Resource Library

Stable, high-quality child care has numerous benefits for children and families, including providing support for child development and enabling parents to work. To make child care accessible to low-income families, the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) offers guidance and funds to states, territories, and tribes to...

People served by public assistance programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) often have difficulty finding jobs in the competitive labor market. This report describes the ways in which eight TANF...

Even in a strong economy, some job seekers struggle to find and keep jobs. These individuals often have limited work experience, few educational credentials and job skills, and other characteristics such as criminal records or primary caretaking responsibilities that make it difficult for them to compete in the labor market. For decades, government entities, private foundations, and nonprofit organizations have developed programs to help disadvantaged job seekers...

The 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) is a coordinated set of four nationally representative surveys aimed at describing the early care and education (ECE) landscape in the United States, including the use and availability of care. Information was collected from individuals and programs providing ECE in center-based and home-based settings to children age birth through five years, and from households with children under age 13...

In September 2019, OPRE awarded eleven new Child Care Policy Research Partnership (CCPRP) Grants. The CCPRP Grant Program supports active collaborations between state Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Lead Agencies and researchers to investigate questions of immediate relevance to local and national child care policies and practices. These four-year cooperative agreements are expected to add to our knowledge about the efficacy of child care subsidy policies...

The Breaking Barriers program, based in San Diego, California, provided employment services to lower-income individuals with disabilities. 

MDRC carried out a random assignment impact evaluation of the program, funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, in order to assess the effectiveness of the program at improving employment outcomes for program participants. Findings from that evaluation were released in September 2019...

Individual Placement and Support (IPS) is a model for helping people who have serious mental illness find employment. There is a good deal of evidence showing the model’s success, but less is known about the model’s effectiveness with those who have other types of disabilities and health conditions, such as physical disabilities or less severe types of mental illness...

The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE), within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has a long history of supporting rigorous research and evaluation on the broad range of human services programs that fall under ACF’s auspices. Many of ACF’s programs have components aimed at supporting employment among low-income populations, and, consequently, OPRE regularly supports...

Home visiting aims to support expectant parents and families with young children by offering them “resources and skills to raise children who are physically, socially, and emotionally healthy and ready to learn” (HRSA, 2019). Although the characteristics of the families served, and the service components delivered, vary by evidence-based home visiting model, problematic substance use is commonly one of the many outcome areas addressed by home visitors in the course of their engagement...

This is the first of three resources included in the report, Healing and Supporting Fathers: Principles, Practices, and Resources for Fatherhood Programs to Help Address and Prevent Domestic Violence. The resource provides suggested ways that fatherhood program staff can enhance program practices to engage fathers in addressing and preventing domestic violence...