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.

The five-year initiative New Skills for Youth (NSFY) aimed to transform career readiness education and bridge the skills gap by supporting innovative strategies in 10 states across the United States. This Advance CTE report shares the successes and challenges of sustaining the work beyond the conclusion of the NSFY initiative, and through a global pandemic, in six of the states: Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. From the experiences of each of these states, the resource presents specific recommendations and action steps for state and local leaders on how to sustain career pathways for long-term success.

Jurisdictions are increasingly using funding in innovative ways to meet the economic and concrete needs of families as a child welfare prevention strategy. Concrete supports are provided further upstream to families at risk for child welfare involvement. While there is variation in when and how these flexible dollars are used by child welfare agencies to strengthen families, this Chapin Hall policy brief highlights efforts in Kentucky, Indiana, and Wisconsin to integrate and expand flexible funds as a core component of their prevention continuum.

The BOOST initiative connects families with low incomes to critical human services supports and educational and career pathways to advance multigenerational family economic success. In six cities — Baltimore, Green Bay, Hartford, New York City (Queens), Portland, and Syracuse — community colleges and human services nonprofits have partnered to support the economic advancement of families as part of the BOOST initiative. This Jobs for the Future brief explores how these partnerships can advance multigenerational family economic success and how to lean into their unique strengths as they seek to achieve this goal. It looks at how the sites are working to change policies and access funding to support their partnership goals. It also highlights practices and insights learned, with the intent of aiding and accelerating other efforts to follow this collaborative path.

Northwest Wisconsin Workforce Investment Board (NWWIB) serves 10 counties across 10,000 square miles in northern Wisconsin, and administers WIOA and discretionary grant programs. Since NWWIB serves a rural region, the staff like to stay innovative on their outreach strategies, such as adopting social media campaigns on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram, and Facebook. This WorkforceGPS resource highlights a Q&A with NWWIB, exploring their innovative and fun social media outreach strategy and why innovation is important to the organization.

Wisconsin’s Youth Apprenticeship program is the oldest and largest ongoing youth apprenticeship (YA) program in the U.S. As youth apprenticeship has reemerged as an attractive option for preparing young people for careers, Wisconsin’s YA program offers interesting insights to policymakers and practitioners. The state funds the program in a way that emphasizes local control, administration, and outreach to high school students and employers. This Urban Institute brief highlights the program’s history, recent growth, and structure and draws on perspectives from state officials, local program directors, and employers.

While a wide range of factors contributes to an individual’s economic mobility or movement up and down the economic ladder, the ties between food insecurity and economic inequality are demonstrated. Individuals who experience a lack of food security face mental and physical health consequences that can directly impact their employment status, use of the health care system, and other factors that impact upward mobility. Jurisdictions are working to improve the food security of residents by integrating local efforts and working with key community partners to enhance food production, transportation, and distribution. The National Association of Counties and National League of Cities held a webinar in June 2022 that featured an expert overview of the state of food insecurity in the United States as well as example solutions from Franklin County, Ohio and Dane County, Wisconsin.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief describes the experiences of three organizations that adapted existing interventions to provide remote work readiness activities or education and training services during the COVID-19 pandemic. It summarizes common challenges that made it difficult for participants to engage in remote services, adaptations made by the organizations, and considerations for remote service delivery after the pandemic. The brief draws upon information gathered from an Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training (I-BEST) site in Des Moines, Washington, Project Quality Employment Through Skills Training (QUEST) in San Antonio, Texas, and a Wisconsin Regional Training Partnerships (WRTP) site in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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.

The University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research on Poverty will host a webinar on September 15, 2021 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET to explore approaches to better serve children with an incarcerated parent. Presentations will examine the costs of children being separated from their parents due to incarceration, research on how to improve outcomes for children and their parents, and efforts made by law enforcement agencies and their partners to serve these families more effectively. Speakers include Julie Poehlmann-Tynan and Pajarita Charles, both from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Dane County (Wisconsin) Sheriff Kalvin Barrett.