This final report focuses on Future Steps. In this report, the authors (1) chronicle the design and operation of Future Steps, assessing program participation, service delivery, and costs; (2) examine 30-month impacts on employment, earnings, welfare dependence, self-sufficiency, and well-being; and (3) draw lessons and recommendations about implementing, designing, and testing future welfare-to-work programs in rural areas. The text box that follows provides a brief overview of these three points, with the rest of the report providing a more detailed discussion of each. The authors include a summary of the Future Steps model and a description of the evaluation’s design and analytic methods. (Author abstract)

This paper is an overview of the Wave 4 Family Employment Program (FEP) Study of Utah. The study included a cohort of participants in the FEP program, and Wave 4 provides data on an additional two years on usage of the program to help guide policy and program development. The average age of participants at entry was 28 years old, 93 percent were female, 64 percent were currently or have been married, 69 percent were in good to excellent physical health, 69.1 percent had a high school or GED degree, and the average number of children was 1.7. Additionally, 63.6 percent of the participants had only one episode of case assistance receipt between April 2005 and September 2010.

The ACF Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) hosted a symposium on the application of behavioral research to programs that serve low-income children and families in July 2010. OPRE released a summary of the event, which included behavioral researchers, social welfare researchers, foundation staff, federal staff, and social service program operators. Stakeholders discussed ways to improve social service delivery and program effectiveness for programs that serve low-income children and families.

On April 26th, 2011, Peer TA hosted a Webinar on a pair of innovative partnerships between TANF programs (or other public systems) and local faith-based or community organizations serving the same low-income families and individuals in their communities. Though these two sectors often work independently at the local level, many TANF officials and program leaders have experienced considerable gains by partnering.

This cross-site analysis examines all 8 of the exemplary FBCO-TANF partnerships described in the project’s case studies, by drawing out important findings related to volunteer management, organizational infrastructure, inter-agency communication, and place-based strategies. Moreover, the 14-page report articulates some of the leading reasons a TANF agency would want to partner with an FBCO, and it describes how effective partnerships can emerge.

Given the weak economy, many nonprofit organizations have been forced to make budget cuts, and often, these reductions are in organizational capacity, rather than direct service funding. The Finance Project authored this report in response to these trends on four approaches for nonprofit organizations serving youth, specifically, and how organizational leaders can support and strengthen their organizational capacity, including building accurate overhead rates into contracts and grants, accessing funding to directly support capacity building, accessing technical assistance to support or improve organizational capacity, and forming partnerships to share administrative services.

Low-wage workers must navigate through multiple social systems in order to access benefits to support employment. The Center on Law and Social Policy, in partnership with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, developed this toolkit to help state and local policymakers, program operators and advocates identify federal funding streams that can be used to support integrated service delivery. The toolkit focuses on integrated service delivery to help organizations offer multiple services to best support participants toward self-sufficiency.

This joint letter was signed by program heads in HHS and Agriculture providing information related to the health insurance exchanges, Medicaid eligibility information technology systems, the advance planning process for information technology procurements and how these and other programs can work together.

This resource is a presentation given by the Keynote speaker, Eugene Bardach, Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley at the National Association for Welfare Research and Statistics 50th Annual Workshop. The meeting occurred September 28-29, 2010 in Los Angeles, California, and the presentation was entitled, "Interagency Collaboration and Coordination in Social Policy Research and Practice."