This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief describes the evaluation of the implementation of four coaching interventions and their impacts on study participants’ self-regulation, employment, earnings, self-sufficiency, and other measures of well-being. The brief summarizes findings from 44 interviews with participants who received coaching services from the interventions under study. The study team sought to better understand how participants viewed the coaching, what they liked and did not like, and whether they thought it was effective. The brief intends to inform program developers, providers, and policymakers about how employment coaching is implemented from the participant perspective and to share lessons for how to improve coaching interventions.

The U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy has released a Center for Advancing Policy on Employment for Youth (CAPE-Youth) brief which discusses the ways states increased participation and performance in career and technical education (CTE) programs for students with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The brief also identifies lessons learned and how policymakers can incorporate these lessons after the pandemic to support the aims of the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V) and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Family Assistance (OFA) conducted the 2021 National TANF Directors’ Meeting from September 20 - 24, 2021. During this innovation station presentation, the speaker showcased Workforce 1 Connect (WF1), a communication tool created by the Minnesota Department of Human Services and the Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). WF1 Connect is a pilot application that participants receiving TANF, SNAP E&T, Childcare Assistance, and DEED Employment and Training Programs such as Blind and Vocational Rehabilitation Services, can download to their phone or tablet. It is a participant-driven tool that can be used to communicate with both county and tribal staff.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief describes the experiences of six employment programs participating in the Next Generation of Enhanced Employment Strategies (NextGen) Project. The brief presents key takeaways from their efforts to maintain and develop new connections with employers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Four of the programs serve people with mental illness; one serves TANF participants with disabilities or who care for dependents with disabilities; and one serves young adults with disabilities who are transitioning from school to work. The brief offers lessons for other employment programs about promising strategies for working with employers that might endure beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

As part of the Building Bridges and Bonds (B3) study, the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation sought to identify new and promising approaches to supporting fathers working toward economic stability and improved relationships with their children. This report presents findings and lessons from one part of the B3 study: a rigorous evaluation of the Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Justice Involved Individuals Seeking Employment (CBI-Emp). CBI-Emp is an intervention that applies cognitive behavioral skill building to help people who have been involved in the justice system maintain employment. The report builds on previously released findings about the implementation of the CBI-Emp curriculum and summarizes the implementation results and lessons learned. The report also describes the effects of the curriculum and provides estimates of program costs.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Family Assistance (OFA) conducted the 2021 National TANF Directors’ Meeting from September 20 - 24, 2021. During this concurrent workshop, discussion focused on sharing lessons from the Pathways Clearinghouse. In addition to the enormous challenges COVID-19 posed to TANF agencies’ service delivery, it also led to sharp increases in unemployment. To help TANF agencies better serve clients during such unprecedented times, the Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse undertook two projects to learn from past periods of economic difficulty and to identify innovations spurred by COVID-19. Participants learned about interventions and strategies that work during periods of economic recession and recovery.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Family Assistance (OFA) conducted the 2021 National TANF Directors’ Meeting from September 20 - 24, 2021. During this concurrent workshop, speakers from two projects funded by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation presented research and on-the-ground experiences from programs that adapted service provision to maintain and develop new connections with employers during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as respond to job seekers’ health, substance use, and recovery needs.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Family Assistance (OFA) conducted the 2021 National TANF Directors’ Meeting from September 20 - 24, 2021. During this concurrent workshop, researchers from the TANF Data Collaborative (TDC) team identified key components to sustaining data analytic capacity in government agency environments, provided examples of activities and practices that fall within each sustainability component, and elicited audience participation to source additional strategies and examples of sustainable practices. The research is based on work with eight pilot states across the country and the results of a comprehensive TANF Data Needs Assessment.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Family Assistance (OFA) conducted the 2021 National TANF Directors’ Meeting from September 20 - 24, 2021. During this concurrent workshop, presenters from the TANF Data Collaborative (TDC) provided key insights from the toolkit developed for TANF administrators about the realities of accessing, linking, and analyzing wage records to inform policy and programming. Solutions for common data access barriers and an overview of key methods for linking TANF data with other datasets were also discussed with the goal of equipping participants with actionable strategies to facilitate data integration.

The Office of Family Assistance has made available preliminary FY 2020 TANF and state maintenance-of-effort (MOE) expenditures and transfer data. The data is available in tables and an interactive map, as well as national and state pie charts. Data is broken down by category of activity, including basic assistance; work, education, and training activities; and child care (including funds that states transferred to the Child Care and Development Discretionary Fund).