This document provides the findings from a six-year study conducted in New York City on the ability of substance abusing TANF participants to obtain a job and remain employed. It was found that the overwhelming majority of substance abusing participants were not exempted from work requirements due to their substance use. One quarter of participants with substance use issues found and maintained employment. Case management is touched upon as an important component to working with this hard-to-serve population.

This document offers information on substance use and co-occurring disorders through the lens of child welfare and child safety. Information on funding related to the Affordable Care Act is covered as well as understanding substance abuse data, direct practice concepts and evidence-based practices and promising interventions currently in use. State and local programs are highlighted for readers.

In Colorado, TANF provides funding to a substance abuse treatment program called New Directions for Families at the Arapahoe House treatment facility. Substance abuse intervention and transitional housing assistance is provided for mothers and their dependent children with a focus on achieving self-sufficiency. In the latter half of the program, employment is emphasized and mothers are expected to be working as they complete treatment.

Kentucky's Targeted Assessment Program (TAP) is a partnership between the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS) Department for Community Based Services (DCBS) and the University of Kentucky Center on Drug and Alcohol Research to assess and support TANF participants struggling with significant barriers to work, including substance abuse and mental health issues. The model uses specialists who administer a comprehensive assessment designed to fully capture any barriers to work and then collaborate with other systems to engage participants in evidenced based interventions. This program has been in place since 1999.

This paper reviews the literature on the policy context of the HPOG program and the challenges and opportunities related to developing healthcare occupational training and support programs. It discusses the structure of the healthcare industry and trends in healthcare employment, implications of ACA for entry-level employment in healthcare, and resulting challenges and opportunities for training programs. (author overview)

The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness recently released a fact sheet on preventing and addressing tuberculosis among people experiencing homelessness. According to the authors, ttuberculosis is a serious health concern for people experiencing homelessness and those working with homeless populations. The authors noted that tuberculosis rates are ten times higher for people experiencing homelessness, and of the patients involved in tuberculosis outbreaks investigated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2010 – 2012, over half did not have a place to call home.

Many TANF staff are unfamiliar with the SSI Program but want to learn more. This brief describes the basic SSI disability determination process and compares and contrasts it with several procedures different TANF agencies use to identify recipients who meet TANF work-limitation criteria in states or localities. It goes on to discuss topics including different strategies TANF agencies use to assess which individuals are most likely to qualify for SSI. (author abstract)

This brief focuses on the analysis of merged national-level SSI data and TANF data from the 26 states that report to the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) on their full TANF caseload. It found, counter to popular narratives, that the overlap between the two programs was small. It also found that TANF recipients who applied for SSI were not at particularly high risk of losing their TANF benefits. Finally, it found that medical award rates among TANF recipients who applied for SSI were comparable to that of SSI applicants who had not recently received TANF, once important age differences were taken into account. (author abstract)

This brief provides an overall summary of the lessons learned from the TANF-SSI Disability Transition Project. It brings together material spread across other documents in a concise format, and it also offers new insights from state-level data analyses that largely back up the conclusions drawn from federal data. (author abstract)