This report includes a review of effective employment and training (E&T) program components and practices published between 2016 and 2020 to provide information that can be used to align SNAP E&T policy and programs to achieve the best training, employment, and wage gains for SNAP participants and integrate the E&T program within the broader public workforce system. The report also provides specific recommendations for building effective SNAP E&T programs, including recommendations related to developing successful workforce system partnerships and identifying the right mix of services to meet participants’ needs.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated inequities and fragilities inherent in existing child care markets and decimated the supply of child care in many communities. Despite being deemed essential to the nation’s economy, the early care and education workforce experiences high turnover, low pay and benefits, and limited opportunities for professional development and advancement—all of which undermines the quality and continuity of care for young children. This blogpost identifies three lessons drawn from research which can help increase opportunities for advancement and upward mobility for the child care workforce.

The National Indian Child Welfare Association will hold its 40th annual conference as a virtual three-day event from April 4-6, 2022, addressing tribal child welfare and well-being. The national conference will share the latest research on the well-being of American Indian and Alaska Native children and the most innovative child welfare and children’s mental health service delivery practices, highlight tactics and strategies for financing and sustaining services that impact children, and showcase strategies for involving youth and families in developing services and policies that lead to systems change.

This Annie E. Casey Foundation brief shares six pivotal strategies for coordinating and funding community efforts to support families at risk of entering the child welfare system: invest in infrastructure at the state and local levels, create funding structures that maximize prevention funds, support community-led planning and design, align programs at the state level to better serve families, invest in evaluation, and leverage private and local dedicated funding streams. Strategies presented in this brief include practices from Colorado, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, Washington State, and the District of Columbia.

The Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) demonstration project, which began in 2016, integrates principles of procedural justice into enforcement practices in six child support agencies across the United States. This guide assists child support agencies to develop more people-centered practices using the principles of procedural justice to build trust, better engage participants, and create a more fair and effective process for serving families and supporting children.

The Fathers and Continuous Learning in Child Welfare (FCL) project sought to improve placement stability and permanency outcomes for children by engaging their fathers and paternal relatives. FCL implemented a methodology known as the Breakthrough Series Collaborative (BSC), a continuous learning methodology. The last in a three-part series, this podcast discusses strategies in the BSC within Prowers County, Colorado. Topics discussed include:

• The flexibility and innovation small child welfare agencies can have in comparison to larger, more bureaucratic agencies
• The collective accountability child welfare and partner human service agencies shared in Prowers County to engage and involve fathers and paternal families in their casework and prevention efforts
• The "must-haves" necessary to spark and sustain culture change

Family-engaged case planning is a new model for the initial stage of the juvenile probation process where juvenile probation officers formulate case plans by collaborating with young people and their families. This approach is necessary to align probation with powerful studies on adolescent brain development and effective responses to delinquent behavior. This Practice Guide covers:

• Why family engagement is important—and a departure from the status quo.
• Three stages of the family-engaged case planning model.
• Advice on adapting this model to local jurisdictions.
• Six common challenges to meaningfully engaging families.

This comprehensive child welfare resource provides state and national data on child maltreatment, foster care, kinship caregiving, and adoption from foster care. Data profiles are available by state. Also available for download is a companion guide which explains how stakeholders can interpret and use the data.

Providing access to tangible resources can strengthen families and communities by avoiding and de-escalating crises, reducing parental stress, increasing access to safe housing and reliable childcare, and ensuring children have the material items they need to thrive. This brief discusses the impact of community-based strategies, connections, and collaborations that offer economic supports to address families’ basic needs, keeping children safe and families together. These include housing supports, food assistance, financial supports, employment assistance, early care and education services, legal services, and medical and behavioral health care.

The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Mathematica, and The Adjacent Possible will jointly host a webinar on March 14, 2022 from 3:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. ET to highlight innovative strategies used by state and local TANF programs during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic to adapt service delivery and promote staff and client well-being. Speakers will share the findings of two briefs published by Project SPARK (Supporting Partnerships to Advance Research and Knowledge). The webinar will be interactive with two primary purposes for participants: engage in a sense-making exercise with the research themes, and explore ways of applying and experimenting with the innovations.