This Office of Family Assistance brief is part of a broader study exploring how Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs across the country use TANF funds to serve and support families experiencing or at risk of homelessness. It describes housing-related challenges that families faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, both nationally and in communities visited for this study. The brief also focuses on how the TANF agency in one of these communities, Boulder County, Colorado, responded to families’ housing needs specifically at the beginning of the pandemic. It details the shifts and associated actions Boulder County’s TANF agency took in response to housing challenges posed by the pandemic.

Increases in a family’s earnings are often offset by declines in public assistance benefits (commonly called “benefit cliffs” when the declines are sharp) and increases in taxes owed. This report summarizes insights from qualitative interviews with 43 respondents who currently or recently received TANF. Respondents reported experiencing tradeoffs between benefits, taxes, and work. It also presents results from microsimulation modeling of how benefits and taxes respond when income changes, and features 2018 data from Colorado, Minnesota, and New York.

The Larimer County Works Program has implemented a goal achievement coaching model (Goal4 It!) hand-in-glove with a technology-based coaching platform, TuaPath. The combined approach, referred to as My Journey to Success, has redirected TANF staff and participants’ time and energy toward employment outcomes. With online and in-person tools to plan and track action steps with coaches, this approach supports participants in building executive function skills, goal setting capacity, and accountability to reach employment and life goals.

This brief is part of the Emerging Practice Series of the Office of Family Assistance’s Integrating Innovative Employment and Economic Stability Strategies (IIEESS) initiative, which highlights the strategies of TANF agencies and their partners to help low-income individuals gain and sustain meaningful employment. Each brief describes an emerging practice that has been implemented in one site, an overview of the program model, and the results that have been achieved. Compelling stories of participants’ success and suggestions from TANF agency staff to their peers provide actionable insights and on-the-ground perspectives.

Healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs aim to support the well-being of families. For such programs to be effective, it is critical that clients attend regularly, yet studies have found that HMRE program providers sometimes struggle to maintain high rates of participation. Identifying and exploring typical participation patterns in HMRE programming can increase understanding of this challenge and point to ways in which programs can promote and support regular participation. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief describes typical patterns of participation in three programs that were part of the Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services (STREAMS) evaluation, a large multisite evaluation conducted from 2015 to 2022 to identify strategies for improving the delivery and effectiveness of healthy marriage and relationship education programs. The brief identifies distinct patterns of participation in each of these programs and provides profiles of the clients who participate in these distinct ways.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation digital report shares highlights from the Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services (STREAMS) evaluation, a large multisite evaluation conducted from 2015 to 2022 to identify strategies for improving the delivery and effectiveness of healthy marriage and relationship education programs. This report describes the five grantees —in Georgia, Florida, Denver, Missouri, and Texas— and the services they provided. To capture the perspectives and experiences of the people most directly affected by the programs, this report also tells the personal stories of some of the program staff and participants who contributed to STREAMS.

Self-regulation skills are the skills needed to finish tasks, stay organized, and control emotions, and they are critical in finding and maintaining employment. Poverty and other chronic stressors can hinder the development and use of these skills, but coaching can promote self-regulation skills and help adults with low incomes become economically secure. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report presents findings from a study of four employment coaching programs conducted as part of the Evaluation of Employment Coaching for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Related Populations. The report presents estimates of impacts of coaching on participants’ self-regulation skills, employment, earnings, self-sufficiency, and other measures of personal and family well-being throughout the 21 months after enrollment.

Supporting families and individuals means understanding that their needs are complex, interrelated, and affected by the opportunities available in their communities. Integrated service approaches to prevent homelessness or involvement in systems like child welfare may be best positioned to succeed when they recognize these holistic needs and identities and when they coordinate access to resources and services. This Mathematica brief highlights the efforts made by programs to coordinate services and supports for participants by focusing on their holistic needs, including how programs identified their participants’ strengths and needs and how the sites integrated services to be responsive to those needs. The findings are based on interviews with staff and partners from nine case studies sites across the country and with people who have been served by these programs.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance hosted the Regions V-VIII State Technical Assistance Meeting from July 9 to July 11, 2024 in Denver, Colorado. Themed “Reimagining Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Programs through the Lens of Program Participants,” this meeting was designed to inspire, support, and engage TANF program leaders and staff in evidence-driven change that improves programs and positively impacts the lives of the families they serve. Over the course of the meeting, participants engaged in peer-to-peer learning, group discussion and idea generation, and networking among Federal and state colleagues.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) case managers monitor compliance with program rules and can offer participants job search assistance and link them to other services to support employment. Recently, interest has grown among policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in offering employment coaching to TANF participants rather than traditional case management. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief focuses on lessons learned from an evaluation of the implementation of two employment coaching programs that served only families receiving TANF benefits: Family Development and Self-Sufficiency in Iowa and Goal4 It!TM in Colorado.

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.