This report from the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) describes major welfare and family self-sufficiency research that OPRE’s Division of Economic Independence sponsored in Fiscal Year 2018. The five areas of research explored by OPRE projects are: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, employment and the labor market, education and training, behavioral science, and cross-cutting and other safety net research. The report provides project summaries and highlights key findings.

This Office of Family Assistance-sponsored webinar on February 26, 2019 discussed the complexities of engaging two-parent families in TANF, and featured strategies to improve employment outcomes through relationship education. Representatives from the Oklahoma Department of Human Services, Insight Policy Research, Public Strategies and the Urban Institute participated.

This Federal Register notice is an update of the poverty guidelines by income and size of household. This new set of guidelines reflects a 2.4 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index between calendar years 2017 and 2018 and is used as an eligibility criterion by Medicaid and other Federal programs.

This updated and expanded report from the Congressional Research Service provides a summary of TANF block grant information and addresses frequently asked questions. The report covers TANF funding and expenditures, TANF caseload data, level of TANF cash benefits, and TANF work participation standards.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposes data collection activities as part of the Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) program. ACF has developed a multi-faceted research and evaluation approach to better assess HPOG activities and their results. Under a second round of HPOG grants awarded in 2015, ACF provided grants to five tribal-affiliated organizations and 27 non-tribal entities. The Office of Management and Budget approved data collection for this round, and the first submission of data, approved in August 2015, included baseline data collection instruments and the grant performance management system, followed by a second submission approved in June 2017 that included additional data collection for the National Evaluation impact and descriptive studies and the Tribal Evaluation. A third submission for National Evaluation impact study data collection was approved in June 2018. The proposed data collection activities will provide data for the impact, descriptive, and cost-benefit studies of the non-tribal grantees. Comments are due to ACF by February 27, 2019.

The State Plan is a mandatory statement that states submit to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); it is comprised of an outline describing how the state's TANF program will be administered, as well as certifications required by the state's Chief Executive Officer. States are required to submit new plans within a 27-month period. HHS/Administration for Children and Families (ACF) proposes to continue information collection without change, and copies of the proposed collection can be obtained by writing to ACF. The Office of Management and Budget is required to make a decision regarding the collection of information between 30 and 60 days after publication of this document in the Federal Register.

This University of Maryland report, a part of the annual Life After Welfare series, reviews the outcomes of households that are no longer on TANF caseloads. The report examines the characteristics, employment, and earnings outcomes of 12,597 families who left Maryland’s Temporary Cash Assistance (TCA) program between January 2004 and March 2017. The findings suggest that these families improved their financial situations after exiting TCA, compared to their circumstances before TCA enrollment. However, these families still struggle to maintain independence from cash assistance following exit from the program.

Urban Institute fellow and podcast host Justin Milner, along with experts in the U.S. Department of Labor and the Brookings Institution, speaks about what evidence-based policy is and what it looks like in practice. The speakers emphasize basic research, statistical evaluation, performance management and measurement, and experiential evidence to build effective and applicable programs. Because policy makers do not always use robust evidence, many government programs do not have large impacts when statistically scrutinized. Thus, including researchers is important in the policy debate and program development stages to create successful new initiatives and identify existing effective programs for expansion.