Over 3.2 million North Carolinians are poor or near poor, and many more experience economic instability and challenges over time. This report examines the ways that women in North Carolina are caught in the crosshairs of irreconcilable social and economic demands. Hundreds of thousands of women were forced last year to forgo job opportunities, experienced employment disruptions, or lost a job because of lack of affordable childcare.

Building on previous work developing a roadmap for system-level change to better support young families, the American Public Human Services Association established the System Alignment for Young Families Learning Academy (SAYF) to support cross-systems teams from state and local human services agencies in establishing a System Alignment Plan to support young families. This blogpost notes how the SAYF Learning Academy was launched in March 2022 with six cross-sectional teams that included parent leadership representing Maryland, Maricopa County (Arizona), Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, and Wake County (North Carolina). Through the development of targeted practice tools, peer-to-peer learning, and individualized planning, the teams worked to advance system alignment, so that young families experience seamless service delivery that meets their individual needs. An infographic in the blogpost spotlights each team’s vision statement.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act passed in 1996 replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. TANF imposed work requirements on participants who received benefits for a certain period of time and time limits on benefits that were paid with federal funds. Some evaluations conducted at that time, including the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies (NEWWS), found these new approaches led to some positive short-term effects for participants. This report is part of the From Theory to Practice project and presents findings from an analysis of 20-year outcomes and impacts of an employment-focused program offered to welfare recipients in Portland, Oregon in the 1990s as part of NEWWS. The findings described in the report represent some of the first available evidence on how individuals who previously received welfare fared in the labor market over the long term and on how sequence and cluster analyses can provide a richer picture of their trajectories and program impacts.

The economic and health effects of COVID-19 continue to linger for low- and moderate-income communities and communities of color, and organizations serving these communities also continue to feel the strain of COVID-19. While there were lower levels of pandemic-related effects in many segments of the economy relative to 2021 and there are signs of slow stabilization and recovery, to promote a true recovery that benefits these communities, it is important to monitor the conditions and needs of the organizations who serve those affected most.

As part of its Connecting Communities webinar series, the Federal Reserve System will host a discussion on February 9, 2023 from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET on findings from the National COVID-19 Community Impact Survey administered by the Federal Reserve System. The survey tracks the significant impact that the pandemic has had on underserved communities and those who support them. Participants will hear perspectives from those working on the frontlines in distressed communities and how organizations can use this data to advocate for themselves and those that they serve.

Strengthening Families and Help Me Grow (HMG) are closely aligned efforts focused on improving outcomes in early childhood. This brief describes how the HMG Model currently aligns with the Strengthening Families Approach and Protective Factors Framework and how HMG affiliates are currently using Strengthening Families. The brief also illustrates how the introduction of goal concordant care might enhance HMG affiliates’ ability to support families in attaining their goals for their children, as well as how this interacts with the promotion of families’ protective factors.

Families affected by substance use disorders and involved in the child welfare system face a variety of complex challenges. Children of parents with substance use disorder are more likely to be removed from parental care, less likely to be reunified, and experience lengthier out-of-home placements and delayed permanency. This brief provides an overview of the Sobriety Treatment and Recovery Teams (START) program — an evidence-based child welfare service delivery model for families that is aimed at keeping children safely with their parent(s) whenever possible through achieving parental sobriety and recovery, and family stability. The brief also highlights the funding and implementation of the START model in Kansas, Kentucky (which uses TANF to support the model), North Carolina, and Ohio, along with each state’s unique considerations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been especially challenging for American families with children. The U.S. Surgeon General as well as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s Hospital Association declared a children’s mental health crisis in late 2021, citing school closures, social isolation, grief over lost community and family members, and challenges accessing needed care as contributing factors. Parents, and especially mothers, have also borne significant caregiving, health, and health care access burdens that likely contributed to observed increases in mental health challenges since the pandemic began. However, women and mothers were already facing significant mental health challenges before the pandemic, and those challenges are likely to persist and evolve as the most acute pandemic stressors subside and new threats to women’s health and well-being arise. This report notes how maternal mental health has important implications for children, and how understanding mental health challenges among mothers will be critical to addressing the mental health crisis among children.

In recent years, many healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs serving couples with low incomes have offered participants economic stability services in addition to traditional HMRE programming focused on relationship skills. The Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services (STREAMS) evaluation included an impact study of Empowering Families, an HMRE program with integrated economic stability services for couples with low incomes raising children together. The program was implemented by The Parenting Center, a community-based social services provider in Fort Worth, Texas. Empowering Families’ core service was an eight-session workshop that taught relationship skills integrated with content on employment and financial literacy. The program supplemented this workshop with one-on-one employment counseling and financial coaching services.

This brief presents six considerations for practitioners who want to try using text message reminders to increase participation at the first session of a voluntary program and regular attendance thereafter. The considerations are drawn from a recent study assessing the effectiveness of text message reminders in promoting couples’ attendance at a voluntary healthy marriage and relationship education workshop in Florida. The study was conducted as part of the Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services evaluation for the Administration for Children and Families.

The Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) program offers education, training, support services, and employment assistance to prepare Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients and other adults with low incomes for occupations in the healthcare field that pay well and are expected to either experience labor shortages or be in high demand. This HPOG 2.0 National Evaluation Implementation Study Report documents how 27 non-tribal HPOG 2.0 grantees designed and implemented their programs, including program contexts, administration, grant expenditures, training and support services, and employment assistance services. It also documents participant characteristics and their engagement in program services and training activities.