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.

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.

Very few domestic violence survivors are getting Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) waivers from the work requirements and time limits, despite being eligible. Federal law allows states to grant domestic violence waivers to TANF recipients when time limits, work requirements, and other policies would unfairly penalize victims of abuse or increase their risk of abuse. This Rutgers resource was developed through an examination of the annual reports from Michigan to the federal government on the number of domestic violence waivers issued from 2008 to 2021, as well as focus groups with TANF caseworkers. This resource discusses the importance of waivers for survivors and other work being done around this issue.

The goal of the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) Economic Justice and
Domestic Violence Advisory Council is a long-term, in-depth collaboration of national experts in the domestic violence (DV) field working to advance survivors’ economic empowerment and financial well-being. NNEDV virtually gathered those working at the intersection of DV and economic justice to identify gaps and strategize ways to expand awareness and
solutions through recommendations. These recommendations include:

1. Expanding funding for culturally specific programs;
2. Increasing survivors’ access to flexible funds;
3. Employers should have a workplace policy specifically addressing DV;
4. DV programs and advocates should receive training in intimate partner violence and workplace safety; and
5. Reformations to public policies.

While domestic violence affects thousands of Chicagoans each year, there is often limited focus on the impact of economic insecurity on survivors, and little research on their employment needs. This report, published by Women Employed, was designed to better understand the barriers to economic independence for survivors of domestic violence, and more specifically, to living wage jobs by gathering the insights and experiences of survivors, domestic violence advocates, and workforce development professionals.