This blogpost highlights the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation (NRAEF) apprenticeship program for restaurant managers and line cooks. The program, developed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, features partnerships with restaurants and hospitality employers to provide training and employment opportunities for underserved populations, including Hispanic and Black American youth and adults. The program also builds alliances with YouthBuild and Job Corps as well as post-high school educational institutions in Maryland, Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, and California. To date, the program has expanded to 70 restaurant and hospitality employer partners and 2,000 apprentices who also earn up to 18 credits toward a culinary arts or hospitality degree.

This blogpost reviews the operations and procedures of the Safe & Sound Family Resource Center in San Francisco. The blogpost notes the intake interview process where families identify what they perceive as their needs and helps to illustrate how the families are functioning, including their support network, what types of concrete supports they need, and what they see as their strengths. The blogpost also highlights “light touch” services offered to help enhance protection for parents and children, such as parenting and education classes, parenting support groups, counseling, and respite childcare. There is also discussion of the Integrated Family Services program, which offers a more intensive level of services to families living in conditions that create the highest risk for child abuse and neglect; many of these families have three or more adverse childhood experiences.

This notice for applications from the Southern California Tribal Chairmen’s Association provides an example of the criteria and applications for non-recurrent Tribal TANF benefits. The notice identifies a regulatory definition of non-recurrent benefits as those created to address a particular crisis situation or episode of need, not intended to meet ongoing needs, and not extending beyond four months.

This podcast, as part of the Building Evidence on Employment Strategies for Low-Income Families project, includes interviews with developers of the Individual Placement and Support (IPS) model in San Diego County, California on the model’s implementation. IPS intends to help people with serious mental illness access and find employment. The podcast discussion also reflects IPS’ impact in serving individuals with a range of physical disabilities and health conditions other than mental illness.

This research-to-practice brief profiles a needs assessment of TANF child-only cases undertaken as part of the Office of Family Assistance’s Assisting Special Populations to Improve Readiness and Engagement (ASPIRE) project. Researchers first conducted a literature search and then select interviews with state and local TANF agency officials in California, Idaho, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Washington State. The brief describes three major categories of child-only TANF cases and provides a historical overview of how the TANF child-only caseload has changed in size over time. Additionally, the brief identifies needs pertaining to specific types of TANF child-only families, including non-parent caregivers, ineligible immigrant parents, and SSI recipient parents. Innovative models for alternative service delivery are highlighted.

This research-to-practice brief describes the Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) demonstration project and its integration of procedural justice principles into enforcement practices in six child support agencies in Arizona, California, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, and Virginia. The premise of PJAC is that if defendants perceive the dispute resolution process to be fair, they will comply with the outcome of the process, regardless of whether the decision was favorable to the defendant. The target population of the PJAC demonstration project is noncustodial parents being referred for civil contempt of court-mandated child support even when these parents have been determined to be able to pay it. Implementation of PJAC addresses noncustodial parents’ perception of the court system proceedings and reasons for nonpayment, how to improve consistency of their payments, and ways to promote their positive engagement with the child support agency as well as the other parent.

This research-to-practice brief identifies programmatic solutions to support reentry for young adults who have been involved in the juvenile justice or criminal justice system as they navigate employment and education pathways. The brief summarizes best practices from nine communities under the three-year U.S. Department of Labor-funded Compass Rose Collaborative (CRC). CRC communities are: Southeast Arkansas; Los Angeles, California; Denver, Colorado; Hartford, Connecticut; Louisville, Kentucky; Baltimore, Maryland; Boston, Massachusetts; St. Louis, Missouri; and Albany, New York.

The American Public Human Services Association (APHSA) will host a webinar on March 11, 2020 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. ET to cover how Sonoma County, California changed its service delivery model to improve client outcomes. Discussion from Sonoma County Department of Health Services, IBM, and APHSA representatives will cover changes in information sharing across departments, collaboration in multi-discipline teams, client consent for data sharing, and creation of an integrated data hub to track results.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation issue brief examines how two agencies, Alameda County, California and the Colorado Department of Human Services use continuous quality improvement (CQI) in implementing their programs that address youth at risk of homelessness. CQI is a process-oriented evaluation that supports the enhancement of programs and practices through ongoing collection analysis of real-time data to identify and test changes in program implementation. Key components of this brief look at the CQI process design features at these two agencies, how the CQI process affected the operation of the agency’s interventions to prevent homelessness among youth and young adults who have been involved in the child welfare system, and what advice the two agencies have for other entities that may use CQI in their program reviews.