This Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation brief summarizes findings of a Youth At-Risk of Homelessness (YARH) grantee peer-learning experience held in summer 2020. Six YARH grantees shared their experiences, challenges, lessons learned, and solutions to engaging youth.

This brief explores strategies to help young adults successfully connect to education and employment pathways. Effective career pathway models emphasize coordinated services, work-based learning, and strong partnerships across systems. For TANF programs, these approaches reinforce the importance of aligning employment services with education and training opportunities, especially for young parents and youth transitioning to independence, to support long-term economic mobility.

The National Youth Employment Coalition will host a webinar on March 19, 2026 at 2:30 p.m. ET to explore how opportunity navigation and social capital strategies can help young people connect to education, training, and career pathways. TANF programs supporting youth and young parents may find these approaches valuable for strengthening workforce partnerships and improving employment outcomes.

This Annie E. Casey Foundation resource highlights the positive outcomes associated with extended foster care for young people transitioning to adulthood. The evidence shows that allowing youth to remain in care past age 18 can improve educational attainment, employment outcomes, and housing stability. For TANF programs serving youth transitioning from foster care, this resource offers insights into how extended supports and cross-system coordination can help promote long-term economic mobility and stability.

Professionals supporting children and families involved in child welfare can benefit from the services and tools offered by AdoptUSKids. This resource highlights how agencies and community partners can use their training, recruitment strategies, and technical assistance to strengthen permanency efforts for children and youth. TANF programs working alongside child welfare partners may find these services helpful for understanding how family recruitment, adoption support, and permanency planning intersect with broader family stability and economic support goals.

A new brief from Child Trends examines how workforce and career programs can better support young people with foster care experience as they transition to employment and adulthood. Its roadmap format highlights flexible, individualized approaches to career services and the importance of supportive relationships and targeted workforce supports – insights that may help TANF programs strengthen partnerships serving young parents and youth transitioning from foster care.

Families and young people navigating the foster care system often face complex challenges that intersect with TANF goals, from economic hardship to employment barriers and service access. This GovFacts resource list offers supports for parents, relatives, and youth involved in foster care, including legal help, educational resources, and pathways for youth transition planning. Sharing these tools with TANF participants can help enhance case management, improve stability, and connect families with critical supports.

The Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network will host a webinar on February 11 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET to focus on how kinship and family support programs are building and sustaining multi-state navigator initiatives. The session will share real-world lessons about effective partnership structures, staffing strategies, data sharing, and funding approaches as well as examples of promising models that have expanded across regions. This is a chance to learn how navigator services can expand for broader reach, strengthen cross-state collaboration, and help connect families to benefits and supports.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation is hosting a webinar on February 25, 2026 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. ET to introduce Functional Family Therapy (FFT) and its use in foster care to improve outcomes for children, youth, and foster parents. FFT is an evidence-based, family-centered approach that helps strengthen relationships and increase placement stability, with research suggesting it can lead to better experiences for kids in care and higher satisfaction for caregivers. For TANF programs, understanding FFT can be useful when considering cross-system partnerships with child welfare and behavioral health providers, especially where family engagement and stability connect to participants’ broader economic and social well-being.

Alex J. Adams, Assistant Secretary for Family Support at the Administration for Children and Families, explains in this City Journal article that a major issue in foster care is a shortage of licensed foster homes relative to the number of children entering care. This shortage leads to children being placed in emergency settings, group facilities, or temporary housing without good long-term fits.

Many families who want to foster face burdens: complicated paperwork, trainings, court involvement, and costs. Streamlining licensing would increase the pool of available foster homes. And by licensing broadly and matching carefully, the system can have “homes waiting for children, not children waiting for homes.”