The Wellness Comprehensive Assessment Rehabilitation and Employment (WeCARE) program provides clinical assessment, employment, Social Security application, wellness, and rehabilitation services to New York City residents who receive public assistance and have physical and/or mental health challenges to employment. Populations served by the WeCARE program include single adults who have limited resources and TANF recipients who struggle to meet work requirements. This report documents how WeCARE served clients before the COVID-19 pandemic, how the program changed in response to the employment and service needs of its clients during the pandemic and economic recession, and the implications of those changes to the WeCARE model. It also notes lessons WeCARE learned which could guide other agencies coping with significant shifts in service delivery, including serving people with physical and mental health challenges virtually.

Due in part to structural socioeconomic inequality, children from families with lower incomes may be at particularly high risk of abuse, neglect, and behavioral problems during infancy, toddlerhood, and early childhood. Research has found that home visiting programs for families with young children can improve children’s development and strengthen caregivers’ and families’ well-being. However, the COVID-19 pandemic created numerous challenges for home visiting programs, forcing them to deliver services online or in a hybrid format and to adapt their program models’ content to respond to pandemic-related challenges. One evidence-based home visiting program, Child First, provides a psychotherapeutic, parent-child intervention embedded in a coordinated system of care. This working paper highlights the 12-month impacts found in a study of Child First implemented in Connecticut and North Carolina.

Many families struggle to meet their basic needs, a challenge that may be exacerbated by increased costs of living, widening income inequality, and ongoing economic uncertainty. Upward economic mobility across generations remains limited; children who grow up in the United States today are much less likely than children born in the 1940s to earn more income than their parents. Research suggests that two-generation (2Gen) approaches can help interrupt the economic and social barriers to many families’ economic mobility and increased well-being and carry long-term benefits. This report provides a current data snapshot of some families in the United States who may be eligible for and benefit from 2Gen supports and services.

Youth apprenticeships are structured, work-based learning opportunities that offer young people, particularly young people of color and those from low-income households, the opportunity to learn specialized skills that they can use throughout their career. This blogpost outlines four key characteristics of youth apprenticeships, as identified by the Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship (PAYA). It also lists the ways that PAYA works with partners who follow a set of five guiding principles to deliver high-quality youth apprenticeship opportunities. Resources on how youth apprenticeships benefit young people, communities, and industries are included.

The U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration hosted a webinar on March 21, 2023 about the Federal Highway Administration's Every Day Counts 6: Strategic Workforce Development initiative, which identifies, trains, places, and retains women in construction. Participants heard presentations from representatives of the Vermont Agency of Transportation and Vermont Works4Women.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) will host a virtual training for parents and caregivers on children’s mental health on March 22, 2023 from 6:00 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. ET. The training will provide parents and caregivers with the information and resources to recognize, manage, and support their children’s mental health needs. ACF and SAMHSA recognize that parents and caregivers play a vital role and want to provide training participants all the tools and skills needed to support children.

Event facilitators and speakers will include January Contreras, Assistant Secretary, ACF; Lauren Behsudi, Senior Advisor, ACF; Miriam Delphin-Rittmon, Assistant Secretary, SAMHSA; Dr. Sunny Patel, Senior Medical Advisor, SAMHSA Center for Mental Health; Dr. Gary Blau, Senior Advisor, SAMHSA; Arc Telos Saint Amour, Executive Director, Youth MOVE National; and David Armstrong, parent and caregiver advocate.

The Promise is a public-private partnership dedicated to meeting some of the goals of the City of Philadelphia’s Poverty Action Plan. Key aspects of The Promise include “community challenges,” wherein community-based organizations receive funding to partner on efforts to improve city residents’ material conditions. Because eligible Philadelphians leave millions of dollars’ worth of public benefits and refundable tax credits on the table each year, the first community challenge launched, called the Family Stability Challenge (FSC), funds service provider coalitions to collaborate on connecting underserved populations with benefits and credits. The Urban Institute was invited to conduct an evaluation of the early implementation of the FSC. As a result, they released this report that provides a scan of relevant literature and contextual information important for understanding the FSC.

The Next Level Now (NLN) Collaborative is the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration's hub for delivering technical assistance (TA) to the public workforce system. NLN will host a webinar on March 9, 2023 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. ET, which will provide steps and strategies in building a strong network of partners and resources before the occurrence of a Rapid Response event, such as a natural disaster or mass layoff. The webinar will also demonstrate strategies from the field for supporting businesses and dislocated workers during these types of events. It will be followed up with a roundtable discussion with additional presenters and related topics for the Rapid Response program, through which dislocated workers are transitioned to new employment as quickly as possible.

Children rely on the adults in their lives to provide safety and security; unfortunately, this is often difficult for adults living in poverty to provide. As a result, some children living in poverty face developmental challenges that may affect their well-being long term. This article discusses how poverty affects children's brain development and mental health. It also covers risk factors that may affect brain development, how a family’s economic status impacts the amount of gray and white matter volumes in the brain (gray matter controls movement, memory, and emotions while white matter helps with the transfer of information within the brain), and medical and counseling recommendations. Further, the article identifies a number of existing anti-poverty programs, including TANF, that may help reduce the financial burden of living in poverty.

This Wisconsin Department of Health Services webpage includes a section featuring the Individual Placement and Support (IPS) model. IPS is a supported employment model that helps people with mental health and substance use disorders find and keep jobs of their choosing. The IPS model is based on the philosophy that employment is treatment and leads to improved recovery outcomes. The webpage illustrates the eight principles of IPS and how stakeholders (including job seekers, businesses, counties, tribal nations, mental health providers, and vocational services providers) benefit from implementing IPS.