This blogpost by the Commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF) highlights the challenges facing homeless pregnant mothers, babies, and toddlers. To address these challenges, the Administration for Children and Families’ (ACF’s) Family and Youth Services Bureau and the Office of Head Start support collaboration between Runaway and Homeless Youth and Early Head Start grantees serving both youth in transitional living programs and maternity group homes, as well as children enrolled in Head Start programs. National Training and Technical Assistance Centers will play a crucial role in this collaboration, sharing resources and training materials on early childhood development for young parents and families experiencing homelessness. By encouraging this collaborative relationship, ACF’s two-generation approach strives to meet the needs of parents and their children.

The Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison will host a webinar on April 1, 2020 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. CT to discuss the relationships that human services programs develop with the participants they serve, as well as the relationships that programs help participants develop outside their organizations. Speakers from the Yale Schools of Medicine and Public Health, the School of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will discuss the measurement and evaluation of building program participants’ social capital and the value of logic models for documenting social capital inputs, activities, and outputs. The webinar will also feature a program that tracks social capital to support programming in human services administration.

This policy brief examines how state tax systems use or have developed earned income tax credit (EITC) programs below the federal level. The brief also provides a set of steps that could be used to formulate a new state EITC campaign in the 31 states that do not currently have an EITC in their tax code.

This report summarizes findings from random assignment studies of 13 subsidized employment programs funded under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Subsidized and Transitional Employment Demonstration (STED) and the U.S. Department of Labor Enhanced Transitional Jobs Demonstration (EJTD). The report presents the impacts on the employment and earnings for participants in each of the 13 programs and also examines nonemployment outcomes for participants such as reducing recidivism and increased child support payments.

The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance seeks applications for technical assistance and training providers for Second Chance Act (SCA) grantees to improve reentry and reduce recidivism. Providers are sought to support site-based SCA grantees in one of the following three categories of technical assistance: Corrections and Community Engagement; Education, Employment, and Community Engagement; and Behavioral Health, Housing, and Family Support. Submissions are due by April 28, 2020.

The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance has announced the Justice Reinvestment Initiative to support research and analysis of business management and operations processes of criminal justice systems. Funding proposals may be submitted under one of three categories: Improving Court Processing and Efficient Docket Management; Improving and Implementing Pre-Trial Systems; and Innovative Approaches to Improve the Efficacy of State, Local, and Tribal Justice Systems. Proposals are due by May 1, 2020.

The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance has announced a grant funding opportunity for state, local, and tribal community corrections agencies to improve the capacity and effectiveness of the supervision capacity of their probation and parole agencies and their parole success rates in reducing recidivism. Applications are due by April 28, 2020.

The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance has announced a grant funding opportunity to help local jurisdictions identify strengths and gaps within their reentry systems, build capacity for improving reentry systems or improve service delivery, or enhance existing reentry programs to reduce recidivism. Applications are due by May 4, 2020.

The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance has announced a grant funding opportunity for projects that establish, expand, and improve treatment for individuals with substance use disorders during incarceration and reentry into the community. Applications are due by April 27, 2020.

The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance has announced a grant funding opportunity for state, local, and tribal community supervision agencies to develop and test new or enhanced applications of the swift, certain, and fair (SCF) principles of intervention to reduce recidivism and improve outcomes for individuals under community supervision. The SCF principles of intervention reflect:

• Swiftness—responding to behavior quickly so those under supervision relate the response to their behavior.

• Certainty—ensuring that sanctions and rewards are applied consistently and predictably.

• Fairness—making sanctions and rewards proportional to negative and positive behavior respectively. Applications are due by April 28, 2020.