Though high-quality services for families are critical, implementing community pathways is about much more than expanding services. The concept of community pathways represents an opportunity to craft a fundamentally different experience for families, especially those who may distrust public entities or consider child protection punitive and threatening. The Family First Prevention Services Act (Family First) allows states and tribes to use federal Title IV-E funds for prevention services that support children living safely with their families. Family First provides an opportunity to reorient child welfare and advance transformation in terms of the types of services offered, and how and where families access them. Through community pathways, approved entities such as community-based organizations, prevention services providers, and other public agencies may deliver support and perform required Family First administrative functions. To date, at least 14 states have articulated a community pathways approach in their Family First Prevention Plan. This Casey Family brief highlights three unique approaches to building community pathways while using Family First as a strategic lever.

On April 2, 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) announced the award of $10.5 million to fund the first year of four, five-year cooperative agreements aimed at developing strategies to assist youth and young adults with disabilities — particularly in underserved communities — in successfully transitioning into the workforce. This DOL news releasee announces that Connecticut DOL, Kansas Department of Commerce, Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, and the New York DOL received the awards.

The BOOST initiative connects families with low incomes to critical human services supports and educational and career pathways to advance multigenerational family economic success. In six cities — Baltimore, Green Bay, Hartford, New York City (Queens), Portland, and Syracuse — community colleges and human services nonprofits have partnered to support the economic advancement of families as part of the BOOST initiative. This Jobs for the Future brief explores how these partnerships can advance multigenerational family economic success and how to lean into their unique strengths as they seek to achieve this goal. It looks at how the sites are working to change policies and access funding to support their partnership goals. It also highlights practices and insights learned, with the intent of aiding and accelerating other efforts to follow this collaborative path.

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.

Mothers living in poverty often face complex circumstances and major stressors that strain mental health and make it difficult to get and keep a job. The Mental Health Outreach for Mothers or MOMS Partnership® is a community-based model for helping mothers with low incomes manage their stress, reduce depressive symptoms, and improve their social and economic mobility. Central to the model is an 8-week stress management course based on cognitive behavioral therapy that is co-facilitated by skilled clinicians and mothers from the community with lived experience similar to mothers who enroll in the program; the mothers with lived experience are called Community Mental Health Ambassadors (CMHAs). Other features of the program include the use of incentives to support regular attendance and providing services in a central community location. The MOMS Partnership was launched by the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut in 2011 and has been implemented in TANF, public housing agencies, and other related programs. The Office of Family Assistance hosted a webinar on June 29, 2023 which provided participants with the opportunity to learn more about MOMS and the implementation experiences in TANF programs. Speakers included staff from Elevate Policy Lab and The Adjacent Possible; MOMS Stress Management facilitators; and human services leaders from Maine, Vermont, and the District of Columbia. Speakers delivered presentations on What is The MOMS Partnership?, MOMS in Practice – Lessons from Clinicians and CMHAs, and Operating MOMS in TANF and Related Programs.

Currently, almost 5 million (or about one-third of) children younger than age 6 living in families with working parents have parents who work before 7:00 a.m. or after 6:00 p.m. on weekdays or on weekends. Further, children of color, children in families with low incomes, and children in single-parent families are disproportionately likely to have parents working these hours. However, very little is known about what child care arrangements these parents want during nontraditional hours or about the policy constraints and opportunities that may affect their ability to access the care they want.

This report presents findings from a mixed methods study of parents in Connecticut, the District of Columbia, and Oklahoma that explores the following questions:

• What do we know about the potential demand for child care during nontraditional hours?
• What child care arrangements do parents of young children recommend and use for nontraditional hours?
• What role do children’s needs play in shaping parents’ recommendations for nontraditional hour child care?
• What other constraints and issues do parents report concerning nontraditional-hour child care?
• What are the implications of the answers to these questions for policy and practice?

This research-to-practice brief supports better understanding the intersection between child maltreatment and intimate partner violence so that comprehensive community-based prevention and intervention programs can be provided effectively. The brief notes the impact of domestic violence on children in the long-term and discusses how adult survivors of domestic violence and their children need support that promotes their well-being. The brief also outlines strategies for capacity building and collaboration implemented between child protection agencies and domestic violence programs in Massachusetts, Florida, Iowa, and Connecticut.

(See also Resources on "intimate partner violence" in the Resource Library)

This research-to-practice brief identifies the positive outcomes of preserving sibling relationships within child welfare agencies and the barriers for joint sibling placement. Strategies that support joint sibling placement and adoptions are presented from initiatives in Connecticut, Idaho, and New Jersey; they include prioritizing kinship relationships regarding placement and establishing clear operating policies, involving children in placement decisions, and using retention strategies for adoptive and foster parents.

This toolkit by National Conference of State Legislatures focuses on new approaches and strategies to help families disrupt the cycle of poverty. The toolkit outlines and describes the fundamentals of two-generation approaches to address poverty, with focus on state legislators’ critical role in legislating, convening, partnering, championing, and coordinating funding for two-generation initiatives. It highlights the vital role legislators play in bringing stakeholders together and increasing collaboration and data sharing among agencies to address the needs of similar populations. It also illustrates initiatives taken by legislators in several states such as Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Washington, and others to create and sustain those efforts.