This report, from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and ACF, provides an overview of the critical lessons learned from a 2013 roundtable of national and local leaders from promising programs. The roundtable members convened to discuss current efforts to help youth build financial capability through employment programs.

This blog post from the Acting Assistant Secretary of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Mark Greenberg, highlights the importance of financial capability programs within human services agencies. ACF programs have issued notices to a wide range of ACF-supported programs to demonstrate the need for financial capability and encourage them to structure their services and activities to strengthen financial capability among the populations they serve.

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.

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)