In 2020, the National Community Action Partnership (NCAP) became a sub-grantee for a multi-year national Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Employment & Training (E&T) research cohort project. MAHUBE-OTWA Community Action Partnership is a critical service provider for people who earn low incomes, working to build community and eradicate poverty in Mahnomen, Hubbard, Becker, Otter Tail and Wadena (MAHUBE-OTWA) counties. Through NCAP’s webinars, one-on-one meetings, and intensive coaching sessions, the MAHUBE-OTWA team learned how a SNAP E&T Partnership could align with organizational goals and position an agency with workforce development tools to better facilitate economic mobility for clients. MAHUBE-OTWA then worked closely with the Minnesota state SNAP E&T office and officially became a new SNAP E&T third-party provider in October 2022. NCAP’s Q&A with the MAHUBE-OTWA team captures their E&T partnership journey.

The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) hosted a webinar on March 21, 2023 — the second of a two-part webinar series entitled, The Whole Family Approach: How TANF Programs Can Engage Customers in Mental Health Services. In Part I of the webinar series on January 26, 2023, State and Tribal TANF programs discussed the intersection between poverty, trauma, and mental health and highlighted how their programs have helped improve long-term mental health outcomes for families with low incomes.

Part 2 built on the concepts introduced in Part I and the speakers shared the details of their programs’ whole family design and implementation processes, including how they identify services to include in their TANF programs, how they select and coordinate with supportive partnerships, what types of assessments they use when meeting with clients, and funding streams they utilize. They also highlighted successes and challenges they have experienced throughout the process. Participants received insights into the options TANF programs can explore in expanding and improving the mental health care for their TANF customers.

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Data Collaborative Pilot Initiative is a component of the TANF Data Innovation project. The 30-month pilot offered technical assistance and training to support cross-disciplinary teams of staff at eight state and county TANF programs in the routine use of TANF and other administrative data to inform policy and practice. This collection of eight profiles summarizes the data analytics projects undertaken by teams from California, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Utah, and Virginia. Each profile provides project-specific details for each pilot, including the research questions, data landscape, approach and research methods, and initial findings and next steps as well as an overview of the state TANF program.

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Data Innovation project and the TANF Data Collaborative (TDC) Pilot were established to expand the routine use, integration, and analysis of TANF and employment data by agency staff to improve program services and outcomes for families with low incomes. The 30-month TDC Pilot offered technical assistance and training to support cross-disciplinary teams of staff at eight state and county TANF programs. This nine-minute video, produced after the completion of the TDC Pilot, features staff members from the California, Colorado, Minnesota, and Virginia TANF agencies reflecting on their challenges, accomplishments, and general experiences during the pilot. Staff describe their research questions and discuss building data capacity, integrating datasets, networking with other states, increasing collaboration between state and county agencies, learning new technical skills, and the benefits of being able to draw from diverse skillsets.

Partnerships between TANF-funded programs and Community Action Agencies (CAAs) are the focus of this video series just released by the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) and the Office of Community Services (OCS). Filmed at four sites across the country, the five brief videos each look at how TANF programs and CAAs are working together to help shared customers achieve social and economic success. The videos are one result of the COVID and Safety Net Innovation (CASI) TA Initiative, a joint OFA and OCS initiative that provided technical assistance to TANF programs and CAAs, helping them develop a joint action plan to strengthen the safety net.

Hampton Roads Community Action Program and the Virginia Department of Social Services: Working together to create a whole family approach.

Audubon Area Community Services and the Kentucky Transitional Assistance Program: Partnering to deliver diverse work opportunities.

Maricopa County Human Services Department and the Arizona Department of Economic Security: Planning a holistic approach to anti-poverty efforts.

Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) and MAHUBE-OTWA Community Action Partnership: The first video explores how DHS and MAHUBE-OTWA collaborate to serve families in a rural area. The second video looks at how they are supporting American Indian/Native American culture.

During the continued recovery from and ongoing response to the COVID-19 epidemic, every member of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) families has experienced a growing set of challenges to their mental well-being. Amplified socioeconomic issues such as the rising cost of daily expenses, especially food, gas, and housing; difficulties with finding quality and long-term employment; and challenges with access to healthcare continue to place an increased mental burden on low-income families. In addition, children who previously found stability at school, even when it was not present at home, have had to endure constant changes in school closures, learning styles, and staff fluctuations and shortages.

Due to the heightened need of mental health services for all members of the family, it is vital that health and human service departments and community organizations consider mental health promotion as part of a comprehensive approach to service delivery. TANF programs provide an important touchpoint to low-income families facing mental health challenges and can improve access and utilization of mental health services for parents and children.

The Office of Family Assistance hosted a webinar on January 26, 2023 where speakers discussed the intersection between poverty, trauma, and mental health and shared strategies that could help improve long-term mental health outcomes for low-income families. Webinar attendees engaged with speakers and peers in dialogue focused on building mental health service strategies for TANF families impacted by various traumas.

The vastly altered societal context since March 2020 has created an opportunity for responsible fatherhood programs to partner with systems such as child welfare, child support, criminal justice, public assistance, workforce development, and others in innovative ways that could lead to program sustainability that the fatherhood field has not seen before. In this National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse information brief, Dr. Andrew Freeberg, Director of Family Stability for Goodwill-Easter Seals Minnesota, draws on his 20 years of experience overseeing the organization’s FATHER Project to provide a case study of leadership, innovation, and sustainability. In the brief, he also shares strategies that other leaders of fatherhood programs might employ.

For young parents juggling work, school, and child care, supporting their families while transitioning into adulthood can be challenging. Parents with low incomes and those who have been involved with the foster care or criminal legal systems face even greater barriers to achieving stability. To explore how organizations can improve young parents’ employment and educational opportunities, this blogpost reflects findings from interviews with representatives of three partners involved in the Learn and Earn to Achieve Potential (LEAP) initiative. (LEAP™ is a multi­million dollar initiative to increase employment and educational opportunities for young people, ages 14 to 25, who are in foster care, homeless, or exiting the juvenile justice system.) Interviews were held with staff members at two LEAP cohort members—the Nebraska Children and Families Foundation and The Door in New York City—as well as with Hennepin Healthcare, a Minnesota organization that collaborates with Project for Pride in Living, another LEAP cohort member. The answers they shared highlight the importance of convening cross-sector partners to work toward common goals, connecting with other organizations to meet parents’ basic needs, and navigating public systems to remove barriers and help young people achieve their goals.

This playbook, developed in collaboration between the National Community Action Partnership and the American Public Human Services Association, explores how Community Action and human services agencies partnered together in response to the COVID-19 public health and economic crisis. It presents opportunities for alignment in providing whole family supports, making career pathways possible for SNAP recipients, and tackling structural inequities in accessing services. Examples of these alignments include western Maryland and Virginia (whole family supports), Minnesota and Oregon (SNAP Employment & Training), and rural Ohio and Montgomery County, Maryland (dismantling structural inequities).

Increases in a family’s earnings are often offset by declines in public assistance benefits (commonly called “benefit cliffs” when the declines are sharp) and increases in taxes owed. This report summarizes insights from qualitative interviews with 43 respondents who currently or recently received TANF. Respondents reported experiencing tradeoffs between benefits, taxes, and work. It also presents results from microsimulation modeling of how benefits and taxes respond when income changes, and features 2018 data from Colorado, Minnesota, and New York.