Youth aging out of the foster care system face a variety of challenges, but building healthy and supportive relationships can help improve their outcomes. This Brookings Institution report highlights experiences from recent relationship-building programs targeted toward foster youth. The authors found four important lessons that researchers and policymakers can use when designing relationship-building programs for foster youth. Those lessons include the need for child welfare agencies to measure a youth’s relational capacities, designing relationship-based interventions for foster youth, tailoring services to the needs of each youth, and obtaining support from all partners involved in a foster youth’s case to reinforce relationships.

This MDRC report highlights early findings from the Jobs Plus Pilot Program Evaluation, which provides employment services for public housing residents. This study focuses on how the nine Public Housing Authorities selected as grantees implemented their four-year grant programs. In the first 18 months of the grant, all nine sites had begun implementing their programs and developing a variety of partnerships and employment services. The researchers found that the employment services offered were often generic and not tailored to individual needs, and that grantees needed more guidance on how to develop community support for work. Grantees voiced a need for more technical assistance in implementation, including clearer guidance and program standards.

This Child Trends blog post provides resources to help children cope after a hurricane. Children often suffer more than adults when exposed to natural disasters, and 14% of children in the U.S. have experienced a natural disaster. The authors analyzed nine major themes from resources and research on how to help children recover after exposure to a natural disaster. Those themes include understanding that reactions to trauma differ, creating a safe environment where a child’s basic needs are met, and keeping children busy. The post concludes with links to additional resources for children and caregivers.

This blog post from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families details the reasoning behind a recent decision to rescind waivers from TANF work requirements. Strengthening work requirements is not intended to be punitive, but rather to emphasize the importance of work as a crucial means of attaining self-sufficiency. The goal of this new policy is to help states engage TANF participants in work and work activities more consistently.

This blog post from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families describes how the Office of Refugee Resettlement is providing temporary assistance to U.S. citizens who evacuated from St. Maarten to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma. The Office of Refugee Resettlement works with the Department of State to provide medical care, food, shelter, and other necessary services to U.S. citizens returning from abroad after a crisis.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance released 22 work participation rate tables for fiscal year 2016. The tables include an average number of work-eligible individuals participating in work activities, the average number of hours of work participation per week, and the average number of families with sufficient work hours to meet the work requirement.