Research Brief

This brief describes Consolidated Block Grant (CBG) authority, which allows federal agencies to consolidate grants to insular areas into a single block grant, and how it is used with the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). Key findings include:

This brief describes the reporting practices used by the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG), the burden associated with the reporting process and the limitations of the resulting information for understanding how CSBG funds are used by eligible entities.

This brief explores how states are approaching kinship care by examining states’ definitions of kinship caregivers, the prevalence of children in foster care living with relatives or kin, states’ adoption of separate licensing standards for kinship homes, and states’ participation in kinship navigator programs through the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse. Key findings include:

This brief analyzes Title IV-E foster care program reported expenditures and reimbursements using the most recent years of publicly available claims data (from fiscal years 2019 to 2023). The content explores administrative costs, identifies how average monthly costs per child have changed over time, and provides a snapshot of the variation seen across states in FY2023.

This brief presents information on Head Start spending per slot across the country.  Key findings include:

This study examined how people with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) use hospice compared with patients who have other terminal diagnoses, as well as how hospice characteristics shape those care patterns.

This brief, focused on the Title IV-E Prevention Program, explores how states, territories, and Tribes have been engaging in the program since it began. The content highlights the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse process, as well as information from jurisdictions’ prevention plans and claimed expenditures. Key findings include:

This brief synthesizes experiences over the past 25 years of the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR), providing an overview of the process, analyzing collective state performance across rounds, and highlighting costs and challenges. During that time, zero states have passed the CFSR process. Although the process does not seem to be driving program improvement, it is costly and burdensome.

We modeled the excess utilization of three commonly used drugs that treat heat-related illness in emergency departments during extreme heat events, using literature-derived estimates of emergency department visit rates for heat-related illness on extreme heat days and drug utilization rates from medical claims data.We estimate that extreme heat is associated with an average of 34,

This brief summarizes results of interviews and focus groups with participants in human services programs about how they view extreme weather and other environmental hazards and their effects on families and communities. Participants discussed acute hazards such as flooding, as well as more chronic problems such as widespread trash, heat, poor air and water quality, and lead.