The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Family Assistance (OFA) conducted the 2021 National TANF Directors’ Meeting from September 20 - 24, 2021. During this concurrent workshop, representatives of the TANF Data Collaborative overviewed three pilot projects showcasing their experiences. California examined wage progression for TANF participants who have left the program. New York organized its data into cohorts and spells, which is valuable in providing information about the duration of TANF receipt, reentry, and basic outcomes, and Utah created an analytic file to examine characteristics that predict a cohort of “leavers” returning to TANF.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Family Assistance (OFA) conducted the 2021 National TANF Directors’ Meeting from September 20 - 24, 2021. During this concurrent workshop, panelists explored how Tribal TANF and NEW programs can consider expanding virtual services to motivate participants to pursue opportunities, especially those which may have been previously inaccessible. Speakers discussed a variety of strategies used in the past year to create virtual education and training opportunities and virtual case management services for clients, as well as how these offerings were developed, challenges along the way, witnessed successes, and recommendations for programs considering offering similar resources. This session concluded with a review of OFA’s Coaching for Success eLearning modules, which program staff can use to provide virtual coaching and mentorship to participants.

This report focuses on children who are entering group settings for their first child welfare placement. The study reviewed data on children – by age, gender, race and ethnicity, and urbanicity – with an initial out-of-home placement from 2012 to 2019 to determine how or if these factors played a role in their group care experience. They found a significant relationship between age, race and ethnicity, and the utilization of group placements. The study also explored how these factors are best understood within the context of the local child welfare system and its local service offerings.

This annotated bibliography offers resources to practitioners and researchers within the Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) field that may help them adapt, develop, and test new or refined strategies for working with diverse groups of youth, including those who have faced adversity. These populations include youth aging out of foster care, those who are or have been involved with the juvenile justice system, those who are parents, and those who are or have experienced homelessness.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report is a quantitative analysis of the “success sequence” as an approach to reduce poverty and improve economic opportunity among adolescents and young adults. (“Success sequence” refers to a series of milestones associated with escaping poverty and joining the middle class: high school completion, full-time employment, and waiting for marriage to have children.) The report uses longitudinal data to evaluate the order and combination of milestones and to assess the associations between completing the success sequence milestones by the age of 30 and economic self-sufficiency and family stability outcomes in the late 30s.

This report identifies the four components of youth apprenticeship programs and how they fit together to offer a set of principles for adoption that improve program quality. These distinguishing components are 1) structured and paid on-the-job learning under the supervision of skilled mentors, 2) classroom-based or technical instruction aligned to the workplace environment, 3) ongoing assessment, and 4) attainment of portable, industry-recognized credentials. To illustrate these components, the report presents the Aerospace Joint Apprenticeship Committee (Washington State), the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeship program (South Carolina), and Early Care & Education Pathways to Success (California).

This research brief presents findings from a fall 2020 survey of parents in Maryland on child care needs, access to child care, continuity of care, and child care costs for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and school-age children during the COVID-19 pandemic. This survey was conducted with families who received child care scholarships and families with children enrolled with a licensed child care provider. The survey defined “continuity of care” for young children as child care with the same provider before and during the COVID-19 pandemic; “continuity of care” has been associated with decreased parental and caregiver stress and stronger family-caregiver relationships.

This set of briefs, organized by region and all 50 states and the District of Columbia, uses Census Household Pulse survey data to illustrate Child Tax Credit (CTC) receipt, payment usage, and changes in food security for families after the CTC payment was received. The survey was conducted between July 21 and August 16, 2021 when the first two CTC payments were deposited into families’ bank accounts.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report examines the initial impact of two versions of the Relationships Smarts PLUS program, delivered primarily to 9th graders at two Atlanta-area high schools. The two versions of Relationship Smarts PLUS were either a full 12-lesson 18-hour version, or an 8-lesson 12-hour format (designed specifically for this study). Key questions in the report pertain to the impact of HMRE on students’ relationship skills, attitudes, and knowledge beyond the end of the course and the influence on students of shortening an HMRE program.

This brief illustrates the delivery of Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) services from the perspective of case managers in six child support agencies. Procedural justice, a process-oriented model for dispute resolution, suggests that if people perceive fairness in the process, there will more likely be compliance with the outcome of the process, regardless of whether the outcome is favorable. Integrating this model into six child support agencies across the United States, the PJAC demonstration project supports noncustodial parents who are referred to the legal system for civil contempt of court and have not met child support obligations. PJAC services are used to address the reasons for nonpayment, improve the consistency in making payments, and support positive engagement with the child support agency and the custodial parent.