The term “chronic scarcity” was coined by behavioral economist Sendhil Mullainathan and psychologist Eldar Shafir in their book, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much (published by Henry Holt & Company, 2013). This book articulates the ways that scarcity creates and perpetuates poverty and how scarcity leads people to shuffle resources and prioritize for urgent roles. From a policy perspective, the authors present an example of how training programs need to offer alternative meeting times to prevent participant attrition. As well, they suggest that time limits can effectively motivate TANF participants to prioritize identifying and securing employment.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service will host a webinar on July 18, 2019 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. ET to discuss the use of intermediaries in the administration of SNAP E&T programs. Intermediaries are organizations that conduct required administrative tasks and support State SNAP programs by centralizing operations and fiscal reporting. The webinar will include speakers from Goodwill of North Georgia, Portland (Oregon) Community College, and Worksystems (the local Workforce Investment Board in Portland, Oregon) who will discuss the benefits, challenges, and opportunities of each of their models.

This Chapin Hall issue brief reviews: child welfare workers’ perceptions of county-level availability of training and the range of services available for transition-age foster youth; workers’ views about the collaboration between child welfare departments and other service delivery systems; and the correlation between foster youth satisfaction with training and services and outcomes in education, homelessness, employment and health. The analysis relies on longitudinal studies from the California Youth Transitions to Adulthood Study (CalYOUTH) conducted in 2013 and 2015. Report findings point to the need for increased collaboration among child welfare and other systems, as well as connection of foster youths’ satisfaction with offered services to support service delivery.

This report identifies the state of current research on the prevalence of opioid use disorder and treatment services among Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) participants and the TANF-eligible population. Additional emphasis is provided on how opioid use disorder negatively affects work-readiness and employment attainment. Funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families, this project aims to improve economic well-being and increase TANF agencies’ knowledge base. This report is based on a literature review of opioid use disorder treatment strategies and information on the effects of opioids in the TANF, TANF-eligible, and low-income populations.

The Office of Family Assistance hosted a webinar on Wednesday, July 31, 2019 showcasing several Social Enterprise Organizations (SEOs) and their unique strengths, challenges, and contexts. SEOs are hybrid organizations that aim to balance business and social missions. They use a profit-maximizing approach to solve society’s challenges and help improve individual and community well-being. SEOs target hard-to-serve populations to help remove barriers to self-sufficiency by offering opportunities such as employment, housing, or mental and physical health services. Various strategies, such as workforce training, job placement, microfinancing, literacy resources, and offering affordable health services, are just some of the approaches used by social enterprises in pursuing their missions. SEOs are unique because they use capital investment to create a social benefit and revenue, which allows the organizations to be self-sufficient. Social enterprises are a promising solution to helping resolve social problems in the future.

This Prosperity Now report is the culmination of an 18-month partnership with the Citi Foundation to design and implement the Youth Financial Capability Fund, which integrated workforce development with financial capability services and supported five youth workforce development organizations: Genesys Works, Juma Ventures, NPower, STRIVE International, and the Urban Alliance. The report identifies 11 key findings in the following five categories that agencies can use when designing financial capability programs to meet young people’s needs: preparing for organizational change, putting youth at the center, exploring partnerships’ role, measuring progress, and managing organizational change and sustaining financial capability work. Also highlighted are recommendations on how to partner with employers, offer multi-generational financial capability services to support household financial empowerment, and collaborate across sectors to address barriers that disconnected youth face when considering their financial well-being.

This blogpost, authored by the Assistant Secretary of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), describes the 10 listening sessions that ACF held nationally among key stakeholders to address family homelessness. These stakeholders, who provided input on the latest trends and local innovative programs, included parents with homelessness experience, grantee and non-grantee service providers, faith-based partners, educators, and government leaders. Five of ACF’s program offices either directly focus on homelessness or offer services and resources to move families from homelessness towards self-sufficiency and include: the Office of Head Start, the Family and Youth Services Bureau, the Office of Child Care, the Office of Family Assistance, and the Children’s Bureau.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration (DOLETA) will host a webinar on July 11, 2019 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET to discuss best practices of using labor market information (LMI) data in creating Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) State Plans. Speakers include LMI Directors from Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan and representatives from the U.S. Department of Education and DOLETA.

The U.S. Department of Labor announces a series of competency model resources that outline the knowledge, skills, and abilities one needs to enter and succeed in an occupation or industry. Discussed are stackable competencies in the areas of personal effectiveness, academic requirements, and the workplace, and industry-wide and industry-sector skills.

This dataset from the Annie E. Casey Foundation is the 30th annual report that follows and ranks states on metrics related to child well-being. Particular focus is on four larger categories of trend analysis: economic well-being, education, family and community, and health. Additionally, there are individual state profiles with relevant data that are presented as user-friendly fact sheets.