Self-Sufficiency, Welfare & Employment View all reports on this topic

The Advancing Welfare and Family Self-Sufficiency Research follow-on contract provides timely and flexible research and evaluation support to ACF and its stakeholders and a flexible research and evaluation mechanism for responding to rapidly emerging policy priorities and research opportunities. In particular, the contractor...

Project Overview

Through this project, awarded to Mathematica Policy Research, ACF seeks to learn more about how states and communities coordinate early care and education, family economic security, and/or other health and human services to most efficiently and effectively serve the needs...

Linking administrative data sets to program evaluation records is a promising and potentially low-cost means of tracking long-term impacts of social interventions. For the purposes of this project...

From 1998 until 2017, ACF operated the Assets for Independence (AFI) program, a demonstration program that supported an assets-based approach for increasing the economic self-sufficiency of individuals and families with low-incomes through Individual Development Accounts (IDAs). In 2011...

The Behavioral Interventions Scholars (BIS) grant program supports dissertation research by advanced graduate students who are applying a behavioral science lens to specific research questions relevant to social services programs and policies and other issues facing low-income and vulnerable families in the United States. As part of OPRE’s Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency research portfolio...

The Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project demonstrated that applying insights from behavioral science to challenges facing human services programs can improve program operations and outcomes at relatively low cost. The Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency-Next Generation (BIAS-NG) project continues ACF’s exploration...

Many human services programs are designed such that individuals must make a series of decisions and take a number of active steps in order to realize a benefit. From deciding which programs to apply for, to completing forms, attending meetings, showing proof of eligibility, and arranging travel and child care, program designers often assume that individuals make decisions about how to proceed based on careful consideration of their options and what is best for them...

There is great interest in identifying effective strategies that build fathers’ capacity to support their children, both emotionally and financially. Since 2006, Congress has provided funds for discretionary grants to programs aimed at supporting fathers in three core areas....

The ACF Office of Family Assistance launched the ongoing Rapid Cycle Evaluation and Training Technical Assistance (RCE TTA) project to strengthen the evaluation capacity of human services agencies. This project aims to complement these efforts by providing research and evaluation TA to state, tribal, and local TANF programs currently or formerly engaged under RCE TTA. 

This project is working closely with the Office of Community Services (OCS) to assist in building capacity among the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) network - including state and local agencies - for evaluating the CSBG model and approach. The CSBG’s mission is to provide assistance to states and local communities, working through a network of Community Action Agencies (CAA) and other neighborhood-based organizations...

The purpose of this project is to strengthen ACF’s understanding of effective interventions aimed at supporting low-income individuals to find jobs, advance in the labor market, and improve their economic security.

The project will build evidence in this area by...

The Career Pathways Intermediate Outcomes Study is rigorously evaluating the intermediate impact of career pathways programs first studied in the federally-sponsored Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) Impact Study and Pathways for Advancing Careers and Education (PACE) Study. The intermediate impact studies... 

The Career Pathways Long-term Outcomes Study is rigorously evaluating the long-term impact of career pathways programs first studied in the federally-sponsored Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) Impact Study and Pathways for Advancing Careers and Education (PACE) Study. The studies will use administrative data and survey responses to examine long-term impacts on educational progress, labor market outcomes, and family well-bring approximately six years after enrollment into the study. Intermediate program impacts are being assessed at approximately three years after enrollment into the study through the Career Pathways Intermediate Outcomes (CPIO) Study.

Career pathways programs connect education, training, and related supports in a pathway that leads to employment in a specific sector or occupation or to further training. The approach is gaining attention as a promising strategy to improve...

The National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families generates new research and translates research across three priority areas—poverty reduction and self-sufficiency, healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood, and early care and education—to build knowledge and inform ACF programs and policies to better serve Hispanic children and families. The Center has three primary goals: 1) advance a cutting-edge research agenda; 2) build research capacity; and 3) translate emerging research. Lina Guzman at Child Trends and Michael Lopez at Abt Associates lead the Center, in collaboration with university partners (University of Maryland-College Park; University of North Carolina at Greensboro; and New York University's Institute for Human Development and Social Change). In 2014, the Center launched a Fellowship program supporting emerging scholars studying issues relevant to low-income and vulnerable Hispanic children and families.

ACF supports the development and operation of fully integrated systems to support person-centric service delivery.  Integration implies alignment of legal, policy, program, and technology factors that impact our ability to share information.  If we are successful as a community, interoperability will drive progress in...

The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) at the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) has awarded a contract to MEF Associates and its subcontractor, Child Trends, to conduct a study to better understand the range of child welfare services and benefits provided through the Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (URM) Program. The URM Program serves refugees and...

Project Overview

The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) within the Administration of Children and Families (ACF) funds numerous data collection efforts through research studies on a wide-range...

The Employment Sector Analysis for TANF Recipients and Other Low-Income Families will synthesize existing literature and resources for identifying federal, state, and local labor market data in high-growth fields; and analyze labor market information...

The purpose of this project is to provide recommendations for the design of an evaluation to assess the implementation, outcomes, systems change, and impacts of the second round of Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) awarded in September 2015...

PRE launched this project in 2016 to evaluate interventions that apply coaching practices to promote job entry and retention among TANF populations and other low-income individuals. Coaching-based interventions have been put forth as one way to give people the tools to overcome various barriers in order to build employment-related skills and to secure work. The hypothesis underlying these approaches is that participants’ challenges may be addressed through coaching by specially trained staff who...

The Ex-Prisoner Reentry Strategies Study documented the implementation of six Responsible Fatherhood programs initially funded in 2011 under the Responsible Fatherhood grant program...

Bayesian methods are emerging as the primary alternative to the conventional frequentist approach to statistical inference. Bayes' theorem is a model for learning from data. Using Bayes’ theorem, a researcher weights their prior beliefs about the size of an intervention’s effect by the data observed through...

In 2013, OPRE awarded grants to a network of university-based researchers to investigate critical issues in improving family self-sufficiency and stability. The Family Self-Sufficiency and Stability Research Scholars Network supports...

This cooperative agreement, awarded to the University of Chicago in 2013, supports the development, implementation, and ongoing operations of a Data Center to support family self-sufficiency research and activities. This center serves as a hub to support the development of state and institutional capacity for data collection...

The Family Strengthening Scholars grant program is designed to build research capacity in the healthy marriage/responsible fatherhood field (HM/RF). These grants are to support dissertation research on HM/RF policy issues and are meant to build capacity in the research field to focus research on questions that have direct implications for HM/RF decision-making and program administration...

The purpose of the Fatherhood and Marriage Local Evaluation and Cross-Site Project is to support ACF’s third cohort (2015-2020) of Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) grantees through:

• fostering high quality data collection;
• strengthening grantee-led local evaluations; and
• conducting cross-site performance measures analysis.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services promotes the economic and social well-being of families, children, individuals, and communities. Many ACF programs interact with and serve fathers...

This project will develop products intended to expand the use of administrative data in analyzing long-term outcomes of federal social program interventions.

The purpose of this project is to explore how emerging insights from psychology can strengthen programs aimed at helping families achieve self-sufficiency. In particular, the project will review the implications of existing research on psychological...

The Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG), administered by the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, was created to provide education and training to TANF recipients and other low-income individuals for occupations in the healthcare field that pay well and are expected to either experience labor shortages or be in high demand.

The Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) Impact Study is using an experimental design to examine the short-term impacts of HPOG 1.0 on participants’ educational and economic outcomes at 15 months after random assignment. The study includes 42 local HPOG programs implemented by 23 of the 32 HPOG 1.0 grantees...

In 2016, OPRE awarded a second round of Health Profession Opportunity Grants University Partnership Research Grants, referred to as HPOGUP 2.0. These grants augment OPRE’s multi-pronged evaluation strategy for HPOG by funding university research teams that partner with...

ACF’s Hispanic Research Work Group brings together experts in a wide range of content areas relevant to ACF’s mission to assist ACF/OPRE in identifying research priorities concerning low-income, Hispanic families.

The goal of the Home Visiting Career Trajectories project is to examine the state of home visiting careers to understand how people enter the field, the perceived and actual pathways for professional advancement and tenure, and reasons for field attrition. This work aims to address the paucity of data on the home visiting workforce that can be used to learn how to best recruit and retain high quality staff. The project has two purposes. First, it will provide information on the state of the home visiting sector and the career trajectories of home visitors and recommendations on strategies to build a pipeline of high-quality home visitors and supervisors. Second, it will provide information on the professional development system that supports early childhood home visiting, including training and technical assistance supports. To accomplish these goals, the research team will access pre-existing administrative and survey data, as well as collect new quantitative and qualitative data through two surveys and eight case studies.

This contract will produce a series of research briefs on issues related to the well-being and economic self-sufficiency of families and children experiencing homelessness. The briefs will be based on data collected as part of the U.S. Department of...

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program is a key program for supporting self-sufficiency among low-income families...

Though significant evaluative work has been carried out to improve our understanding of how human services programs meet their goals of improving family economic self-sufficiency, financial security, and overall wellbeing, there are gaps in knowledge of how programs can best serve rural communities. Rural contexts present unique opportunities and challenges for administering human services programs, and the Administration for Children & Families (ACF) seeks to better understand these contexts through several programs

The Human Services Research Partnership of the U.S. Virgin Islands (VI) will explore issues related to social service needs and public welfare systems in the territory. This cooperative agreement will support a partnership among researchers, local...

In this project, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is exploring the application of human-centered design (HCD) across its service delivery programs at the federal, state, and local levels. To date, little is known regarding what HCD looks like in the context of human services, the requirements for implementation across a range of programs; the measurable outcomes and effectiveness of HCD approaches; the evaluability of HCD approaches; or the sustainability of HCD approaches.

This project explored the issues and options related to the development of an employment-related outcome performance measurement system for the TANF program, including potential target groups, performance measures, performance standards, data needs, and accountability approaches. The project...

The Job Search Assistance (JSA) Strategies Evaluation features a multi-site, random assignment evaluation to measure the relative impact of specific job search services offered by TANF programs on short-term labor market outcomes such as earnings and time to employment. The evaluation, led by Abt Associates...

OPRE plays a central role in advancing understanding and disseminating knowledge about research and evaluation methods and tools that are, or could be, used to enhance knowledge about program and policy effectiveness. The purpose of the Methods Inquiries project is to organize...

In 2015, OPRE launched a comprehensive evaluation of the second round of grants awarded under the Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) Program. The HPOG 2.0 National Evaluation will rigorously assess the HPOG programs administered by the non-tribal grantees. The 27 non-tribal grantees operate 38 HPOG programs across 17 states...

The National Implementation Evaluation of the Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) is assessing program implementation, systems change, and participant outcomes of the 27 non-tribal HPOG 1.0 programs (those awarded in 2010). The evaluation aims...

The National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) documented the nation's utilization and availability of early care and education (including school-age care) in 2012...

To further build the evidence around effective strategies for helping low-income individuals find and sustain employment, OPRE contracted with Mathematica Policy Research to conduct the Next Generation of Enhanced Employment Strategies (NextGen) Project. This project will identify and test approximately nine innovative...

OPRE is responsible for advising the Assistant Secretary for Children and Families on improving the effectiveness and efficiency of programs designed to better the employment-related outcomes of low-income individuals. To that end, the primary goal of this project...

To learn about the implementation and effects of Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) programs, ACF awarded a contract in 2011 to Mathematica Policy Research to conduct the Parents and Children Together (PACT) evaluation. The evaluation...

In 2007, ACF initiated the Pathways for Advancing Careers and Education project, a multi-site, random assignment evaluation of promising strategies for increasing employment and self-sufficiency among low-income families. During the project’s development, consensus emerged that the evaluation should...

The John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for Successful Transition to Adulthood (Chafee program; formerly the John H. Chafee Foster Care Independence Program) was created following the passage of the Foster Care Independence Act (FCIA) of 1999 (Public Law 106-169). The program provides assistance to help youth currently and formerly in foster care achieve self-sufficiency by providing grants to States and eligible Tribes that submit an approvable plan.

OPRE’s welfare and family self-sufficiency research includes experimental impact evaluations...

The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) in collaboration with the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded funding to the National Poverty...

Project Overview

This project builds on the earlier OPRE Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Human Services (RED) project. RED helped build a base of knowledge to inform the Administration for Children and Families (ACF)’s identification and understanding of ethnic and racial differences across the service delivery system... 

OPRE awarded eight cooperative agreements to fund research to conduct secondary data analysis of archived ACF data, specifically the Building Strong Families (BSF), Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM), and Community Healthy Marriage Initiative (CHMI)...

In 2013, OPRE commissioned four interrelated reports focused on self-regulation and toxic stress from a team at the Center for Child and Social Policy at Duke University. Since then, that team and other experts have created multiple practice-oriented resources grounded in the initial reports. Together, these reports and resources comprise the ‘Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress Series.’ The goal of this series is to communicate the potential of a self-regulation...

Research highlights self-regulation as a critical set of life skills linked to individual success across the lifespan, including the ability to set goals, delay gratification, exert willpower, manage emotions, and solve problems. Strong evidence reveals that parents, educators, and other adult caregivers...

The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation awarded a grant to ICF International to fund the launch and maintenance of the Self-Sufficiency Research Clearinghouse (SSRC) as a strategic part of OPRE's goal – to build and disseminate knowledge about effective approaches to helping low-income children and families. The SSRC is a virtual portal of research on low-income families and vulnerable populations. It influences policy and practice in such areas as employment, education and training, and family self-sufficiency by improving access to field-tested, evidence-informed, and evidence-based program and policy strategies and by fostering professional connectivity among its targeted audiences.

For several years, ACF has provided resources to facilitate updating and expanding the State TANF Policies Database. The Urban Institute began developing the database in early 1997, as part of the Assessing New Federalism project...

Project Overview

This project will identify promising and innovative employment and training programs for low-income individuals that include TANF recipients and produce case studies of the selected programs. The programs...

This project will evaluate subsidized and transitional employment approaches for critical low-income populations, potentially including welfare recipients and low-income non-custodial parents. The project will examine subsidized employment strategies designed to address two distinct goals...

The project will support innovation and improved effectiveness of state TANF programs by enhancing the use of data from TANF and related human services programs. This work may include encouraging and strengthening state integrated data systems (IDS), promoting proper payments...

The Fatherhood Research and Practice Network (FRPN) is a cooperative agreement awarded to Temple University with a subcontract to the Center for Policy Research in Denver, CO. The FRPN will pursue three goals:

1. Promote rigorous evaluation of fatherhood programs.
2. Expand the number of researchers and practitioners collaborating to evaluate fatherhood programs by providing training and technical assistance to develop their capacity to conduct and participate in high-quality research studies and evaluations.
3. Disseminate information that leads to effective fatherhood practice and research.

People who run programs for low-income job seekers and those seeking to promote policies that can improve employment outcomes for low-income individuals need evidence about what works. But it can be challenging for program administrators and policymakers to know where to find dependable sources of evidence and to know how this evidence might apply to their programs and populations...

The 2003 Reauthorization of the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act called for a study of long-term outcomes for youth who are served through the Transitional Living Program (TLP). In response, OPRE and ACF’s Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) are sponsoring a study that will capture data from youth at program entry and up to 12 months...

In 2015, OPRE awarded a contract to Abt Associates, in partnership with MEF Policy Associates, Insight Policy Research, Urban Institute, and NORC at the University of Chicago, to conduct impact, outcome, and implementation studies of the second round of grants awarded under the Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) Program. The five Tribal HPOG grantees are participating in a comprehensive implementation and outcome study led by NORC at the University of Chicago....

The purpose of this project is to provide guidance and support to Tribal TANF Child Welfare Coordination Grantees that promotes excellence in performance measurement, continuous quality improvement, and grantee-led collaborations between child welfare and TANF agencies in their tribal communities. The project is intended to (1) provide guidance to grantees in revising project logic models to align project activities with intended outcomes; (2) provide support for grantees’ identification and collection of performance measures to track project activities and outcomes; (3) provide support to grantees in using data for quality assurance and continuous quality improvement; (4) provide programmatic guidance on ways to strengthen Tribal TANF and Child Welfare coordination in order to strengthen outcomes specified by grantees in their applications; and (5) document these activities and lessons learned. This project will provide universal guidance and peer learning opportunities, as well as grantee specific guidance on a variety of topics which may include identification of measurable goals and objectives, data systems and data privacy, data analysis and interpretation, continuous quality improvement, and dissemination of program successes.