This Mathematica brief describes the activities of the Mississippi Action Learning Network (MALN) from May 2022 to December 2023 and includes takeaways related to how facilitators planned and facilitated meetings, meeting attendance, how sharing and learning occurred, what participants learned and collaboration examples, and progress the group made towards its goals. MALN is a Mississippi state initiative where leaders share and learn best practices, innovations, and solutions for improving economic mobility.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has published details of a new process for victims and survivors of trafficking to block adverse information from their credit reports that resulted from their trafficking experience. This Polaris Project guide was created to provide survivors and advocates with additional information about this process.

Just Science hosted a Human Trafficking Policy and Research Analyses Project mini season and sat down with RTI International in episode two of the podcast to discuss a project which focuses on economic empowerment for those who have experienced human trafficking. For those who have experienced human trafficking, economic or financial consequences are often inextricably linked to their trafficking experience and may leave those people without the skills, resources, or social capital to meet their needs in the community. As part of the project, researchers are developing a guide to help service providers understand fundamentals and important considerations of implementing economic empowerment programs for people who have experienced human trafficking, including programming related to financial education, financial abuse, and supporting employment. This podcast episode describes promising practices related to economic empowerment programming for people who have experienced human trafficking, the experience of incorporating trauma-informed practices in human trafficking research, and recommendations for other researchers interested in this work.

Children and youth involved with the child welfare system are at heightened risk of experiencing human trafficking. Therefore, child welfare agencies must be at the forefront of responding to and preventing human trafficking. This Child Welfare Information Gateway bulletin explores how agencies can support children and youth who have been exploited as well as those who may have risk factors for future exploitation. It provides background information about trafficking, including its scope, relevant legislation and initiatives, and strategies agencies can implement to address the trafficking of children and youth in the United States.

The understanding of how child welfare agencies identify youth who have experienced human trafficking (or are at increased risk for experiencing human trafficking) is somewhat limited. In an effort to address this knowledge gap, the Identifying and Addressing Human Trafficking in Child Welfare Agencies (IAHT) study conducted interviews with state child welfare leaders from 25 states about how their agencies work to identify and serve children and youth who have experienced or are at increased risk of trafficking. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief describes human trafficking screening tools currently being used by state child welfare agencies that participated in the IAHT study, as well as key themes that arose from interviews with these state child welfare leaders regarding considerations for screening tool selection and protocols.

In recognition of World Day for the Prevention of and Healing from Child Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Violence, the Administration for Children and Families announced the launch of two new microlearnings developed for frontline professionals who work with children to strengthen screening for human trafficking and safety planning. As children who have already experienced abuse are at disproportionate risk for human trafficking through coercive online and offline schemes, professionals in child welfare and other youth-serving programs are in positions to identify the risks for exploitation early, promote healing, and strengthen resiliency. These are the new offerings:

• Human Trafficking Screening for Child Welfare Professionals
• Safety Planning and Multidisciplinary Response for Child Welfare Professionals

The 30-minute modules are designed to be quick, digestible, and interactive trainings for busy professionals. Their content is intended to support personnel in their everyday work of preventing and responding to human trafficking among children and youth — in foster care and in the broader community.

Supplemental Security Income (SSI) provides a safety net for millions of young adults with significant disabilities. Although most SSI participants do not work, many want to do so, potentially because working can provide a substantially higher income than SSI participation and improve quality of life. Policy analysts have speculated that efforts to help these individuals firmly establish themselves in the labor force before they apply for SSI might succeed. However, providing vocational services to people before they apply for SSI is challenging because it requires identifying in advance those who are likely to apply for SSI later. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report aims to inform those who study or develop programs offering employment services to young adults who are potential SSI participants. Employment and other programs seeking to effectively support potential SSI applicants could consider using the findings to improve their outreach and intake screening processes.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, human services agencies faced unique challenges to adapt services to meet new needs while supporting the staff delivering these services. The impact of this period is still felt today, with families adjusting to ending pandemic programs and communities experiencing human services workforce shortages. However, these challenges also spurred innovation in how people support each other. This Administration for Children and Families resource discusses how ACF catalyzed a new employee-centric program that has helped define their agency culture and advanced their work in communities.

Capturing a clear picture of Americans’ financial lives involves looking at not only financial metrics but also the circumstances that shape people’s everyday lives, such as access to health care and affordable childcare. However, creating this holistic understanding can be difficult. Researchers and local officials must navigate a fragmented data landscape, which makes it challenging to understand people’s financial lives, much less develop solutions to improve them.

The Urban Institute’s Financial Well-Being Data Hub developed a tool to address the challenge by allowing users to browse financial well-being metrics across publicly available datasets. The tool’s more than 300 metrics include core measures of financial well-being, such as the value of household assets and debts, and contextual factors that shape people’s financial lives, such as disruptions due to climate-driven events. Users can filter metrics by data source, geography, and topic.