Being mentored helps young people, particularly young people at risk, stay healthy and safe. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic challenged traditional strategies for engaging youth and prompted mentoring models to evolve. This report explores how both mentoring programs and mentors adapted to social distancing guidelines during the pandemic. It addresses research questions related to the social-emotional effects of social isolation and virtual learning and explores the benefits and challenges of using virtual mentoring models. The report also offers recommendations aimed at helping mentoring programs better serve youth from a distance.

Goal4 It!™ is a participant-centered framework for working with TANF participants to set goals, break their goals down into manageable steps, develop specific plans to achieve the steps, and regularly review their goal progress. This report summarizes the design and implementation of Goal4 It!™ at the Jefferson County, Colorado, Department of Human Services. The agency implemented Goal4 It!™ as an alternative to the traditional case management provided by Colorado Works, its TANF program. 

The White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Domestic Policy Council spearheaded the Recovery-Ready Workplace (RRW) Resource Hub, an online resource hosted by the Employment and Training Administration (ETA), in collaboration with various government agencies including the U.S. Department of Labor. The RRW Resource Hub provides guidance, tools, best practices, and other resources to help public and private sector employers address substance use disorder in the workforce, hire people in or seeking recovery, and support recovery in the workplace. The ETA will host a webinar on March 30, 2023 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. ET on the Hub and Administration policy priorities on substance use disorders and recovery in the workplace.

Experiments conducted in the mid-1990s show that a combination of work requirements and work supports substantially increased the employment of cash assistance recipients in Aid to Families with Dependent Children, while having little effect on recipients’ average income. There is little evidence on the effects of TANF’s work requirements, though, and recent research on other means-tested programs demonstrates that their work requirements have had little effect on employment and have substantially reduced the number of people receiving the benefits they provide. Using administrative data, this Congressional Budget Office working paper examines how Alabama’s recent expansion of its TANF work requirement to the parents of children between the ages of 6 months and 11 months affects their employment and income.

The Wellness Comprehensive Assessment Rehabilitation and Employment (WeCARE) program provides clinical assessment, employment, Social Security application, wellness, and rehabilitation services to New York City residents who receive public assistance and have physical and/or mental health challenges to employment. Populations served by the WeCARE program include single adults who have limited resources and TANF recipients who struggle to meet work requirements. This report documents how WeCARE served clients before the COVID-19 pandemic, how the program changed in response to the employment and service needs of its clients during the pandemic and economic recession, and the implications of those changes to the WeCARE model. It also notes lessons WeCARE learned which could guide other agencies coping with significant shifts in service delivery, including serving people with physical and mental health challenges virtually.

Youth apprenticeships are structured, work-based learning opportunities that offer young people, particularly young people of color and those from low-income households, the opportunity to learn specialized skills that they can use throughout their career. This blogpost outlines four key characteristics of youth apprenticeships, as identified by the Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship (PAYA). It also lists the ways that PAYA works with partners who follow a set of five guiding principles to deliver high-quality youth apprenticeship opportunities. Resources on how youth apprenticeships benefit young people, communities, and industries are included.

The U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration hosted a webinar on March 21, 2023 about the Federal Highway Administration's Every Day Counts 6: Strategic Workforce Development initiative, which identifies, trains, places, and retains women in construction. Participants heard presentations from representatives of the Vermont Agency of Transportation and Vermont Works4Women.

The Next Level Now (NLN) Collaborative is the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration's hub for delivering technical assistance (TA) to the public workforce system. NLN will host a webinar on March 9, 2023 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. ET, which will provide steps and strategies in building a strong network of partners and resources before the occurrence of a Rapid Response event, such as a natural disaster or mass layoff. The webinar will also demonstrate strategies from the field for supporting businesses and dislocated workers during these types of events. It will be followed up with a roundtable discussion with additional presenters and related topics for the Rapid Response program, through which dislocated workers are transitioned to new employment as quickly as possible.

The Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse will host a webinar on March 21, 2023 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET, which will help participants better understand the chances that an employment program will improve earnings and other outcomes for program participants and which programs have the greatest odds of success. The webinar will cover a comprehensive resource that the Clearinghouse developed, which is designed to help service providers explore evidence that answers:

• How likely is it that specific programs will improve employment-related outcomes?
• What combination of employment-focused services have the greatest chance of improving outcomes?
• Which services are most effective for different groups of people?

This Wisconsin Department of Health Services webpage includes a section featuring the Individual Placement and Support (IPS) model. IPS is a supported employment model that helps people with mental health and substance use disorders find and keep jobs of their choosing. The IPS model is based on the philosophy that employment is treatment and leads to improved recovery outcomes. The webpage illustrates the eight principles of IPS and how stakeholders (including job seekers, businesses, counties, tribal nations, mental health providers, and vocational services providers) benefit from implementing IPS.