Positive Youth Development (PYD) is a capacity-building approach to program interventions that aims to promote soft skills, positive relationships, community involvement, family-school-work linkages, and academic engagement among youth to create a fully supportive and safe environment. The PILOT tool, developed by Child Trends, works on implementing those strategies concretely in the workforce for youth in primarily middle skill jobs. After working with five organizations to integrate the PILOT tool into their workplaces, Child Trends found that it not only improves the work outcomes of vulnerable youth populations and generates internal and external conversations about PYD, but that many places that practice these initiatives do so without formal recognition or prompting and thus go unfunded. Child Trends expects to further help program stakeholders, leaders, and funders in the next phase of their program when they look into how to systematize PYD policies.

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) encourages local workforce development boards to create and utilize Youth Committees to provide youth services effectively. New provisions in the requirements allow boards greater flexibility in naming Youth Committees from previous existing youth councils. This posting compiles webinars and a success guide from the DOL’s Division of Youth Services to help stakeholders learn more about and implement their own Youth Committees to bring experts together, generate ideas and discussions, foster partnerships, and ultimately meet the needs of local youth.

A seven-year government project that researched ways to strengthen social services using principles from behavioral science, called Behavioral Insights to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS), recently ended and published a case study based on their field research. This workbook is designed to teach students and field practitioners about behavioral design and methodology. It provides information, exercises, and worksheets and asks readers to read first about different behavioral principles and then about a problem with a tax credit program. Using behavioral science, the publication works through the issue, proposes solutions, and ends with guided discussion questions for readers to ask themselves and their case study group. Questions pertain to readers’ newfound knowledge and insight into how to use behavioral principles to increase the efficacy of their own service provision in the future.

This brief from the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation is aimed at practitioners interested in helping clients reach self-sufficiency by focusing on goal-making abilities. The brief describes the importance of the ability to set and achieve goals and what, when, and how to measure to determine a program's ability to help its participants with this need. Specific real-world program examples are highlighted throughout the brief.

This report comments on the effectiveness of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Fund (TANF EF) in creating subsidized employment and suggests more subsidized job creation to aid low-income families and weather economic downturns. Subsidized employment that offers temporary government-funded work has been widely proven to be beneficial in providing income support, increasing employment, boosting wages, and improving child support and recidivism numbers. TANF EF was particularly effective because it gave states flexibility to administer funds as they saw fit, enabling them to adapt to specific local contexts and create targeted interventions. The author calls for more subsidized employment programs with flexibility, tailored approaches based on program purpose, sustainable funding streams, and built-in triggers to adapt to changing economic conditions like recessions.

The Health Profession Opportunity Grants Program (HPOG 2.0) provides funding for education and training initiatives to help TANF recipients gain skills for in-demand health care professions. This report is part of an ongoing series that describes the flexible programs and services states offer, catalogues the characteristics of participating individuals, and evaluates program outcomes. Thus far, one-third of participants took basic skills training and about two-thirds of those participants started health care training. Half of participants nationwide earned professional certifications and started or were promoted in a health care job. While some supportive services like case management were widely used, others like job placement or multiple certification services were underutilized. With five years of curriculum goals, HPOG will continue to publish future reports as the program progresses.

This paper tests the relationship between maternal depression, parental quality, and child outcomes. It finds that experiencing adversity as a child is a factor in current maternal depression, which in turn affects parental engagement and sensitivity to children’s distress, but not non-distress. Thus, different interventions should be used for mothers who have experienced trauma depending on whether the goal is identifying and responding to distress signals or increasing parental sensitivity to their children overall.

On September 17, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention will host a webinar on supporting youth who have been affected by drugs and addiction within their families. Specifically, they will focus on the importance of mentoring and share strategies and best practices on counseling youth from families and communities where substance abuse may be an issue. Presenters will also discuss the challenges and changes of mentoring as the abuse landscape shifts and the opioid crisis grows.

As youth transition into adulthood, financial literacy is crucial for self-sufficiency. To help young adults understand and manage their finances, the Federal Trade Commission and Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention will sponsor a webinar on September 20 on topics such as generating good credit, avoiding debt burden on student loans, buying cars, and avoiding identity theft, among other important topics.

Join a U.S. Census Bureau economist and statistician on September 19 as they discuss their research into the recent economic stagnation from the late 1990s through 2015 and its effects. They primarily focus on workers moving onto and up the job ladder and the implications of this movement on hours worked and wages earned. Earnings gains were lowered by previously unemployed hires and increased by those who stayed with their jobs and who changed employers.