Western Michigan University is building an innovative program to make welcome those students who were raised in foster care and to help them earn their diplomas without having to shoplift or trespass over the holidays. Many of the students have comfortable apartments on the campus, and a hall was kept open over the holiday break for dorm residents…

This brief updates an overview of welfare benefits and services in Texas in 1997, when House Bill 1863 and the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 first went into effect. Since 1997, Texas and 12 other states from the Assessing the New Federalism study have implemented many changes in social safety net…

Students in the Culebra Road GED/JOBS (General Educational Development/Job Opportunities and Basic Skills) class, an adult education class for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) students, created their own website. First, students completed a computer literacy survey to gauge their computer skills. Next, students were encouraged to…

These matrices summarize the content of the certification/chartering requirements established by nine first-round and three second-round implementation states to deliver services in One-Stop Career Centers. Seven areas or dimensions of design/operations are compared. The narrative accompanying the matrices is divided into two sections--a matrix…

The Culebra Road GED/JOBS (General Educational Development/Job Opportunities and Basic Skills) class provides recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) with remedial academic instruction, job preparedness training, and training in parenting skills. At the suggestion of one of its students, the class undertook a project that…

This Kids Count fact book describes services that are designed to protect the health, education, and safety of children in each county in Texas. It begins with a brief overview of each service program, describing the services, giving eligibility requirements, and analyzing regional differences in service provision across the state. The overview is…

This Kids Count report details trends in the well-being of children in Texas. The statistical portrait is based on indicators in the areas of: (1) family and community population; (2) economic resources, security, and opportunity; (3) early care and education; (4) school success; (5) teens at risk; (6) physical, social, and emotional health; (7)…

The Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) project was undertaken to identify effective strategies for helping low-income parents work more steadily and advance in the labor market. The 15 ERA demonstration projects that were operating in nine states (California, Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, South Carolina; Tennessee, and…