Early childhood trauma, such as physical abuse or witnessing violence, can last a lifetime and manifest in physical and mental health problems throughout one’s life. The National Collaborative on Adversity and Resilience (NCAR) is a national movement committed to preventing childhood trauma. In December 2013, 35 NCAR leaders in adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) research, policy, and practice convened at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to follow up on the national summit on ACEs earlier in the year. This report provides a summary of the meeting.

In the July 2015 issue of the Office of Child Support Enforcement's Child Support Report, practitioners can learn about programs and initiatives that help fathers deepen their financial and emotional commitments to their children. Topics include improving compliance, arrears collections, court partnerships, and more.

Sector partnerships, which convene multiple employers with education, training, labor, and community-based organizations to address the local skill needs of a particular industry, are a proven strategy for helping workers prepare for middle-skill jobs and helping employers find skilled workers. States can adopt policies that help establish, sustain, and scale local sector partnerships by providing ongoing funding, technical assistance, and/or support through program initiatives. Through this study, the National Skills Coalition found that 21 States have such sector partnership policies in place, and are, therefore, positioned to help local communities meet the needs of both workers and employers in key industries.

This Trauma-Informed Organizational Toolkit was created to provide homeless service providers a roadmap for becoming trauma-informed. The Toolkit provides concrete guidelines for modifying practices and policies and ensuring appropriate responses to the needs of families who have experienced traumatic stress.

This blog and accompanying report present data about the health and well-being of children across the United States. Twenty-three federal agencies participated in data collection and reporting. This contributed to the wide range of indicators that were covered, relating to topics such as family and social environment, economic circumstances, health care and safety, behavior, education, and health.

This resource from the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) explains the provisions from the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) regarding revisions to performance management requirements. Some of these revisions include: new measures of interim skill gains; new approaches to defining overall performance success; and revised sanctions for states.

The purpose of this webcast is to provide an overview of the proposed information collection request for WIOA Unified and Combined State Plans. On August 6, 2015, the Departments of Labor, Education, Health and Human Services, Agriculture, and Housing and Urban Development published a Federal Register notice seeking public comment on the proposed planning requirements and related burden, as required by the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA). This pre-recorded webcast was designed to provide information on this request and tips on how to make a good comment. Presenters discussed the contents of the PRA package, introduce the Information Collection Request (ICR), and note the WIOA requirements for state plans. This webcast also highlights the process for submitting comments on the ICR during the 60-day comment period.

The federal government allows states to distribute child support payments to TANF participants, rather than retain them for cost recovery, and not count those payments when calculating their TANF benefits, known as a pass-through and disregard policy. States may pass through all child support collected to current TANF families, with federal cost sharing of $100 per month for one child and $200 per month for two or more children. This study analyzes the District of Columbia’s $150 pass-through and disregard policy. Such policies play an important role in benefitting and penalizing TANF families and require training, outreach, and federal cost analyses.

This fact sheet from the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) examines the changing relationship of whether the government or the custodial family is owed child support arrears, and how this influences the financial stability of TANF participants. Child support arrears accrued during periods of TANF received have declined from 51% of total arrears in 2002 to 26% of total arrears in 2013; possible reasons for this decline include increased TANF arrears collection, or decreased number of cases on TANF, or the amount of TANF arrears owed per case. OCSE data collected since 1999 is used to analyze these potential reasons and a possible relationship with the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. Policies that continue to shift the distribution of TANF arrears from the government to families are shown to have a powerful effect on TANF participants’ financial success as well as state revenue.

Previous research has shown that receiving child support not only reduces the chance of families returning to welfare, but that it also reduces child poverty and, on average, accounts for 40% of a low-income family’s income. This study examines the relationship between child support receipt in Maryland and returns to the TANF program. Results show that women who do not receive child support after leaving the program are far more likely to return to welfare; that larger and more consistent child support payments reduce the chances of a family returning to welfare; and that receiving any child support reduces recidivism, though this is less likely for women with lower incomes.