December 8, 2021
Greetings!

Welcome to the latest issue of The Connection, APHSA’s newsletter offering updates and resources pertaining to employment and economic well-being, child and family well-being, and H/HS integration.
APHSA and the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) have released a new infographic: Best Practices for Child Welfare in Working with Families with Immigrant Members. The infographic is based on the 2019 report Immigrant Families and Child Welfare Systems: Emerging Needs and Promising Policies, featuring recommendations made in the report.
Check out our latest podcast episode in the Our Dream Deferred: Fulfilling the Nation’s Promise series, featuring a wide-ranging conversation with philosopher, writer, and professor C. Thi Nguyen on filter bubbles, echo chambers, and the power that games can have in our lives. You can find us on your preferred streaming platform by searching for “Our Dream Deferred,” as well as on YouTube or our podcast page. Share with your network, write us a review - and send us your feedback and questions!
Join our team—APHSA has two new job openings! We are seeking a Senior Policy Associate for Knowledge Mobilization and a Refugee and Immigration Policy Associate. Apply now or share with interested parties in your network.

Announcements
New Release! SNAP Employment and Training (E&T): Five Things to Know and Five Opportunities to Act, November 2021- APHSA and the National Conference of State Legislatures partnered to create a resource to highlight opportunities for State legislatures to support economic recovery and decrease food insecurity. This resource serves as an opportunity to share more about SNAP E&T with legislatures, gubernatorial partners, and agency leadership.
Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration Seeks Feedback - The Employment and Training Administration (ETA) is seeking feedback from front-line staff and participants to understand how current processes and systems that deliver workforce, education, and human services are serving them and opportunities for improvement. Individuals interested in participating in a conversation on these topics can complete the linked form for more information.
Headlines
Resources
Removing Barriers to Child Care for Parents in Education and Training Programs, November 23, 2021 - Based on the five-year federal Strengthening Working Families Initiative (SWFI), Mathematica recently released a new podcast episode about a two-generation strategy that helped parents from low-income households find affordable and convenient child care so that they could participate in job training and education. The episode explores lessons from SWFI that can inform federal policies and programs, as well as cross-sector community partnerships at the local level that help parents participate in education and training by removing barriers to child care.
Events
Thursday, December 9, 11:00-11:45 AM EST
Virtual Supply Chain Roundtable - No Kid Hungry, the School Nutrition Association.

Monday, December 13, 4:00 PM EST

Friday, December 17, 12:00 PM EST
States Lay the Foundation: Refugee and Immigrant Workforce Inclusion - International Rescue Committee (IRC), Refugee Advocacy Lab.
 
February 1-March 4, 2022 - Part A
March 8-April 8, 2022 - Part B
Online Entrepreneurship Institute - For Service Providers & Adult Educators teaching entrepreneurship skills; Coalition on Adult Basic Education.

Announcements
HHS Issues New Requirement for Head Start Staff Vaccination and Universal Masking, November 29, 2021 - The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued new Head Start Program Performance Standards to outline the new requirements on COVID-19 vaccinations for grant recipient staff, and the timelines, exceptions, and exemptions for each. Comments on the Interim Final Rule are due by December 30.
Headlines
ARP Child Care Stabilization Grant Obligation Deadline Approaching, November 30, 2021 - At the end of November, the Office of Child Care (OCC) released instructions for states to notify OCC if they are on target to obligate as least 50% of stabilization grants that were authorized in the American Rescue Plan (ARP). The deadline for notification is December 9.

Surgeon General Issues Advisory on Youth Mental Health Crisis, December 7, 2021 - U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy this week issued a new Surgeon General’s Advisory to highlight an urgent need to address the nation’s youth mental health crisis that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Resources
Virtually the Same? Virtual Home Visits in Response to COVID-19, October 19 2021 - Erikson Institute presents findings from a survey of 658 home visitors representing multiple models, geographic regions, and communities, about their shift to virtual home visiting because of the COVID-19 pandemic. With an emphasis on how home visitors work with families using interactive video visits, the survey is part of a larger study conducted by Erikson Institute and the Home Visiting Applied Research Collaborative (HARC), which also included observing recorded virtual home visits and interviewing home visitors and caregivers from those visits.

Child Welfare Evidence-Building Academy: A Training on Rigorous Evaluation Design and Implementation, October 20, 2021 - This resource library from ACF includes a series of 15 training modules aimed at training child welfare agency administrators and evaluators on increasing the number of evidence-supported interventions for the child welfare population. These modules outline how to identify rigor in evaluation designs, apply core scientific principles and tools required to produce evaluation evidence; and have greater capacity to conduct and support rigorous evaluation.

Build Back Better Child Care Copayment Calculator, November 21, 2021 - This new interactive resource from The Hunt Institute is an online copayment calculator designed to help individuals estimate their child care costs under HR 5376, the Build Back Better Act. This interactive tool builds on published estimates, allowing families and providers to enter their state, income and family size and receive a precise, personalized estimate alongside the year their eligibility is projected to begin based on income.
Events
Friday, December 10, 2:00 PM EST
Convening on the Child Tax Credit - NACo, APHSA, and the Center for Intergovernmental Partnerships.

Tuesday, January 11, 2022, 10:30 AM PT

Wednesday, January 19, 2022, 11:00 AM MT

Announcements
Preparing for Human-Centered Redesign, This report, co-authored by the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University and the nonprofit design studio Civilla, is a readiness guide for state and local public benefits agencies looking to improve applications, renewals, and correspondence. The guide provides actionable examples of large-scale and smaller-scale changes, checklists of conditions and resources needed for each approach, and guidance and practical resources for getting started with redesign.
Resources
AISP Working Paper: Addressing Racial and Ethnic Inequities in Human Service Provision, November 29, 2021 - This working paper outlines the three phases of work for assessing and responding to racial and ethnic disparities in human service provision, including performing a gaps analysis, interpreting the gaps analysis by assessing root causes, and co-creating an equity plan to correct for inequities.

Fighting Hunger by Connecting Cross-Sector Partners and Centering Lived Expertise, December 2021 - As part of the Exploring Cross-Agency Partnerships to Address Food Insecurity initiative, led by the Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS) with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, this report offers four recommendations drawn from conversations with individuals with lived expertise, interviews with state policymakers representing Medicaid and SNAP, and an environmental scan. The recommendations give insight to policymakers on more effectively addressing food insecurity by integrating individuals with lived expertise as partners in program and policy design, implementation, and evaluation.