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.

Texas’s Summer Earn and Learn (SEAL) program and the Promoting Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income (PROMISE) programs in Arkansas are identified as successful examples of collaboration between vocational rehabilitation agencies and workforce boards. This Mathematica report also identifies key features of the programs so that policymakers can choose, develop, and adapt similar partnerships within their own context.

This MDRC evaluation report assesses a Transitional Living Program that targets youth in foster care or involved with the juvenile justice system. Youth Villages, a social service organization, created YVLife Set to provide individualized and intensive clinically focused case management, support, and counseling to help secure positive outcomes for young participants as they move to adulthood.

This Child Trends infographic presents analysis from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting System (AFCARS) data. It presents a graphic of the United States that illustrates 39 states that experienced an increase in FY 2017 in the number of children and young persons in foster care. According to the latest data, 5.8 of every 1,000 U.S. children were in foster care in 2017.