In October 2017, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and MEF Associates gathered child support practitioners for a roundtable on the future of child support programs, which served as the content base for this report. They highlight eight issues faced by the child support community, such as compliance, non-traditional families, changing costs of living, and other public benefit receipt, as well as types of research opportunities to further study these concerns. Although not exhaustive, their list is comprehensive and offers concrete research questions for stakeholders to discuss and use to inform their child support policies and operations.

On October 30, the American Public Health Association will host a webinar for caseworkers and policymakers alike that will discuss necessary leadership skills to inspire and drive change in workplace culture around health and safety. Applicable to many different settings and contexts, their exploration of leadership requisites and leveraging expertise to support health and safety initiatives will be invaluable for all changemakers in various social policy fields.

System modeling is an effective tool to understand the way homeless people navigate the variety or systems and programs in an area, which can ultimately lead to more efficient and cost-effective service provision. A report from The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness details steps involved in system modeling for homeless services, including listing desired aspects of a homeless services program, estimating the population size, reviewing existing data on which programs are being accessed and for how long, identifying intervention combinations that will lead to permanent housing, and using those figures and interventions to develop an ideal model to distribute resources effectively. By taking a broad look at the state of existing programs, using actual data to make utilization projections and assumptions, and reviewing new data periodically to ensure resources remain efficiently distributed, system modeling can be a powerful way to combat homelessness. This article also discusses a case study where system modeling in Indianapolis helped reduce homelessness for youth and young adults.

This blog post from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is part of the Self-Sufficiency Series: Solutions from the Field. The series profiles local programs from across the country finding solutions that meet HHS’s Strategic Plan for encouraging self-sufficiency and personal responsibility, and eliminating barriers to economic opportunity. The blog highlights the partnership between the Nurse-Family Partnership and Goodwill of Central and Southern Indiana. The organizations have joined hands to improve the health of low-income, first-time mothers and their babies and to strengthen the economic stability of their families.

On September 12, the U.S. Census Bureau released new economic data for 2017. Median household income increased from 2016 by 1.8 percent to $61,372, and the poverty rate simultaneously declined 0.4 percent to 12.3 percent. This fall does not represent a significant change from the previous year, but poverty is down 2.5 percent in total over the past three years. The Supplemental Poverty Measure, which takes governmental programs designed to aid low-income families into account, also did not change significantly and currently is 13.9 percent for 2017. For income and poverty delineations by age, race, educational status, and other demographic factors, visit the Census website.

While the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a popular anti-poverty and pro-work policy that provides a refundable tax credit to low-income Americans, most of its dollars go to families with children. Because there are significantly fewer resources for workers without children, New York City and Atlanta piloted a “Paycheck Plus” program to give single workers more generous benefits. This report by MDRC finds that this program reduced extreme poverty and modestly increased employment rates, particularly for women and the lowest-income men. The researchers speculate that increasing people’s knowledge of employment services may increase the employment effects of the program, which could be an area of expansion for similar interventions going forward. Paycheck Plus also had additional social benefits like increasing tax filing rates and increasing child support payments, leading MDRC to conclude that work-based safety net programs have measured effects on poverty and employment for low-income Americans.

In 2009, Washington, D.C. began offering two years of full-day public preschool, citing literature on better school performance and higher parental work hours that come with preschool enrollment. This report from American Progress studies the effects of D.C.’s program on maternal labor force participation (LFP) and finds that the program caused a 10-percentage point increase in maternal LFP, as well as a large increase in employment. The effects come mainly from low- and high-income women, since LFP for middle-income families remained the same. Overall, the researchers conclude that universal full-day preschool positively affects maternal labor supply and suggests that the United States should consider expanding child care for all.

This Urban Institute report notes that the opioid crisis is widely recognized as a difficult policy challenge, but the reasons why it is difficult and the paths to overcoming those difficulties are less easily understood. As a result, policymakers risk spending limited public resources on potentially ineffective or even counterproductive efforts. Adopting the perspective of pay for success (PFS)-–an outcomes-oriented funding model-–helps to mitigate these risks and facilitates the application of sound public policy and administration principles.

This interactive tool provided by the National Center for Children in Poverty allows users to identify current legislation and policies across states regarding these following key policy areas and others: child care and development fund subsidies, family and medical leave, SNAP eligibility, Medicaid income limits, and TANF eligibility criteria. The tracker enables policy and decision makers to learn about policies in the social and poverty domain.

The Urban Institute was contracted by a Washington State housing authority to evaluate its 2013-2016 Student and Family Stability Initiative that provided supportive housing and employment to homeless or vulnerable families with elementary-aged children. Case management for those willing to work was combined with short-term financial assistance for housing-related costs, like searching or moving expenses. The program successfully raised participants’ income and promoted housing stability and income gains after the program ended, but also had high attrition rates. Households that opted out, failed to find housing, or failed to complete the program because they fell out of touch with case managers represent areas for programmatic improvement. The program may be more cost-efficient than providing long-term assistance like Housing Choice Vouchers, but it was difficult to understand how well the housing pilot program worked.