On September 27, 2012 at 1:00 p.m. EDT, the Office of Family Assistance hosted the first Webinar in a series highlighting promising practices for building sustainable subsidized employment programs. This Webinar provided an overview of different types of subsidized employment programs that can work in different settings and with different types of employers; discussed the varied funding streams utilized and strategies for matching subsidized employment opportunities to local labor markets and employer needs; and outlined practical strategies used by peer agencies for creating targeted subsidized employment programs. Presenters for this webinar included representatives from the Oklahoma Department of Human Services, the Oregon Department of Human Services, the city and county of San Francisco Human Services Agency, and MDRC.

The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) has recently released the Engaging Employers to Support Adult Career Pathways Programs issue brief as part of their ongoing effort to support the development of high-quality Adult Career Pathway (ACP) programs. The new issue brief provides strategies and promising practices that support States and programs tackling the issue of employer engagement.

CLASP has released an updated resource entitled, Funding Career Pathways and Career Pathway Bridges: A Federal Funding Toolkit. This toolkit is designed to help interagency State teams identify and facilitate 'braiding' of Federal resources to build career pathways for adults and out-of-school youth. This new edition includes State and local examples and revised program profiles reflecting critical legislative and administrative changes to key Federal programs. A new appendix identifies ten Federal funding sources that can be used to provide a wide range of support services.

The Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) Program was established by the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) to provide training programs in high-demand health care professions to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients and other low-income individuals. Beginning in 2010, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provided five-year grants to 32 grantees in 23 states across the United States. HPOG grantees include post-secondary educational institutions, workforce investment boards (WIBs), state or local government agencies, and non-profit organizations (NPOs). Five grantees are Tribal organizations. In their first year of funding, HPOG grantees were able to launch their programs and enroll and train substantial numbers of participants. This brief describes the HPOG Program and progress made by grantees in the first year of funding. It also describes the evaluation efforts sponsored by ACF to assess the success of the HPOG Program. (author abstract)

MDRC released a policy memo as part of their "Looking Forward" series, providing policymakers with suggested ways to make progress on critical issues. This policy memo describes some promising college readiness programs that can provide students with the skills they need to successfully complete college.

Through secondary analysis, this study examines which benefits and financial supports low-income families access, with a particular focus on child support. The aim is to explore how families create their own economic safety net package from among the existing benefit programs. It was found that higher levels of child support receipt corresponded with higher levels of work, however that child support did not replace any type of welfare benefit but rather, complements it.

This study sought to investigate if the current practice of offering assistance to low income families through tax credits and other transfer methods which are conditional on the recipient working, have financially hurt these families when the labor market is particularly bad, as during the Great Recession. The authors found that work incentives are not helpful to low-income individuals during times when unemployment is high. It is suggested that work incentive policies should be better tied to the ups and downs in the labor market.

The United States Department of Labor, Employment & Training Administration released a resource to help case managers guide jobseekers through the career exploration and planning process. Components of the guide include three ideas about how case managers can organize career exploration and planning, eight "At-A-Glance" templates that help case managers determine which electronic tools are most helpful to meet customers' needs, three "Career Transition Roadmaps" that show how case managers provide career exploration in three distinct scenarios, and an "E-Learning Resource Chart" that highlights additional resources for case managers who want to learn more.

In March of 2012, the WPTA Network collaborated with CLIMB Wyoming to learn more about their program's sustainability and successes with working with low-income single mothers through tailored job trainings and wraparound services.

CLIMB Wyoming engages participants using a comprehensive wraparound service that includes job training, wage reimbursement during on-the-job training, work tools, mental health counseling, life and parental skills classes, and ongoing support after job placement. This podcast highlights CLIMB Wyoming's job training, subsidized employment and wraparound services for TANF participants. Staff from CLIMB Wyoming describe the job training services offered to low-income single mothers to prepare them for entry into high-demand, high-skill, and high-wage positions, as well as how CLIMB coordinates their various funding streams and partners to leverage the appropriate resources to support their program operations.

In March of 2012, the WPTA Network collaborated with Arkansas's Career Pathways Initiative - a partnership between Arkansas's Department of Higher Education and Department of Workforce Services - to learn more about their program's growth and the successes with workforce-ready adults.

This podcast highlights the Arkansas Career Pathways Initiative (CPI), which provides a comprehensive set of academic and support services designed to enable low-income, low-skilled individuals to acquire the degrees and/or credentials required to obtain and hold jobs in high-demand, high-wage industries. Staff from the Arkansas Career Pathways Initiative explained the complexity of the collaborations necessary to provide services that enable low-income job seekers to receive educational services, as well as how to help participants understand the importance of education in addition to work activities and employment.