This brief synthesizes the work the states and tribes participating in the Office for Family Assistance and Children’s Bureau’s joint-initiative “Families Are Stronger Together Learning Community” (FAST-LC) accomplished. It highlights implementation issues and the strategies the participating states and tribes employed in their partnership efforts and their prevention-oriented activities. The brief also identifies sustainability issues the sites confronted and addressed.

In September 2024, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) continued its investment in economic mobility with a gathering of state government officials from across ACF’s Region V. This gathering emphasized the role states can play in engaging families in the policy process, including working with philanthropy to ensure funding for creative solutions to problems confronting parents, and actively collaborating with state legislators to ensure the actionability of legislative solutions. This ACF resource provides a recap of the Region V summit, including an overview of each state’s innovative strategies to support expectant parents and the parents of young children. Strategies highlighted include the creation of a Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) engagement unit in Illinois, expansion of Medicaid coverage for 12 months postpartum in Indiana, the launching of Family Connects in Ohio and Family Impacts Teams project in Michigan, standing up of the newly created Department of Children, Youth, and Families in Minnesota, and the creation of the Wisconsin Child Support Parent Advisory Group.

On September 27, 2024, the Office of Child Support Services (OCSS) announced their awarding of $4.7 million to help states and tribes develop and refine child support-led employment efforts for noncustodial parents under the Next Generation Child Support Employment (NextGen) grant. OCSS awarded an additional $3.4 million to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to provide technical assistance and evaluate the NextGen demonstration projects. This OCSS announcement highlights the demonstration grants recipients, including six states and two tribes.

The National Association for Welfare Research and Statistics is hosting a webinar on July 24, 2024 at 1:00 p.m. ET to discuss the importance of and strategies for supporting families during pregnancy and the first year of life. Presenters will share how TANF funds are being used to provide cash to families and talk about RxTalks, a no-strings-attached program in Flint, Michigan that is currently providing cash to 700 families.

Over the past three years, the Michigan Center for Student Success (MCSS) at the Michigan Community College Association has focused on implementing the statewide Strengthening MiWorkforce Pathways project. The workforce-focused initiative is one of many system-level efforts among states in the greater Student Success Center Network that embrace and recognize learner agility and learning that happens outside the traditional classroom. The explicit focus on credit for industry credentials provides a framework for state-level strategies supporting community colleges’ efforts to improve student completion rates. This Jobs for the Future post provides an overview of MCSS as well as focus areas for future considerations to support colleges in their efforts to establish equitable credit for prior learning policies and practices.

COTS Detroit, an organization with a long history of providing support to individuals and families experiencing or overcoming homelessness, achieved a milestone by becoming the first organization in the EMPath Economic Mobility Exchange to receive certification in a research-backed economic mobility coaching method. In this Question-and-Answer resource, the COTS Detroit Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships discusses their mission and the impact of economic mobility coaching on the communities they serve.

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.

The Office of Family Assistance and Children’s Bureau have announced the 10 sites selected to participate in the FAST-LC. The FAST-LC is a 12-month initiative operating from September 2023 through September 2024. The Learning Community will focus on promoting innovative prevention strategies to mitigate and reduce families’ involvement with the child welfare system through partnerships between TANF and Child Welfare programs. Site teams will benefit from a robust suite of individualized training, technical assistance, and coaching support, as well as regular opportunities for collaborative learning and sharing across site teams.

The states and tribes participating in the FAST-LC are:
• Arizona Department of Child Safety and Department of Economic Security;
• Arkansas Department of Human Services;
• California Department of Social Services;
• Chippewa Cree Tribe of the Rocky Boys Reservation (Montana),
• Iowa Department of Health and Human Services;
• Kentucky Department for Community Based Services;
• Michigan Department of Health and Human Services;
• Oregon Department of Human Services;
• Pascua Yaqui Tribe (Arizona); and
• West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources.

This newspaper article from the Detroit Free Press profiles the challenges faced by low-income and working parents who need child care. It also illustrates a model program that offers 24-hour child care to the parents who need this type of support.

The Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison hosted a webinar on November 4, 2021 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. CT, which explored ways that fathers’ roles and responsibilities shifted during the pandemic. Topics included father involvement in childcare and support for virtual learning, how the pandemic heightened existing challenges for low-income and noncustodial fathers, insights from practice and research, and supports that fathers may need to maintain positive changes or recover from negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Representatives from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the City of Milwaukee, the University of Michigan, and the 4Dad Fatherhood Initiative in Kalamazoo, Michigan made presentations.