Researchers from Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago authored this report on the employment needs of foster youth. There is currently limited research on youth aging out of foster care, but studies that have been done point to poor labor market outcomes. From the Midwest Study, the data show that foster youth in Illinois had difficulty staying employed.

The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) hosted the Rural Communities Initiative Implementing Strategies for Employer Engagement Workshop in Louisville, Kentucky January 28-29, 2010. Six rural communities, as a component of ongoing technical assistance, attended to discuss promising practices and develop reasonable local action steps on the topics of employer outreach, subsidized employment, job placement and retention, and workforce intermediaries. The rural sites were introduced to the partnership between the City of Louisville and UPS with a presentation on the partnership and tour of the UPS Worldport facility. The sites developed concise action plans that summarized the key points and questions that emerged from their discussions and captured how the sites plan to use this information to develop concrete actions locally. Participants were provided with tools, replicable innovative models, and guidance on designing employer engagement opportunities to improve outcomes for TANF families.

Community college and vocational training programs provided education to more than 6.2 million students in 2006, which represents about 35 percent of all postsecondary education students. These programs are often important in reaching low-income youth and adults to increase their educational attainment and skills. This paper, from the Center for American Progress, offers information on how community college programs can better engage and reach low-income students and improve their skill development for improved job attainment.

New York City’s Human Resource Administration designed and implemented the WeCARE program to assist the high number of TANF participants on their caseload with clinical barriers to work; the model has since been successful in moving clients with mental health and other needs off of cash assistance. This 2010 webinar provided TANF stakeholders with information on the program’s creation and implementation. Also available on PeerTA are reports from two site exchanges to WeCARE, with Wisconsin and Hawaii.

From Public/Private Ventures, this report outlines findings from a mentoring impact study of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Program. Data was collected from a large-scale, random assignment impact study of ten Big Brothers Big Sisters agencies, which included 1,139 youth in 71 schools across the country. Findings show that high school volunteers as mentors can provide attention and friendship for children lacking peer social skills or experiences. High school mentors tend to involve their mentees in decisionmaking more often than adults.

Recently, the Colorado Works Program requested Technical Assistance from the Welfare Peer Technical Assistance (WPTA) Network, specifically on effective strategies for integrating subsidized employment programming into local Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs. As a result, the WPTA Network hosted two conference calls in August and September for the Colorado Works Program by facilitating a peer-to-peer dialog with the Tennessee Department of Human Services, inquiring about its subsidized employment program, specifically its successful program in Perry County, Tennessee. During these calls, Paul Lefkowitz, Director, Family Assistance Policy, Tennessee Department of Human Services, and Jan McKeel, Executive Director, South Central Tennessee Workforce Alliance, provided an overview of a subsidized employment program that began in Perry County, Tennessee, in May 2009, through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009, to the Technical Assistance Requestor—Mary Roberto, Section Manager, Colorado Department of Human Services, Colorado Works Program. Some of the topics of the program discussed on the conference calls include eligibility, working with employers, outreach and marketing, data collection, and replication and lessons learned.

From Public/Private Ventures, this resource brief is designed to provide program operators and researchers with advice about how to assess a program's implementation and impact with a focus on mentoring programs, in general. However, the information can be applied across social programs. Authors provide an overview of issues that can arise in implementation as well as evaluation of a program.

The Urban Institute issued this report on poverty in the United States in the year 2008. In 2008, the poverty rate reached 13.2 percent, which is a significant increase from 12.5 percent in 2007. However, despite an increase, this increase may not fully show the extent to which the economic climate has affected American families, as Census poverty data are based on the incomes of individuals and families gathered over the past calendar year; in 2008, the monthly unemployment did not exceed six percent until August.

The National Transitional Jobs Network developed this toolkit to provide States with information on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that is targeted to TANF participants. Transitional Jobs programs can help States increase TANF participants’ self-sufficiency while also meeting federal work requirements. The toolkit includes resources on how States can develop transitional jobs programs using the TANF Emergency Fund and provides examples of RFPs, Worksheets, and Assessment Tools.

This resource is from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service and is an update of the annual series on rural America. Researchers provide the state of rural areas with a focus on the effect of the recession on rural families. For rural areas, even before the recession, unemployment was increasing in manufacturing; other major employment sectors, and the poverty rate in rural areas has continued to be higher than the national average since 2001. The nonmetro population has continued to increase, but from a rise in births and not migration from metro into nonmetro areas.