The Office of Family Assistance initiative, “Leveraging America’s Social and Economic Resilience TANF Learning Community” (LASER TLC), supported ten TANF Programs across the country as they worked to address the challenges of human service delivery in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and focused on improving and delivering more responsive services to their TANF families. This document shares the Chippewa Cree Tribe of the Rocky Boys Reservation’s journey during their participation in the 18-month learning community. The site journey conveys how their LASER TLC site team, along with support from their dedicated coaching team and application of the LI2 framework, contributed to developing their action plan and strategizing the implementation of their change agenda to benefit TANF families.

Children living in families with low incomes face an array of challenges that place them at much higher risk of experiencing poverty in adulthood as compared with other children. This cycle of intergenerational poverty poses an economic disadvantage to not only the children and their families but also the nation. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) will host a webinar on September 21, 2023 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. ET on the NASEM report entitled Reducing Intergenerational Poverty that examines the drivers of long-term, intergenerational poverty, identifies potential policies and programs to reduce it, addresses gaps in data and research, and highlights the disproportionate effect of disadvantage to different racial/ethnic groups. The webinar will include a discussion of the report's key findings and questions from webinar participants.

Columbia University's Center on Poverty and Social Policy will co-host a virtual session on September 21, 2023 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. EDT to discuss the policy takeaways from the COVID-19 pandemic for reducing poverty and promoting economic well-being moving forward. This webinar will include a policy panel to discuss the challenges faced by low-income households, how the federal government achieved a record-low poverty rate in 2020 and again in 2021, and what lessons ought to be carried forward from those experiences.

Child Trends will host a virtual session on September 20, 2023 at 2:00 p.m. EDT to unpack a decades-long decline in child poverty and more recent shifts that followed COVID-19 aid to probe how well common poverty indicators have captured changes in child and family well-being. This webinar will include a panel representing research, advocacy, direct service, philanthropy, and human services that will discuss what it takes to build a social safety net focused on economic well-being rather than poverty.

The challenge of attracting and retaining a diverse, productive, engaged workforce has grown. Workers seek quality jobs, and companies that prioritize job quality become employers of choice. Job quality is not just about the job; it is a combination of key drivers that are important to each worker’s overall employment experience. This Job Quality Toolkit, issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce, is an actionable tool for organizations to improve the quality of the jobs they offer. Identifying and improving the drivers most valued by workers can significantly increase their satisfaction and engagement and, in turn, improve the organization’s ability to compete for talent and achieve success in the marketplace.

The Welfare and Family Self-Sufficiency Learning Agenda (WFSSLA) was developed by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation’s Division of Economic Independence and the Office of Family Assistance (OFA). It guides the development and execution of the Division and OFA’s activities to learn how TANF and other human services best support the self-sufficiency and economic well-being of children and families with low incomes. The WFSSLA includes briefs for workstreams, or focal domains, to build knowledge about effectively fostering family economic security, stability, and self-sufficiency. Each brief synthesizes learning to date in that area based on key Division of Economic Independence projects; discusses select remaining gaps in knowledge; lists learning questions to inform future learning activities; and includes a table listing current Division projects pertaining to the workstream.

The Skills and Experience for the Careers of Tomorrow (SECTOR) program provides employment and training services, cognitive behavioral interventions, and connections to mental health and substance use disorder services for people with previous legal system involvement. It uses a sector-based approach, which connects individuals to training opportunities that offer a livable wage, career advancement opportunities, and benefits for job seekers. The model anticipates that behavioral health, well-being, employment, and earnings improvements will reduce future interactions with the criminal legal system. This MDRC report presents the findings of the SECTOR program evaluation as part of the Los Angeles County Reentry Integrated Services Project. The evaluation focuses mainly on employment and criminal legal system contact and whether SECTOR successfully connects individuals to mental health and substance use disorder services.

Disaster displacement refers to the involuntary movement of residents from their homes and community because of an external phenomenon for a temporary, short-term, or long-term period. There are approximately 1 million new disaster displacements in the United States every year. After being displaced by a disaster, people often have critical human services needs in areas such as housing, income support, transportation, employment, and education. These needs can be acute for people with low incomes. A combination of federal, state, and local emergency management and human services agencies and nonprofit, community, and faith-based organizations work to address these needs. This report summarizes existing literature and available resources on disaster displacement and human services. The findings in this report can provide useful insights to policymakers, agencies, and organizations that provide human services to people displaced by disasters.

In 2014, three Ohio community colleges set out to adapt a developmental student support model pioneered by the City University of New York (CUNY) called Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP). This program requires students to attend school full time and provides support services for three years, including enhanced advising, financial aid, and career counseling, to help them graduate with an associate’s degree quickly. In this Evidence First podcast episode, MDRC talks with Christine Brongniart, the University Executive Director of CUNY ASAP, and Colleen Sommo, a senior research fellow in MDRC’s Postsecondary Education policy area, to learn more about the replication of CUNY ASAP and the latest findings from MDRC’s study of the Ohio program, including increased earnings and doubled graduation rates.