This issue brief was developed by the Child Welfare Information Gateway and offers information to help States and Tribes work effectively together to serve families. Authors examine the key factors that affect Tribal-State relations in child welfare and provide promising practices for effective collaboration.

Child support is crucial for supporting low-income families; it makes up on average about 30 percent of family income. Authored by the Congressional Research Service, this report addresses the effects of adopting the changes made through the Deficit Reduction Act in terms of child support pass-through and disregard. Authors review possible indirect behavioral effects of implementing this policy.

This report from the Government Accountability Office reviews the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Authors provide information on how States cover adults under SCHIP, approaches employed by States to reach all individuals eligible for SCHIP and how States have evaluated their outreach approaches.

From the Urban Institute, this paper is an evaluation of the Special Homeless Initiative (HI) of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health. The Homeless Initiative was designed to prevent and end homelessness among the most vulnerable clients and clients with serious mental illness. This is the third report in the evaluation series and provides data on client outcomes from the Initiative.

This report is through the Rural Families Speak project at the University of Minnesota. Funded through the USDA National Research Initiative Cooperative Grant Program (NRICGP), this project tracked 524 rural low-income families in 17 states post-welfare reform. Data was collected on labor force participation, health, food security, and social support. It was found that low-income families face multiple challenges in rural areas including fewer employment opportunities, and also less access to support services such as childcare, transportation, and mental health services.

This report is from the Brookings Institution and reviews income inequality and new housing construction in 215 metropolitan areas. Findings show that between 1970 and 2000, distressed and non-distressed metropolitan areas with rapidly growing income inequality also had rapidly growing segregation by income. Researchers suggest that policies to reduce income inequality can help reduce overbuilding and income segregation in distressed areas.

The University of Missouri Extension requested the assistance of the Welfare Peer TA Network to plan and conduct a 2-day statewide Roundtable on the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)/Child Tax Credit (CTC) and strategies to help eligible current and former TANF participants and low-income families apply for the credits. The principal goal of the Roundtable was to build and enhance partnerships statewide between social services providers, Missouri’s TANF Agency, business leaders, and community and faith-based organizations, with an aim toward helping low wage earning families achieve financial self-sufficiency through the Earned Income Tax Credit

The RAND Corporation authored this report on the effects of work-conditioned welfare programs on marriage or child well-being. By using a theoretical framework and past research in this area, authors find that welfare programs can increase family income, which will affect child outcomes.

Through the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Partners for Fragile Families (PFF) demonstration program intended to affect systems change to ultimately improve outcomes for both parents and children in low-income families. Specifically, this report provides data on economic and child support outcomes for the project’s participants.

This research brief is from the Institute for Research on Poverty and provides information on how the needs of children can be met while parents are working. Over the past forty years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of mothers employed, which has changed expectations for all mothers. While expectations for low-income families have changed as well, the need for work supports has increased. In particular, the funding for the Earned Income Tax Credit and child care subsidies has increased to support workers in the workplace and their families.