Skills-based hiring is intended to help employers focus more on what people can actually do and less on traditional requirements such as degrees or years of experience. But making that approach work requires a clear understanding of which skills are needed for a job. This resource from the American Institutes for Research looks at how four states are working to define job-related skills in a consistent, evidence-based way. The effort focuses on public benefits specialist roles, making the lessons especially relevant to government agencies.

The resource is especially useful because it moves beyond the idea of “skills-based” hiring and looks at the foundational work needed to make it practical. By defining skills based on how jobs are performed, states can create more consistent approaches to hiring, career development, and workforce planning. For TANF agencies, these lessons can support both stronger internal workforces and more informed conversations with participants about the skills they can build and demonstrate in the labor market.

Young people leaving foster care often take on financial responsibilities earlier than their peers, while having fewer opportunities to learn about saving, banking, and building financial stability. This Annie E. Casey Foundation report examines the financial experiences of young people participating in the Opportunity Passport program, which combined financial guidance with savings accounts, stipends, and opportunities to receive savings matches. The report highlights both the challenges young people faced transitioning out of foster care and the supports that helped them begin building assets. 

For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) practitioners working with young adults, this resource offers a useful way to think about financial stability beyond monthly income. Young people may need support developing the skills, habits, and resources to manage money and build assets over time. The findings can inform conversations about financial coaching, savings opportunities, employment supports, and partnerships with organizations that help young adults strengthen their financial lives.

Transitioning from foster care into adulthood can be challenging for any young person, but Native youth may also be navigating questions of culture, community, identity, and connection. This resource from the National Tribal Child Welfare Center for Innovation and Advancement brings together guidance, research, tools, and programs that can help Tribal child welfare professionals support young people as they move toward adulthood. The resource emphasizes youth engagement, connectedness, well-being, and helping young people build futures that reflect their own goals and choices.

This resource focuses on culturally connected and youth-centered support and can help Tribal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) staff and their partners think more broadly about how services can be coordinated around the goals and strengths of Native youth. By highlighting tools and approaches that can be adapted to individual and community needs, the resource provides ideas for building stronger supports as young people take on greater independence.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) non-assistance funds flow through workforce boards, employment program providers, and community partners—but data about service delivery often lives in separate systems. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has identified this as a core program integrity challenge: without cross-agency data infrastructure, TANF agencies struggle to assess provider performance, identify service gaps, and connect spending to participant outcomes.

As a result, the Office of Family Assistance’s State and Tribal Technical Assistance and Resources (STAR) team developed the TANF Program Integrity Office Hours as a series of topical peer learning sessions where TANF agencies can share what's working, explore real challenges, and walk away with practical strategies they can use to address the challenge identified by GAO.

This recording includes key takeaways from the July session, highlights from peer discussions, and an overview of how to use and navigate the companion resource, which can help TANF programs assess and strengthen their own provider contracts and accountability structures.

This Office of Family Assistance brief focuses specifically on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) child-only cases in which a child receives assistance while a parent is excluded from the assistance unit because of citizenship or immigration status. The brief examines how common these cases are among broader TANF child-only cases and brings greater attention to a part of TANF that can be easy to overlook.

For TANF practitioners, this resource provides useful context for understanding the families behind child-only cases and the different circumstances that can shape eligibility. It can help TANF staff understand the impact of child-only cases involving a parent excluded because of immigration status and how they impact program caseloads, spending, and reporting.

The Competitive Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) is a federal funding opportunity that supports organizations working with adolescents and young adults to build skills for healthy relationships, responsible decision-making, and planning for the future. Eligible applicants include community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, and other qualified partners that serve young people. 

For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) practitioners, PREP is an opportunity to strengthen supports for youth beyond employment services alone. Many TANF families include teens and young adults who are navigating important life transitions, and this program can help fill gaps by supporting skills that contribute to long-term stability and well-being. TANF agencies can use this opportunity to partner with organizations that are focused on youth development or explore whether they are eligible to apply directly. This funding can help expand services that prepare young people for adulthood in a more intentional and supportive way. Applications are due August 31, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. ET. 

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services added new peer support programs to the Title-IV Prevention Services Clearinghouse, for which all states can now claim federal reimbursement. The expansion advances the Trump Administration’s Great American Recovery and A Home for Every Child initiatives by equipping states with evidence-based resources to help parents overcome addiction, thereby strengthening families and reducing the number of children entering foster care. The services are designed to connect parents and caregivers with people who have lived experience navigating similar challenges, providing practical support, encouragement, and connections to community resources before families reach a crisis point. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) practitioners can use this resource to better understand how peer support can complement existing services, engage families in a more accessible and supportive way, and connect parents and caregivers to resources that can help promote family stability and well-being.

A digital service may look efficient from an agency’s perspective while being confusing or frustrating for the people expected to use it. This guide from GovLoop explains the importance of understanding people’s experiences before redesigning or upgrading digital services. It introduces customer journey mapping and human-centered design as tools agencies can use to identify where people encounter problems and create services that are easier to navigate.

For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) practitioners, this approach can be useful when thinking about online applications, eligibility processes, appointment systems, document submission, and other digital interactions with families. Instead of assuming that a difficult process is simply a user problem, practitioners can examine the process from the client’s perspective and identify where confusion, unnecessary steps, or unclear instructions create barriers. The guide can help TANF leaders and staff ask practical questions about what families experience at each stage of accessing services and use that information to make improvements. Its emphasis on listening to users makes it a useful resource for agencies working to make digital services more accessible.

Finding out which public benefits a family may qualify for can be difficult when eligibility rules differ across programs and applications require time, information, and paperwork. This Urban Institute resource evaluates the initial implementation of MyFriendBen, a free online screening tool that helps people quickly identify benefits and community resources for which they may qualify. The evaluation found that the tool helped many users discover programs they did not know about, and most users who applied for a new benefit or resource were approved for at least one program. At the same time, the research shows that screening is only the first step; many people still needed help understanding application requirements and completing the process.

For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) practitioners, this resource offers practical lessons for improving benefits access. A digital screener can help families see the full range of supports that may be available rather than approaching each program separately. It can also help staff identify where technology can reduce information barriers while highlighting where personal assistance is still needed. TANF agencies can use the findings to think about how screening tools might connect families to navigators, community organizations, and application assistance.

Access to education and training does not automatically translate into a good job. People also need help figuring out which opportunities make sense for their goals, how to pay for training, what credentials employers value, and what steps can lead to a sustainable career. This National Skills Coalition factsheet focuses on career navigation as an important part of making Workforce Pell work for students and workers. It highlights the role states can play in connecting people with information and support as they move through education and workforce systems.

Career navigation can make workforce referrals more useful by helping people move beyond simply identifying a training program to understanding how that program fits into a longer-term career pathway. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) practitioners can use the resource to think about stronger partnerships with workforce agencies, education providers, and employers, as well as the supports participants may need before, during, and after training. The broader lesson is important for TANF: connecting someone to a program is only the beginning; helping them understand where that opportunity can lead can make the pathway to employment much more meaningful.