement Framework, which reflects an organization’s culture and climate, engagement partnerships, knowledge and skills, infrastructure, and resources. The guidebook also includes resources and components to build capacity for change for each framework element.

This dataset features FY2019 kinship caregiving profiles for all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Data used in these profiles were retrieved from the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect. Some of the data featured includes the race and ethnicity of children placed with a relative foster family, age of the children placed with a relative foster family, and funding availability and spending for guardianship by state in SFY2016. Along with the profile is a companion guide that outlines how the state profiles can be used, a description of each data source, how to interpret the data, and an overview of the current state of child welfare in the United States.

This report presents data and graphics to illustrate the variation of young children in deep poverty by race and ethnicity and health and development, including low birth weight, physical impairments, intellectual disability and developmental delay, participation rates in early intervention and special education, child behavior, lack of health insurance, obesity, and elevated blood lead levels. The report also examines parent characteristics by poverty status, such as their overall mental health status, income status among single parent households, level of neighborhood support, educational attainment, and rates among parents without health insurance and rates among unemployed parents.

This report reviews models and success factors of successful American Apprenticeship Initiative (AAI) grantees. AAI, which commenced in 2015, was a $175 million five-year grant program with a goal of registering 34,000 new apprentices in health care, IT, and advanced manufacturing by 2020. AAI success factors discussed in the report include sustainability of funding from other federal sources, partnerships with employers and industry to design apprenticeship programs, a simplified process for identifying and registering apprenticeship programs at the state level and for complying with federal and state regulations on these programs, and flexibility to meet employers’ and apprentices’ needs.

In April 2020, the U.S. Department of Education expanded the Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative to include 67 new higher education institutions in the program, beyond the 63 colleges that had already been providing postsecondary education programs in prisons. This initiative and its expansion offer unique challenges for colleges responding to this nontraditional student population. This guide offers examples and practical operational support to both colleges and corrections departments for establishing postsecondary education programs in the prison environment. These programs strive to balance affirming the dignity of these nontraditional students with delivering comparable in-person educational quality to traditional classroom settings.