The Office of Family Assistance and its Systems to Family Stability National Policy Academy hosted a webinar on Assessing Family History, Needs, and Well-Being to Improve TANF Services to Families on Wednesday, May 18, 2016 EDT. Many Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs, and other programs serving low-income individuals and families, are seeking ways to better measure and assess how family histories and current family functioning affect service planning and delivery. With the increased focus on intergenerational approaches across human service systems, many are seeking new and improved ways to improve overall family well-being. This webinar was designed to help Systems to Family Stability National Policy Academy, TANF, and other human service system stakeholders understand how assessing family functioning, history, and experience can improve outcomes for TANF and other human service system participants. Speakers discussed how family assessment tools are administered and used by TANF, child welfare, and other stakeholder programs. They also addressed how these tools can be used to measure improvements in family well-being and create opportunities to use data to improve service planning. Presenters included: Lisa Washington-Thomas from the Office of Family Assistance; Jill Tichenor from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services; Debbie Davis from the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services; and Karla Aguirre and Marion Eckersley, both from the Utah Department of Workforce Services.

This website from the Child Welfare Information Gateway provides resources and materials as part of child abuse prevention and awareness month. A center piece of the site is the 2016 Prevention Resource Guide: Building Community, Building Hope, which includes interactive scenarios, outreach tools, over 20 practice tip sheets, and a video gallery promoting the value of community-based child abuse prevention programs. The site also connects users to a variety of prevention-related publications.

This blog post from the National Skills Coalition highlights a letter from the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Labor to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) State Workforce Administrators and Workforce Development Boards and American Jobs Centers. The letter encourages these entities to coordinate efforts to better connect SNAP participants, especially able-bodied adults without dependents, with employment and training opportunities provided through the workforce development system.