This blogpost by the Associate Commissioner of the Children’s Bureau highlights the celebration of National Foster Care Month 2019. This year’s theme is that foster care supports birth families when they most need it and provides care for children until their safe return home. The blogpost identifies resources and tips on building relationships among child welfare professionals, birth parents, and foster parents to support development of healthy and thriving children, as well as targeted supportive services implementation.

This factsheet, prepared by Minnesota State Careerwise, illustrates a list of common barriers to employment. It also provides guidance on how to address barriers when job hunting, including finding helpful resources.

The Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison will hold a webinar on May 15, 2019 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. CT to discuss research findings from the National Academies report, Cutting the Child Poverty Rate by Half. Two of the report’s authors, Hilary Hoynes and Robert Moffitt, will cover the effectiveness of current assistance programs and their policy and program recommendations to reduce child poverty by half in the next 10 years.

This Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) issue brief is drawn from a jointly funded initiative from the ARC and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, “Creating a Culture of Health in Appalachia: Disparities and Bright Spots.” The brief presents statistics on opioid abuse and deaths in Appalachia, discusses strategies and resources for addressing the opioid crisis in this location, and offers recommendations for further study and program implementation of community-based solutions.

This Upjohn Institute study is an interim first-year report of the Institute’s “Promise: Investing in Community” initiative. The report presents strategies that rural areas as well as small and mid-sized cities might deploy to create shared prosperity. The strategies include investing in workers with education and training and investing in businesses through targeted incentives and direct funding assistance. The report includes a summary of best practices for place-based scholarships, workforce training, and support for small businesses, as well as guidance on how to integrate these best practices in an overall strategy drawn on local community assets.

This United States Interagency Council on Homelessness issue brief reviews the relationship between housing costs and housing stability; more affordable housing options reduce the likelihood of families becoming homeless, and help homeless families exit homelessness more quickly. The issue brief also notes recent reports identifying housing affordability and stability challenges and efforts the Council has made to address them.

This Urban Institute report examines findings from its replication validation of the National Institute of Correction’s Employment Retention Inventory (ERI). This study was conducted to determine the ERI’s capability of identifying workforce detachment risks and reductions in labor force participation for justice-involved populations in Indiana, New York, and Massachusetts. Conducted from June 2017 to July 2018, the study reviewed the employment and recidivism rates of 185 employed and 148 unemployed persons and compared this group with the overall justice-involved population. Employment outcomes and prediction of unemployment were made 3 to 6 months following release into community correctional settings.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration has posted a set of data resources and publications to identify rates of labor force participation among people with disabilities, as well as to illustrate the barriers to the labor market this population faces.

The blogpost, co-authored by the Associate Commissioner of the Children’s Bureau at the Administration for Children and Families and the Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) at the U.S. Department of Justice, highlights the partnering efforts between both federal agencies to reduce the frequency and impact of child abuse and neglect. Key highlights in this post are the Children’s Bureau’s and OJJDP’s resources, including an information memorandum, resource guides and tip sheets, and toolkits, as well as collaborative efforts to engage child welfare and law enforcement professionals.

This Chapin Hall report reviews the implementation of a “housing first” approach that addresses the needs of families in the child welfare system. The case study of supportive housing in Connecticut was a demonstration project, funded by the Children’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Researchers used a randomized controlled trial to identify the impact of supportive housing on child and family outcomes to include family reunification, as well as removal from and placement into foster care.