This Child Welfare Information Gateway podcast offers insights from the National Native Children's Trauma Center for caseworkers and agencies that are working or will work with Indigenous communities to support children and families. It also covers why Indian Child Welfare Act provisions cannot be implemented the same way for every tribe or nation with which state and local child welfare professionals work, how historical trauma within Native and tribal communities is strongly connected to intergenerational trauma, and what guidance state and local child welfare caseworkers and agencies can use when engaging with Native families and communities. Additional resources are provided for reference.

The U.S. Department of Commerce, Economic Development Administration (EDA)’s American Rescue Plan Good Jobs Challenge aims to get Americans back to work by building and strengthening systems and partnerships that bring together employers who have hiring needs with other key entities to train workers with in-demand skills that lead to good-paying jobs.

Through the Good Jobs Challenge, EDA is allocating $500 million to collaborative skills training systems and programs. EDA encourages efforts to reach historically underserved populations and areas, communities of color, women, and other groups facing labor market barriers such as persons with disabilities, disconnected youth, individuals in recovery, individuals with past criminal records, including justice impacted and reentry participants, serving trainees participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and veterans and military spouses.

Applications are due by January 26, 2022.

One of the largest victim service providers in New York City, Sanctuary for Families (SFF), has implemented a workforce development program called the Economic Empowerment Program that works exclusively with domestic violence survivors. This report describes a program evaluation and points to interim findings which suggest that after four months of completing the required program modules, clients not only improve their skills attainment and job readiness, but become able to address critical barriers to employment, such as safety concerns, low self-esteem, and lack of confidence in career outlook. These interim findings can inform service providers and policymakers who may otherwise shy away from launching workforce development programs that work solely with survivors.

Many workers in hourly front-line retail and food service jobs have been subject to low pay and few benefits for decades. More recently, these workers' challenges have been compounded by increasingly unstable and unpredictable work schedules due to shifts cancelled or shortened with little notice, inconsistent days or times of day they are expected to work, little advance notice when schedules are posted, or having to be on-call without a guarantee of being paid. This policy brief illustrates how schedule unpredictability has a direct connection to how often workers struggle to provide adequate food, housing, and medical care for themselves and their families. The brief also notes how instability can also affect workers' ability to access social safety net programs.

This Children’s Bureau resource guide recognizes that there are actions that communities, organizations, and families can take to address the root causes of child abuse and neglect. It highlights innovative ways that communities conduct purposeful prevention work to help children and families thrive using a protective factors approach. This approach focuses on positive ways to engage families by emphasizing their strengths and by identifying areas where they have room to grow with support. The guide includes English and Spanish versions of conversation guides that help to engage parents and caregivers in personalized conversations with service providers about protective factors and how they want to care for their children and themselves.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation summary brief presents updates from 2021’s Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness (HomVEE) review of home visiting program models that serve families with pregnant women and children from birth to age five. The brief presents the review process, a summary of the results, the 21 models determined to meet U.S. Department of Health and Human Services criteria for an “evidence-based early childhood home visiting service delivery model,” and a link to the HomVEE website for more detailed information.

This playbook synthesizes lessons learned and recommendations from existing resources, emergency management protocols, and interviews with federal program staff about responding to emergencies and disasters. As federal human services program staff serve populations often experiencing marginalization, economic disadvantages, and disproportionate negative impacts in a disaster or emergency context, this playbook discusses opportunities for federal programs to deliver human services equitably to all populations during and after major emergencies, especially those with multi-state impacts.

This U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance toolkit helps tribal justice system practitioners create or enhance reentry programs for American Indians and Alaska Natives returning from jail or prison. The toolkit starts with the formation of a planning team and covers all the key steps of developing a reentry program, including developing partnerships, refining a reentry program, measuring program impact, and planning for sustainability. The toolkit is informed by the work of reentry programs in Indian Country, the Center for Court Innovation, the Harlem Parole Reentry Court, and the American Probation and Parole Association.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief is a literature review and meta-analysis of data from the Pathways Clearinghouse. The analysis sought to understand the interventions and types of services with the strongest evidence of success in improving employment, earnings, and related outcomes for people with low incomes during recessions and recoveries.

COVID-19 has brought additional attention to the impact of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and trauma across the lifespan, which may be exacerbated by disruption in the lives of families. This case study highlights California’s ACEs Aware and its key elements as a model for other states. Led by the Office of the California Surgeon General and the Department of Health Care Services, California’s ACEs Aware initiative trains and reimburses health care providers to screen children and adults for childhood trauma and respond to the effects of toxic stress, with the goal of reducing ACEs and toxic stress by 50 percent in one generation.