Families with Children

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

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:

The Welfare Indicators Act of 1994 (Public Law 103-432) requires the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to prepare an annual report to Congress on indicators and predictors of “welfare dependence.” That Act requires the report to include three programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program (which replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)

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.

The cost of raising a family in America is high and continues to rise, with inflation rising by 23 percent between 2020 and 2025. For working families, some of the largest nondiscretionary expenses continue to be health care and child care.

This two-pager presents knowledge gaps and research opportunities elevated during a national convening of child support and child poverty experts. The questions under each topic are opportunities where research can support child support program decision-making surrounding current issues elevated during the convening, though they do not cover the only important questions for study.

Congress has directed HHS to operate the Children’s Interagency Coordinating Council (CICC). The CICC is charged with fostering greater coordination and transparency on child policy across federal agencies and examining a broad array of cross-cutting issues affecting child poverty and child well-being.

Custody relinquishment occurs when children enter foster care primarily to receive behavioral health or disability services, not because of maltreatment. Parents may relinquish custody for a variety of reasons. Entering foster care could provide children with access to services that are otherwise unavailable due to limited capacity.

The first brief below provides insight into children’s and adolescents’ mental health service use in Medicaid and CHIP during the pandemic, by using a national Medicaid claims database.

This brief summarizes findings from a research project that examined access to and use of tele-mental health services among individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) and children with serious emotional disturbance (SED) and behavioral health consumer and provider perceptions of the optimal balance of telehealth and in-person services for people with SMI and SED.