OPRE Report 2012-08
March 2012
https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/strategies_work.pdf
The Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ (HtE) Demonstration and Evaluation Project seeks to answer a critical question about this population: how might we improve the prospects of the many Americans who grapple with serious barriers to finding and holding a steady job? The HtE evaluation was a 10-year study that used rigorous random assignment research designs to evaluate innovative strategies aimed at improving employment and other outcomes for groups who face serious barriers to employment. The strategies were tested in New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Kansas, and Missouri.
This report describes the HtE programs that were tested and summarizes the final results for each program. Similar information is presented for three of the programs in the ACF sponsored Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) project — programs that also targeted hard-to-employ populations, operated around the same time, and were evaluated with an identical methodology.
The inclusion of these ERA results permits an analysis of a wider variety of programs targeting those with serious barriers to finding and holding a steady job. The HtE and ERA programs had a variety of goals, but they all aimed, directly or indirectly, to increase employment and earnings, and most aimed to reduce reliance on public assistance.
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Final Report
Launched in 1994, Florida’s pilot Family Transition Program (FTP) was the first welfare reform initiative in which some families reached a time limit on their welfare eligibility and had their benefits canceled. Today, almost all states have welfare time limits (and there is a 60-month lifetime limit on federally funded assistance), although relatively few families have yet reached those limits. FTP, which operated in Escambia County (including Pensacola) until 1999, limited most families to 24 months of cash welfare assistance in any 60-month period (the least job-ready were limited to 36 months in any 72-month period) and provided a wide array of services and incentives to help welfare recipients find work. Florida’s statewide welfare program incorporates many of the pilot program’s features but differs from it in key ways; thus, the evaluation of FTP did not assess the statewide program.
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Implementation, Participation Patterns, Costs, and Three-Year Impacts of the Columbus Welfare-to-Work Program
http://www.mdrc.org/sites/default/files/full_95.pdf
June 2001
Prepared by: Susan Scrivener Johanna Walter with Thomas Brock Gayle Hamilton Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation
for
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Administration for Children and Families
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation
U.S. Department of Education Office of the Under Secretary
Office of Vocational and Adult Education
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