Healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs aim to support the well-being of families. For such programs to be effective, it is critical that clients attend regularly, yet studies have found that HMRE program providers sometimes struggle to maintain high rates of participation. Identifying and exploring typical participation patterns in HMRE programming can increase understanding of this challenge and point to ways in which programs can promote and support regular participation. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief describes typical patterns of participation in three programs that were part of the Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services (STREAMS) evaluation, a large multisite evaluation conducted from 2015 to 2022 to identify strategies for improving the delivery and effectiveness of healthy marriage and relationship education programs. The brief identifies distinct patterns of participation in each of these programs and provides profiles of the clients who participate in these distinct ways.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation digital report shares highlights from the Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services (STREAMS) evaluation, a large multisite evaluation conducted from 2015 to 2022 to identify strategies for improving the delivery and effectiveness of healthy marriage and relationship education programs. This report describes the five grantees —in Georgia, Florida, Denver, Missouri, and Texas— and the services they provided. To capture the perspectives and experiences of the people most directly affected by the programs, this report also tells the personal stories of some of the program staff and participants who contributed to STREAMS.

The Child Welfare Community Collaborations (CWCC) initiative is designed to mobilize communities to develop and evaluate multi-system collaboratives that address local barriers and provide a continuum of services to prevent child abuse and neglect. In 2018 and 2019, the Children’s Bureau awarded 5-year cooperative agreements to a total of 13 states, non-profit organizations, and Native American tribal organizations. This Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation brief provides a high-level description of each of the 13 CWCC projects and is one of a series of products the evaluation team will produce as part of the cross-site process evaluation. This brief contains a one-page description of each project, including its geographic catchment area, population of focus, key partners, prior experience with community-level collaboration, timeline, and local evaluation.

Strengthening Families is a research-based framework developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy over the last decade to increase family strengths, enhance child development, and reduce child abuse and neglect. This approach helps child welfare systems, early education, prevention organizations, and other programs work with parents to build five protective factors that, when present, increase the overall well-being of children and families. They are:

• Enhancing parental resilience
• Providing an array of social connections
• Providing parents concrete support in times of need
• Facilitating knowledge of parenting and child development
• Supporting healthy social and emotional development in young children

This set of resources includes a state profile of Strengthening Families efforts in Missouri.

The U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration will host a webinar on March 16, 2021 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET to cover best practices in work-based learning at the state level. Work-based learning offers participants the ability to combine employment with training. Presentations will be made by representatives of the Missouri Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development, WorkSource Oregon, the New Hampshire Department of Employment Security, the Maricopa County (Arizona) Human Services Department, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, and Adaptive Construction Solutions, Inc.

This research-to-practice brief identifies programmatic solutions to support reentry for young adults who have been involved in the juvenile justice or criminal justice system as they navigate employment and education pathways. The brief summarizes best practices from nine communities under the three-year U.S. Department of Labor-funded Compass Rose Collaborative (CRC). CRC communities are: Southeast Arkansas; Los Angeles, California; Denver, Colorado; Hartford, Connecticut; Louisville, Kentucky; Baltimore, Maryland; Boston, Massachusetts; St. Louis, Missouri; and Albany, New York.

The Missouri Job Centers in Kansas City and Vicinity and the Greater St. Louis Metropolitan Region provide a variety of services for TANF customers through Missouri Works Assistance (MWA). This case statement describes collaborative practices among TANF and WIOA agencies contracted to deliver MWA services, such as sharing resources, case management, specialized staffing, and communication channels across programs. State-level support and a history of cross-agency collaboration also encourage partnership-building in this region.

Sections of the brief discuss joint service delivery, resource sharing, shared learning, and managing collaborative activities. Readers may also access links to the state TANF plan and funding information for more context and resources. This brief is part of the TANF Works! TANF/WIOA Collaboration Series, through which the Office of Family Assistance’s Integrating Innovative Employment and Economic Stability Strategies (IIEESS) initiative seeks to highlight innovative coordination strategies of TANF and WIOA programs to serve low-income or vulnerable populations.