With institutional cultures that are rooted in family, community, and holistic supports, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) are uniquely positioned to catalyze the systemic change needed to better support Black and Native student parents. Ascend at the Aspen Institute established the Black and Native Family Futures Fund to provide funding and expert technical assistance to eight HBCU and TCU partners. Ascend is hosting a webinar on November 14, 2024 at 12:00 p.m. ET where student parents and leaders from some of the Fund partners will discuss key themes including the importance of family-like environments, student parent expertise, and the support of leadership.

To better understand families’ circumstances, their resources, and the costs of fully participating in the society and economy, the Urban Institute developed a “true cost of economic security” measure. They designed the measure with accuracy and replicability in mind, using high-quality publicly accessible data collected regularly to capture variations across states and all areas to explore differences by age, family structure, and race and ethnicity. The Urban Institute is hosting a webinar on November 20, 2024 at 1:30 p.m. ET to discuss their new measure and how to leverage insights from this research to improve American families’ well-being.

To address the critical need for support for Native American people who have experienced human trafficking, the Administration for Children and Families’ Office on Trafficking in Persons established the Demonstration Grants to Strengthen the Response to Victims of Human Trafficking in Native Communities (VHT-NC) Program. The program aims to build, expand, and sustain organizational and community capacity to deliver services to Native American people who have experienced human trafficking. In 2020, six VHT-NC projects received awards to provide culturally responsive and trauma-informed participant outreach and identification, comprehensive case management and service provision, and training to respond to human trafficking in their communities. This Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation brief provides examples of the culturally responsive approaches the VHT-NC projects took with regard to project staffing, education and training, outreach, and case management and supportive services. Within these four programming components, the brief describes the culturally responsive approaches used, identifies the challenges the projects encountered and potential suggestions to address them, and highlights the potential benefits and strengths of these culturally responsive approaches.

Incentive-based strategies can significantly enhance participation in fatherhood programs, particularly when they are tailored to meet the specific needs of the program’s target population. However, these strategies must be carefully designed to combine immediate rewards with strategies that balance the use of incentives with efforts to foster intrinsic motivation and personal autonomy. This National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse resource discusses the impact of fatherhood programs that integrate incentives into program activities and regular assessments of the incentive strategies.

This Office of Research, Planning and Evaluation report describes the design of the NextGen Project, which is evaluating the effectiveness of four programs that provide services for people with physical, mental, or emotional health challenges. Many of the people are potential applicants for Supplemental Security Income. The four programs highlighted are:
• Bridges from School to Work;
• Individual Placement and Support for Adults with Justice Involvement;
• Philadelphia Workforce Inclusion Networks; and
• Western Mass Mental Health Outreach for MotherS PartnershipSM.

The Native Wellness Institute (NWI) is hosting a webinar on December 17 and 18, 2024. It is a two-day program designed for adults who seek to enhance their understanding of healthy relationships, as well as staff and workers who provide healthy relationships education and workshops to community members. During the training, participants will learn about and engage in NWI's Healthy Relationships curriculum that covers the essential elements of healthy relationships, as well as additional topics. There is a fee for participation.

The Office of Child Support Services (OCSS) is releasing a series of stakeholder resources that analyzes data from the 2023 Current Population Survey-Child Support Supplement (CPS-CSS). In 2023, the CPS-CSS added new questions for custodial parents about their experience working with the child support program. This OCSS resource explains the custodial parents experience with the child support program, and highlights reasons why parents reported difficulty accessing the child support program.

Black and Hispanic individuals, as well as those with lower incomes, had fewer resources with which to respond to sudden and prolonged childcare disruptions due to the nature of their employment. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report describes rates of childcare disruptions and employment-related responses from July 2021 to May 2022 for households with children under age 5, both overall and by five household characteristics: race/ethnicity, household income, the number of adults in the household, employment status, and telework status. Responses to childcare disruptions included losing pay, taking paid leave, not working or not searching for a job, and supervising children while working.

This Urban Institute resource follows the House Committee on Ways and Means Hearing on Reforming Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF): States’ Misuse of Welfare Funds Leaves Poor Families Behind, held in September 2024. The resource explains that using TANF funds for activities seemingly unrelated to the program’s core goals, even if technically legal, undermines the integrity of TANF. The resource also provides supporting evidence that parents with low incomes have intrinsic motivations for employment, that TANF work requirements can be counterproductive, and that shifting TANF funding to the broader workforce development system could leave recipient families behind. The resource offers evidence-based recommendations on how access to and accountability for TANF block grant funds can better ensure the program supports employment and children in need.

Survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking need access to education and job training programs that are grounded in trauma-informed practices. Futures Without Violence hosted a webinar in January 2022 and focused on recognizing barriers to employment and education for survivors and strategies for building strong cross-sector collaborations between advocacy service providers and workforce development programs.