The Office of Family Assistance held a Webinar on Integrating Two-Generation Strategies into TANF Programs on Thursday, April 28, 2016 from 1:00-2:30 p.m. EDT. The two-generation approach to serving low-income or disadvantaged families has seen renewed interest in recent years, with models focused on combining comprehensive, career-focused employment and training opportunities for parents with educational and enrichment opportunities for their children. However, state, territory, and tribal TANF program leadership and staff have suggested a need for more targeted TA and information around two-generation approaches and TANF integration and implementation strategies. In this facilitated webinar, presenters provided an overview of the policy components of an intentional two-generation approach and offered tools and resources that may be applicable to the audience’s TANF programs, wherever they lie on the two-generation continuum. Through a “Town Hall” format, presenters also provided planning, policy, and implementation strategies and lessons learned from their own experiences with two-generation integration.

Presenters included Dr. Monica Barczak, Senior Advisor, Administration for Children and Families; Peter Palermino, Program Manager, Economic Security Unit, State of Connecticut Department of Social Services; Elaine Zimmerman, Executive Director, Connecticut Commission on Children; Sisifo Taatiti, TANF Program Manager, Utah Department of Workforce Services; Tracy Gruber, Director of the Office of Child Care and Senior Advisor of the Intergenerational Poverty Initiative, Utah Department of Workforce Services; and Dr. Sharon McGroder, Program Director, Economic, Human Services & Workforce Division, Center for Best Practices, National Governors Association.

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, this guide features a collection of resources for TANF administrators and other practitioners on career exploration and assessment, career pathways and sector strategies, and labor market information. These resources may be helpful for those working with TANF recipients and low-income families in connecting their clients to jobs with wages that support self-sufficiency. There are four types of resources included in the guide: 

• Research Studies
• Technical Assistance Resources
• Client Assessments
• Data Sets Related To Education And Employment. (author abstract)

The Welfare Indicators Act of 1994 requires the Department of Health and Human Services to prepare annual reports to Congress on indicators and predictors of welfare dependence. The 2015 report on Welfare Indicators and Risk Factors, from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), provides indicators and risk factors through 2012 for most indicators, reflecting changes that have taken place since the enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in August 1996. As directed by the Welfare Indicators Act, the report focuses on benefits under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, formerly Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC); the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly Food Stamps); and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program.

This report from Generations United identifies key state laws and policies specifically designed to address barriers and better support grandparents and other relatives raising children. According to the report, almost 65 percent of children living in grandfamilies, or kinship care, are in states that have half or fewer of these key laws and policies. The report provides recommendations to aid the development of supportive federal and State policies and services for grandfamilies.

The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) has posted Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) caseload and application data for fiscal year (FY) 2015. The data includes families receiving assistance through state TANF and Separate State Program Maintenance-of-Effort (SSP-MOE). In FY 2015, there was a monthly average of 1.6 million families receiving TANF & SSP-MOE assistance, representing approximately 4.1 million recipients. This was a slight decline of 1.1 percent compared to the prior fiscal year. The monthly average number of TANF applications received in FY 2015 was 267,650.

This framework outlines how various types of research and evaluation generate information and answer empirical questions related to the human services provided by the Administration for Children and Families. The framework is designed to 1) organize and guide ACF’s decisions about investments in research and evaluation, and 2) provide clarification for potential grantees and contractors about the justifications for, and evidence expected from, each type of study, as well as relevant aspects of research design that contribute to high-quality evidence.

This guidance, developed jointly by the U.S. Departments of Labor (DOL), Education (ED), Health and Human Services (HHS), Agriculture (USDA), and Housing and Urban Development (HUD), provides an overview of the Administration's priorities in relation to the WIOA planning requirements, explains the planning requirements where necessary, and instructs States regarding submission procedures.

This kit, developed by IDEO, provides tools to help programs engage in human-centered design. Human-centered design is a creative approach to problem solving that starts by learning directly from the people you’re designing for in order to build empathy for them and a deep understanding of their needs to ensure that your solutions suit their needs. The kit includes a field guide, facilitators guide, and case studies. IDEO also offers courses in human-centered design.

This resource from the Duke Initiative on Survey Methodology at the Social Science Research Institute deals with two issues that come up for researchers when asking people sensitive questions: 1) social desirability bias (where respondents answer in the way they know to be socially favorable) and 2) privacy (where respondents don't want to answer a question because they think it's too personal). The tipsheet describes techniques that researchers can use to combat sensitivity to these issues and increase the reliability of surveys.

This report from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) presents analyses of the impact of the safety net on poverty rates and a close look at populations experiencing high risks of poverty during the 50 years since the War on Poverty began. The report highlights the increasing role of safety net programs in lifting families and children out of poverty between 1967 and 2012 by providing estimates of what poverty rates would have looked like had resources from government policies and programs not been available.