This Brookings Institution report from the Hamilton Project examines the reasons behind the decline in labor force participation over the last two years. The analysis identifies trends in labor force participation by age, gender, race, and educational level. The report also reviews proposals for increasing participation among non-college-educated workers and how changes in caregiving responsibilities, health and disability, and criminal justice reform affect engagement with the labor market.

This Urban Institute report presents motivations and barriers faced by employers that provide work-family supports. The report also highlights employer perceptions about public policies that help low-wage workers address or manage work-family supports, such as paid leave, workplace flexibility, and subsidized child care. The findings also reveal ways that employer-based policies can be integrated and aligned with work-family supports. The report draws on interviews with 16 organizations that represent or directly work with employers and notes that further research on work-family supports for low-wage workers is needed.

The National Resource Center for Healthy Marriage and Families will host a webinar on October 10, 2019 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET to discuss strategies for supporting parents of children with special needs. Presenters will share tips on what parents can do to create a hopeful future for themselves as a couple and for their child. Topics to be covered include strategies parents can use after finding out that their newborn has a developmental disability, and resources for helping later in their child’s transition to adulthood. This webinar is intended for service providers who work with parents as well as parents and guardians themselves. Speakers from the UCLA School of Nursing, University of Utah, and Utah Parent Center will present.

This Office of Family Assistance dataset identifies combined federal TANF and state maintenance-of-effort (MOE) expenditures at national and state levels. The dataset, which includes tables and national and state pie charts, illustrates how the TANF and MOE funds were used for basic assistance; work, education, and training activities; and child care. The dataset also identifies in tables those funds that were transferred to the Child Care Development Fund.

This Chapin Hall study reviews the impact of eligibility extension from 6 months to 12 months in Illinois for families who receive child care subsidies under the Child Care and Development Fund. Key questions reflect whether families who receive automatic extensions experience longer periods of participation, if fewer child care providers are used by eligible families as result of an extended redetermination period, and whether consistent child care is provided over the longer period of time. The study notes that extending the redetermination period from 6 to 12 months has the potential to broadly impact the stability of child care.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation literature survey identifies research conducted by the Division of Child and Family Development in fiscal year 2018. It covers projects that examine early childhood research, child care, Head Start and Early Head Start, child welfare, human trafficking, and cultural diversity.

More than half the caseload of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program consists of child-only cases, in which a child receives TANF cash assistance but the parent or caregiver does not. The most common type of child-only case is a nonparent caregiver case, consisting of children being cared for by someone other than their parents, often a grandparent. Research suggests that nonparent caregiver cases are often vulnerable with many unmet needs and that the children in these cases share characteristics with children living in foster care: mental health conditions, school-related problems, and experience with trauma. Kinship navigator programs can be an important tool for supporting these families. Most states are developing or expanding these programs, and the federal government has provided funding in fiscal years 2018 and 2019 to state and eligible tribal child welfare agencies to develop, enhance, or evaluate kinship navigator programs. The Family First Prevention Services Act amended the Social Security Act to allow title IV-E agencies to receive funding for kinship navigator programs that meet certain evidence-based criteria; see ACYF-CB-PI-18-11 for program requirements.

On July 16, 2019, the Office of Family Assistance, in collaboration with the Children’s Bureau, sponsored a webinar that featured kinship navigator programs operating in three states and the services they offer to nonparent caregivers. Arizona Kinship Support Services connects kinship families to government benefits, links them to legal services, and helps them navigate existing community support systems. California’s UWCA-211-iFoster Kinship Navigator Collaborative provides an online, self-service resource portal for kinship families that coordinates public and private resources based on the families’ individual needs and preferences. The New York State Kinship Navigator provides an information and referral network for kinship caregivers statewide. In addition to these three states, the webinar featured a representative from the Children’s Bureau who discussed the federal funding available for kinship navigator programs and a representative from the Assisting Special Populations to Improve Readiness and Engagement (ASPIRE) study team who shared information on TANF child-only cases.

This blogpost, authored by the Assistant Secretary of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), describes the 10 listening sessions that ACF held nationally among key stakeholders to address family homelessness. These stakeholders, who provided input on the latest trends and local innovative programs, included parents with homelessness experience, grantee and non-grantee service providers, faith-based partners, educators, and government leaders. Five of ACF’s program offices either directly focus on homelessness or offer services and resources to move families from homelessness towards self-sufficiency and include: the Office of Head Start, the Family and Youth Services Bureau, the Office of Child Care, the Office of Family Assistance, and the Children’s Bureau.

This National Conference of State Legislatures blogpost identifies state initiatives and model programs that support early education and child care. Highlighted are initiatives on parental leave programs; home visiting; improving infant and toddler child care supply and quality; well-being and developmental physical and mental health screenings for 9-, 18-, and 30-month-olds; and child care funding and early education subsidies.

Family engagement has been identified as a key factor in children’s early learning and development at a cognitive and social level. Since few ways exist for early care and education (ECE) programs to determine the strength of family engagement supports and to identify areas for improvement, the Georgia Family Engagement Assessment and Planning Tool (FEAP-T) was developed. This National Center for Children in Poverty report presents findings from a FEAP-T pilot, suggests that the FEAP-T be revised, and highlights ways a revised tool could help strengthen family engagement practices in Georgia’s ECE programs.