Every May, Ascend recognizes the importance of raising awareness about mental health and the multifaceted ways that it impacts family prosperity and well-being.

Founded in 1995 as Project Women, Family Scholar House (FSH) provides comprehensive, holistic services for disadvantaged single parents, their children, and foster alumni.

Federal safety net programs are intended to protect the most vulnerable Americans—such as the elderly, people with severe disabilities and young children.

During CLPHA’s Education Working Group Webinar on addressing school attendance at PHAs, representatives from the King County Housing Authority and the national nonprofit Attendance Works presented on tools for addressing chronic absenteeism, as well as strategies for fostering a culture of attendanc

This SchoolHouse Connection series is focused on helping youth experiencing homelessness succeed in college. We highlight best practices for supporting these students from institutions across the country.

According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, 26% of undergraduate students--about 4.8 million students--are raising dependent children. Students of color are more likely to be parents; additionally, about 70% of parenting students are women.

Island School is one of 247 “community schools” in New York. These are regular public schools, with a twist. They have longer days and longer school years: Island stays open 12 hours a day, six days a week, including spring and winter breaks as well as the summer.

With collectively more than 100 years of policy expertise and values-based leadership between us, Ascend at the Aspen Institute and the Housing Opportunity and Services Together initiative at the Urban Institute partnered to develop a set of recommendations on how to harness assisted housing and pub

Colleges and higher education systems can make institutional policy changes to bolster the success of students who are parents and their families through intentional use of a two-generation approach.

There are opportunities for federal and state policies to better support postsecondary institutions in serving students who are parents and their families.

Current efforts to end homelessness are largely focused on the immediate housing needs of adults. Yet recent research further demonstrates the importance of addressing childhood, early care, and education in efforts to prevent and end homelessness. This blog post summarizes five new studies.

Which neighborhoods in America offer children the best chance to rise out of poverty? The Opportunity Atlas answers this question using anonymous data following 20 million Americans from childhood to their mid-30s.

This short document provides basic information to help housing and homeless assistance providers advocate with their families and youth for appropriate educational services, from birth through higher education.

The King County Housing Authority (KCHA), in partnership with the Highline School District and the nonprofit social service organization Neighborhood House, launched the Student and Family Stability Initiative (SFSI) pilot program in 2013 to provide housing and employment supports to homeless and un

Homelessness among children is correlated with developmental delays, fair or poor health, and high healthcare utilization. Associations of homelessness specifically among infants younger than 12 months, however, are unknown.

SAHF members believe that connecting residents of affordable housing with needed supports – such as educational resources or health services – can help vulnerable families and seniors achieve a better quality of life.

The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment offered randomly selected families living in highpoverty housing projects housing vouchers to move to lower-poverty neighborhoods. We present new evidence on the impacts of MTO on children’s long-term outcomes using administrative data from tax returns.

School readiness, school attendance, and summer learning

We examined the influence of maternal health literacy on child participation in social welfare programs. In this cohort, 20% of the mothers had inadequate or marginal health literacy.

"There's no silver bullet" to end chronic absenteeism, but a simple "nudge" letter has shown real success in reducing truancy.

Education leaders reconvened on Tuesday to continue discussing how to help kids by helping their parents. The approach, known as the “Two-Gen” method is based on data showing a child’s trajectory is largely determined by their parents’ stability.

Why do some neighborhoods appear able to launch effective local improvement initiatives, while others are more hampered by fragmentation and mistrust? Why can some communities mobilize diverse constituencies to influence public policy, while others cannot?

These case studies provide a framework for implementing or replicating promising approaches to use two-generation initiatives specifically with housing authority residents as means to improve life outcomes.