A Question about DV/Stalking/Harassment Prevention Training

The Child and Family Teaming (CFT) model forms the basis of practice for child welfare services under the Integrated Core Practice Model and California's Continuum of Care Reform. This guide was developed by the California Department of Social Services in collaboration with California Tribal Families Coalition and begins with an overview of Indian Child Welfare Act’s requirements for the CFT. It then moves on to best practices in partnering with Tribes, including learning about the Tribe and understanding differing perspectives. The guide continues with highlighting best practices for including children and engaging all team members in the CFT, provides guidance in making CFT meetings accessible and culturally responsive, and gives tips to practitioners in their ongoing communication with the team between meetings.

The San Francisco Department of Child Support Services (SF DCSS) has piloted a voluntary program that explores an alternative to monthly cash payments, allowing parents to meet their child support obligations through agreed-upon, in-kind contributions. This approach acknowledges how some parents already contribute to their children and empowers them to flexibly address their families’ changing needs. It is modeled after the Yurok Tribe’s child support system, which allows parents to support their children in ways beyond monetary support, including providing diapers, fish, firewood, and child care. This Urban Institute fact sheet summarizes the implementation process of this pilot as an introduction for other counties that may be considering offering in-kind child support alternatives.

As part of the Building Evidence on Employment Strategies project, researchers conducted virtual interviews from November 2021 to April 2022 with staff members at ten workforce programs to learn how they were using technology to adapt their services during the pandemic. Most of the organizations used a hybrid model to blend in-person and virtual service delivery. This MDRC publication examines five key adaptations of the programs made to accommodate the new hiring context.

The Child Welfare Community Collaborations (CWCC) initiative is designed to mobilize communities to develop and evaluate multi-system collaboratives that address local barriers and provide a continuum of services to prevent child abuse and neglect. In 2018 and 2019, the Children’s Bureau awarded 5-year cooperative agreements to a total of 13 states, non-profit organizations, and Native American tribal organizations. This Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation brief provides a high-level description of each of the 13 CWCC projects and is one of a series of products the evaluation team will produce as part of the cross-site process evaluation. This brief contains a one-page description of each project, including its geographic catchment area, population of focus, key partners, prior experience with community-level collaboration, timeline, and local evaluation.

In 2020, the Urban Institute (UI) published a framework comprising 26 mobility metrics that can help communities understand and track the factors that most influence mobility from poverty. These metrics span three distinct but interconnected dimensions:

1. economic success,
2. power and autonomy, and
3. dignity and belonging.

To gain a nuanced understanding of local conditions, however, communities should supplement these metrics with local data, as well as the knowledge and lived experiences of community members. This UI resource offers insights into how two communities – Fresno, California and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - can effectively monitor progress toward their upward mobility goals.

More on the Mobility Metrics Framework!

From its design, apprenticeship was meant to be a pathway for youth to gain skills and employment. However, with time, the system has morphed and the typical apprentice in California is closer to the age of 30 than to 16. Apprenticeship has largely ceased to be a pathway of choice for young people to access careers and has instead turned into an opportunity that’s only pursued after other roads have turned into dead ends. This New America blogpost looks at California’s Master Plan for Career Education. This plan will provide an opportunity for the state to make clear what it means for apprenticeship to serve young people in California.

In 2022, the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) and Project SPARC (Student-Parents Are Reimagining CalWORKs) conducted research to better understand the barriers experienced by parenting students in CalWORKs, California’s cash assistance program for families with children. Parenting students work hard every day to pursue their goals, often juggling work, classes, and caregiving responsibilities. Public systems and programs can provide critical support, but frequently create additional hurdles for parenting students and their families, especially those with low incomes. This CSSP brief highlights findings from the research on parenting students’ experiences transferring to four-year institutions. Inadequate support for families’ basic needs combined with limited support at four-year institutions for parenting students who participate in CalWORKs are significant barriers for parenting students as they further their education.

This U.S. Department of Labor brief explores how states use financial incentives to expand Registered Apprenticeship (RA) Programs and achieve targeted goals. Incentives are additional financial supports used to increase the number of RA programs and offset the cost for employers in the form of state tax credits or subsidies to apprenticeship sponsors, related technical instruction providers, and other entities responsible for developing RA programs. The brief highlights findings from focus groups conducted with the following eight states: Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, and Mississippi.

Economic stability and employment during young adulthood are critical to long-term economic security, and today, many young adults face longer periods of financial insecurity than in the past. Young people affected by the justice system face additional barriers to achieving economic stability and employment with research showing that formerly incarcerated people are almost five times more likely than the public to be unemployed. This report details the findings of a joint project between The National Youth Employment Coalition and Urban Institute to conduct case studies of five sites that launched or implemented a broad-based, cross-system collaborative to promote workforce development and better provide labor market opportunities for justice-involved youth. The case studies include a detailed analysis of each site’s collaborative efforts, key stakeholders, best practices for systems collaboration, an exploration of funding sources, and sustainability efforts.