This blog post from the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) examines promising new findings from ACF’s Assets for Independence (AFI) program. AFI was shown to increase liquid assets among participants and reduce participant use of alternative financial services. Additionally, the program participants experienced fewer material hardships and showed greater confidence in their financial security.

In the United States, child welfare systems encounter many vulnerable children and their families each year. This report from the Center on the Developing Child examines how new science on child development can be applied to policies and practices to enhance child welfare systems, thereby improving outcomes for children and their families.

The Year Up program is one of nine career pathways programs in the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation’s Pathways for Advancing Careers and Education (PACE) study. Year Up’s sites had to increase recruitment by 50% to meet the study sample requirements. This blog post from the Administration for Children and Families highlights Year Up’s efforts and lessons learned while scaling up their services.

Throughout the past three years, the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices has provided technical assistance to Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Kentucky, Michigan, New Mexico, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming to develop statewide plans to improve outcomes and reduce cost of care for high-need, high-cost Medicaid enrollees. This road map from NGA can be used by states across the country that are interested in housing as an element of improved health and a reduction of costly health services.

This brief from MDRC examines whether quick employment or basic education and training better improves economic well-being of TANF participants. The authors present findings from three sites that took part in the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies study. Overall, the findings suggest that both types of welfare-to-work programs can increase earnings, compared with not offering such services.

Reading is linked to children’s cognitive development, academic skills, and future employment opportunities. Research suggests that fathers are particularly influential for children’s language and literacy development. This brief from the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse provides programs with ideas to inspire fathers to read with their children.

Adverse experiences in childhood can produce physiological changes in the brain, which can ultimately negatively affect a child’s long-term decision-making skills and ability to regulate emotions. The Annie E. Casey Foundation hosted a webinar that presented practical tools and solutions for integrating trauma-responsive practices into youth programs.

This eight-minute video from MDRC highlights six New York participants of the Paycheck Plus demonstration, which is testing an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for low-income single workers without children in New York City and Atlanta.

Although the labor market has been steadily recovering since the Great Recession, younger workers have not been benefiting at the same rate as the overall workforce. The unemployment rate among adults aged 20-24 is almost double the national average, and the jobless rate among people aged 16-19 is almost triple the national rate. This report from the National Skills Coalition and the National Youth Employment Coalition highlights how work-based learning can provide youth with job training, in addition to the essential income support for disconnected and at-youth individuals.

This report from the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation presents early findings from a random assignment evaluation of subsidized employment for TANF participants in Los Angeles County. The report analyzes the impact of two approaches to subsidized employment: paid work experience and on-the-job training.