Hawaii Department of Human Services

This interactive tool from the Urban Institute allows users to look at a picture of their city’s financial health through wealth data, credit bureau information, and peer groups that highlight a city’s challenges and promising interventions. Since financially healthy residents can better contribute to the local economy, this is a useful tool for those who want to support their local communities.

For long-term employment and career advancement, it is important that clients are placed in jobs that align with their education, experience, interests, and skills, as well as local labor market information (LMI). Workers can utilize assessment data and labor market information (LMI) to help clients make informed decisions about their career aspirations, including potential earnings, projected number of job openings, and entry level education needed.

The Online Work Readiness Assessment (OWRA) has linked work experiences and career interests of individuals with LMI to strengthen client pathways toward self-sufficiency. In this facilitated webinar, attendees learned how programs have used assessment data and LMI to enhance the types of services offered to clients and improve employment outcomes. The webinar also explored the comprehensive OWRA tool and its LMI functionality. The interactive webinar was held on December 6, 2017 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

To learn more about OWRA and access a variety of resources, visit https://peerta.acf.hhs.gov/owra.

This practice brief highlights the efforts of four Office of Family Assistance, Systems to Family Stability National Policy Academy teams that redesigned their TANF case management systems to support client coaching and motivational interviewing strategies. The Academy was an 18-month initiative that supported TANF programs in designing and creating collaborative systems across agencies to improve family economic security.

This brief summarizes current research around those Americans most at risk for falling into deep poverty. It also examines the role of the safety net in preventing and solving deep poverty. It proposes three potential areas of research, including: 1) measurement of food insecurity and other material hardships, 2) work and the effect of the labor markets on those experiencing poverty, and 3) policy – approaches that have worked, and those that have not (for example, looking at what policies can help those most at risk for poverty, such as SNAP, TANF, and child support enforcement).

The purpose of this OFA Program Instruction is to transmit the renewed form ACF-202 and instructions for completing that form, which states must use to report caseload reduction information for fiscal year 2018 and thereafter.

A virtual roundtable was held on November 30, 2017 from 1:00-5:00 p.m. EST, co-presented by the Office of Family Assistance, the Office of Child Support Enforcement, and the Family and Youth Services Bureau. Via plenaries and breakout sessions, the roundtable  defined family violence, explained good cause, and highlighted examples of excellence across the nation.

The Opening Plenary Session was titled, "Family Violence and Accessing and Applying for Public Benefits and Work Supports: Challenges and Solutions," and was led by Dr. Janet Mickish, Lead Trainer and Manager of Staff Development, Colorado Department of Human Services and Krista Del Gallo, Public Policy Manager, Texas Council on Family Violence (TCFV).

The Plenary was followed by 4 breakout sessions to include:

• Breakout Session #1: Discussion Around Building Good Relationships with DV Coalitions and Programs
• Breakout Session #2: Promoting Disclosure and Safety for Victims Accessing Child Support
• Breakout Session #3: Establishing Good Cause
• Breakout Session #4: Family Violence with Native American Populations

The roundtable closed with a plenary titled, "State and Local TANF/Child Support Programs of Excellence," led by Meghan McCann, National Conference of State Legislatures; Amber Harchuk, Temporary Assistance to Domestic Violence Survivor’s (TA-DVS) Policy Analyst and DHS Domestic Violence Co-Located Advocates Program Coordinator; Belit Burke, Self-Sufficiency Program Administrator, Oregon Department of Human Services; and Traci Underwood, Program Coordinator, Economic Justice Project, Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence. 

According to GAO's analysis of data in the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS), on average, low-wage workers worked fewer hours per week, were more highly concentrated in a few industries and occupations, and had lower educational attainment than workers earning hourly wages above $16 in each year GAO reviewed—1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2016. Their percentage of the U.S. workforce also stayed relatively constant over time. About 40 percent of the U.S. workforce ages 25 to 64 earned hourly wages of $16 or less (in constant 2016 dollars) over the period 1995 through 2016. The combination of low wages and few hours worked compounded the income disadvantage of low-wage workers and likely contributed to their potential eligibility for federal social safety net programs.

About 20 percent of families with a worker earning up to the federal minimum wage (currently $7.25 per hour), 13 percent of families with a worker earning above federal minimum wage to $12.00 per hour, and 5 percent of families with a worker earning $12.01 to $16 per hour were in poverty in each year GAO reviewed (see figure).The extent of poverty varied considerably by the type of family in which a worker lived. For example, single-parent families earning the federal minimum wage or below comprised a higher percentage of families in poverty. In contrast, married families with no children comprised the lowest percentage of families in poverty, and generally had family incomes at or above the poverty line.

On Tuesday, October 10, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) hosted an event on the state of safety-net programs under the Trump administration to include the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, Medicaid, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The discussion was moderated by AEI’s Robert Doar with a panel of Wade Horn, the former assistant secretary for the Administration for Children and Families; Robert Rector from the Heritage Foundation; and Ron Haskins from the Brookings Institution.

Project IMPROVE, which is funded by the Office of Family Assistance (OFA), is a training and technical assistance resource for TANF programs interested in improving outcomes for low-income families. Under contract with OFA, Mathematica Policy Research works in partnership with state and local TANF agencies using the Learn, Innovate, Improve (LI2) process to execute collaborative, evidence-informed program change. LI2 was developed by Mathematica in partnership with the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University with support from the Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation. This process has been or is being used in dozens of TANF and workforce agencies across the country to design, implement, and test innovative strategies to improve program performance and client outcomes.

This OFA-sponsored webinar on October 26th from 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. EST provided an overview of the LI2 process, drawing upon recent examples of how it has helped large and small, urban and rural TANF programs make targeted improvements and manage change. We highlighted innovations that have emerged from TANF programs using this process. Presenters included Michelle Derr and Jonathan McCay from Mathematica Policy Research, Dena Jardine from the Larimer County Workforce Center in Colorado, and Noelle Simmons from the San Francisco Human Services Agency.