The Center for Law and Social Policy describes the challenges that workers with volatile schedules face in accessing public benefits, such as SNAP, TANF, Medicaid, and child care assistance. Many low wage workers now have volatile schedules, meaning they receive one week or less advance notice of their upcoming work schedule. These workers also experience fluctuations in the number of hours worked each week. Workers with volatile schedules often need public benefits to supplement their income, but such schedules can make it difficult to access these benefits. After analyzing how volatile schedules impact access to benefits, this brief provides best practices for policymakers to consider to help workers access SNAP, TANF, and other public assistance support. For example, states can request a waiver to allow workers to average their hours across the month, which can reduce the need for clients to participate in employment and training programs for working less than 30 hours a week.

Homes for Families, Inc. developed this guide to help service providers, policymakers, community leaders, state agencies, and other stakeholders conduct comprehensive assessments of homeless families. The guide defines assessment, describes the importance of a two-generation model, and presents implications for policy and practice.

This post from the Urban Institute discusses shortfalls of the TANF program and offers suggestions to make the program more successful and more effective for low-income families. The author describes how TANF policies can create disincentives and barriers to meeting the complex needs of TANF families. Rather, she suggests, federal performance measures should give states incentives to take a balanced approach to promote work, family economic stability, and child well-being. Additionally, states should have greater flexibility through reduced reporting requirements and fewer restrictions on specific client activities.

Homeless families struggle with a variety of structural and psychosocial issues, including severe poverty, unemployment, and exposure to interpersonal violence and trauma. Historically, the full range of homeless families’ needs has not been routinely assessed. The Assessment Checklist for Homeless Family Providers was created by the Bassuk Center to address this situation and assist service providers in conducting comprehensive, evidence-based assessments of the families they serve. The checklist covers the following eight domains that have been proven to be relevant to the care of homeless families: family demographics, immediate safety needs, housing and homelessness, self-sufficiency, service use, parent functioning, child development, and use of standardized screening instruments.

This brief from the Family Welfare Research & Training Group profiles cash assistance cases in Maryland that were designated as “child under one cases” and eligible for the federal Age of Youngest Child (AYC) exemption, which permits single parents to abstain from work requirements for up to 12 months while caring for an infant. Overall, the clients from these cases were substantially younger than the typical cash assistance client in Maryland, many of them were new to the cash assistance program, just over half had been employed before receiving benefits, and the typical parent only used the exemption for 7 months.

The resources and services available through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program are critical to ending family homelessness. State and local TANF programs can provide access to critical work opportunities and support services for families experiencing homelessness. This resource from the Heartland Alliance provides an overview of TANF, examples of where state and local TANF programs have been leveraged to support homeless families, and recommendations to ensure that TANF resources are leveraged effectively to support homeless families.

This report from the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) summarizes key findings from the implementation of the adapted version of the Reducing the Risk comprehensive sex education program in the Barren River and Lincoln Trail District Health Departments in Kentucky. In both districts, health educators delivered the program in relatively low-income, mostly rural high schools. The report describes the supports established to help health educators as they implemented the curriculum; adherence to the implementation plan; and the level of youth engagement with the curriculum.

In this study, published by the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities, caseworkers provided information regarding a mother’s number and quality of social supports and whether an infant was removed from her care. Analyses indicated that infants were less likely to be removed from the mother’s care when caseworkers viewed maternal social supports as positive. This association was strongest when the caseworker identified only positive supports, with no contacts defined as non-positive. Mothers who were assessed to have no intimate relationship or a low level of commitment were nearly twice as likely to have their children in foster care compared to mothers assessed to be in a mid-to-high level of committed relationship. Results suggest that caseworkers’ distinctions between positive and non-positive social networks influence removal decisions. (author abstract)

The social impact bond (SIB) uses private funds to pay for a social, educational, or health program. Then if the program achieves predetermined results, the government repays investors, plus a return. This paper from MDRC looks at the successes and failures of current SIBs and presents lessons learned for moving forward.

The Brookings Institution released a paper that documents the characteristics of the 46.7 million Americans who were living in poverty in 2014. The authors used data from the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement that were collected in March 2015. This data presents information about who lives in poverty, including characteristics of the working-age poor.