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Office of Human Services Policy (HSP)

The Office of Human Services Policy (HSP) conducts policy research, analysis, evaluation, and coordination on various issues across the Department, including but not limited to, poverty and measurement, vulnerable populations, early childhood education and child welfare, family strengthening, economic support for families, and youth development. HSP serves as a liaison with other agencies on broad economic matters and is the Department’s lead on poverty research and analysis.

The Division of Children and Youth Policy focuses on policies related to the well-being of children and youth. Projects range from quick-turnaround policy analyses to large-scale experimental studies, and major policy initiatives. Key areas include early childhood, early care and education, home visiting, youth development and risky behaviors, parenting and family support, child welfare and foster care, linkages with physical and mental health, methods for evaluating what works, and strategies for improving research and data in these areas.

The Division of Family and Community Policy focuses on policies affecting various low-income populations. This includes policy development around major initiatives such as homelessness and reentry. It also includes conducting and coordinating analysis, research, and evaluation on the safety net, economic mobility and opportunity, welfare-to-work issues, strengthening families and responsible fatherhood, child support enforcement, and domestic violence. Other key priorities include place-based initiatives, the role of social capital in human services, human trafficking, benefits coordination.

The Division of Data and Technical Analysis focuses on policies and programs concerning low-income and otherwise disadvantaged populations. The Division provides data analytic capacity for policy development through data collection activities, secondary data analysis, modeling, and cost analyses. The Division focuses on cross-cutting human services policy issues such as income, poverty, cash and non-cash supports for low-income families, employment, fertility, and child welfare. The Division also issues annual updates to the poverty guidelines and reports to Congress on indicators of welfare dependence.

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Reports

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ASPE Issue Brief

Aligning Federal Performance Indicators Across Programs Promoting Self-Sufficiency: Actionable Steps For Program Design And Practice

This brief outlines actionable steps that program designers at the federal, state, or local level can take to build or use aligned measures across programs in ways that can improve program management and increase service coordination.

Supporting Employment Among Lower-Income Mothers: Attachment to Work After Childbirth

This is the first of two briefs about a qualitative study examining lower-income mothers' attachment to work around the time of childbirth and the role of state paid family leave (PFL) programs in supporting their return to employment. Seventy-five mothers who used PFL participated in the study.

Strengthening Human Services through Social Capital

ASPE has contracted with Research Triangle Institute and the University of North Carolina School of Government to understand how local, state, faith-based, and nonprofit human services programs and organizations can create and use social capital to increase employment, reduce poverty, and improve child and family well-being.

Independent Contractors and Nontraditional Workers: Implications for the Child Support Program

For child support programs, the emergence of the gig economy presents a new dimension to the longstanding challenge of establishing and enforcing child support orders for noncustodial parents working outside traditional salaried employment – in jobs that are often temporary, part-time, and contingent.

Aligning Federal Performance Indicators Across Programs Promoting Self-Sufficiency: Local Perspectives

Individuals and families frequently qualify for multiple human services and employment programs that are funded, regulated, and administered by different federal agencies—each with their own eligibility criteria, program requirements, and performance indicators.

Factsheet: Estimates of Child Care Eligibility and Receipt for Fiscal Year 2015

This factsheet provides descriptive information on child care eligibility and receipt. Of the 13.6 million children eligible for child care subsidies under federal rules, 15 percent received subsidies. Of the 8.4 million children eligible for child care subsidies under state rules, 25 percent received subsidies. Poorer children were more likely to receive subsidies than less poor children.
Research Brief

The Child Support Performance and Incentive Act at 20: Examining Trends in State Performance

Despite broad agreement that the child support program has performed well since the passage of the Child Support Performance and Incentive Act (CSPIA) in 1998, questions remain over whether the current measures will continue to drive better performance on outcomes that reflect the child support program’s core mission.

Medication-Assisted Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder in the Child Welfare Context: Challenges and Opportunities

This brief describes four key challenges related to the use of medication-assisted treatment (MAT) in child welfare contexts for parents with opioid use disorder. It draws upon results from a mixed methods study examining how substance use affects child welfare systems across the country. Key challenges discussed include:
Research Brief

¡Cuídate!: Impact Findings from the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Replication Study (Research Brief)

This research brief highlights findings from the evaluation of ¡Cuídate!, an HIV/AIDS prevention program that uses an approach culturally tailored to Latino youth. The study examined data from three different replications of ¡Cuídate!, pooling the data to examine the overall program impact.
Report

Safer Sex Intervention: Impact Findings from the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Replication Study (Research Brief)

This research brief highlights the impact findings from the evaluation of three replications of the Safer Sex Intervention (SSI), a clinic-based intervention intended to reduce the incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and increase condom use among high-risk sexually active female adolescents.