On February 7, 2019 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. ET, the National Association of Counties will host the third of a three-part webinar series on evidence-based policymaking. The previous two webinars, Identifying Effective Programs and Using Evidence in Budgeting & Contracting, can be found on their website. This session will focus on practical tips that practitioners can use to monitor and assist service providers using data information. Also, county officials currently using evidence-based policymaking will be present to discuss their own experiences and answer participant questions.

In this February 6, 2019 webinar from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. ET, the WIOA performance accountability team from the U.S. Departments of Labor and Education will discuss recent federal guidance on data validation for state reporting. The webinar will not only answer questions on developing data validation systems that comply with new reliability metrics for data reporting, but will also facilitate interagency and interstate communication on challenges, solutions, and best practices for data validation.

Using data to inform, create, and administer service provision is the best way to ensure effective programmatic change. On January 31, 2019 at 1:00 p.m. ET, Mathematica will host a webinar for practitioners to explore using administrative data in pre-employment transitional programs. Presenters will showcase new ways to use tools like Microsoft Excel to analyze demographic, geographic, and training characteristics and how to analyze these data to improve vocational rehabilitation services.

This blog post from Child Trends presents findings from a recent Early Childhood Data Collaborative survey, which noted that 22 states have created data sharing systems to measure the utilization and outcomes of early childhood services. However, this study also suggested that most states have not yet included home visiting data in their integrated systems due to challenges in linking data across a range of home visiting programs with varying data collection requirements and data storage capacity.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposes data collection activities as part of the Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) program. ACF has developed a multi-faceted research and evaluation approach to better assess HPOG activities and their results. Under a second round of HPOG grants awarded in 2015, ACF provided grants to five tribal-affiliated organizations and 27 non-tribal entities. The Office of Management and Budget approved data collection for this round, and the first submission of data, approved in August 2015, included baseline data collection instruments and the grant performance management system, followed by a second submission approved in June 2017 that included additional data collection for the National Evaluation impact and descriptive studies and the Tribal Evaluation. A third submission for National Evaluation impact study data collection was approved in June 2018. The proposed data collection activities will provide data for the impact, descriptive, and cost-benefit studies of the non-tribal grantees. Comments are due to ACF by February 27, 2019.

The State Plan is a mandatory statement that states submit to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); it is comprised of an outline describing how the state's TANF program will be administered, as well as certifications required by the state's Chief Executive Officer. States are required to submit new plans within a 27-month period. HHS/Administration for Children and Families (ACF) proposes to continue information collection without change, and copies of the proposed collection can be obtained by writing to ACF. The Office of Management and Budget is required to make a decision regarding the collection of information between 30 and 60 days after publication of this document in the Federal Register.

This fact sheet by the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research on Poverty reviews the challenges of low-wage jobs and identifies factors of economic instability; these factors include irregularity in work schedules and monthly income. The fact sheet considers how unpredictability can be a complicating issue for safety net program eligibility and affects the workers’ well-being.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation literature review examines how state and local TANF agencies have implemented approaches to improve their organizational culture to be more client-centered. The review’s premise is that the agencies’ organizational culture affects TANF program implementation, both in terms of the clients and the work that frontline staff performs.

A January 9, 2019 webinar will discuss the implementation and outcomes of the Individual Placement and Support-Supported Employment practice for TANF families. This webinar will feature the Project Director for SAMHSA’s Transforming Lives through Supported Employment Program (SEP) in Washington State and a representative from the grant program’s evaluation team.