On August 14 and 15, 2012, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Administration for Children and Families (ACF) Office of Family Assistance (OFA) Regions V, VI, VII, and VIII convened the 2012 Regions V, VI, VII, and VIII Tribal TANF Workshop in St. Paul, Minnesota. Designed to bring together Tribal TANF program directors and other key stakeholders, this workshop focused on the dual issues of effectively providing services to Tribal families in a recovering economy and helping TANF participants achieve self-sufficiency. Workshop attendees were provided with opportunities to strategically engage with their peers in order to share promising practices and the latest research, as well as to plan ways to improve TANF programming for low-income families. Over the course of the day and a half workshop a number of specific topics were covered including: Dialogue with the OFA Division of Tribal TANF Management; Youth Programming and Summer Youth Employment; Subsidized Employment Programs and Employer Engagement; Use of Skill-Building Activities; Audits, Financial and Grants Management, and Data Reporting; Collaboration with Child Support Enforcement and Child Welfare; and Financial Literacy and Asset Building. The wide reach of the workshop was evident with 24 Tribes represented from four OFA Regions. During the workshop, Tribal TANF program representatives also spent time networking and dialoguing on their program strengths, challenges, partnerships, and program policies/integrity, to garner new and innovative ideas from others for serving their TANF participants.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) has released an early childhood and family homelessness resource list in order to reinforce the importance of access to quality early childhood services for young homeless children and their families. The resources listed clarify policy options for State Administrators of Child Care and Head Start Directors to ensure that more young children and their families are served in child care and Head Start programs.

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities released a report discussing the relationship between SNAP and work among low-income households. The success of the core goals of SNAP in increasing the food purchasing power of eligible low-income households to improve their nutrition and alleviate hunger continues to be well documented. This report discusses previous documentations and addresses labor force participation among SNAP recipients, as well as how SNAP supports work.

Mathematica conducted an exploratory study for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food and Nutrition Service, to determine existing measures for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) modernization initiatives. These initiatives included call centers, online systems, document imaging, kiosks, partnering, waiving the face-to-face interview, shortened interviews, and online expedited applications. An integrated report summarizes findings on initiatives across the 45 States participating in the study, including how they monitor and measure performance. It also includes suggestions for performance measures and standards to consider.

Out of work, no diploma and struggling in poverty just three years ago, Quinton Sanders now has a full-time career in the medical field thanks to the Affordable Care Act's Health Profession Opportunity Grants program.

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities recently released an updated report reviewing State government SNAP Web sites. States across the U.S. provide general information to the public on their SNAP programs via the Internet, including information on their application process and State policy manuals. In this report, the CBPP reviews all the States' web pages to determine what information and services they offer. In addition to this, the report provides links to the addresses for each States' SNAP web pages and an overview of the types of information and services that State provides.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently published their revised version of "Online Services for Key Low-Income Benefit Programs: What States Provide Online with Respect to SNAP, TANF, Child Care Assistance, Medicaid, CHIP, and General Assistance." This report makes available to the public basic program information in these five main State-administered low-income benefit programs for most States. Application forms and data on the number of program participants is provided, as well as links that will provide additional information on eligibility and benefits.

Child Welfare Information Gateway published "Online Resources for State Child Welfare Law and Policy" to provide web addresses for State statutes that are accessible online. These addresses list part of the code for each State and territory that contains the laws addressing child protection, adoption, child welfare, legal guardianship, and services for youth. It also provides web addresses for States' regulation and policy sites, State court rules, Tribal codes, and judicial resources. Information for each State and territory can be accessed on the State Statutes Search page.

The MDRC recently published a report on early findings from a program for housing voucher recipients in New York City. In 2007, New York City's Center for Economic Opportunity launched Opportunity NYC-Work Rewards, a new test of three alternative but related ways of increasing employment and earnings for families who receive Housing Choice Vouchers to subsidize their rent. This report addresses five key findings from the first two and a half years of followup, informing future research on family self-sufficiency. The Work Rewards program will continue to track participants' outcomes through 2013, with future reports including additional information on results.

In 2012, the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) launched a major research initiative designed to enhance understanding of how policies and programs can build economic self-sufficiency by increasing employment, wages, labor market skills, and earnings. It is one of three such integrated research projects that extend over three-year periods with a range of activities that are focused on topics related to three themes identified by IRP as key trends in poverty and policy: Economic Self-Sufficiency, Family Change and Poverty, and the Intergenerational Transmission of Poverty.