The Urban Institute’s Marriage Calculator shows how marriage can change a household’s income, taxes, and benefit eligibility. It helps surface the often complex financial consequences of family structure decisions. For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs, it can be used as a neutral, educational tool in coaching conversations to help participants better understand how relationships and financial systems interact as well as the financial benefits that marriage can offer.

The National Fatherhood Initiative offers ready-to-use programs and tools that help fathers build stronger relationships with their children and take a more active role in family life. For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs, this fills a common gap: many services focus primarily on mothers, leaving fewer structured ways to engage fathers. These resources give TANF practitioners concrete curricula, activities, and strategies they can use to involve fathers in case planning, parenting education, and family stability efforts. By bringing fathers into the conversation in a meaningful way, programs can better support whole-family outcomes, improve child well-being, and strengthen long-term stability. Materials are available for purchase, making them a practical option for programs looking to implement structured fatherhood services rather than building content from scratch.

This resource, released by Casey Family Programs, examines how child protection agencies can work alongside faith-based and community-based organizations to better meet the needs of families involved in or at risk of involvement with the child welfare system. It highlights how these partnerships can expand the reach of trusted, community-rooted supports that families often turn to first—such as mentoring, material assistance, emotional support, and informal navigation help.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs can be part of this broader support ecosystem where child welfare agencies and community partners are already engaging families. TANF-funded services—such as cash assistance, work supports, child care assistance, and case management—can connect more intentionally with faith-based and community organizations that are addressing immediate, practical needs like food security, housing stability, and family support. This alignment helps ensure families are not moving between disconnected services, but instead receiving complementary supports that reinforce stability and self-sufficiency goals. Strengthening these connections can reduce fragmentation across systems and improve continuity of care for families navigating multiple challenges at once.

This resource by Chapin Hall takes a closer look at how adoption systems can better support children and the families who step in to care for them. For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs—which often work with relative caregivers and families connected to the child welfare system—this resource offers useful perspective on where families tend to encounter barriers and what more effective support can look like. It highlights opportunities to improve coordination and reduce confusion during what is often a complex and emotional process. TANF practitioners can use this information to better guide caregivers, strengthen collaboration with child welfare partners, and ensure families have access to both financial assistance and the broader supports that help foster placements remain stable over time.

For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs, this Institute for Family Studies resource offers a relatable way to introduce communication and relationship skills without relying on technical language. It centers on a practical idea: relationships are strengthened not by avoiding conflict, but by how people handle it and reconnect afterward. This resource addresses a common gap—many TANF clients may receive guidance on employment or finances, but not always on maintaining healthy relationships under stress. TANF practitioners can incorporate these soft skill concepts into workshops, case management conversations, or family-focused services to help participants build stronger connections, manage work and home challenges more effectively, and create more stable family environments.

The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) will host the National Fatherhood Summit from August 3 to August 5, 2026, providing a forum for stakeholders interested in sharing and discovering ways to support and promote responsible fatherhood. OFA encourages stakeholders from a variety of vocations and walks of life to help shape the Summit agenda by submitting workshop proposals that align with the Summit theme, “The Fatherhood Mandate: Building Families, Building America,” and one of their five concurrent Summit learning tracks:

1. Strengthening Marriage and Family Stability in the Context of Fatherhood
2. Fathers, Child Welfare, and the Path Beyond Foster Care
3. Workforce Readiness and Economic Mobility for Fathers
4. Fathers as Leaders in Faith-Based and Civic Institutions in Their Communities
5. Data-Driven Fatherhood Programming

If you are interested in presenting, OFA is welcoming submissions until April 24, 2026 at 11:59 p.m. ET. 

For more information on participating as an attendee, please check out The 2026 National Fatherhood Summit webpage. 

This resource explains how state and federal policies may create “marriage penalties” (financial disincentives to marry) or “marriage bonuses” (financial incentives to marry) for low-income families. For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs, this highlights a key challenge: families may face tradeoffs between financial stability and forming or maintaining two-parent households.

This report can be a useful tool for practitioners to better understand why clients may hesitate to report household changes or pursue marriage. The report helps staff have targeted conversations about program impacts and the benefits of marriage, anticipate barriers, and think through ways to better align TANF services with family stability goals.

This initiative highlights the importance of coordinated, community-based approaches to supporting families and preventing child welfare involvement. TANF programs can use this model to strengthen cross-system partnerships and align services across child welfare, community organizations, and other supports. By leveraging collaborative approaches, TANF agencies can expand access to prevention-focused services that promote stability, safety, and family well-being.

This resource page from the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services highlights state-level prevention strategies, including in-home family support and kinship navigator programs. TANF programs can use these models to expand prevention-focused services and strengthen partnerships with child welfare and community organizations. These approaches demonstrate how coordinated, family-centered strategies can reduce risk factors and support child safety while keeping families together.