Millions of food and cash assistance customers rely on cash transfers each month to meet their family’s needs. Much of today’s benefits available to families are deposited directly onto Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards that are assigned to customers. EBT card skimming is a growing challenge to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program participants, putting them at risk of losing crucial benefits. Challenges related to protecting beneficiaries from theft have increased for human services programs as they seek to improve the level of customer protections similar to those afforded credit cards.

The Office of Family Assistance Project IMPROVE team hosted a webinar in November 2022 that brought together a panel representing TANF and SNAP programs as well as experts on EBT card skimming prevention. Panelists discussed ways agencies can educate participants on how to protect their benefits from theft, and responded to questions around challenges, best practices, and lessons learned. Panelists included: Michael Cole, Deputy Commissioner for Policy & Programs, Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance; Jennifer Reynolds, Program Manager, Utah Department of Workforce Services; Kristi Manseau, Program Specialist, Utah Department of Workforce Services; and Ernest Baca, Deputy Systems Administrator, Arizona Department of Economic Security.

When it comes to cash transfer programs like welfare for single parents and especially mothers, most of the evaluation and economic modeling efforts have focused on how those programs impact the amount of paid work single parents do. However, there has been less attention to the value of parental time and how that matters for children’s development. This podcast from the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison features Joseph Mullins, an economist at the University of Minnesota, who developed an economic model for U.S. cash transfer programs that attempts to place an accurate value on parents’ time when assessing cash transfer programs.

Domestic Violence Awareness Month (DVAM) was launched nationwide in October 1987 as a way to connect and unite individuals and organizations working on domestic violence issues while raising awareness for those issues. This toolkit from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) provides information, background, messaging, templates, and content to promote involvement in #DVAM2022 and express a commitment to seeing a national culture where we are all safe, empowered, and free from domestic violence.

The #WeAreResilient toolkit includes:

• Details about NCADV and DVAM
• Information about Domestic Violence (including graphics, links to blog posts and fact sheets, and online resources)
• Samples and Templates
• More Ways to #PowerUp with NCADV

The COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout have caused major disruptions for many workers and their families, particularly individuals working in jobs with low wages. This report and its accompanying brief summarize the experiences that 41 such workers shared during in-depth interviews, which examined how the respondents’ employment situations changed during the pandemic and the financial struggles they faced as a result of losing their job or having their work hours reduced. The stories and experiences workers share in the report and brief can help policymakers, employers, and programs that are interested in better supporting individuals with low incomes and their families.

Human-Centered Design (HCD) is a process and a mindset for addressing complex problems by designing solutions with those who will ultimately use the solution (i.e., end users). Because of its inherent focus on end users or recipients of services, HCD appears to have potential for promoting effective, efficient, and compassionate service delivery that is aligned with the mission of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families (ACF).

In 2018, ACF’s Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) initiated the Human-Centered Design for Human Services (HCD4HS) project to explore the viability of HCD in addressing the complex problems facing public sector human services programs. This project included a review of the knowledge base to define HCD and describe how it has been used and evaluated in the human services context, and a pilot study to evaluate the implementation of HCD, with a focus on assessing its evaluability. This report presents the findings from this pilot study.

In the face of a public health emergency, economic downturn, or other unexpected circumstance, TANF agencies and other human services providers are required to reimagine and adapt previous expectations, behaviors, and service provision for a digital, dispersed, and/or displaced environment. At the same time, TANF agencies often face growing caseloads and increasing needs from participants who are struggling because of various crises.

OFA developed this three-part podcast series to increase awareness about state TANF agency responses to the unexpected as they relate to legislation, agency staff, and service provision to participants. The series leverages content from earlier resources which aggregate disaster response efforts across the country. The podcasts include interviews with representatives of the Owens Valley Community Development Center (California); the Maine Office of Family Independence, Department of Health and Human Services; the Vermont Department of Children and Families; the Colorado Department of Human Services; TANF of Sonoma and Marin (California) as well as the Office of Human Services Emergency Preparedness and Response (OHSEPR), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the Labor-Management Partnerships Program at the University of California at Berkeley.

Objectives of this podcast series include:

• Identify state and federal policy responses to natural disasters and other public health emergencies including, but not limited to, hurricanes, recessions, and other calamities that directly impact TANF staff and clients.
• Equip TANF agencies with information and resources to support their staff and participants during major transitions.
• Highlight innovative and adaptive service provision solutions during unexpected events such as natural disasters, public health emergencies, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Explore options for pivoting employment-related services to prepare and upskill TANF participants for sudden labor market shifts.

This report provides statistics on food security in U.S. households throughout 2021 based on the Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement data collected in December 2021. Statistics showed that 10.2 percent of households were food insecure at least some time during the year, including 3.8 percent with very low food security. About 56 percent of food-insecure households participated in one or more of the three largest Federal nutrition assistance programs: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); and the National School Lunch Program during the month prior to the 2021 survey.

For much of 2022, the U.S. has enjoyed an unusually strong labor market. Unemployment is historically low, and job creation is well above the level needed to keep pace with population growth. By some measures, such as wage growth, the labor market is especially solid for many lower-wage workers. However, this does not mean that all workers are participating in the labor market at the rates they had prior to the pandemic. This blogpost summarizes research indicating less-educated couples became more likely during the COVID-19 pandemic to include only one labor force participant. The findings indicate that parents of young children report that caregiving is increasingly the reason given for their labor force nonparticipation.

Human-Centered Design (HCD) is a problem-solving and design approach that appears to have potential for promoting effective, efficient, and compassionate service delivery aligned with the mission of the Administration for Children and Families. However, implementation of HCD within human services is relatively novel. This brief presents a definition of HCD that is applicable to the context of human services delivery, differentiates HCD from similar design and problem-solving approaches, and describes how HCD is being used in human services. It also explores what is currently known about evaluation efforts to date including facilitators to HCD implementation.