This blog post from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families describes how the Office of Refugee Resettlement is providing temporary assistance to U.S. citizens who evacuated from St. Maarten to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma. The Office of Refugee Resettlement works with the Department of State to provide medical care, food, shelter, and other necessary services to U.S. citizens returning from abroad after a crisis.

This guide from the Child Welfare Information Gateway is designed to help practitioners implement Family Group Decision-Making (FGDM). In FGDM, child welfare agencies actively engage families in developing a case plan to ensure the safety of their children. There are six elements that are critical to success in FGDM: having an independent facilitator, recognizing that the family is the key decision-making partner in the child welfare process, including private family time, prioritizing the case plan that the family develops, providing services to implement that case plan, and following up afterward until the desired outcomes have been achieved. The guide describes the challenges involved with implementing FGDM, and provides strategies and resources for overcoming those challenges.

This study from the Wisconsin HOPE Lab was designed to help practitioners and policymakers understand the extent of food and housing insecurity at different community colleges across the country. The researchers analyzed data from 33,000 community college students at 70 community colleges in 24 states. They found that two-thirds of students were food insecure, about half of students were housing insecure, and about 13-14% were homeless. There was very little geographic variation in the hunger and homelessness that community college students experienced, but former foster youth experienced homelessness at a higher rate than other community college students. The researchers recommend improvements in policy and practice to ensure the basic needs of community college students are met.

This Prosperity Now brief describes how three types of housing organizations have started to integrate financial capability services into their housing programs. Those housing organizations include affordable housing developers, public housing authorities, and housing counseling organizations, and they most frequently offered financial education or one-on-one financial counseling and coaching. Through interviews, the authors found that these housing organizations are started to offer financial capability services either in-house or through partnerships, but they face challenges in implementing those services. Lack of staff capacity, the need for training, and having enough resources available to offer financial capability services are the challenges that housing organizations face. Despite these challenges, housing organizations stated that helping clients proactively address their financial concerns can reduce the need for evictions.

This Urban Institute brief examines the experiences of clients applying for work supports, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, Medicaid, and child care assistance. Applying for these benefits can be a daunting process for low-income families, so six states participated in the Work Support Strategies initiative to streamline and improve the application and service delivery process. The authors describe the experiences of families applying for work supports, then they identify three areas where the process could be improved. Those areas include minimizing wait times so families can receive their benefits sooner, improving customer service so families applying for benefits are treated with respect, and providing clearer information about the process of applying for benefits. The authors recommend that states provide a range of options for applying for benefits and aim for providing benefits on the same day that a client applies.

This Congressional Research Service report explores the involvement of child support enforcement in fatherhood programs and discusses initiatives to promote and support father-child interaction outside the parents’ relationship. The report also focuses on the need many see for more work-oriented programs that would enable fathers to consistently meet their child support obligations and reviews the current initiatives already in place.

The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine wrote this report at the request of the Food and Drug Administration to characterize the opioid epidemic, describe the evidence on strategies for addressing it, and identify actions that government agencies can pursue to respond to the epidemic. A committee of 18 experts wrote this report, and they recommended that opioid abuse become a public health priority. Other recommendations included enhancing education on opioid abuse for health professionals and the public, collecting better data on pain and opioid use, implementing state laws to increase the availability of naloxone, and investing in evidence-based treatment for opioid abuse in multiple settings, such as prisons and hospitals.

Mental Health America created this Back to School Toolkit to help students and parents learn the self-regulation and coping skills that lead to better mental health as an adult. Children face a variety of stressors at school and home, and if they do not learn how to manage their emotions, they can have behavior issues. This toolkit includes a variety of materials that explain the relationship between emotions and behavior, and also provides resources for finding treatment when students are in crisis. Toolkit materials include handouts, classroom activities, and media and social media materials aimed at both parents and students.

This Urban Institute brief analyzes how a pay-for-success model could help solve family homelessness. Family homelessness remains high, and the authors believe that political will and arbitrary budget divisions stand in the way of solving this problem. Using a pay-for-success model allows state and local governments to overcome these challenges. In a pay-for-success project, an investor provides the upfront funding to a program, and if the program can achieve positive outcomes, then the investor can get their money back plus a potential positive return. The brief describes how such a model has been used for other housing interventions, such as housing vouchers and permanent supportive housing, and describes the benefits and complexities of a pay-for-success project.

This policy brief from the Center for Poverty Research at UC Davis highlights new research that demonstrates a connection between a parent being employed or receiving cash assistance and a higher likelihood of the parent(s) being reunified with their children after a child welfare interaction. It provides examples of how a parent may become economically disconnected once their child is removed and how this can significantly impact the chance of reunification. Suggestions for further supporting vulnerable families are given.