Case management is a common component of healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) services. Many social service programs are beginning to explore a motivation-driven approach to case management that prioritizes identifying the goals that participants want to achieve and the steps they can take to achieve those goals. Two HMRE grant recipients, Family Service Agency of Santa Barbara County (FSA-SB) and More Than Conquerors, Inc. (MTCI), implemented motivation-driven case management through the Strengthening the Implementation of Marriage and Relationship Programs (SIMR) project, which aims to strengthen the capacity of HMRE grant recipients to improve their services. This brief provides practical tips for implementing motivation-driven case management as part of HMRE services based on the experiences of FSA-SB and MTCI.

The Agricultural Act of 2014 authorized $200 million for the development, implementation, and evaluation of pilot projects to test innovative strategies to reduce dependency on and increase employment among Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants. California, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Mississippi, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington received grants in March 2015 and began implementing their pilots between January and April 2016. Resource materials in this post include a summary of findings from these 10 pilots and a set of four issue briefs. These issue briefs present cross-pilot findings that cover participation patterns in selected Employment and Training (E&T) activities, effectiveness of work-based learning, employment patterns after occupational skills training, and how sanctions affect participants in mandatory SNAP E&T programs.

There is a growing recognition of the importance of healthy social-emotional development and the behavioral and mental health of young children, as well as the critical nature of early relationships with parents and other caregivers. Addressing the social and emotional development of infants and toddlers with and at-risk for developmental delays and disabilities is a requirement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This briefing paper examines an array of infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH) policies and practices that state early intervention (IDEA, Part C) programs may consider implementing to effectively support the social-emotional development and mental health needs of eligible children as the policies and programs reflect the importance of nurturing early relationships for a child's social emotional wellbeing. An appendix includes state spotlights in Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Michigan, Rhode Island and Wisconsin.

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), one of the federal government’s largest antipoverty programs, has lifted millions of people out of severe poverty. While it offers a refundable credit at tax time to eligible workers with low incomes, it provides only a very small refund for single workers with no qualifying children. Paycheck Plus is a test of an EITC expansion for low-income workers without dependent children. This report presents final impacts from the test in Atlanta. The Atlanta Paycheck Plus Demonstration is part of the Subsidized and Transitional Employment Demonstration, a large-scale research demonstration designed to build rigorous evidence on the effectiveness of the latest generation of subsidized models.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Family Assistance (OFA) conducted the 2021 National TANF Directors’ Meeting from September 20 - 24, 2021. During this workshop, presenters included two economic mobility leaders in Georgia and Massachusetts who have changed the way they do business to better serve young parents and engage them in TANF, with the explicit goals of helping participants achieve greater economic mobility outcomes. The workshop also included interactive components where participants could consider how they might adjust some of their own operations in service of economic mobility.

Part of a larger project sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services called Key Programmatic Elements of Engaging Fathers to Promote Self-Sufficiency (KEEP Fathers Engaged), this fact sheet explores three strategies for child support agencies to engage fathers and improve family stability. The strategies are: 1) focus outreach on the emotional and other nonfinancial contributions fathers make to children’s well-being; 2) develop partnerships to help fathers achieve their full potential; and 3) use data and evaluation to support sustaining father engagement. The fact sheet provides brief sketches of how these strategies were used within the Georgia Division of Child Support Services, the Texas Office of the Attorney General’s Child Support Division, and at the Mecklenburg County, North Carolina Child Support Enforcement.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report examines the initial impact of two versions of the Relationships Smarts PLUS program, delivered primarily to 9th graders at two Atlanta-area high schools. The two versions of Relationship Smarts PLUS were either a full 12-lesson 18-hour version, or an 8-lesson 12-hour format (designed specifically for this study). Key questions in the report pertain to the impact of HMRE on students’ relationship skills, attitudes, and knowledge beyond the end of the course and the influence on students of shortening an HMRE program.

The Family Resource Simulator shows how earnings, benefits, and expenses interact as circumstances change. It makes “what if” scenarios visible in a way that is difficult to capture through conversation alone. In Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) settings, the simulator can support planning discussions by helping families see how small changes in work hours, income, or benefits affect overall stability.

Research from SmartAsset explores what it takes financially for one parent to stay home and the other to support the household. It adds context to the tradeoffs families face when making caregiving and work decisions. Within Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) services, it can support more realistic financial planning discussions and help families think through how income choices affect stability, caregiving roles, and long-term goals.

The MIT Living Wage Calculator estimates the income families need to cover basic expenses based on where they live and family size. It helps clarify a common disconnect in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) work—employment alone does not always equal economic stability. Practitioners can use it to ground conversations about self-sufficiency in local reality, making it easier to connect job planning and financial goals to actual household needs and improve family stability.