This blog post discusses the importance of financial literacy and empowerment within the Latino community. One example of a recent initiative is the ACF Region X partnership with Catholic Charities in Portland, Oregon to present a Spanish-language training called “Your Money, Your Goals.” This new financial empowerment toolkit for social service workers who serve the Latino community was created to train front-line staff on how to talk about personal finances with their clients. The resources are available in both English and Spanish.

This article examines how acquisition of financial skills begins with parental teaching, providing children with their first exposure to financial literacy and money management. Since parental instruction is critical for children's future financial outcomes, children whose parents lack financial and money management skills may be further disadvantaged by this absence of financial literacy.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families' (ACF) Office of Family Assistance (OFA) hosted this webinar that highlights the redesigned OFA PeerTA (PeerTA) website. PeerTA facilitates information sharing between states, counties, localities, tribal organizations, and community-based organizations working with TANF participants and families. The PeerTA website functions as the communications vehicle for the PeerTA model by facilitating dialogue at the state, county, local, and tribal level. In this brief webinar, we provided a demo of the key features of the PeerTA website and how the website can support TANF stakeholders in their work with families.

This brief by the Corporation for Enterprise Development outlines a Household Financial Security Framework. This tool helps to illuminate what a household needs to start to build security. The goal of the Framework is to provide a better understanding of the factors that contribute to or detract from a household’s financial security and how the many components are interrelated.

This guide, offered by the ASSET Initiative Partnership of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Community Services (OCS), provides tools and guidance for organizations seeking to add and/or improve financial capability services to their programs. The guide includes 13 tools for guiding organizations in integrating services that build financial capability, and features seven key strategies to help build financial capability so that families can maximize available resources, reduce expense, and save for the future:
• Financial education
• Financial counseling and coaching
• Credit counseling and credit building
• Free tax preparation assistance
• Access to federal and state benefits
• Access to safe and affordable financial products
• Matched savings and asset-building programs

The guide is organized into phases, which walk users step-by-step through designing a program. Each phase includes actionable steps, including program examples from existing organizations. At the end of each step, the guide provides assessments and planning tools to ensure the financial capability strategies are sound.

Associate Commissioner Joo Yeun Chang of the Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth, and Families, Children's Bureau released a letter to Child Welfare Agencies and providers highlighting the importance of financial capability. This letter also identifies resources available to support financial capability work with children, youth, families, and the child welfare workforce.

This report discusses the current state of financial security in American households. It provides information about the three components of family balance sheets: income, expenditures, and wealth. In addition, the report details how these three components have changed through the past decades and more.

Youth transitioning out of foster care and into adulthood need many supports to navigate the challenges they face. Over the past three decades, federal child welfare policy has significantly increased the availability of those supports. In 1999, the Foster Care Independence Act amended Title IV-E of the Social Security Act to create the Chafee Foster Care Independence Program (the Chafee Program). This amendment doubled the maximum amount of funds potentially available to states for independent living services and gave states greater discretion over how they use those funds. More recently, a provision in the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 gave states an option to extend eligibility for Title IV-E foster care for youth beyond age 18 until age 21. In states that have taken this option, young people can receive an additional three years of foster care support to prepare for the transition into adulthood.

ACF contracted with the Urban Institute and its partner Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago to plan for the next generation of evaluation activities funded by the Chafee Program.  This brief focuses on programs that promote financial literacy and asset building.  The brief reviews what we currently know about challenges impacting the financial stability of youth as they transition out of foster care, considers the existing evidence on the effectiveness of financial literacy programs, and concludes with issues for the field to consider as we move toward the next evaluation of the Chafee Program. (author abstract)

The ACF blog - The Family Room - talks about new initiatives at the agency, success stories and policy announcements. The blog also provides links that help direct viewers to other parts of ACF's website.

Stemming from the lessons learned of the initial conditional cash transfer program, this report provides key findings from the first two years of implementing Family Rewards 2.0. Launched during 2011 in the Bronx, New York and Memphis, Tennessee, Family Rewards 2.0 targets low-income families with children primarily in the ninth and tenth grade. In addition, the program seeks to provide financial stability for disadvantaged communities through conditioned-based rewards.