This brief describes a human-centered design approach that any state, Tribal, or local agency can use to strengthen partnerships between TANF and Child Welfare with the goal of lowering families’ risk of involvement with the Child Welfare system. It offers several example activities, including building empathy for families, mapping partners serving families, and exploring families' program experiences.

To address the critical need for support for Native American people who have experienced human trafficking, the Administration for Children and Families’ Office on Trafficking in Persons established the Demonstration Grants to Strengthen the Response to Victims of Human Trafficking in Native Communities (VHT-NC) Program. The program aims to build, expand, and sustain organizational and community capacity to deliver services to Native American people who have experienced human trafficking. In 2020, six VHT-NC projects received awards to provide culturally responsive and trauma-informed participant outreach and identification, comprehensive case management and service provision, and training to respond to human trafficking in their communities. This Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation brief provides examples of the culturally responsive approaches the VHT-NC projects took with regard to project staffing, education and training, outreach, and case management and supportive services. Within these four programming components, the brief describes the culturally responsive approaches used, identifies the challenges the projects encountered and potential suggestions to address them, and highlights the potential benefits and strengths of these culturally responsive approaches.

Based on input from state TANF programs during the 2023 National TANF Directors’ Meeting, the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) developed five virtual Learning Collaboratives (LCs) on topics best addressed through a cohort-based, peer learning format. These LCs were designed to be a progressive series of interactive meetings that facilitated reflection, peer sharing, connection with experts, and human-centered design and planning activities to deeply explore facets of the collaborative topic. Sessions were held monthly from March to August 2024 for 60-90 minutes.

The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 has prompted states to think about how they track employment and other outcomes of the TANF program. States have been interested in learning best practices in capturing and using data, and in hearing from other states about their data practices. The purpose of the Strengthening TANF Data and Reporting LC was to help participating states build knowledge, skills, and motivation to help their TANF programs strategically use their data to make evidence-driven decision that can support improved outcomes. Participating states included Arizona, Georgia, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, South Dakota, and West Virginia.

This OFA resource highlights the Strengthening TANF Data & Reporting LC, including key takeaways and resources from each session as well as overall themes and future considerations for follow-up.

Based on input from state TANF programs during the 2023 National TANF Directors’ Meeting, the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) developed five virtual Learning Collaboratives (LCs) on topics best addressed through a cohort-based, peer learning format. These LCs were designed to be a progressive series of interactive meetings that facilitated reflection, peer sharing, connection with experts, and human-centered design and planning activities to deeply explore facets of the collaborative topic. Sessions were held monthly from March to August 2024 for 60-90 minutes.

The Building Strategic Partnerships with Child Welfare Services LC was connected TANF professionals interested in building strategic partnerships with child welfare partners with experts and one another. It was designed to prepare states to partner with child welfare services to jointly explore a key area for upstream prevention, given the growing body of evidence demonstrating how the concrete and economic supports available through TANF can prevent and reduce families’ involvement with the child welfare system. Participating states included Massachusetts, Vermont, New Jersey, Alabama, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.

This OFA resource highlights the Building Strategic Partnerships with Child Welfare Services LC, including key takeaways and resources from each session as well as overall themes and future considerations for follow-up.

Based on input from state TANF programs during the 2023 National TANF Directors’ Meeting, the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) developed five virtual Learning Collaboratives (LCs) on topics best addressed through a cohort-based, peer learning format. These LCs were designed to be a progressive series of interactive meetings that facilitated reflection, peer sharing, connection with experts, and human-centered design and planning activities to deeply explore facets of the collaborative topic. Sessions were held monthly from March to August 2024 for 60-90 minutes.

The Overcoming Barriers to TANF Participation LC gathered TANF program leaders motivated by the many families facing barriers to accessing TANF or needed financial support despite their eligibility. The LC provided the opportunity for states to connect with each other while learning new strategies that may increase TANF participation for greater family well-being. It was designed to encourage participants to take steps to identify a priority barrier to participation in their TANF program. Participating states and territories included New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Virgin Islands, Pennsylvania, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, Minnesota, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Wyoming.

This OFA resource highlights the Strengthening Overcoming Barriers to TANF Participation LC, including key takeaways and resources from each session as well as overall themes and future considerations for follow-up.

Survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking need access to education and job training programs that are grounded in trauma-informed practices. Futures Without Violence hosted a webinar in January 2022 and focused on recognizing barriers to employment and education for survivors and strategies for building strong cross-sector collaborations between advocacy service providers and workforce development programs.

Very few domestic violence survivors are getting Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) waivers from the work requirements and time limits, despite being eligible. Federal law allows states to grant domestic violence waivers to TANF recipients when time limits, work requirements, and other policies would unfairly penalize victims of abuse or increase their risk of abuse. This Rutgers resource was developed through an examination of the annual reports from Michigan to the federal government on the number of domestic violence waivers issued from 2008 to 2021, as well as focus groups with TANF caseworkers. This resource discusses the importance of waivers for survivors and other work being done around this issue.

In recent years, local, state, and federal child support offices started reexamining how their enforcement and collection roles can be paired with services that foster meaningful parental engagement and invest in the social and economic well-being of parents paying child support. In examining child support services, it is important to understand the reach they have throughout federal benefits. Across the continuum of human services programs, rules related to child support can impact whether someone qualifies for benefits, what amount they can receive, or the amount of child support they owe – including but not limited to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid, childcare, and child welfare. Often, federal and state policies’ options regarding child support practices are made by individual programs in distinct silos from each other. This American Public Human Services Association resource discusses strategies that can help create the enabling conditions for continued progress in re-centering state and local child support collaborations with other human services program areas.

The Administration for Children and Families’ (ACF) inaugural data strategy provides a north star to ensure that data delivers for the people ACF serves. ACF recognizes that better data capacity internally and throughout the human services ecosystem can lead to improved operations, more informed policy, and faster, more proactive, and safer delivery of public benefits and services. This ACF resource explains the data strategy, which builds on their existing progress to better use, share, and analyze data at ACF. The strategy includes a dozen individual initiatives that fall into four categories: sustaining initiatives; one-stop shop initiatives; delivery initiatives; and technology initiatives. These categories include building foundational infrastructure such as hiring ACF’s first ever Chief Data Officer and establishing a Data Governance Council; supporting program offices by creating a Data Talent Center to provide expertise in hiring and retaining data talent; and sharing data regularly through community-centered data tools and stories.

This Office of Research, Planning and Evaluation resource shares three strategies, identified from the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency-Next Generation project report published earlier this year, to help program staff understand client needs better and improve client engagement. The resource uses examples from the report that details the approach that Monroe County in New York took to improve attendance at activities required by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.