This Institute for Research on Poverty report presents findings of the Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration Program (CSPED) implementation analysis. The report highlights promising agency-led approaches that emphasize delivery of services to noncustodial parents, compared to child services agencies that only emphasize enforcement of child support obligations. This new management orientation for child services agencies engages noncustodial parents and impacts parenting, case management, and employment, which helps facilitate reliable child support payments.

This Administration for Children and Families blogpost, authored by the Director of the Office of Head Start and Early Childhood Development, identifies the reach of Head Start programs to serve children within families that experience homelessness and the links between Head Start and other human service agencies. Additionally, the blogpost links to Head Start training opportunities that include eight interactive learning modules that lead to receiving professional development certificates, and notes three forthcoming webinars that share effective practices for building organizational readiness, developing partnerships, and addressing service challenges in local Head Start communities.

This Upjohn Institute policy brief analyzes the long-run outcomes of Earned Income Tax Credit and welfare time limits to increase employment and reduce public assistance; the brief also reviews the impact of anti-poverty programs on geographical locations where participants live. The research and analysis examine these anti-poverty programs and whether they have made a difference not only for individual households and participants, but also for disadvantaged neighborhoods.

This Urban Institute report highlights qualitative data to explain the reasons why low-wage workers apply for public assistance initially. The report is drawn from interviews with 40 individuals who recently separated from low-wage work and received or participated in Medicaid, SNAP, the Minnesota Family Investment Program, cash assistance, or unemployment insurance. The focus of the study is to understand why workers lose or leave low-wage work and how these workers get by on low and fluctuating income; these factors can determine worker outcomes for receiving assistance and improved outcomes for self-sufficiency.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report is an implementation and impact study of two job search assistance programs in Sacramento County, California: Standard Job Club and Fast Track Job Club. The report assessed whether there are differences in types of services that job seekers receive under either program, as well as the level and duration of assistance. The report also discusses if there are differences between participants in the two programs regarding employment, earnings, duration before employment, and need for public assistance.

The National Association of Workforce Development Professionals (NAWDP) will host a set of three professional development webinars, beginning on August 22, 2019 at 1:00 p.m. ET and continuing on September 26, 2019 and October 17, 2019. The first of these one-hour webinars will cover Career Assessment Principles and Practices, and successive webinars will highlight Career Planning: Individualizing the Process and Beat the Clock: Behavior Focused Time Management. Registration fees are required for all three webinars for both NAWDP members and non-members prior to attendance.

The term “chronic scarcity” was coined by behavioral economist Sendhil Mullainathan and psychologist Eldar Shafir in their book, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much (published by Henry Holt & Company, 2013). This book articulates the ways that scarcity creates and perpetuates poverty and how scarcity leads people to shuffle resources and prioritize for urgent roles. From a policy perspective, the authors present an example of how training programs need to offer alternative meeting times to prevent participant attrition. As well, they suggest that time limits can effectively motivate TANF participants to prioritize identifying and securing employment.

MDRC will host a webinar on July 18, 2019 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET to introduce the TANF Data Collaborative (TDC) and launch the TDC Pilot. Presenters will discuss three ways that TDC supports data-driven management and will cover how TANF agencies can access TDC pilot funding and receive a scholarship for attending data analytics training.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service will host a webinar on July 18, 2019 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. ET to discuss the use of intermediaries in the administration of SNAP E&T programs. Intermediaries are organizations that conduct required administrative tasks and support State SNAP programs by centralizing operations and fiscal reporting. The webinar will include speakers from Goodwill of North Georgia, Portland (Oregon) Community College, and Worksystems (the local Workforce Investment Board in Portland, Oregon) who will discuss the benefits, challenges, and opportunities of each of their models.

This Chapin Hall issue brief reviews: child welfare workers’ perceptions of county-level availability of training and the range of services available for transition-age foster youth; workers’ views about the collaboration between child welfare departments and other service delivery systems; and the correlation between foster youth satisfaction with training and services and outcomes in education, homelessness, employment and health. The analysis relies on longitudinal studies from the California Youth Transitions to Adulthood Study (CalYOUTH) conducted in 2013 and 2015. Report findings point to the need for increased collaboration among child welfare and other systems, as well as connection of foster youths’ satisfaction with offered services to support service delivery.