In Spring 2020, the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Center for Urban Families (CFUF) hosted a two-part roundtable with practitioners from 10 youth-serving organizations that provide outreach and services to young fathers. This CFUF brief highlights strategies the practitioners developed to improve services for fathers of color, ages 18-24. The practitioners also shared their engagement approaches and their perspectives on program research and evaluation.

Opportunity populations—such as youth between the ages of 17-24 who are not in school or out of work, formerly incarcerated persons, members of indigenous communities, refugee populations, homeless persons, and people with disabilities—all face various challenges and barriers to upward mobility. This U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation report offers guidance to stakeholders as they work with and help opportunity populations understand new technologies and navigate today’s job market. The report examines three focus areas—barriers to employment, labor market design for people who face challenges and have limited access to employment and career advancement, and recommendations for addressing barriers to employment.

This report is a developmental evaluation of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s deep-end reform initiative covering 12 juvenile justice jurisdictions across the U.S. The evaluation not only presents the deep-end approach as a comprehensive and holistic approach for youth in transition, but also highlights five characteristics of the jurisdictions that implemented this approach. Implemented from 2012 to 2018, the deep-end approach aimed to safely and significantly reduce out-of-home placements for youth, especially youth of color.

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) youth program includes financial literacy education as one of 14 program elements. This set of resources provides tools and guides for financial literacy education as well as pertinent research reports and curriculum. The resources cover creating budgets; setting up checking and saving accounts; managing spending, credit, and debt; understanding credit reports and credit scores; and protecting against identify theft.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued a Request for Information (RFI) to gather information on programs providing services to help youth ages 16 to 24 progress on education and employment pathways. This project focuses on young people who are out of work and/or out of school, especially those from lower income families and communities. The information gathered will be included in a public compendium highlighting selected programs. Note: Not all submissions will be included in the compendium.

Submitted programs must:

• Serve youth ages 16-24 (may also serve adults).
• Target young people who are out of school and/or work or have the following risk factors: low-income family or community, is a parent, is justice-involved, is now or was in foster care, experiences homelessness, has a disability.
• Provide services supporting education or employment goals.
• Currently operate in the United States.

Submit written comments by September 28, 2020 to ReconnectingYouthRFI@hhs.gov.

Low-income young workers in service-sector jobs have felt first-hand the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. This report explores how 10 states participating in the New Skills for Youth Initiative addressed designing and implementing pathways for high school students. It reflects findings from interviews with educators, business leaders, student advisors, community partners, and other key stakeholders which took place from June 2017 to June 2020. The report also covers pathway options for younger workers and how they gain work experience through internships, apprenticeships, and other work-based learning opportunities.

This practice guide illustrates case management practices that are appropriate and effective for promoting youth well-being and provides methods for helping youth on probation understand and take responsibility for their actions. The guide highlights how diversion from formal court processing could be used more often with youth otherwise engaging in normal adolescent behavior. Also noted is how probation professionals need to engage with the families of youth in transition and their communities while working in partnership with other public systems and service providers to utilize a strengths-based, trauma-responsive approach for positive adolescent development.

This report is part of the Responding to Intimate Violence in Relationship Programs (RIViR) study to evaluate approaches for assessing teen dating violence. The report covers how to accurately identify youth in Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) programs who are experiencing teen dating violence (TDV) so they can be referred for additional services. The report also examines how youth and TDV program staff perceive tools to assess TDV and strategies to implement these tools. The report compared two HMRE programs—More Than Conquerors, Inc. of Conyers, Georgia and Youth and Family Services of Rapid City, South Dakota.

This blogpost illustrates some of the programs at the Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) in the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families (ACYF) which are designed to reduce youth homelessness, domestic violence, and adolescent pregnancy. The blogpost identifies one approach for self-sufficiency and health among FYSB-funded grantees that is called the success sequence – first graduate from high school, then get a full-time job, and then get married before having children – which, if followed in that order, is likely to enable young people to avoid poverty and to achieve economic stability.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention within the U.S. Department of Justice will host a webinar on July 30, 2020 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET which will focus on serving adolescents in family drug courts. Emphasis will be on encouraging youth to engage in building positive relationships with adults and peers and to be actively involved in developing their own voice as they transition into adulthood. Strategies for substance use prevention and treatment and information on recovery support will also be addressed.