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.

Transportation challenges can create significant barriers for kinship caregivers trying to access services, employment, and school. These case profiles from the Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network highlight real-world strategies communities are using to address transportation needs for kinship and grandfamilies. TANF programs can use these examples to explore partnerships and practical solutions that improve access to benefits, case management, and workforce opportunities.

This America Succeeds report highlights the workplace value of durable skills: communication, teamwork, problem-solving, and leadership. TANF programs can integrate these into their case management or training to help participants build foundational and transferable skills for long-term career growth.

Kinship families interact with many systems, including child welfare, education/schools, housing, Medicaid/Medicare, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Dealing with multiple systems is time-consuming and emotionally draining. TANF child-only grants are often the only source of ongoing financial support for these families. This Grandfamilies and Kinship Support Network resource outlines how TANF programs can help these families by facilitating or participating in cross-system collaboration and coordination while helping individual families navigate the challenging landscape.

The Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA) offers a comprehensive system of programs and supports to help individuals and families achieve greater economic self-sufficiency, including food and nutritional assistance, economic assistance, and employment supports through programs such as Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Emergency Aid to the Elderly, Disabled, and Children. The DTA works to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse as part of their core functions. The DTA’s Program Integrity (PI) Division uses advanced data analytics and a variety of fraud detection practices to promote PI. This DTA report describes the efforts of their PI division.

The Western Mass Mental Health Outreach for MotherS PartnershipSM (Western Mass MOMS) is part of the Next Generation of Enhanced Employment Strategies (NextGen) Project, which seeks to rigorously evaluate employment strategies for people with low incomes and physical or mental health challenges. Western Mass MOMS is designed to reduce depressive symptoms, improve social connections, and promote labor market success among mothers or caregivers with low incomes that are experiencing symptoms of depression. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report discusses the effectiveness of Western Mass MOMS and aids stakeholders interested in replicating this model to understand the program and its operations.

This Office of Research, Planning and Evaluation report describes the design of the NextGen Project, which is evaluating the effectiveness of four programs that provide services for people with physical, mental, or emotional health challenges. Many of the people are potential applicants for Supplemental Security Income. The four programs highlighted are:
• Bridges from School to Work;
• Individual Placement and Support for Adults with Justice Involvement;
• Philadelphia Workforce Inclusion Networks; and
• Western Mass Mental Health Outreach for MotherS PartnershipSM.

Based on input from state TANF programs during the 2023 National TANF Directors’ Meeting, the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) developed five virtual Learning Collaboratives (LCs) on topics best addressed through a cohort-based, peer learning format. These LCs were designed to be a progressive series of interactive meetings that facilitated reflection, peer sharing, connection with experts, and human-centered design and planning activities to deeply explore facets of the collaborative topic. Sessions were held monthly from March to August 2024 for 60-90 minutes.

The Building Strategic Partnerships with Child Welfare Services LC was connected TANF professionals interested in building strategic partnerships with child welfare partners with experts and one another. It was designed to prepare states to partner with child welfare services to jointly explore a key area for upstream prevention, given the growing body of evidence demonstrating how the concrete and economic supports available through TANF can prevent and reduce families’ involvement with the child welfare system. Participating states included Massachusetts, Vermont, New Jersey, Alabama, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.

This OFA resource highlights the Building Strategic Partnerships with Child Welfare Services LC, including key takeaways and resources from each session as well as overall themes and future considerations for follow-up.

The five-year initiative New Skills for Youth (NSFY) aimed to transform career readiness education and bridge the skills gap by supporting innovative strategies in 10 states across the United States. This Advance CTE report shares the successes and challenges of sustaining the work beyond the conclusion of the NSFY initiative, and through a global pandemic, in six of the states: Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. From the experiences of each of these states, the resource presents specific recommendations and action steps for state and local leaders on how to sustain career pathways for long-term success.

As part of the Building Evidence on Employment Strategies project, researchers conducted virtual interviews from November 2021 to April 2022 with staff members at ten workforce programs to learn how they were using technology to adapt their services during the pandemic. Most of the organizations used a hybrid model to blend in-person and virtual service delivery. This MDRC publication examines five key adaptations of the programs made to accommodate the new hiring context.