The Workforce Strategies Initiative published this update on how community colleges and sector initiatives are collaborating to benefit businesses and low-income workers seeking. As there is a continued demand for workers educated beyond high school, 43 percent of adults between the ages of 25 and 64 in the United States are not educated beyond a high school level.

The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics seeks to enhance and improve consistency in data collection and reporting on children and families. This 2007 resource provides a set of key indicators that measure important aspects of children’s lives. The indicators included in this report met the following criteria: easy to understand by broad audiences, objectively based on substantial research connecting them to child well-being and easily estimated using reliable data; balanced, so that no single area of children’s lives dominates the report; measured regularly, so that they can be updated and show trends over time; and representative of large segments of the population, rather than one particular group.

Published through Child Trends, this newsletter includes information from the National Survey of Children’s Health, which provides state-level data on children’s health and wellbeing. Additionally, authors provide information on new data tools and resources on child welfare.

This resource from the Urban Institute provides information on asset building among low-income families. Because welfare benefits and food stamps are means tested, assets and income must fall below set limits for families to qualify. This ensures that benefits go to the most needy families; however, asset limits can also discourage asset building for low-income families. Authors review how assets, such as education, a home, a car, or an individual development account (IDA), can be exempted.

From the Urban Institute, this paper reviews the use and quality of care and education that children in low-income families receive. Authors focus on these issues and provide suggestions for better supporting the development of children in low-income families before they enter the public school system. Current public policies are focused on supporting parental work, child development, and the quality of market-based settings, and many policies do not focus on all three of these issues, which are important.

Evidence-based practice is the practice of applying the best available research evidence in the provision of health, behavior, and education services to enhance outcomes for serving families. This brief on evidenced-based practice is from Child Trends and reviews strategies for front line workers to bring research to practice. Additionally, authors provide strategies to help reduce the lag time between the identification and application of evidence-based practice and make evidenced-based research easily accessible to practitioners.

This paper focuses on poverty in the last 40 years in the United States, focusing on policy and poverty in the African American community. Between 1968 and 2005, the black poverty rate fell from 35 percent to about 25 percent. However, in 2005, blacks were more than three times as likely as whites to be in “deep poverty,” meaning incomes below 50 percent of poverty. Additionally, Hispanics were twice as likely as whites to be poor (8.6 percent versus 3.5 percent).

Currently, most measures of poverty focus mainly on income and income level and do not include other aspects of economic status such as assets or debt. From the National Center for Children in Poverty, this fact sheet reviews the current measures of poverty in the United States. Authors also provide alternative ways that economic hardship can be measured to accurately portray poverty.

This brief presents research findings from the SAMHSA 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health and provides information on illicit drug use among youth. The Survey found that youth who did not participate in any extracurricular activities had higher rates of past month cigarette and illicit drug use than those who participated in 4 or more activities.

This study was completed through the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, and explores how local management of TANF programs has adapted practices to address changing needs of the TANF population in the local areas. This study was conducted in five sites across the country, including Phoenix, Arizona; Macon, Georgia; Kansas City, Missouri; Newark, New Jersey and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Findings conclude that the implementation of TANF varies across the sites, and that programs will have upcoming changes in response to the Deficit Reduction Act.