The Office of Family Assistance has awarded and overseen federal funding for four cohorts of healthy marriage (HM) and responsible fatherhood (RF) grant programs (2006-2011, 2011-2015, 2015-2020, and 2020-2025). The HM grantees promote healthy marriage and relationships through eight legislatively authorized activities, such as marriage and relationship education and development of skills for job and career advancement. RF grantees’ legislatively authorized activities promote responsible parenting, healthy marriage, and economic stability. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief shares what was learned after visits with grantees about factors that have helped or hindered successful implementation of the 2015-2020 cohort of grantees, focusing on approaches to staffing programs and working with partners.

The Fathers & Families Coalition of America will host its 23rd Annual National Conference as a hybrid event from March 8 to March 11, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. The conference will feature a Roundtable Series covering child support, engaging families, child welfare, disparities in education, and local to national policy impacting practices; 10 Workshop Strands; and Fireside General Sessions. Also included are credential or certificate programs and networking opportunities. Conference registration includes a fee for in-person and virtual participants.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is soliciting applications for the Fiscal Year 2022 Tribal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Grant Program. Funding is intended for tribal entities that do not have prior experience with implementing evidence-based home visiting models, performance measurement systems, and continuous quality improvement activities.

Grant funds will support 63-month grants between ACF and federally-recognized Indian tribes (or a consortium of Indian tribes), tribal organizations, or urban Indian organizations. The grants will support activities including conducting needs assessments, developing infrastructure, providing home visiting programs, and strengthening early childhood systems of support. The anticipated project start date is July 1, 2022. Applications are due April 15, 2022.

Increases in a family’s earnings are often offset by declines in public assistance benefits (commonly called “benefit cliffs” when the declines are sharp) and increases in taxes owed. This report summarizes insights from qualitative interviews with 43 respondents who currently or recently received TANF. Respondents reported experiencing tradeoffs between benefits, taxes, and work. It also presents results from microsimulation modeling of how benefits and taxes respond when income changes, and features 2018 data from Colorado, Minnesota, and New York.

This Digital Skills Discussion Guide helps workforce providers learn how employers are integrating technology and upskilling workers. The Guide facilitates supporting workers to adapt to new ways of interacting with their work environments during this digital transformation. It is based on conversations held with large, national employers from a range of industry sectors during 2020 and 2021.

Do you lead, work in, or know of an employment and training program that integrates financial capability interventions into its services? Financial capability interventions include:

• Financial education
• Financial coaching
• Financial counseling
• Credit counseling
• Or access to emergency savings programs, safe and affordable financial products, asset-building programs, or tax preparation assistance

MEF Associates and its subcontractor, the Urban Institute, in partnership with the OPRE, invite nominations of employment and training programs to participate in a survey to better understand how financial capability interventions are delivered in the context of employment and training (E&T) programs serving adults with low incomes. This survey is being conducted as part of the Integrating Financial Capability and Employment Services project.

Self-nominations or nominations of others are both welcome. Nominations can be sent to IntegratedFinCap@mefassociates.com. Please include the name of the program and contact information, if known.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Chapin Hall, and Casey Families partnered to host an expert roundtable on June 23 and 24, 2021. The roundtable, “Toward an Analytic Framework to Address Economic-Related Risk Factors in Child Welfare,” had two objectives: 1) create an analytic framework and identify tools to help jurisdictions deploy resources to address economic risk factors for child maltreatment and 2) identify steps to develop the data capacity and infrastructure needed to implement the analytic framework. This brief summarizes the roundtable, providing an overview of the conversation and highlighting the resulting action steps.

This policy brief establishes a framework to modernize health and human services agencies, realigning siloed programs and services focused on important, but segmented, aspects of community needs. In this Roadmap, the American Public Human Services Association identifies four essential components that must work in tandem to create inroads to genuine system alignment to support young families.

The U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration will host a webinar on February 15, 2022 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. ET to discuss CareerOneStop, a comprehensive career, education, and job search website. CareerOneStop offers career assessment tools that focus on interests, skills, work values, or previous job experience. This webinar will go in-depth on each tool and explore how to use them on a path to career exploration.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief describes the effectiveness of programs identified by the Pathways Clearinghouse that use employment coaching. The brief summarizes these programs and their impacts on employment, earnings, and related outcomes for people with low incomes. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) administrators, policymakers, researchers, and stakeholders can apply the evidence to questions and contexts that matter to them.