In December 2011, representatives from the Jefferson County Department of Human Services, Career and Family Support Services, Colorado Works and Child Care Assistance Program contacted the Welfare Peer TA (WPTA) Network for assistance in determining the optimal number of cases each TANF caseworker should maintain, so that an appropriate amount of time and attention can be paid to all participants to assist them in achieving higher levels of economic self-sufficiency. In response to Jefferson County’s TA Request, the WPTA team conducted information gathering outreach to 10 of the largest cities in the country (New York, New York; Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; Houston, Texas; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Phoenix, Arizona; San Antonio, Texas; San Diego, California; Dallas, Texas; and San Jose, California). This data provided Colorado and other States a greater understanding of optimal caseload sizes for TANF offices, and of caseload sizes per TANF eligibility workers versus case managers. The Technical Assistance Summary associated with this effort provides a high-level overview of TANF caseload sizes among the 10 highlighted metropolitan areas. It also provides insight into staffing structure, caseload size designation, characteristics of staff and participants, caseload manageability, caseload assignments, caseload demographic information, workload and responsibilities of staff, curricula and training, as well as barriers and challenges faced by the TANF programs.

The Administration for Children and Families' Office of Family Assistance (OFA) hosted the "Strategies to Assist Noncustodial Parents in Improving Economic Well-Being" webinar. This webinar showcased several programs making headway in this area. TANF programs and their safety-net partners increasingly understand the importance of engaging noncustodial parents while also holding them accountable for the economic and social growth of their children. Barriers such as unemployment, underemployment, or incarceration can hinder noncustodial parents from providing for their children even when many want to do so. The Webinar featured three programs.

1. North Dakota PRIDE is a partnership between North Dakota's Department of Human Services, Job Service North Dakota, the Child Support Enforcement Division, and eight judicial district courts throughout the state. The program refers parents with unpaid child support obligations to Job Service North Dakota for employment support.

2. Kansas Child Support Savings Initiative is a partnership between Kansas Child Support Services and the state Treasurer's Office to empower noncustodial parents to save money for their children's education. Noncustodial parents open 529 savings accounts for their children and for every dollar they put into the account, the State reduces their child support arrears by two dollars.

3. Couples Advancing Together is a program of the Center for Urban Families in Baltimore, Maryland that provides employment development, case management services, and healthy relationship skills training to couples with children who currently receive public benefits through the Maryland Department of Social Services. Completion of the Couples Advancing Together program qualifies participants for a 10% reduction in any child support arrears they owe to the State of Maryland, which is helpful to those who are noncustodial parents to children outside their primary family unit.

The Working Poor Families Project released a policy brief that outlines ways that states can encourage two-generation strategies within programs to continue to help adults achieve economic success while maintaining strong, stable families. The brief includes an in-depth history of poverty and two-generation strategies in the United States, and offers specific recommendations to support and stimulate these efforts within states.

This study sought to examine the effect of prenatal poverty on the birth weight of infants (as birth weight can be a predictor for a range of outcomes for children) and subsequently, the effect that work-based welfare assistance, such as the EITC and TANF, has on maternal and infant health. The study found that there is a causal link between prenatal poverty and low birth weights, finding that state EITCs relieve prenatal poverty and indicated increased birth weights in babies born to mothers who received an earned income tax credit. However, the study found mixed results for TANF receipt and its effect on birth weights.

This brief from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities provides a broad overview of research and evidence of the positive effect of public benefit programs on poverty rates in the U.S. Programs highlighted include SNAP, Medicaid, and refundable tax credits with a discussion of the current support for low income working families (versus historical policies which did not incentivize work). To conclude, the brief provides research citing improved long-term outcomes for children whose families are supported by public benefit programs. Two appendices provide charts with the number of people kept above the poverty in each state; an interesting and potentially helpful resource for policymakers and program administrators.

This data report from Child Trends provides updated information and recent data related to TANF and its outcomes for children. A summary of trends is provided as well as a series of graphs offering both longitudinal data and point in time data from fiscal year 2010. Various studies are cited which offer both mixed results when examining TANF’s effect on child poverty.

The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation released a publication that provides tables containing Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) policies for each state as of July 2013. The Databook also includes longitudinal tables describing various state policies for selected years between 1996 and 2013.

The Brookings Institution released a report that examines how the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program responded to the increased unemployment rates during the Great Recession (December 2007 - June 2009). Authors of the report explored three conducted studies that looked at changes in TANF rolls in relation to two alternative measures of rising unemployment per state.

The Urban Partnerships Initiative was a project designed by the Office of Family Assistance to improve outcomes for low-income families by facilitating peer exchange among TANF stakeholders in urban centers. This project sought to identify the issues faced by urban communities in moving families from welfare to work, to establish community-level collaborative, and to match technical assistance to community needs. The key purposes of the project were to convene Academies with key stakeholders from urban areas with high TANF caseloads and provide intensive technical assistance to these urban communities to help them develop relationships between systems, to identify and remove barriers to collaboration between systems, and to develop strategic plans addressing the needs identified by the communities during the panel meeting.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) proposed to amend the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) regulations to require states to maintain policies and practices that prevent TANF-funded assistance from being used in any electronic benefit transfer transaction in specified locations.