The Departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services released a joint letter that encourages local school systems across the United States to partner with American Job Centers, human service agencies, and the private sector to encourage students to pursue postsecondary education and join the workforce after high school. Examples of how to develop these partnerships are provided in the letter.

The Mayors Challenge to End Veteran Homelessness by 2015 engages local leaders to draw on evidence-based approaches and local collaborations to end homelessness in their communities.

Since the creation of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) in 1996, there has been concern about low-income individuals who may be eligible for TANF cash assistance but are neither receiving TANF nor working. These individuals are often referred to as “disconnected.” This study, Understanding the Dynamics of Disconnection from Employment and Assistance, uses interview data from a sample of 51 disconnected, unmarried mothers from Southeast Michigan and Los Angeles, California, to learn more about their experiences related to work, benefit receipt, and material hardship, the economic coping strategies they use to manage, and their overall well-being. (author abstract) 

This report presents results from the early implementation of the study of the Impact of Housing and Services Interventions for Homeless Families, referred to as the Family Options Study. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the study measures the relative impacts of four interventions commonly employed within local communities to help families experiencing homelessness. The study compares the impacts of: community-based rapid re-housing (CBRR), project-based transitional housing (PBTH), permanent housing subsidies (SUB), and the usual care (UC) emergency shelter system in 12 communities.

The Wilson Foundation released a report that summarizes findings from the Service and Housing Interventions for Families in Transition (SHIFT) Longitudinal Study. The SHIFT study examined the effectiveness of different housing and service models in helping families who are experiencing homelessness establish and maintain residential stability and self-sufficiency. The characteristics, experiences, and challenges of the families are presented, followed by the outcomes including housing stability, economic independence, maternal mental health, maternal substance abuse, and child functioning. Characteristics of successful family members as well as those who met challenges in establishing and maintaining residential stability are also explored. The findings are intended to inform policies that address housing stability and self-sufficiency among families.

The National Women's Law Center released a fact sheet that lists five common scheduling challenges faced by workers in low-wage jobs, and outlines their impacts on marriage, transportation, education and training programs, and arranging child care.

The Working Poor Families Project released a policy brief that explores ways to connect young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 years old to education and training programs borne out of state level policies and interventions.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) released a paper that explores four areas of work-family policy related to low-income working families: unpaid family and medical leave, extended paid parental or family leave, paid sick leave, and efforts to expand employees' control over work shifts, hours, and other circumstances of their jobs. The paper outlines the ways in which these supports can be facilitated by public policy to enact change.

The Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Initiative released a guide that includes an alphabetized list of resources for practitioners to use in topics related to marriage and relationships, fatherhood and parenting, and financial education.

MDRC released a brief that outlines a project effort that is testing Paycheck Plus, an enhanced Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for single, low-income adults with no dependent children in New York City. According to the authors, most EITC benefits go towards families with children, so this initiative focuses efforts on this sub-group. The project just enrolled over 6,000 individuals and will now monitor these individuals for the next several years to assess the effectiveness of the Paycheck Plus supplement on economic well-being, work, and other outcomes.