This fact sheet from the National Resource Center for Healthy Marriage and Families offers suggestions for ways that safety-net service providers can help non-custodial parents explore non-financial mechanisms for participating in their children's lives. This would be a helpful resource for TANF case managers to share with participants wishing to be more involved in their children's lives.

This report displays and discusses some of the data related to the poverty of children and their living arrangements and data on male employment and earnings, educational attainment, and incarceration. It then provides information on federal programs that could play a greater role in addressing poverty of children through the fathers of these children (nearly all noncustodial parents are fathers). These programs provide economic assistance, family support, and job training and employment to eligible participants. The report also examines federal programs that have the purposes of preventing teen pregnancy and helping disadvantaged youth obtain the skills and support they need to make the transition to adulthood. The underlying premise of these programs generally is that the aid or services received from these programs by low-income noncustodial fathers can help them in meeting their financial commitments to their children (or future children) and providing emotional support to their children. The report concludes by presenting several public policy approaches proposed by the policy community that might improve the lives of low-income noncustodial fathers and their children. For example, social policy could play a role by expanding economic assistance programs to noncustodial fathers, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); and implementing strategies to prevent the build-up of unpaid child support through early intervention. (author abstract)

The Welfare Peer Technical Assistance (TA) Network is a federally funded initiative through the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Family Assistance.  The objective of the Welfare Peer TA Network is to facilitate the sharing of information between and among states and to establish linkages between organizations serving the needs of welfare recipients. 

The U.S. Administration for Children and Families (ACF), with support from the Welfare Peer Technical Assistance Network, sponsored the Addressing the Needs of Non-Custodial Parents in TANF Families Workshop on January 18-19, 2001, in Tallahassee, Florida.  Participants included representatives from State Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), Child Support Enforcement, local fatherhood providers, and Federal participants from the Department of Labor and the Department of Health and Human Services.  The purpose of the workshop was to promote collaboration between State TANF and OCSE agencies, and to encourage the sharing of information about initiatives to address the needs of non-custodial parents.

To support further progress in this area, ACF is sponsoring a large-scale, comprehensive demonstration and evaluation of programs designed to strengthen relationships and support the marital aspirations of unmarried couples expecting a child: the Building Strong Families project (BSF). To inform the design and development of strong BSF programs, Mathematica conducted a related project (titled Evaluating the Implementation of Programs to Strengthen Families with Children Born Out of Wedlock, or ESF) to identify and study existing programs that have aspects similar to those envisioned for BSF programs. A major purpose of that project was to identify design and implementation issues likely to arise in BSF programs and describe strategies that have been used to address them in similar programs.

One program that was deemed similar to BSF was Family Connections in Alabama (FCA). The FCA was a 12-month project conducted during 2003 that aimed to design, implement, and evaluate a program to provide family life education to low-income unmarried parents of young children. It was selected for study because it was one of very few newly emerging programs that included a focus on couple relationships among  low-income unmarried parents. Although some key aspects of the program differed from those of the BSF program model, several of the goals, approaches, and expected outcomes were similar enough to warrant examination for lessons that could inform the development and operation of BSF programs.

This report describes and develops lessons learned from the FCA program that are relevant for designing and implementing BSF programs. It first describes the overall program design and planning, and then discusses implementation in each of the study sites, focusing on staffing, participant recruitment, curriculum, structure and content of classes, and receptivity of staff and participants to the program. The final chapter discusses implications for developing and operating relationship/marriage interventions with unwed couples—the BSF target population—and discusses how the lessons learned may apply to future BSF program design and content.

This report is not an evaluation of the Family Connections in Alabama program. Rather, it focuses on what BSF program developers can learn from FCA given the underlying differences in program goals and design. A separate report presents findings of an evaluation of the FCA (Adler-Baeder et al. 2004). (author abstract)

In 1995, the Texas Legislature enacted H. B. 1863, which formed the basis for Texas’ waiver from existing Federal laws governing the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. The Texas waiver, officially known as the Achieving Change for Texans (ACT) demonstration, aimed to assist participants to achieve independence from welfare through an increased emphasis on employment, training, temporary assistance and support services. It included three primary components: time-limited benefits, a personal responsibility agreement and one-time payments in lieu of welfare payments. The evaluation of the ACT demonstration consisted of three approaches: a process evaluation, a random-assignment impact analysis, and follow-up interviews with persons who reached their time limits or who elected to receive one-time payments instead of cash welfare assistance. This report summarizes findings from all facets of the evaluation and draws conclusions and policy implications for welfare policy development in the post-waiver time period. (author abstract)

From the Institute for Research on Poverty and researchers at Columbia University, this article provides information on the status of low-income men. Since the mid-1970s, wages and labor force participation has been decreasing for young, lesser educated men. In this piece, authors examine how key income-security policy areas, including unemployment insurance, payroll taxes and the Earned Income Tax Credit, and child support enforcement, affect this population.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance (OFA) and Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) and the United States Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (ETA) hosted a technical assistance teleconference for Newark, New Jersey’s Workforce Investment Administration. As an outgrowth of the OFA-sponsored Collaboration Initiative, Newark requested additional technical assistance on an innovative non-custodial parent initiative being integrated into the child support enforcement and workforce administrations in San Antonio, Texas.

From the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, this report provides data on the importance of father involvement within the lives of children. Researchers analyze case outcomes for children within the child welfare system in relation to nonresident fatherhood involvement.

A National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) publication entitled "Broke But Not Deadbeat: Reconnecting Low-Income Fathers and Children" addresses the circumstances faced by low-income fathers who are not able to meet their required child support payments, the implications and consequences for the children, and the opportunities available through the TANF, Welfare-to-Work, and Workforce Investment Act to assist this population.