The U.S. Interagency Council on Economic Mobility, a new federal interagency effort, includes the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), along with the Social Security Administration; the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Education, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, and Treasury; and the Council of Economic Advisors. The Council seeks to develop an effective structure for interagency collaboration and to use federal officials to promote careers and economic mobility for low-income Americans. The Council requests input from stakeholders (such as state and local government agencies, local program operators, and the people that they serve) through a request for information (RFI). The RFI includes questions such as: What priorities should the new Council have? What suggestions do you have on how to make federal workforce and work support programs work together more effectively? and What barriers do these programs encounter for them to work effectively? The deadline for comments is October 2, 2020.

The Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) will host a webinar on August 13, 2020 from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET to address questions from the field about how to strengthen families. Questions can be philosophical or mundane, and participation is welcome to all. There will also be presentations from representatives from CSSP and the Children’s Trust Fund Alliance.

This issue brief from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation defines “social capital” in the context of human services programs. To illustrate how social capital can be strengthened for incarcerated or reentering persons, the brief identifies lessons learned from three programs: RecycleForce, Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison, and Prison Fellowship Academy at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women. The brief also highlights six considerations for implementing models to build social capital among this population.

This blogpost from the Commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families profiles the Handle with Care (HWC) program, which is an intervention focused on trauma-informed responses among law enforcement, schools, and mental health providers to address exposure to adverse childhood experiences. The HWC program initially began in 2013 in Charleston, West Virginia and aims to ensure that children exposed to crime, violence, or abuse can receive interventions to support their ability to succeed in school. The HWC model relies upon law enforcement to share a “handle with care” notice with an affected child’s school if law enforcement has been at the affected child’s household the night before to address an incidence of violence or crime at home.

This podcast series of three episodes discusses how networks and relationship building constitute social capital. The episodes, entitled “Close-Knit Communities for Better Outcomes: Using Peer Groups,” “Friend Request Accepted: Using Technology and Social Capital,” and “Beyond Icebreakers: How to Help Participants Really Connect,” include discussions with health and human service experts who offer ways to help program participants create and access social capital and improve their outcomes. The podcast is hosted by Anita Brown Graham of the ncIMPACT initiative at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention within the U.S. Department of Justice will host a webinar on July 30, 2020 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET which will focus on serving adolescents in family drug courts. Emphasis will be on encouraging youth to engage in building positive relationships with adults and peers and to be actively involved in developing their own voice as they transition into adulthood. Strategies for substance use prevention and treatment and information on recovery support will also be addressed.

The Office of Human Services Policy at the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation will host a virtual training series and offer concrete strategies for organizations working with incarcerated/reentering participants to help them improve their outcomes through building and leveraging social capital. The series will also describe considerations for measuring social capital. The first of these virtual training sessions will be held on August 4, 2020 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET. Subsequent sessions will be held bi-weekly on Tuesdays during the same time slot.

This dataset from the Annie E. Casey Foundation is the 31st edition that follows and ranks states on metrics related to child well-being. The data reflects trends prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. 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.

This issue brief identifies characteristics of noncustodial parents in the Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) demonstration project in six child support agencies across the country. The brief also includes assessments from case managers who use these characteristics to determine the reasons why they believe these noncustodial parents fall into contempt of court orders. The brief findings are drawn from PJAC records for noncustodial parents enrolled through July 31, 2019 and from interviews with case managers conducted during the spring of 2019.

Stimulus checks, enhanced SNAP, and expanded unemployment insurance benefits enacted by the Federal government provided financial assistance to low-income individuals and families impacted by COVID-19 and lessened the rise of the poverty rate. This report includes individual state projected 2020 annual poverty rates with and without COVID-19 pandemic response policies. The report indicates that the policies implemented in the early months of the crisis will keep more than 10 million people out of poverty this year. These are initial projections based on current data, and the official data on poverty rates for 2020 will not be available until September 2021. This information is intended to help policymakers address the continuing hardships that families are facing and to initiate and implement policies that will support families and avoid rising poverty rates.