The COVID-19 pandemic has had a tremendous impact on State, Tribal, and Local TANF and child support programs. While some efforts have been made to understand these impacts, there are significant gaps in our knowledge of how these programs were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, OPRE launched a project to document the changes these programs made during the pandemic, what lessons were learned, and what changes have been incorporated into ongoing program operations.
This project will also advance knowledge regarding how State, Tribal, and Local TANF and child support programs can incorporate family input to inform program improvements and operations. There is an increasing understanding of the valuable role of family input in creating more effective, equitable social programs. This project will first describe how TANF and child support programs are currently using family input to inform their programs. It will then create a family input guide and other resources for TANF and child support programs to use to obtain family input, pilot these resources with select programs, and conduct an iterative formative rapid-cycle evaluation of these resources.