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.

While many of the United States’ peer countries have partnered effectively with employers to offer earn-and-learn options like apprenticeships on a grand scale, the U.S. continues to rely almost exclusively on traditional four-year college degrees as the primary path to a good job—leaving many workers and learners behind. Brookings and New America’s Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship are co-hosting a webinar on February 21, 2024 at 2:00 p.m. ET, where leaders in Alabama, Colorado, and Indiana will discuss how they are creating enabling policies to scale earn-and-learn opportunities.

Employment coaching involves trained staff working collaboratively with participants to help them set individualized goals related to employment and providing motivation, support, and feedback as participants work toward those goals. Recently, there has been growing interest among policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in using employment coaching to assist Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients and other adults with low incomes become economically mobile. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report highlights the evaluation that was designed to assess the implementation and effectiveness of the four programs participating in the Employment Coaching for TANF and Related Populations study. The report answers the following research questions: In what contexts were programs implemented? How did the designs of the programs vary and differ? How was coaching implemented across programs? The programs highlighted in this evaluation are: • Family Development and Self-Sufficiency, which serves TANF recipients and their family members in Iowa. • Goal4 It!TM, which provides employment coaching to TANF recipients in Jefferson County, Colorado in lieu of traditional case management. • LIFT, which is a voluntary coaching program operated in four U.S. cities. • MyGoals for Employment Success, which serves recipients of housing assistance in Baltimore, Maryland, and Houston, Texas.

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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.

The Office of Family Assistance initiative, “Leveraging America’s Social and Economic Resilience TANF Learning Community” (LASER TLC), supported ten TANF Programs across the country as they worked to address the challenges of human service delivery in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and focused on improving and delivering more responsive services to their TANF families. This document shares Larimer County Colorado Department of Human Services’ journey during their participation in the 18-month learning community. The site journey conveys how their LASER TLC site team, along with support from their dedicated coaching team and application of the LI2 framework, contributed to developing their action plan and strategizing the implementation of their change agenda to benefit TANF families.

The federal government currently has five primary programs designed to feed school-age children: the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), the School Breakfast Program (SBP), the Child and Adult Care Food Program, the Seamless Summer Option, and the Summer Food Service Program. Each program has distinct meal costs, eligibility requirements, and reimbursement processes for the meals served. While all public schools have the option to participate in each of these federal meal programs, they may choose to opt out of any of them. Recognizing the multitude of benefits for students, families, and schools, this report illustrates how five states—California, Maine, Colorado, Minnesota, and New Mexico—have acted to independently serve free school meals for all students. In the absence of continued federal investment, this strategy is essential for ensuring that students are well fed and ready to learn during the school day.