Child support has steadily evolved over the decades from a welfare cost-recovery model to a major family support program in a technologically savvy environment.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) has released an early childhood and family homelessness resource list in order to reinforce the importance of access to quality early childhood services for young homeless children and their families. The resources listed clarify policy options for State Administrators of Child Care and Head Start Directors to ensure that more young children and their families are served in child care and Head Start programs.

Child Welfare Information Gateway published "Online Resources for State Child Welfare Law and Policy" to provide web addresses for State statutes that are accessible online. These addresses list part of the code for each State and territory that contains the laws addressing child protection, adoption, child welfare, legal guardianship, and services for youth. It also provides web addresses for States' regulation and policy sites, State court rules, Tribal codes, and judicial resources. Information for each State and territory can be accessed on the State Statutes Search page.

Child-only cases have become a substantial presence in the United States' TANF caseload, representing a large portion of TANF cases. Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago released a report with the purpose of aiding policy makers as they contemplate modifications to TANF. This report has three goals: to describe child-only policies and explore how these policies create and shape child-only cases; to provide information about the needs of children and adults in households that receive child-only aid; and to situate child-only TANF policy in the context of other relevant policies.

America's children and their families are showing greater resilience and support in the face of rising poverty that has now wiped out the historic financial gains of the 1990s, according to the Foundation for Child Development's annual child well-being index. The New York City-based group announced that overall child well-being is up more than five percent both from 2001 and the index's beginning a generation ago, in 1975. The index is a composite of 28 indicators of both children's environmental and economic environments and their own behaviors.

The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) released a research brief from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW) entitled "Instability and Early Life Changes among Children in the Child Welfare System." This is one in a series of briefs based on data from NSCAW, a nationally representative, longitudinal survey focusing on children who come to the attention of the child welfare system through investigation by child protective services. The survey is being conducted through a contract to RTI. The brief describes the placement histories and changes in living situations of infants who come to the attention of Child Protective Services.

In recent years, a significant change in the TANF caseload is the growth, proportionally speaking, of child-only cases. Child-only cases are typically defined as those TANF cases in which no adult recipient is included in the TANF cash grant. Child-only cases are classified as either parental or non-parental. Parental child-only cases are those cases in which a parent is present in the household, but is ineligible for TANF receipt due to a sanction, time limit, SSI receipt or alien status. Non-parental cases are those cases in which no parent is present; the children are residing with a relative or other adult with legal guardianship or custody. A small number of cases are in child-only status for unique reasons. (author abstract)

Almost half of TANF cases are "child-only" in which no adult is included in the benefit calculation. In about 4 out of 10 these cases, the children live with relatives or nonrelatives instead of their parents. The other 6 in 10 cases include parents not eligible for benefits because they receive federal disability payments, are sanctioned for failure to comply with some TANF regulation, exceeded their time limit, or they are undocumented immigrants. This brief reviews the available research on child-only cases, including how cases arise, their characteristics, the children's well-being, and implications for policy and research. (author abstract)