From the Indiana University, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, this white paper focuses on the Great Recession and how it has impacted poverty in the United States. Authors provide an overview of poverty trends both nationally and across the 50 states, and offer information on the state of the safety net in helping economically secure families. For example, authors note that the number of people in poverty has increased since the Recession and is estimated to continue increasing.

The U.S. Department Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced awards of $201 million to 731 homeless programs across the United States, which provides emergency shelter, transitional housing, and permanent support for individuals and families. HUD also awarded $1.47 billion to renew funding to 7,100 existing local homeless programs. Between 2010 and 2011, homelessness declined 2.1 percent and 12 percent among Veterans.

This resource is from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and provides an overview of the key components of the Foundation’s financial stability activities for low-income families in Baltimore and the State of Maryland with Baltimore’s CASH Campaign Coalition. The Coalition has built a citywide network to improve tax preparation services and financial services, increase financial literacy, and expand the use of Individual Development Accounts. Authors conducted a case study of how this strategy has been developed and implemented in Baltimore and offer recommendations for replication for others doing similar work in their communities.

Head Start is a national program that aims to promote school readiness by enhancing the social and cognitive development of children through the provision of educational, health, nutritional, social, and other services to enrolled children and families. The Head Start program provides grants to local public and private non-profit and for-profit agencies to provide comprehensive child development services to economically disadvantaged children and families; the Office of Head Start emphasizes a special focus on helping preschoolers develop the reading and mathematics skills they need to be successful in school. The program also seeks to engage parents in their children’s learning and to promote their progress toward their own educational, literacy, and employment goals (Administration for Children and Families [ACF] 2009).

The Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) was first launched in 1997 as a periodic longitudinal study of program performance. Successive nationally representative samples of Head Start children, their families, classrooms, and programs provide descriptive information on the population served; staff qualifications, credentials, beliefs and opinions; classroom practices and quality measures; and child and family outcomes. FACES includes a battery of direct child assessments across multiple domains. It also comprises interviews with the child’s parents, teachers and program managers, as well as direct observations of classroom quality. (For background information on FACES 2006, see West et al. 2007, Tarullo et al. 2008 and West et al. 2008.)

FACES is a tool for measuring Head Start program performance at the national level. This recurring data collection provides the means to assess how the program is performing currently and over time. Figure 1 offers the conceptual framework for the FACES study. The child is located at the center, surrounded by parents and family, and located within the context of a given Head Start classroom and program. The model posits that it is through the provision of high quality, comprehensive educational services (in interaction with their home and classroom contexts) that children make progress towards the goal of physical wellbeing and cognitive and social-emotional school readiness.

This brief profiles the 3- and 4-year-old Head Start children and families who were newly enrolled in the program in fall 2006 (see Tarullo et al. 2008) and are still attending in spring 2007. The first section of the report provides background on the study methodology and sample. The next offers information on the children’s characteristics, family demographics, and home life, including language background, educational environment of the home, family routines, and socioeconomic risk status. It includes information on parent involvement in Head Start and level of satisfaction with their own and their children’s Head Start experiences. The following section chronicles children’s developmental progress over the Head Start year, considering whether these outcomes vary by age, gender, race/ethnicity, or risk status. Changes in children’s skills and development during the program year reflect a range of influences, including maturation, program and family influences, and other influences in children’s lives. Presented next are the characteristics of their teachers and classrooms, including measures of observed quality. Finally, the last section examines the relationships among child, family, and classroom factors and children’s outcomes. (author abstract)

This report uses meta-analysis, a set of statistically based techniques for combining  quantitative findings from different studies, to synthesize estimates of program effects from  random assignment evaluations of welfare-to-work programs and to explore the factors that best explain differences in the programs' performance. The analysis is based on data extracted from the published evaluation reports and from official sources.  All the programs included in the analysis targeted recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC; now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, TANF).  The objective of the analysis is to establish the principal characteristics of welfare-to-work programs that were associated with differences in success, distinguishing between variations in the services received, differences in the characteristics of those who participated in each program, and variations in the socio-economic environment in which the programs operated. (author abstract)

This resource is also publlished as a discussion paper by the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin.

This report examines the effects of welfare and work policies on earnings, welfare benefits, income, stable employment, and stable welfare exits across a range of subgroups using information from random assignment studies of 26 welfare and work policies studied by MDRC. No two of the programs are alike, but they used one of five broad approaches: (1) job-search first programs required most welfare recipients to initially look for work; (2) education-first programs initially required most welfare recipients to enroll in education and training; (3) employment-focused mixed-activity programs stressed the importance of finding work but required more job-ready welfare recipients to look for work while allowing others to enroll in education or training programs; (4) education-focused mixed-activity programs likewise used a mix of initial activities but did not stress employment; and (5) earnings supplement programs provided extra financial payments to welfare recipients who went to work. (author abstract)

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 changed cash welfare from a system of income maintenance as an entitlement to low-income families to one in which assistance to families is both limited and temporary, and in which work and economic self-sufficiency are emphasized. The emerging emphasis on work has led many states to significantly narrow the exemptions from welfare-related work requirements. Under prior Federal law, states could opt to adjust the young-child work exemption from its Federally-mandated level, which exempted parents with a child under three years old, to exempt only parents with a child under one year old. In 1998, 22 states used the new flexibility granted under PRWORA to require parents to work if their youngest child was less than one year old. This report examines the state and local policies and practices that encourage and support the activities of welfare-reliant parents of infants who are required to engage in work and school activities.

Juggling work and family responsibilities is a formidable challenge for two-parent families with young children, but it is even harder for single parents, who make up the majority of the welfare caseload. Even more challenging for single parents who work is the task of caring for an infant because infant care is generally less available, more expensive, and harder to assess in terms of quality. As states seek ways to support families with infants in their transition from welfare to work, many questions emerge for researchers and policymakers alike. How successful is the welfare-to-work transition for parents of infants? What special challenges do these parents face in balancing their parenting activities with required work or school activities? What supportive services are critical to continued participation in work and school activities, and ultimately, to a successful transition from welfare to work? Is continuous, reliable, affordable, and good-quality infant care available to these parents? Have states taken the opportunity to link these families with child care that can promote the health and development of infants?

In an effort to answer these questions and, ultimately, to address the issue of providing infant care for single, working, low-income parents, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services contracted with Mathematica Policy Research (MPR) to conduct the Study of Infant Care Under Welfare Reform. The study was designed to provide information about the strategies states and communities are using to help parents of infants make the transition to school or work while promoting the health and development of their infants, and about the policy and program challenges states and communities are facing in this effort. The information is intended both to inform policymakers about the experience of several communities and to build a foundation for future research on the effectiveness of particular programs, policies, and strategies in supporting the transition to work or school while promoting infant health and development.

The study has three phases:

A general information-gathering phase, focusing on the work-, school-, and child care-related policies and programs in 22 states that required parents of infants to work in 1998, when the study was launched.

An in-depth study phase, focusing on welfare and child care program policy and practice in eight communities, and on the experiences of welfare-reliant parents of infants in these sites.

A research design phase, focusing on the evaluation of programs, policies, and strategies designed to support parents’ transitions to work and their infants’ health and development.

This report presents the findings from the first two phases of the study, with an emphasis on the second phase. We end with a summary of research directions, which will be expanded upon in a forthcoming report. (author abstract)

<p>Authorized by the Affordable Care Act, the Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) program from the Administration for Children and Families provides education and training to TANF recipients and other low-income individuals for occupations in the health care field. The <a href="http://www.acf.hhs.gov/ofa/programs/hpog/">HPOG Web site</a> serves as a repository of important grant-related information and a forum for grantee interaction. Among other features, the Web site enables you to: locate contact information for all HPOG grantees in the <a href="http://www.acf.hhs.gov/ofa/hpog/findhpogprograms">Grantee Directory</a>; learn about what other HPOG programs are doing; and find helpful technical assistance toolkits, conference presentations, administrative forms, and other relevant documents in the <a href="http://www.acf.hhs.gov/ofa/resource-library/search?area%5b2400%5d=2400">Resources Section</a>.</p>

Using data from a Pew Research Center survey and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this report provides information on young adults in the labor market. Only 54 percent of young adults ages 18 to 24 are currently employed, which is the lowest since the data started being collected in 1948. Additionally, those young adults working full time have had the greatest decrease in weekly earnings than any other age group over the past four years (a six percent decline). These trends have had an impact on this population’s long-term plans as many have delayed marriage and starting a family, and 24 percent say they have had to move back home with their parents after living on their own.