This Aspen Institute report describes The Opportunity Youth Forum (OYF), an initiative of the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions. Collaborative approaches funded under this program represent multiple stakeholders working together to remove barriers for underserved youth by creating comprehensive pathways for education, family-sustaining careers, and successful adulthood. Launched in 2017, The Youth Entrepreneurship Fund responded to OYF by supporting youth entrepreneurship programs for school age youth; enhancing business development programs that provide educational, financial, and advisory services; and expanding experiential and social enterprise programs.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report is based on interviews conducted with over 80 Enhanced Transitional Jobs Demonstration (U.S. Department of Labor) and Subsidized Transitional Employment Demonstration (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) program participants. The research highlights how participants initially decided to engage in subsidized employment and how they felt these jobs were leading them toward unsubsidized work. The report’s findings contribute to a greater understanding of subsidized employment models and how these programs address participant barriers to the labor market so that these individuals might secure employment without other supports in the future.

This Federal Register notice is an update of the poverty guidelines by income and size of household. This new set of guidelines reflects a 2.4 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index between calendar years 2017 and 2018 and is used as an eligibility criterion by Medicaid and other Federal programs.

This Casey Family Programs brief identifies a practice model for reducing the need for foster care and building permanent families. The practice model draws on input from professional staff, youth, biological parents, resource families, and community partners. The model identifies potential strategies and program interventions that advance legal and relationship permanency and proposes approaches that strengthen families and improve the processes for individualized case management and integrated service delivery.

This Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides a snapshot of the data related to opioid-involved overdose deaths. One key finding, among many other trends this infographic identifies, is that there were 70,237 drug overdose deaths in 2017, of which 67.8 percent involved opioids. This represents a 10.4 percent increase over 2016.

This Urban Institute report illustrates the complexity of work requirements that parents encounter, either to comply with program regulations or to increase their work engagement. There is also discussion about how parents can access the supports necessary to comply with requirements and how assistance affects the economic well-being of parents and children as work requirements are implemented or expanded.

This newly released report from the Community Action Partnership, representing over 1,000 Community Action Agencies (CAA) nationwide, presents a broad landscape of the activities and impact of CAAs. It identifies several “spotlight stories” to reflect on initiatives undertaken relative to job creation and job training, asset building, supports for health and well-being, community development, and services to strengthen children and families. The emphasis is on community-wide solutions that are designed and implemented to address challenges that low-income families face.