The National Center for Children in Poverty’s Basic Needs Budget Calculator breaks down what it actually costs to meet essential needs like housing, food, childcare, and transportation. It highlights gaps between wages, benefits, and real household expenses. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) practitioners can use it to support budgeting work that feels concrete and locally relevant, helping families understand what stability requires in practical terms.

Research from SmartAsset explores what it takes financially for one parent to stay home and the other to support the household. It adds context to the tradeoffs families face when making caregiving and work decisions. Within Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) services, it can support more realistic financial planning discussions and help families think through how income choices affect stability, caregiving roles, and long-term goals.

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.

A resource from the Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network highlights how agencies are prioritizing placement with relatives or trusted caregivers when children cannot remain with their parents. These approaches help maintain family connections, reduce disruptions, and support more stable caregiving arrangements.

TANF programs can support this work by reinforcing care in the home or with relatives, including efforts that help stabilize caregiving arrangements, reduce placement changes, and support caregivers in meeting the day-to-day needs of children. This may also include coordinating with partner systems and aligning services to strengthen family-based care and promote continuity.

Intergenerational programs are gaining momentum as a strategy to support families, reduce social isolation, and build community capacity. This Generations United toolkit provides step-by-step guidance for TANF partners interested in creating or strengthening shared intergenerational sites, spaces where older adults and children/youth participate together in learning, care, and engagement. With tools for planning, partnership development, and sustainability, this resource supports goals around family economic success, caregiving support, and community engagement.

This U.S. Aging guide offers a practical framework for strengthening collaboration between child welfare and aging networks to better identify and support kinship caregivers, many of whom are older adults stepping in to care for children when parents are unable. The resource outlines action steps to improve cross-system coordination, access to benefits and services, and recognition of the vital role kin caregivers play in family stability. This can help TANF agencies deepen connections with community partners serving older caregivers and reduce barriers to economic support and resource navigation.

For every one child in kinship foster care, there are 19 children in kinship care outside of the formal child welfare system. These families are often referred to as “informal” kinship families because of their outside-of-the-system status and, historically, they have not gotten the same financial or social supports that families in the child welfare system have.

Chapin Hall partnered with Kinnect, an Ohio-based nonprofit, to develop OhioKAN—a responsive kinship and adoption navigator program that supports children, youth, and their families. This resource outlines the development of OhioKAN, from the state’s request for proposals issued in response to the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) to the program’s implementation and the success stories of the families it serves.

This op-ed written by Acting Assistant Secretary Andrew Gradison outlines that current welfare policies focused on unconditional cash transfers are failing to lift low-income families out of poverty. Instead, he advocates for a welfare model that emphasizes work incentives, family stability, personal responsibility, and reduced dependency on government aid.

The pilot is authorized under the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 and reflects the Administration’s commitment to reshaping welfare programs to encourage employment, personal responsibility, and strong, stable two-parent families. States were encouraged to propose alternative performance measures to the work participation rate that prioritize rapid employment outcomes, earnings progression, and reduced dependency on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, and other welfare. 

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services selected Arizona, Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio, and Virginia to participate in the redesigned TANF pilot. These states were chosen from a strong applicant pool to develop models and metrics other states can replicate to help families achieve self-sufficiency. In addition to concretely tracking employment and earnings, pilot states will pursue the following strategies to reduce dependency:

• Arizona will engage directly with employers that have vacancies for in-demand, well-paying positions to directly connect TANF participants with quality, sustainable employment.
• Iowa will improve referral coordination across services, enhance the quality of information available to TANF participants through financial literacy and decision-making tools, and build partnerships with employers to create employment and matched savings opportunities.
• Nebraska, in partnership with community organizations, colleges, and businesses, will develop personalized pathways for TANF participants to strengthen connections to local jobs. Pathways will include referrals to Nebraska’s TANF-funded Fatherhood and Healthy Marriage Initiative.
• Ohio will implement a personalized “well-being assessment” for TANF participants, which will include intensive case management services, financial literacy training, and support for counties to build community capacity.
• Virginia will establish Personalized Results Plans for TANF participants to build upon the success of the Career Pathway Pilot, which blends sector-based training, intensive case management, and employment engagement to support participants as they gain credentials in fields like health care and skilled trades.

The TANF pilot program officially launches on October 1, 2025.