This report provides an overview of the likely effects of increasing the severity of sanction and time-limit policies in California on the welfare caseload, the state’s work participation rate, and the economic circumstances of vulnerable families. Researchers from the Public Policy Institute of California find that, as a result of such policies, the state’s caseload would be lower and the work participation rate higher, if the state adopted stricter sanction policies for adults who fail to meet work requirements.

The National Transitional Jobs Network developed this toolkit to provide States with information on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that is targeted to TANF participants. Transitional Jobs programs can help States increase TANF participants’ self-sufficiency while also meeting federal work requirements. The toolkit includes resources on how States can develop transitional jobs programs using the TANF Emergency Fund and provides examples of RFPs, Worksheets, and Assessment Tools.

This report is from the Assistant Secretary for Planning, Research, and Evaluation. Religion and spirituality play a significant role in the lives of Americans, and this report is focused on how religiosity and spirituality affect outcomes for low-income families. Researchers provide an overview of the role of religiosity for low-income families in the areas of marriage and relationships, parenting, youth outcomes, mental and physical health, substance abuse, and crime and violence, homelessness, and employment.

Due to the economic climate, many workers have faced the unstable labor market with declining wages and job insecurity, and the effects take a larger toll on disadvantaged workers. Organizations that are currently serving disadvantaged workers are also facing challenges to matching their clients to employment opportunities, and organizations have been finding innovative approaches to employment through sectoral employment strategies, career pathways and transitional jobs. This resource, from Public/Private Ventures, provides an overview of alternative staffing strategies currently being utilized across the country to support job seekers and disadvantaged workers.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance (OFA) and Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) and the United States Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (ETA) hosted a technical assistance teleconference for Newark, New Jersey’s Workforce Investment Administration. As an outgrowth of the OFA-sponsored Collaboration Initiative, Newark requested additional technical assistance on an innovative non-custodial parent initiative being integrated into the child support enforcement and workforce administrations in San Antonio, Texas.

This fact sheet is from the National Center for Children in Poverty and provides information on how the United States government measures poverty, and offers alternative ways for measuring economic hardship. Currently, the official poverty measure in 2009 is $22,050 a year for a family of four and $18,310 for a family of three, which is used to determine eligibility for public programs. Authors suggest creating a measure that accounts for regional differences would help families to better understand families in poverty across the country.

The Children’s Future Initiative was designed to prepare young children for achieving successful outcomes in school in Trenton, New Jersey. From Public/Private Ventures, this report offers key strategies employed from the Initiative, and offers information on program implementation, participant recruitment, and collaborations among Trenton’s agencies. Early findings include that this effort has started making changes in the institutional level to help agencies better serve children from birth to age three.

The capstone event for the Rural Communities Initiative was the Rural Leadership Forum that took place in Charleston, South Carolina on September 1-2, 2009. Representatives from the 16 rural TANF sites met to share lessons learned; explore leadership and sustainability plans; and discuss successes garnered and challenges encountered from the implementation of the Rural TANF sites’ TA plans over the past year.

From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, this resource gives an overview of the TANF provisions in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The Act Created an Emergency Contingency Fund under which states can receive 80 percent federal funding for increases (relative to a base year quarter) in certain TANF-related expenditures in federal fiscal years 2009 and 2010.

The Rural Communities Initiative conducted a Site Visit to the White Mountain Apache Tribal TANF Program based on their request for TA. Rural Communities Initiative staff partnered with consultants from the U.C. Davis Extension at the University of California to provide the Tribe with an in-depth needs assessment in order to strategize on developing solutions for programmatic improvement. The consultants, Julie Gondry and Dr. Geni Cowan, are Tribal TANF subject matter experts with program based skills in training, case management, and data reporting. Based upon the assessment results, the White Mountain Apache Tribal TANF Program will receive valuable recommendations to further enhance aspects of their program’s structure and administration to reach the end goal of self-sufficiency for their TANF participants.