Over the past thirty years, Federal and State policymakers have created various programs with the common goal of moving people from welfare to work. A long debated issue has been how to increase employment among welfare recipients. This research synthesis presents lessons learned from the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies (NEWWS) and provides answers to critical questions in the welfare-to-work policy discussion.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration's (DOLETA's) sponsored a one and a half day seminar on the development of strategies to help Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Welfare to Work (WTW) customers overcome barriers to employment. The purpose of the conference was to give practitioners an opportunity to exchange information on experiences, learn of promising program strategies, and consider what can be done to help customers with multiple barriers to work who are facing time limits get on a pathway to employment. This report provides a summary of the seminar.

This report summarizes the key findings of the Administration for Children and Families' seminar, “Site Visit to ConnectInc: Offering Effective Post-employment Services to TANF Clients in Rural Areas,” held June 18-19, 2002, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

This report summarizes a meeting of Region II and III Directors to address challenges to increase work participation rates in TANF programs with the expectation that work participation rates will increase with TANF reauthorization. The stakeholders took this opportunity to learn from well performing States with higher participation rates and States that had overcome barriers to improvement. The meeting provided an opportunity to promote and enhance collaboration and partnerships within the regions.

The Network has created a Q&A on the "Charitable Choice" provision under PRWORA. Additionally, we have compiled a list of Faith-Community Based Initiatives. To view these resources, click on the following links.

The ACF West-Central Hub sponsored a conference entitled “Outreach to Faith and Community: Renewing Our Commitment,” May 14-16, 2002, in New Orleans, Louisiana. This event was designed to support the President Bush's White House Initiative on Rallying the Armies of Compassion and the DHHS/ACF initiative to remove barriers to full participation of faith-based and community services in the delivery of government-funded social services. The conference also showcased ACF’s national initiatives in relation to strengthening families through promoting healthy marriages, parenting skills, and responsible fatherhood or male involvement in support of child well-being.

This panel discussion, held in Brooklyn, New York, is about Building on Faith: Tools to Fund Faith-Based & Community Programs.

The Hudson Institute, with the Center for Public Justice, hosted a panel discussion at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on September 4, 2002. The dual purposes of this panel were: 1) to announce the release of a study by Amy Sherman, Ph.D., a Senior Fellow at Hudson, and John Green, Ph.D., Director of the Bliss Institute at the University of Akron, and; 2) to discuss results of the study from the Federal, State, and local/grassroots perspective.

This conference was to educate, inform, and assist stakeholders from across Alabama about ACF's priority initiatives, to aggressively incorporate the initiatives throughout ACF programs and communities to strengthen families. The focus was on the importance of partnering faith- and community based programs with ACF at the State and local levels to bring fatherhood, healthy marriages, and youth development to strengthen families and to improve the quality of life for children, mothers, fathers, and communities.

Because community colleges are often affordable, they offer many students the opportunity to gain postsecondary education. It has been found that many students, who start at community college, drop out. Because of this problem, the Opening Doors Demonstration tested the effects of community college programs designed to combat this low retention rate and improve student achievement. This report describes MDRC's evaluation of six community colleges undergoing programs to increase student persistence.