Due in part to structural socioeconomic inequality, children from families with lower incomes may be at particularly high risk of abuse, neglect, and behavioral problems during infancy, toddlerhood, and early childhood. Research has found that home visiting programs for families with young children can improve children’s development and strengthen caregivers’ and families’ well-being. However, the COVID-19 pandemic created numerous challenges for home visiting programs, forcing them to deliver services online or in a hybrid format and to adapt their program models’ content to respond to pandemic-related challenges. One evidence-based home visiting program, Child First, provides a psychotherapeutic, parent-child intervention embedded in a coordinated system of care. This working paper highlights the 12-month impacts found in a study of Child First implemented in Connecticut and North Carolina.

Over 3.2 million North Carolinians are poor or near poor, and many more experience economic instability and challenges over time. This report examines the ways that women in North Carolina are caught in the crosshairs of irreconcilable social and economic demands. Hundreds of thousands of women were forced last year to forgo job opportunities, experienced employment disruptions, or lost a job because of lack of affordable childcare.

Building on previous work developing a roadmap for system-level change to better support young families, the American Public Human Services Association established the System Alignment for Young Families Learning Academy (SAYF) to support cross-systems teams from state and local human services agencies in establishing a System Alignment Plan to support young families. This blogpost notes how the SAYF Learning Academy was launched in March 2022 with six cross-sectional teams that included parent leadership representing Maryland, Maricopa County (Arizona), Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, and Wake County (North Carolina). Through the development of targeted practice tools, peer-to-peer learning, and individualized planning, the teams worked to advance system alignment, so that young families experience seamless service delivery that meets their individual needs. An infographic in the blogpost spotlights each team’s vision statement.

Families affected by substance use disorders and involved in the child welfare system face a variety of complex challenges. Children of parents with substance use disorder are more likely to be removed from parental care, less likely to be reunified, and experience lengthier out-of-home placements and delayed permanency. This brief provides an overview of the Sobriety Treatment and Recovery Teams (START) program — an evidence-based child welfare service delivery model for families that is aimed at keeping children safely with their parent(s) whenever possible through achieving parental sobriety and recovery, and family stability. The brief also highlights the funding and implementation of the START model in Kansas, Kentucky (which uses TANF to support the model), North Carolina, and Ohio, along with each state’s unique considerations.

This brief examines Latino families’ experiences with North Carolina’s TANF (also known as Work First) and related income assistance programs. The brief summarizes findings from practitioner responses to a survey that included a questionnaire and a series of open-ended questions. Further, it discusses North Carolina’s Hispanic population and how the state’s income assistance programs are administered, and it provides more detail on income assistance program practitioners’ perspectives on Latino families’ experiences with these programs. Implications of the findings for how income assistance programs are administered in North Carolina and in other states with large and growing Latino populations are also presented.

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.

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.

Finding out which public benefits a family may qualify for can be difficult when eligibility rules differ across programs and applications require time, information, and paperwork. This Urban Institute resource evaluates the initial implementation of MyFriendBen, a free online screening tool that helps people quickly identify benefits and community resources for which they may qualify. The evaluation found that the tool helped many users discover programs they did not know about, and most users who applied for a new benefit or resource were approved for at least one program. At the same time, the research shows that screening is only the first step; many people still needed help understanding application requirements and completing the process.

For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) practitioners, this resource offers practical lessons for improving benefits access. A digital screener can help families see the full range of supports that may be available rather than approaching each program separately. It can also help staff identify where technology can reduce information barriers while highlighting where personal assistance is still needed. TANF agencies can use the findings to think about how screening tools might connect families to navigators, community organizations, and application assistance.

This Administration for Children and Families announcement highlights $6 million in funding for 10 jurisdictions to advance the use of predictive risk modeling in child welfare. These jurisdictions will pilot technology aimed at using data to help child welfare agencies identify patterns and potentially recognize situations where families may benefit from earlier or more targeted support.

This announcement is useful for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) leaders and staff who are thinking about how to strengthen coordination across systems and improve early intervention efforts. The announcement may encourage practitioners to consider how data can support human judgment, relationship-building, and direct engagement with families. Ultimately, it offers a window into how child welfare systems are evolving and what that may mean for the broader network of services that support family stability.

States across the country are finding new ways to connect child support participants with employment opportunities. This federal webpage highlights child support-led employment programs operating across the country and the services they provide to help parents find and keep jobs. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs can use these examples to identify promising practices, strengthen partnerships with child support agencies, and expand employment supports for families.