Team-based case management is an innovative approach that removes redundancies and emphasizes coordination across the multiple organizations that may be serving the same participant. This guide describes how team-based case management can benefit SNAP E&T participants and provides an implementation checklist and resources for State agencies considering this approach. It highlights innovative approaches from Kentucky, Vermont, and Washington, highlighting how each State adopted team-based case management during the 2014 Farm Bill E&T pilot projects.

Economic Mobility Pathways will host a virtual session on September 27, 2023 from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. EDT during which youth-centered programs will share their innovative strategies in the outreach, engagement, and implementation of holistic economic mobility coaching practices for youth and young parents. Topics include differences in goal setting, community building, managing burnout, and more.

Workforce GPS will host a virtual session on September 11, 2023 from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. EDT that will provide an overview of the many professional development resources available to veteran service providers through National Veterans’ Training Institute. Staff from the Employment and Training Administration, the Veterans’ Employment and Training Service, and Management Concepts will provide a refresher on the roles and responsibilities of workforce development staff to ensure effective, integrated, and seamless service delivery to veterans.

The Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance, in partnership with the Children’s Bureau, announces a new TANF-Child Welfare Learning Community. The “Families Are Stronger Together: TANF & Child Welfare Partnering for Prevention Learning Community (FAST-LC)” will center on innovative prevention strategies to strengthen families and mitigate and reduce their involvement with the child welfare system through partnerships between TANF and Child Welfare programs. The FAST-LC is a one-year initiative slated to launch in September 2023 and conclude in September 2024. An August 10, 2023 webinar discussed the self-nomination process and benefits of the FAST-LC.

Self-nomination packages are due by Thursday, September 7, 2023, at 6:00 pm ET and can be obtained by emailing TANF-CWLearningCommunity@blhtech.com.

The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 introduced changes that require states to report on specific employment and education outcomes for people after they stop receiving TANF cash assistance.  Mirroring the Department of Labor's Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act programs, these measures cover employment, employment retention, employment earnings, and attainment of a high school degree. This Urban Institute fact sheet is a resource for states, federal staff, and agency leaders implementing the new law.  Drawing insights from the 2018 report called Measuring Employment Outcomes in TANF, the fact sheet helps explain the challenges and opportunities of measuring and interpreting employment outcomes.

Youth adults and young adults with disabilities (Y&YADs) are overrepresented in the justice system. Researchers estimate between 30-60% of youth in correctional facilities have a disability and are at an elevated risk of adverse outcomes, including unemployment and recidivism. The Center for Advancing Policy on Employment for Youth (CAPE-Youth) hosted a webinar on August 17, 2023 that provided an overview of approaches states can take to develop effective transition services, highlighted rehabilitation and recovery practices that improve long-term opportunities for justice-involved youth and young adults with disabilities, and discussed educational and economic supports that improve employment outcomes for youth exiting the justice system. The webinar was a followup to an earlier roundtable discussion on the same topic hosted by CAPE-Youth and the White House Office of Public Engagement, as summarized in this brief.

Employers have a vested interest in retaining high-quality employees and improving their productivity; in the past, many employers developed strategies to address these two issues without formally engaging youth workers in the process. In today’s economy, young adults are the fastest-growing group of workers, and their voices or perspectives are important to include in decisions that impact the workforce. These two Child Trends tipsheets are designed to help workforce development program staff facilitate proactive, constructive conversations between employers and young adult employees.

Over the past few years, Vermont’s Reach Up program has increasingly moved to a family-centered coaching model of supporting TANF participants and their families. This video provides a contextual overview of the merits of transitioning to a coaching model, highlights how this model works in Vermont, and provides an insider look into the various ways case managers can coach participants to achieve their own goals.

Many child support policies disproportionately harm families with low incomes in which nonresident parents have limited ability to pay support. This blogpost outlines six recommendations on how child support systems can equitably serve families with low incomes to emphasize healthy child development, encourage parental support in all forms, foster parent-child and co-parenting relationships, and assist parents who struggle to pay support. These recommendations include the need to emphasize support for the entire family; establish and modify child support orders according to parents’ ability to pay support; identify and address the causes of noncompliance and limit punitive enforcement; transfer all child support collected by the state to TANF families; collect a wider range of demographic and outcome data and evaluate policy impacts on diverse family types; and provide government support to children in poverty whose parents cannot provide meaningful financial support.

The Child Support Enforcement (CSE) program was enacted in 1975 as a federal-state program and served to reduce public expenditures for recipients of cash assistance by obtaining ongoing support from noncustodial parents that could be used to reimburse the state and federal governments for part of that assistance. Over the years, CSE has evolved into a multifaceted program. While public assistance cost recovery remains an important function of the program, its other aspects include service delivery and promotion of self-sufficiency and parental responsibility. This Congressional Research Service summary explores how the CSE program has different rules for assistance families (e.g., those receiving cash benefits under TANF) and non-assistance families. Additionally, the summary highlights each of the CSE program’s seven major services -- (1) parent location, (2) paternity establishment, (3) establishment of child support orders, (4) review and modification of child support orders, (5) collection of child support payments, (6) distribution of child support payments, and (7) establishment and enforcement of medical support – and discusses how they impact TANF families.