Nearly 80 million individuals are enrolled in Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), including nearly half of all children and youth in the United States. Many of the individuals served through the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) funded programs are enrolled or eligible for Medicaid or CHIP. ACF released this Dear Colleague Letter to support states as they work to strengthen their implementation of Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment requirements to help ensure improved health outcomes for children and youth enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP.

Maternal and infant health is an urgent priority, and a coordinated effort across health and human services is crucial to foster positive maternal health outcomes. The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is responsible for many programs that support maternal and infant health, including home visiting, Head Start, childcare, Medicaid, TANF, child support, and others. ACF released this Dear Colleague Letter to assist human services providers in understanding their important role in addressing the syphilis epidemic by raising awareness and helping to facilitate access to early testing and treatment. Staff at human services agencies have a unique opportunity to intervene and help protect the health of pregnant women and babies by educating clients on the risks and encouraging early and regular prenatal care, including testing and treatment when necessary.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is working to strengthen the well-being of children, youth, and their families by integrating behavioral health services into the existing supports they rely on, such as social services and early childhood programs. ACF released these Dear Colleague Letters and compilations of resources to highlight the critical importance of timely, high-quality behavioral health crisis care and ensure that you are aware of how these resources can be accessed in your communities.

These resources accompany ACF’s webpage released earlier in 2024, which included a tip sheet for parents and caregivers and a series of short videos about mental health.

The FAST-LC Initial Convening was hosted on October 18-19, 2023 in Bethesda, Maryland. The session “Overview of the LI2 Framework with a Focus on the Learn Phase” included a 20-minute plenary presentation on the Learn, Innovate, Improve (LI2) framework and its roots in implementation science. The presenter also highlighted practical ways for the FAST-LC sites to get started with Learn phase activities.

The FAST-LC Initial Convening was hosted on October 18-19, 2023 in Bethesda, Maryland. This session was presented by Clare Anderson at Chapin Hall, who discussed the history of child welfare and its impact on the economic stability of families who are involved with the child welfare system.

FAST-LC held a virtual event in January 2024 that aimed to provide a better understanding of how TANF dollars are used in Child Welfare and operational considerations for aligning funding with prevention efforts. This session reinforced the ways in which TANF spending in Child Welfare is consistent with the statutory purposes of TANF (particularly the first purpose), to inform FAST-LC participating sites’ action plans, and to learn from peers about how they are utilizing TANF funds for prevention strategies upstream of and within child welfare.

FAST-LC held a virtual event in February 2024, “Road Maps and Road Tests: Strategies to Strengthen Your FAST-LC Initiatives.” The FAST-LC site teams were in the process of designing and implementing new strategies to advance their FAST-LC initiative goals. Drawing on the Learn, Innovate, Improve (LI2) framework introduced at the October Initial Convening, this session introduced site teams to two key strategies to support the design and pilot testing of new strategies. The session also featured a practitioner alum from the Leveraging America’s Social and Economic Resilience TANF Learning Community, who shared about their site’s experience with road mapping and road testing.

FAST-LC held a virtual event in April 2024, “Sharing Is Caring: Challenges and Solutions to Integrating TANF and Child Welfare Data for Prevention.” FAST-LC site teams were at varying stages of integration when it came to the working relationships and processes between TANF and Child Welfare program teams. Some teams are housed within the same agency or division whereas others are organized under separate departments. The organizational structure had some bearing on the extent to which data sharing exists between TANF and Child Welfare as well as the possibilities for further interagency sharing of such data. Yet, most FAST-LC teams have identified the topic of data sharing and integration as an area of focus and need for support. This event was designed to (1) offer guidance and tips in response to top-of-mind issues and questions related to TANF-Child Welfare data sharing and (2) share two novel case studies from the field.