Personal and Family Challenges to the Successful Transition from Welfare to Work
by Krista Olson and LaDonna Pavetti
The Urban Institute
Prepared for the Administration for Children and Families and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation under
Contract No. 100-95-0021 Task Order No.6
Key findings from this 40-page (plus Appendix) report are as follows:
Welfare recipients, like many non-welfare families, experience a broad range of family and personal issues that make employment difficult.
There is a wide range of estimates on the prevalence of specific potential barriers to employment among the welfare population.
Most welfare recipients experience at least one potential barrier to employment, with low basic skills being the most common.
The majority of recipients who experience potential barriers to employment nevertheless work, but do so intermittently.
The one-quarter of the AFDC caseload who report a potentially serious barrier to employment and have no recent attachment to the labor force are likely to need more assistance to succeed in the labor market than most traditional welfare-to-work programs provide. Almost twice as many may need additional assistance to maintain steady employment.
For more information contact Helen Howerton:hhowerton@acf.dhhs.gov
Designing Welfare-to-Work Programs for Families Facing Personal or Family Challenges: Lessons from the Field
by LaDonna Pavetti, Krista Olson, Nancy Pindus and Marta Pernas from the Urban Institute and Julie Isaacs from the American Institutes for Research.
Prepared for the Administration for Children and Families and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation under Contract No. 100-95-0021 Task Order No. 6.
This 79-page report includes the following major lessons learned:
Flexibility is a critical component of these programs. A diverse array of personal and family problems contribute to families' inabilities to find or keep employment. These families also have very different strengths on which they can draw to become self-sufficient. Consequently, while some families may need limited assistance for only a short period of time, others may need more intensive assistance for far longer. In addition, a broad range of services and approaches to strengthening families are likely to be needed to help these families achieve self-sufficiency.
One of the key components of each of these programs is the development of a trusting relationship. Program administrators repeatedly stressed the importance of hiring staff who were genuinely committed to helping families bring about change in their lives. One of the main roles staff provide is to celebrate small steps to self-sufficiency and to push families to progress further.
Forging partnerships with community agencies that provide substance abuse treatment, mental health counseling or specialized services for women in abusive situations are critical to helping families achieve self-sufficiency. Most JOBS case managers or eligibility workers lack the skills to address these issues. Even programs that have hired more highly skilled staff rely on these outside resources, both because they are not necessarily skilled in these particular areas and because they lack sufficient time to provide the intensive counseling and support needed to address these issues.
Clear expectations reinforced with financial penalities are important to the success of these programs. Staff report repeatedly that sanctions serve an especially important function in getting families who are fearful of change to begin to take the initial steps necessary to take to become self-sufficient.
The provision of supportive services to families that experience various personal and family challenges that make it difficult for them to find or sustain employment is not incompatible with a program model that emphasizes rapid entry into the labor market. For many families, assistance designed to help them overcome particular barriers to employment can be provided within a relatively short period of time. In some cases, employment itself or participation in community activities designed to increase a recipient's competency in work-related skills and self-esteem may help recipients to overcome their personal and family challenges.
For more information contact Helen Howerton:hhowerton@acf.dhhs.gov
