This Urban Institute report presents motivations and barriers faced by employers that provide work-family supports. The report also highlights employer perceptions about public policies that help low-wage workers address or manage work-family supports, such as paid leave, workplace flexibility, and subsidized child care. The findings also reveal ways that employer-based policies can be integrated and aligned with work-family supports. The report draws on interviews with 16 organizations that represent or directly work with employers and notes that further research on work-family supports for low-wage workers is needed.

The National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare, a resource center jointly funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Children’s Bureau of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, has created a Child Welfare Training Toolkit. The toolkit provides guidance to child welfare professionals about substance use and co-occurring disorders within families involved in the child welfare system. The toolkit comprises 10 modules – 7 core and 3 specialized areas – that build foundational knowledge to support an understanding of substance use, identify when substance use is a factor in child welfare cases, offer strategies for parental engagement, acknowledge the effects of substance use on children and caregivers, and present steps on how to build collaborations for a system of care.

The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) seeks public comment on potential changes to performance measures for the Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) program. Developed in 2014, the program’s current metrics include reporting that reflects program applicant characteristics, program operations, participant outcomes (based on an entrance survey and an existing survey), a quarterly performance report, and a semi-annual performance report within the nFORM (Management Information) system.

OPRE seeks input on the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected, relevance and appropriateness of the performance measures for HMRF program populations, how well the measures are aligned with program goals and theories of changes, whether quarterly reports capture program performance accurately, and ways to minimize performance data collection burdens. Public comments are to be submitted to nformfeedback@acf.hhs.gov by Friday, December 6, 2019.

This National Skills Coalition blogpost summarizes the Coalition’s work on non-degree credentials and how to define quality non-degree credentials that are valid, reliable, and transparent. The blogpost also explores how states could support industry partnerships, expand apprenticeships and work-based learning, and increase financial aid and non-tuition supportive services for persons seeking non-degree credentials.

This MDRC brief is an evaluation of the Behavioral Interventions for Child Support Services (BICS) Project in Vermont, a randomized controlled trial. The report, which summarizes trial findings, examines the two key elements of the behavioral intervention that address noncustodial parents. One element was a change in the letters and outreach that parents receive to increase their meeting participation. A second element pertained to structural changes to the meetings that resulted in agreements between the parents. These changes led to the creation of Vermont Office of Child Support Services “Resolution Meetings” that parents attended instead of court-based Case Manager conferences as a result of previous non-compliance.

This Urban Institute report presents ways that young parents (under the age of 25) can balance education and work and offers recommendations on how public policy and educational institutions can support young parents. The report draws from interviews and data analysis from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.

This research brief from the Office of Child Support Enforcement identifies findings from a five-site Parenting Time Opportunities for Children (PTOC) grant. The grant, awarded to child support agencies in California, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and Oregon, was intended to demonstrate how child support agencies can include parenting time orders in child support enforcement actions. The brief describes how increases in noncustodial parenting time, with safeguards in place for child welfare, led to improved relationships and increased compliance with child support payment orders.

This American Enterprise Institute podcast features a presentation from Clarence H. Carter, the Director of the Office of Family Assistance and Acting Director of the Office of Community Services at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This presentation covers Director Carter’s vision for a re-imagined safety net which builds the capacity of TANF clients and how local service providers’ expertise and creativity can be leveraged.

This Child Trends report reviews the use of existing funding and challenges of providing services and support for young people in transition from foster care. The report’s findings are drawn from 19 child welfare leaders in eight jurisdictions. Funding sources examined in this report primarily include Title IV-E Foster Care Program and the John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for Successful Transition to Adulthood.