The 20th Research and Evaluation Conference on Self-Sufficiency (RECS) was held virtually on October 13–15 and October 19–22, 2020. The conference sessions were organized in six thematic tracks: TANF Programs, Policies, and Populations; Employment and Mobility in the Labor Market; Youth Well-Being and the Transition to Adulthood; Strengthening Families, Fatherhood, Marriages, and Relationships; Evaluating Social Programs, Building Evidence, and Using Data; and Approaches to Alleviate Poverty and Expand Opportunity. A complete set of videos covering plenary and breakout sessions and a career panel is now available online.

The Fathers & Families Coalition of America will host its 22nd Annual National Conference as a hybrid event (with in-person and virtual events) from May 16, 2021 to May 19, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. The conference will include presentations on strategies to support students and families during the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual case management, supporting fatherhood and fatherhood engagement, child support, trauma-informed care, and overcoming adversity and building resilience. Six workshops will be offered as part of the advanced practitioner credential program. The conference registration includes a fee.

The Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood initiative provides funding for the Fathers Advancing Community Together (FACT) program in Contra Costa County, California. FACT offers responsible parenting, healthy relationships, and economic stability services, including workshops for low-income parents. This Urban Institute brief covers a survey of FACT participants that examined whether they believed they were equipped with the skills to be good parents and how participating in the workshops affected their capacity to save money and develop budgets or obtain employment.

This updated interactive mapping tool highlights aspects of communities associated with safe children and strong families. The research-based framework, composed of select community indicators, is offered to communities nationwide. The tool maps community indicators at geographic levels defined by the user, from the state level to neighborhoods. Most indicators are from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. The tool was informed by significant evidence of the community factors correlated with child maltreatment and a healthy community framework developed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Factors include child and family wellbeing, economics, education, and housing. The tool includes new indicators, such as COVID-19 data and resource accessibility, and breaks down many of the data indicators by race and ethnicity. Training videos on how to use the tool are available.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief summarizes findings from three different demonstration projects that are designed to support noncustodial parents: the Enhanced Transitional Jobs Demonstration (ETJD), Parents and Children Together (PACT), and the Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration (CSPED). The evaluations assessed whether employment and other supportive services to disadvantaged noncustodial parents affect participants’ earnings, parental engagement, and ability to make child support payments. Findings from these projects showed significant impacts on improving noncustodial parents’ employment and earnings compared to prior evaluations of similar programs. ETJD and CSPED examined child support payments, and neither study found an impact on the amount of child support paid. However, unlike previous evaluation studies, PACT and CSPED, which had parenting workshops as a core service, generated positive impacts on father-child contact.

This research-to-practice brief identifies strategies that can support caregivers and teachers as they engage with families virtually as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. This family engagement is conducted to support families and children in building positive and goal-oriented relationships. Strategies in this brief include using engaging online lessons to support parent learning, implementing virtual communication to help parents integrate learning in real-life contexts, using technology to offer information and resources to parents more readily, and creating online forums and virtual group meetings. The brief also includes factors that communities may consider in delivering virtual family engagement services.

Helping families meet their basic needs has a direct impact on lowering their stress, especially during a crisis like COVID-19. The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University produced a short paper that focuses on how parents and caregivers can build up and strengthen resilience as they face challenges due to the pandemic. The paper suggests ways program staff can help families and staff reduce sources of stress, including connecting parents and caregivers with programs and services that can help meet their basic needs; encouraging parents, staff, and co-workers to practice self-care; and giving parents a break from child care responsibilities. The paper notes that moving past the pandemic, strengthening core life skills and building and practicing executive function and self-regulation skills will go a long way towards managing daily life so parents are better able to provide care for themselves and family members. Practical tips are provided, such as signing up for text reminders of important appointments, using tools like daily schedules and grocery list apps, and creating checklists for completing important applications.

This KIDS COUNT report utilizes survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau to measure how low-income households and children have been affected by COVID-19. The report first illustrates the rates of child well-being before and during the pandemic. The report also presents findings on health insurance coverage and mental health services access, and measures economic instability during the pandemic as well as data on changes in children’s learning environments since the pandemic’s start in spring 2020. The report then provides strategies that can be implemented at the federal and state levels to address future needs of families and children.

As part of its M.A.N. C.A.V.E. (Men All Need to be Caring, Actively-Engaged, Vested, and Encouraged) Fatherhood Initiative, which aims to improve child well-being and promote positive relationships between fathers and their children, the City of Phoenix Head Start Birth to Five Program is sponsoring a free Fatherhood Virtual Summit on December 3, 2020 and December 4, 2020 from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. ET. This event will combine keynote presentations and breakout sessions geared toward parents, grandparents, foster care providers, educators, and others who work with or raise boys.

This interactive mapping tool reflects the community factors associated with safe children and strong families. These factors include child and family well-being (children living in poverty and children without health insurance), educational attainment, economic status (unemployment rate, poverty rate, and median household income), housing factors (average number of hours working at minimum wage needed to afford housing, and percentage of unoccupied housing units), accessibility (access to healthy food, number of SNAP benefit recipients, computer access, and reduced/free lunch eligibility), and COVID-19 metrics (through November 2, but continuously updated). Data and indicators can be mapped at geographic levels defined by the user from the state level to the neighborhood level (by census tract).