This research article illustrates the origins, processes and strategies of health coaching and motivational interviewing as well as identifies the similarities and differences within these approaches. The article also points how these approaches might be used in tandem or taken individually to support improvements in physical and emotional health.

This blogpost profiles the Louisiana Department of Child and Family Services’ efforts to connect birth families with resource families following child removal, with the hopes of improving child welfare and the likelihood and timeliness of reunification. This shared parenting reflects the Quality Parenting Initiative (QPI), a Youth Law Center strategy to pave a new approach toward increasing reunification outcomes for families. This approach calls for a fundamental culture shift away from an “us-them” adversarial relationship between birth and resource families.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report reviews current Responsible Fatherhood (RF) program approaches undertaken to prevent and tackle intimate partner violence (IPV) and domestic violence. The report illustrates the programs’ strengths and gaps in their services and referrals and promising practices that may improve service provision to address IPV. There is also discussion about new directions for research in IPV prevention, given the success, challenges, and barriers in service delivery that RF programs experience.

The Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison will host a webinar on April 1, 2020 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. CT to discuss the relationships that human services programs develop with the participants they serve, as well as the relationships that programs help participants develop outside their organizations. Speakers from the Yale Schools of Medicine and Public Health, the School of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will discuss the measurement and evaluation of building program participants’ social capital and the value of logic models for documenting social capital inputs, activities, and outputs. The webinar will also feature a program that tracks social capital to support programming in human services administration.

The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance seeks applications for technical assistance and training providers for Second Chance Act (SCA) grantees to improve reentry and reduce recidivism. Providers are sought to support site-based SCA grantees in one of the following three categories of technical assistance: Corrections and Community Engagement; Education, Employment, and Community Engagement; and Behavioral Health, Housing, and Family Support. Submissions are due by April 28, 2020.

The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance has announced a grant funding opportunity for projects that establish, expand, and improve treatment for individuals with substance use disorders during incarceration and reentry into the community. Applications are due by April 27, 2020.

The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance has announced a grant funding opportunity for state, local, and tribal community supervision agencies to develop and test new or enhanced applications of the swift, certain, and fair (SCF) principles of intervention to reduce recidivism and improve outcomes for individuals under community supervision. The SCF principles of intervention reflect:

• Swiftness—responding to behavior quickly so those under supervision relate the response to their behavior.

• Certainty—ensuring that sanctions and rewards are applied consistently and predictably.

• Fairness—making sanctions and rewards proportional to negative and positive behavior respectively. Applications are due by April 28, 2020.

The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance has announced a grant funding opportunity under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). Applications are sought for projects designed to prevent, detect, and respond to sexual abuse and sexual harassment in prisons, and to achieve and maintain compliance with PREA standards. Applications are due by April 14, 2020.

This brief identifies challenges for addressing families in rural areas who fall within the child welfare system and who also encounter substance misuse. It also illustrates several challenges that include a lack of family-centered options as well as transportation and technological limitations in addressing the needs of parents with substance abuse. The brief also points out the need for collaboration in rural areas between child welfare agencies and substance use treatment providers.

This research to practice brief identifies a set of established, promising, and developing practices that serve to improve low-income families’ economic well-being comprehensively. The practices cover financial security, workforce development, housing, and case management and highlight research on each area’s benchmarks and measures of success and the organizations that are engaged in these programmatic areas.