Two-Generation Initiatives

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Dear Colleague Letter

August 17, 2016
Mark Greenberg, Acting ACF Assistant Secretary

Dear Colleagues:

Over the past several years, you’ve likely seen, and perhaps been involved in, discussions about taking a two-generation, whole-family approach in human services programs. At the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, we believe that implementing such a focus has the potential to strengthen the effectiveness of human services programs and help families succeed. I’m writing to describe ACF’s commitment to this work, and to highlight some current resources and ones in development in support of state and local efforts.

First, I want to say a few words about why we think this is an important direction. For us, a starting point is that we want to get good outcomes for children, and we believe it is not possible to do that without recognizing that children grow up in families, that strong and supportive families will promote better outcomes, and that when family life is disrupted, chaotic, or worse, it is far more difficult to get good outcomes for children. At the same time, we also recognize that in efforts to work with adults, particularly to promote success in employment, it’s essential that strategies are mindful of the roles, responsibilities, and challenges faced when workers are also parents.

We appreciate that these basic insights aren’t new but they’re often not reflected in program design. Programs working with children may have minimal awareness of family circumstances and needs and may have little or no capacity to identify broader family needs and connect family members to services. Programs working with adults may not even know they are parents, and if they do have that information, may not use it in any meaningful way in employability planning or services.

For these reasons, we’re encouraged by the number of states and localities that are actively exploring how they can bring a stronger two-generation, whole family approach to their program efforts. We recognize that there are many significant questions about how to do this most effectively and at ACF we’re supporting research to develop the knowledge base relating to these efforts. While we believe the research will provide valuable insights in the coming years, we view this as a time for innovation, exploration, identifying promising practices, and spurring federal, state, and local initiatives.

At our next Quarterly Commissioners call on September 7, 2016, at 3:30 Eastern Time, I will be joined by some of the senior staff leading the way in two-generation work at ACF for a deeper conversation about the ways in which you can use the resources already at your disposal to serve children and parents together. This call will be in webinar format with plenty of time for questions and answers. If you’d like to submit questions in advance, you’re welcome to do so; please send your questions by Friday August 26, to Monica Barczak at monica.barczak@acf.hhs.gov.

For now, I’d like to highlight some of the steps ACF has been taking to fulfill our strategic goal of promoting and supporting two-generation approaches to help families on a path to economic security and mobility. I’ll also offer some strategies that you might want to consider implementing.

ACF Commitment to Two-Generation Approaches

ACF has made a commitment to support and advance two-generation approaches through our research, technical assistance, and program and policy guidance. We seek to promote and support:

  • Linkages between high quality educational services for children and workforce development services for their parents;
  • Programmatic efforts to help parents gain the skills, knowledge, and resources to support their child’s development;
  • Ensuring that families have access to the economic and social supports needed for stability and resilience and healthy child development; and,
  • Helping families build social capital that can support both resilience and upward mobility.

We’ve made a commitment to identifying ways in which these principles can apply in programs we administer; identifying ways in which we can better support their adoption in state, tribal, and local efforts; and advancing a research agenda that will enhance our understanding of effective two-generation approaches and their impacts for children, parents, and families.

Policy Guidance

ACF has released three Information Memoranda to provide guidance on how human services programs can move towards serving families through a two-generation approach:

Technical Assistance

ACF has responded to the growing interest expressed by our state and local grantees in the two-generation approach by offering a number of technical assistance efforts:

  • ACF’s Office of Family Assistance (OFA) created the Systems to Family Stability Policy Academy, an 18-month initiative to help eight teams design and build collaborative systems within and across agencies to improve family economic security. The two-generation approach has emerged as a strong theme across all eight teams, which include the Colorado Department of Human Services, the Connecticut Department of Social Services, the Maryland Department of Social Services, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, Ramsey County (Minnesota) Workforce Solutions, the Utah Department of Workforce Services, the Washington Department of Social and Health Services, and the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources. Policy Academy resources are available here . ACF will be providing opportunities through webinars, peer-to-peer technical assistance, and publications for other jurisdictions to learn from the experiences of these Academy participants.
  • National and regional conferences for TANF, Tribal TANF, Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood, Health Profession Opportunity Grants, and community action agencies have all included sessions to support state and local two-generation efforts. We will continue this focus in the coming year as we host the next round of grantee meetings and convenings, providing information on promising practices, policy options, and research.
  • ACF has worked closely with colleagues at the Department of Agriculture and the White House Rural Council in support of the implementation of Rural Integration Models for Parents and Children to Thrive (IMPACT). Rural IMPACT offers ten demonstration communities comprehensive technical assistance and support from a federal inter-agency team to develop two-generation models, with the ultimate goal of reducing child poverty. Commissioners and program administrators in states with demonstration sites are encouraged to reach out to and support the lead agency in this effort. Demonstration sites are listed here . A Brief summarizing the learnings gathered during the first year of the project will be released in late fall 2016.
  • ACF’s Office of Regional Operations (ORO) has worked closely with our Regional Administrators to strengthen capacity at our regional offices, and the Regional Administrator for your region can connect you with relevant resources.

Research Agenda

We recognize that while the two-generation/whole family concept is promising, there is a need to develop and advance rigorous evaluation of these strategies. Through the Office of Planning and Research Evaluation (OPRE), ACF has developed a substantial two-generation research agenda that seeks to build the evidence base and understand whether these approaches achieve their goals. Projects include:

  • The Buffering Toxic Stress Consortium launched six projects in 2011 to evaluate promising parenting interventions in Early Head Start settings.
  • Head Start-University Partnerships, launched in 2013 with four projects that are rigorously testing two-generation approaches to promoting family well-being and children’s school readiness within the context of Head Start.
  • The Goal-Oriented Adult Learning in Self-Sufficiency (GOALS) project, launched in 2014 to explore how emerging insights from psychology can be integrated into programs aimed at helping parents strengthen the skills that will foster economic security and enhance family well-being.
  • Two-Generation Approaches to Improving Family Self-Sufficiency, launched in 2015 to examine evidence and provide options for how two-generation models might be evaluated.

More information about each of these projects is available via the OPRE website.

Data Sharing 

  Recognizing that cross-agency collaboration is critical to two-generation and other approaches and that such collaboration requires the ability of programs to share data, in June ACF created a new Division of Data and Improvement  (PDF) in OPRE. The division’s goal is to work with ACF offices to improve the quality of data and how it is used for program management, policy development, and efforts to improve services to children and families. It is part of the larger ACF Interoperability Initiative Project, which seeks to promote horizontal integration, facilitate shared services, and improve the landscape of systems supporting human services programs, including their coordination and integration with health programs.

Potential Next Steps for Human Services Programs 

As Human Services Commissioners, there are a number of concrete strategies you could implement to leverage existing resources, capacity, and data through a two-generation lens:

  • Collect and review data on families, not just on children or adults. Colorado’s Department of Human Services holds monthly meetings among executive and program office leaders to review outcome indicators. Programs focus on outcomes that measure progress toward long-term goals, not just on outputs and compliance data. Program leaders are able to make real-time decisions to alter strategies to support successful outcomes.
  • Cross-train TANF and home visiting staff so that TANF case workers become more likely to think about assisting adult clients and their parenting role and home visiting and Head Start staff become more fluent in connecting families to self-sufficiency services through TANF. In Washington, the TANF and Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) programs are working together in this way to expand the capacity for home visiting programs to serve TANF families and increase child and family well-being and improve parental employability.
  • Encourage your Community Services Bock Grant (CSBG) state agency to use discretionary funds to promote innovative two-generation approaches at the local level. In California, the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County submitted a successful proposal to use discretionary funds to operate a project designed to build social support among the families of day laborers, most of whom are immigrants. In addition to building supportive bonds among families, the program offers parent-child groups in child-centered spaces.
  • Connect child support enforcement services to employment and parenting services. ACF’s Office of Child Support Enforcement’s Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration is conducting a large scale random assignment study, which is supporting eight states’ efforts to bring case management, employment services (job search, job readiness training, job development and placement, and job retention), and fatherhood/parenting activities to child support enforcement services. The goal is to provide steady financial support to the child while strengthening the emotional connection between parent and child.
  • Strengthen attention to trauma and behavioral health issues — for both parents and children — in child welfare. Illinois is one of several demonstration projects using a child welfare waiver to address needs of caregivers with substance use disorders to improve permanency and safety outcomes for children.
  • Reach out to refugee and immigrant families through local service agencies to engage youth in summer employment programs while providing their parents with English as a Second language instruction. Utah is using TANF funds to provide employment opportunities to refugee youth while instilling the importance of post-secondary education for sustainable employment.

ACF is committed to supporting state and local efforts in exploring and piloting two-generation approaches. In the near future we will host webinars to provide additional detail about opportunities in specific programs, and we will highlight what some states are already doing to bring services together in a more family-centered way. ACF’s Regional Administrators stand ready to offer their support and answer questions you may have. We encourage you and your staff to take advantage of these opportunities, and to reach out to your colleagues who have been working in this space and have lessons to share.

Sincerely,

Mark H. Greenberg
Acting Assistant Secretary
for Children and Families