This report describes the first year of activities of the 14 tribes and tribal organizations who in 2011 received demonstration grants from the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) for Coordination of Tribal TANF and Child Welfare Services to Tribal Families at Risk of Child Abuse or Neglect.  The overarching goal of the Study of Coordination of Tribal TANF and Child Welfare Services is to document the way in which the tribal grantees are creating and adapting culturally relevant and appropriate approaches, systems, and programs to increase coordination and enhance service delivery to address child abuse and neglect.

Low-income families such as those who qualify for TANF are generally at greater risk for child maltreatment than other families. Since many families are involved with both the welfare (TANF) and child welfare (CW) systems, TANF and CW agencies are ideal partners to coordinate efforts to provide services that can address family risk factors, as TANF is intended not only to encourage parents to improve their socio-economic status, but also to provide stable homes. The funded projects were expected to focus on one or more of the following services: (1) improved case management for families eligible for assistance from a Tribal TANF program; (2) supportive services and assistance to tribal children in out-of-home placements and the tribal families caring for such children, including adoptive families; and (3) prevention services and assistance to tribal families at risk of child abuse and neglect. (author abstract)

This Portfolio of Research in Welfare and Family Self-Sufficiency describes the major research projects of the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation’s Division of Economic Independence. The Portfolio is divided into four sections – TANF and the Safety Net, Employment and the Labor Market, Education and Training and Other and Cross-Cutting Research. This document provides detailed summaries of OPRE’s ongoing welfare and family self-sufficiency research efforts along with brief overviews of past projects. The report also describes OPRE’s efforts to disseminate rigorous research on welfare and family self-sufficiency topics.  This Portfolio covers OPRE-funded projects for Fiscal Year 2012. (author abstract)

This Interim Report provides an overview of the tribal HPOG grantees’ progress over the first two years of the program with initial evaluation findings organized around program structure, program processes, and education and employment outcomes. The report also summarizes the evaluation questions and methodology. The report was written by the Tribal HPOG evaluation team, comprised of NORC at the University of Chicago, Red Star Innovations and the National Indian Health Board. (author abstract)

This brief provides an overview of the strategies that Tribal HPOG grantees have used to implement the HPOG program, challenges encountered during implementation, lessons learned, and ongoing program evolution and adaptation to address unique tribal cultural and programmatic needs. The brief draws upon qualitative data collected from the first year of evaluation activities with the Tribal HPOG programs. It is part of a series of briefs being developed by the Tribal HPOG evaluation team, comprised of NORC at the University of Chicago, Red Star Innovations and the National Indian Health Board (NIHB). (author abstract)

The Kids Count Data Center, a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, released a tool that provides data on children in poverty by race and ethnicity from 2008-2012. Users may filter the information by state, city, territory, or race. Information may be viewed in a table, map, line graph, or bar graph.

The Center for Postsecondary and Economic Success at CLASP released a paper that explores "stackable credentials," which is defined by the Department of Labor as a series of credentials that accumulate to build an individual's qualifications for advancement on a career pathway. The paper discusses some of the barriers to acquiring multiple educational and occupations credentials, pulling from data collected in Kentucky, Oregon, Virginia, and Wisconsin. The paper also outlines the ways in which these states are working to increase credential attainment for their residents.

States and the federal government have invested in early care and education programs with an explicit goal of improving school readiness for low-income children. These investments, aimed at strengthening the quality of care and supporting families’ access to high-quality settings, are based in part on a confluence of research findings showing a link between program quality and children’s outcomes.

While research to date is quite consistent in showing that measures of quality in early care and education settings and measures of children’s development are linked when examined in individual research studies, there has not been a systematic examination of the strength of these relationships across multiple studies. (author abstract)

What are the social service needs of low-income urban American Indians and to what extent to do they access ACF services and supports? This report presents the results of an exploratory study to better understand Urban Indians' interactions with ACF programs and services. Data were obtained via in-depth interviews with directors of Urban Indian Centers (UICs) from around the country and a set of employees from local government social service agencies. Interviewees were asked to identify the range of social service needs of the population; barriers to accessing ACF services, what role the UICs play in meeting urban American Indians’ needs, and any promising or effective practices that they believed would improve services to the urban Indian population. (author abstract)

This report is a technical supplement to The Community Healthy Marriage Initiative Evaluation: Impacts of a Community Approach to Strengthening Families. It provides additional detail about the research design and analytic methods that were used in the impact analyses and additional supplemental analyses that explore other aspects of the demonstration. (author abstract)

This report describes the implementation and impacts of selected programs funded through grants awarded to a number of organizations to conduct large-scale, community-wide projects that used “various methods to support healthy marriages community-wide” (Community Healthy Marriage [CHM] Grants to Implement Multiple Allowable Activities: Level 3; Healthy Marriage Demonstration Grants. Funding Opportunity Announcement 2006). The projects were to implement simultaneously five or more of the eight allowable activities specified in the authorizing legislation, reach a broad audience, involve stakeholders from diverse community sectors (e.g., government, schools, faith-based organizations, businesses, health care providers), and offer voluntary, healthy marriage and relationship education services to reach as many interested participants as possible. Impacts, at the community level, on a range of family-life outcomes were measured utilizing a representative sample of adults in matched treatment and comparison communities. (author abstract)