A 2014 report from Connecticut’s Commission on Children providing an overview of their proposed two-generation strategy and the literature and evidence supporting it.

As part of the state's 2015-2017 budget, the Connecticut General Assembly and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy included $4 million to establish pilot two-generational programs in six Connecticut communities.

The Systems to Family Stability National Policy Academy (Policy Academy) is an 18-month initiative sponsored by the Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance. Through the Policy Academy, eight teams are designing and building collaborative systems within and across agencies to improve family economic security. The Policy Academy has three primary objectives:

1) Build career pathways through job-driven training and alignment of TANF and workforce systems;
2) Improve business processes and systems coordination; and
3) Enhance case management by understanding brain science and applying two-generation approaches.

This annual report is mandated by Utah’s Intergenerational Poverty Mitigation Act, and requires the Utah Department of Workforce Services (DWS) to report on the status of individuals experiencing intergenerational poverty. Since 2012, DWS has met this requirement through coordination of data sharing across the five state agencies that comprise the Intergenerational Welfare Reform Commission, including the Department of Health, Department of Human Services, DWS, Juvenile Courts, and the Utah State Office of Education. This yearly report provides an update on state two-generation activities over the previous year, and includes evidence-based policy recommendations based on the data contained in each report.

The Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) Program funds training in high-demand healthcare professions targeted to TANF recipients and other low-income individuals. This brief from the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) presents an overview of studies funded by HPOG University Partnership Research Grants and discusses the contributions these studies are making to the body of knowledge regarding the education and training, employment, and advancement of low-income job seekers. The brief includes recommendations developed by the studies’ investigators for local education and training programs and state/federal agencies to consider in order to apply the knowledge generated by their studies.

The Office of Child Care and the Office of Family Assistance published an Information Memorandum (IM) on opportunities for coordinating the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs. In particular, the IM focuses on how the 2014 CCDF reauthorization offers new ways for the two programs to align.

The CCDF and TANF programs are linked in federal legislative history and, in many states, through the daily operations of both programs. In fiscal year 2014, states spent approximately $2.6 billion of federal TANF funds on child care, either directly or through a transfer to the CCDF program. Coordination between the two programs is a key part of two-generation strategies that can address the needs of children and their parents together along with the goal of improving the entire family’s overall economic security. The implementation efforts for CCDF reauthorization provide an opportunity to take even greater advantage of the benefits of this kind of partnership.

These National Center for Children in Poverty policy briefs provide a two-generation view of current policies affecting children from birth to age eight, nationally and state-by-state, in the areas of health and nutrition, early care and education, and parenting and economic supports. The profiles are updated and expanded regularly.

In this presentation, Stephanie M. Jones, Marie and Max Kargman Associate Professor in Human Development and Urban Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, describes a new intervention that links the science of brain development with supports for adults and children. The intervention focuses on building executive function skills in children, teachers, and parents by interrupting the stress cycle and putting the front of the brain back in control.

Between 70 million and 100 million Americans, or as many as one in three American adults, have some type of criminal record. Furthermore, between 33 million and 36.5 million children in the United States, or nearly half of all American children, have at least one parent with a criminal record. Even a minor criminal record can present obstacles to employment, housing, education, public assistance, financial empowerment, and more. This report advocates for a two-generation approach to address barriers to opportunity associated with having a criminal record. Additionally, the report offers policy recommendations to give parents with criminal records and their children opportunities to succeed.

In most of the two-generational strategies and programs, the attention is mainly focused on mothers. However, this brief from the Center for Law and Social Policy explains the early evidence from research that shows if noncustodial parents - mostly young men - are successfully employed and in healthy relationships in their own lives, they can also contribute to more successful outcomes for their children, both financially and emotionally.