This issue brief from the National Mentoring Partnership identifies the role that mentoring can play in the lives of youth through career exploration and workforce development activities leading to greater employability. It distinguishes between developmental mentoring, which focuses on healthy and positive social development, and instrumental mentoring, which promotes skill development and targeted goal setting.

This toolkit from the National Mentoring Partnership offers some tips and resources on how best to celebrate National Mentoring Partnership in January 2019.

This Jobs for the Future research report describes how short-term apprenticeship programs can be integrated into a full career ladder. It identifies how shorter apprenticeships (18 months or less) might represent stackable rungs on the career ladder, compared to more traditional apprenticeship programs that are longer in length. The report includes recommendations for employers as well as government to support expanding stackable apprenticeships.

This U.S. Government Accountability Office report reviews Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Employment and Training (E&T) programs from fiscal years 2008 through 2016 and outcomes from 2008 through 2017 from state reports. The report also highlights how state SNAP E&T programs have partnered with other workforce development programs using five state case studies. There are recommendations on data reliability systems and how to leverage partnerships with other workforce development programs.

This blog post from Child Trends presents findings from a recent Early Childhood Data Collaborative survey, which noted that 22 states have created data sharing systems to measure the utilization and outcomes of early childhood services. However, this study also suggested that most states have not yet included home visiting data in their integrated systems due to challenges in linking data across a range of home visiting programs with varying data collection requirements and data storage capacity.

This Center for Law and Social Policy issue brief describes how career pathways have a shared definition under Perkins V, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, and the Higher Education Act. The relationship between career pathways and programs of study is discussed; this important relationship ties training and education to meet the needs of learners as they seek to enter and advance in jobs that require credentialing.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposes data collection activities as part of the Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) program. ACF has developed a multi-faceted research and evaluation approach to better assess HPOG activities and their results. Under a second round of HPOG grants awarded in 2015, ACF provided grants to five tribal-affiliated organizations and 27 non-tribal entities. The Office of Management and Budget approved data collection for this round, and the first submission of data, approved in August 2015, included baseline data collection instruments and the grant performance management system, followed by a second submission approved in June 2017 that included additional data collection for the National Evaluation impact and descriptive studies and the Tribal Evaluation. A third submission for National Evaluation impact study data collection was approved in June 2018. The proposed data collection activities will provide data for the impact, descriptive, and cost-benefit studies of the non-tribal grantees. Comments are due to ACF by February 27, 2019.

This live webcast hosted by the Brookings Institution on January 24, 2019 will discuss potential workplace reforms for older workers and the supports necessary for labor force participation among those who want to work longer. Former U.S. Department of Labor officials and Social Security Administration staff will share presentations at the webcast moderated by the president and chief executive officer of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

This University of Maryland report, a part of the annual Life After Welfare series, reviews the outcomes of households that are no longer on TANF caseloads. The report examines the characteristics, employment, and earnings outcomes of 12,597 families who left Maryland’s Temporary Cash Assistance (TCA) program between January 2004 and March 2017. The findings suggest that these families improved their financial situations after exiting TCA, compared to their circumstances before TCA enrollment. However, these families still struggle to maintain independence from cash assistance following exit from the program.