Overall, the focus of the Office of Human Services Policy (HSP) FY 2001 Research and Evaluation agenda is to cover a wide range of research on families and children. This agenda provides an integrated picture of the low-income population, including analyses of the economic condition, health and well-being, socio-demographic characteristics, and the social service needs of low-income individuals, families, and children. Our policy interests cover a broad spectrum, including welfare outcomes, working families, supports for low-income populations, the hard to serve and special populations, and children and youth programs and policies. The Research and Evaluation agenda includes "welfare outcomes" research funded with an earmark in the Department's FY 2001 appropriations conference report language for continuing the study of the outcomes of welfare reform. Given that the bulk of our funding was targeted to studying the outcomes of welfare reform, an underlying goal of many of our FY 2001 research, evaluation, and data projects is enhancing the Department's understanding of and ability to respond to questions about the outcomes of low-income families. Information, including research findings, from our welfare outcomes research agenda is summarized in our annual reports to Congress.
Efforts were made throughout the planning process to ensure that, to the fullest extent possible, our research agenda complements and enhances other research activities, both within and outside the federal government, and avoids unnecessary duplication. To that end, we paid careful attention to identifying on-going research, evaluation, and data activities which could be enhanced or modified and identifying activities being funded or planned by other entities that could provide joint-funding opportunities.
Our FY 2001 research agenda is organized into six broad areas:
Building and enhancing state and local capacity for data collection and monitoring studies remains integral to HSP's efforts. Our FY 2001 research agenda continues supporting state-level data collection efforts, administrative data linking, and the creation of public-use and restricted-access data files. We also continue our efforts to provide technical assistance to improve the quality of research results, ensure more uniformity and comparability across studies, and synthesize results across state and local level monitoring studies.
This project funds six states — California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Missouri, and South Carolina — to study the characteristics of their TANF caseloads. Particular attention will be given to the personal, family and community factors that may present barriers to employment. States will survey a sample of the current caseload by telephone, in order to gather information in such areas as physical and mental health, disability, substance abuse, and domestic violence, as well as information on demographics, work experience and income. To improve the comparability of survey data, states will use a standardized survey instrument (see project description below). Each state will supplement this common instrument with additional survey questions according to their particular interests, and will augment their survey data with administrative data in order to examine changes over time in recipient characteristics and program utilization. States will compare characteristics of recipients and barriers to employment across various subgroups, such as short-term and long-term recipients or employed and non-employed recipients.
This task order is for the development of a standardized telephone survey instrument to be used in ASPE's State Studies on TANF Caseload project (described above) and for technical assistance throughout this project. Under this task order, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. will develop a survey instrument following review of existing instruments, such as the Women's Employment Survey (WES), the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF), the Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD), the Mathematica Policy Research Caseload Survey, and TANF "leavers" surveys from Missouri and Alameda County, CA. The survey instrument will consist of a common set of questions to be administered by states participating in the above project, supplemented by additional questions according to state's particular interests. Mathematica will also be responsible for gaining approval of the survey instrument from the Office of Management and Budget, and for providing a variety of technical assistance to participating states.
This task order will assist ASPE in analyzing survey data on the TANF caseload in Illinois. The data are being acquired by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., in a project funded by the Packard and Casey Foundations. The data will include information on the personal characteristics and situations, potential barriers to employment, compensating strengths and resources, preparation for employment and employment outcomes of current TANF recipients. Under the ASPE task order, Mathematica will analyze this rich set of data, in order to explore the relationships of an array of factors to the employment outcomes of TANF recipients. In particular, the analysis will enhance ASPE's understanding of the extent to which "job readiness" or "human capital" — the skills, experiences, habits and attitudes that prepare individuals for employment — compensate for barriers to employment. Findings will inform TANF policy and administration, particularly regarding screening and assessment, job preparation strategies and the targeting of services.
Over a dozen new HHS-sponsored administrative and survey databases have recently become available for researcher use. Secondary analyses of new databases will increase our understanding of the outcomes of welfare reform. These databases include data from the ASPE supported National Evaluation of Welfare to Work Strategies (NEWWS), as well as state and local welfare leaver studies. In this project, HSP is working with the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin to provide dissertation grants to young scholars to explore aspects of welfare reform using the HHS-sponsored data sets. The grants also will build capacity by encouraging younger scholars to undertake welfare-related research.
In FYs 1999 and 2000 ASPE funded researcher-initiated grants on various aspects of welfare reform outcomes. Topics were nominated by applicants and competitively selected. Continuing this grant program in FY 2001 we awarded eleven grants in support of policy-relevant research to broaden our understanding of welfare reform outcomes. The issues being addressed under the grants include barriers to service delivery, particularly for special populations; family formation; child and youth outcomes; maternal employment; the low-wage labor market; family economic security; measurement of welfare utilization; and effects of TANF time limits. The FY 2001 funded proposals are:
This project focuses on the development, analysis, and use of neighborhood health indicators. In this project, ASPE is working with the Urban Institute and its collaborative, the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP), a group consisting of 12 data intermediary organizations located in various large cities. The Urban Institute will coordinate information sharing and provide technical assistance to five of these organizations as they conduct cross-site and site-specific ecological analyses. These analyses will examine relationships at the census tract level between health data pertaining to children and youth (e.g, vital records data), Census data, and contextual variables, and also will look at changes in these relationships between 1990 and 2000. Geospacial analysis using mapping techniques will be used to graphically illustrate key relationships. The findings will inform both the NNIP participants and ASPE about effective approaches to collecting and analyzing community health indicator data. Site-specific findings will be used to assess local conditions and trends, to plan specific health initiatives, to engage in city-wide efforts and policy change, or for strategic planning purposes.
This study, being conducted by Capital Research Corporation explores the feasibility of developing a core set of performance measures for the four DHHS programs that focus on services to homeless populations — Programs for Homeless and Runaway Youth, Health Care for the Homeless, Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness (PATH), and Addictions Treatment for Homeless Persons. The core set is expected to include both process and outcome measures. Both routine administrative reporting and homeless registry/homeless management information systems will be examined as sources for indicators for these programs. Based on common goals in these programs and measure usefulness, up to 10 common measures will be proposed and vetted with the programs. To determine if these performance measures have utility in documenting services to homeless persons in generic, non-homeless-specific service programs, the contract will explore whether routine reporting in selected block grant programs and Medicaid could generate any of the measures. The final report will include specific recommendations on performance measures for programs serving homeless individuals, including recommendations for both targeted and mainstream programs.
Two previous national surveys — in 1987 and 1996 — produced valuable and useful descriptions of homeless populations, allowed for more complete understanding of the existing services system, and provided a foundation for policy evaluation and formulation. The value of these previous surveys make another national survey desirable as HHS seeks solutions in a changing environment. The contract, funded in collaboration with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, initiates a process of refining the 1996 survey methodology to prepare for survey administration in 2004 or 2005. Groups concerned with homelessness will be convened to critically review the 1996 National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients (NSHAPC) and to set goals for a potential repeat of NSHAPC. The contract with Westat will permit HHS to assess which methodologies and operations approaches used in NSHAPC 1996 should be retained and/or revised in the potential repeat; whether additional variables can be identified to describe the scope of the homeless assistance system and its services, e.g., by affiliations, funding, and geographic variations; and new conceptualizations of homeless clientele and other users, e.g., by risk and protective factors or their prior homeless histories. Based on these considerations, a final report will identify up to three design options for a national survey.
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HSP has a strong interest in understanding the effects of welfare reform within the context of the devolution of responsibility for major social programs from the federal government to the states. Questions about the implementation and outcomes of welfare reform are legion and encompass a broad range of interests and perspectives. The continued infusion of Policy Research funding dedicated to studying welfare outcomes has been and continues to be invaluable to our efforts to add to and enhance the information available to the Department, Congress, and other interested parties in upcoming debates about future directions for welfare reform.
State and local agencies are making substantial investments through TANF and other sources to help low-income families with demonstrated difficulty entering and sustaining employment. There is a significant amount of activity and a variety of approaches being used to help low-income parents address or cope with the personal and family problems that interfere with their employment stability. ACF and ASPE are supporting a multi-site evaluation of programs working with hard-to-employ low-income parents in order to identify effective strategies for promoting employment and family well-being and to determine the effects of such programs on employment, earnings, income, welfare dependence, family functioning, and the well-being of children. The Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation has been chosen as the contractor to design and conduct a multi-site evaluation that studies the implementation issues, net impact, and benefit-costs of selected programs. During the first year, the MDRC will assist HHS in identifying and recruiting programs with potential for evaluation and will assist selected programs in strengthening or expanding services to meet requisite conditions for rigorous evaluation.
This project supports a National Governors' Association (NGA) project to build state and local capacity to provide work supports which help low-income working parents sustain employment and advance in the labor market, as well as increase positive family functioning and child well-being. NGA will convene a roundtable of federal and state policymakers, program administrators, and researchers with subject area expertise to develop clear goals for serving low-income working families. NGA will then identify programs that are currently providing supports for low-income workers and their families, and will develop a policy guide based on the lessons learned from their experiences. Finally, NGA will convene two regional conferences in order to share these lessons with state and local officials, and will provide customized technical assistance to three states. USDA/ERS also is providing funding for this project.
Although a number of national and state surveys have begun gathering measures of material hardship (e.g., utility cutoffs, inability to get needed medical attention, food insecurity, evictions), it is hard to respond to Congressional interest in gathering information on a state-by-state basis, given the small sample size of most national surveys and the lack of comparability across state surveys. The purpose of this project is to advance understanding of the value and limitations of measures of material hardship as a component of family well-being. The contractor, Abt Associates, will be responsible for convening a working meeting on measuring material hardship; commissioning papers on various aspects of material hardship measures; and producing a final report summarizing the one-day meeting and options for further steps.
The National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies (NEWWS), conducted by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, has used an experimental design to compare the effects of different welfare-to-work strategies in seven sites. The effects of two approaches to preparing welfare recipients for employment were compared in three sites (Atlanta, Grand Rapids, and Riverside). One strategy is a "human capital development" approach whereby individuals are directed to avail themselves of education services and, to a lesser extent, occupational training before they seek work, under the theory that they will then be able to get better jobs and keep them longer. The other strategy is a "labor force attachment" or "work first" strategy whereby individuals are encouraged to gain quick entry into the labor market, even at low wages, under the theory that their work habits and skills will improve on the job and enable them to advance themselves. The effects on children of parents' participation in welfare-to-work programs are also being estimated as part of this project, and special analyses are also being done on the relationship between depression and low literacy. This multi-year project has already produced valuable information by establishing the effectiveness of state "work first" strategies, describing innovative models, and breaking new ground in the assessment of the effects of welfare reform on children. The project will be completed in early 2002. This is our last installment for this evaluation effort.
ASPE is providing continuing support to the Project on Devolution and Urban Change. Under this ongoing project, the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) is studying impacts of welfare reform and welfare to work programs on low-income individuals, families, and the communities in which they live, in four large urban areas — Cleveland, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami. ACF/HHS and ERS/USDA have joined ASPE in funding this project for the past two years. The federal contribution to this project leverages a substantial investment by foundations, which are funding the majority of the over $20 million project cost.
PRWORA authorized HHS to retain data from the Federal Parent Locator Service (FPLS) for TANF and child support enforcement research purposes. This is a rich source of wage and employment data, but does not include key program participation and demographic variables. Previously, ASPE and ACF's Offices of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE), and Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) funded consultations with researchers and policymakers, and a report proposing design options for a research database which would combine FPLS data with other HHS data, e.g., TANF and Medicaid, to give a comprehensive picture of the low income population of interest. This project, which is being conducted by the Lewin Group, will refine and implement a research database design for Department use and develop, as appropriate, public use protocols. This design effort will be managed in ASPE, in conjunction with ACF and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), but is being funded entirely by ACF.
This project supports the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) Research Forum on Children, Families, and the New Federalism database and website. The website is designed to provide the most reliable information to key stakeholders, including researchers, policymakers, administrators, and practitioners concerning welfare reform interventions being tested; populations and geographic areas being assessed; research methods being used; major findings already available; and when future findings will be released. The data base and web site provide valuable information useful to Federal officials and other practitioners regarding research and demonstration initiatives related to welfare reform and the well-being of low-income children and families.
This project provides the final year commitment to support a multi-year effort by South Carolina's Office of Budget and Control Board, Office of Research and Statistics, to link administrative data and additional data from surveys of former welfare recipients and those diverted from cash assistance. The funds are provided through an ACF cooperative agreement and will allow South Carolina to continue its contract for the expansion of the follow-up studies.
This project continues ASPE's on-going core support for the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). ASPE funds provide partial support for the continued collection and processing of longitudinal data relevant to research on economic factors and income support mechanisms, health, fertility, medical care, and disability affecting the poor and the elderly. ASPE funds will continue to support an expansion of the set of welfare related questions to assess the entry effects of recent reforms. In addition, there is included a one time supplement to support an expanded sample of low income families with children for core data collection activities related to the Child Supplement.
The Welfare Reform Urban Strategies Initiative is a multi-stage technical assistance project through which ASPE and ACF will assist 10 urban localities with high TANF caseloads to enhance their existing systems for providing coordinated job support services. The project aims to develop information about the political, social, economic, and demographic characteristics of each site, in order to identify barriers faced by remaining TANF recipients. Caliber Associates will organize a stakeholder meeting for representatives of the 10 localities, which will facilitate greater coordination among key institutions that influence the welfare to work continuum in those localities. Caliber also will provide intensive technical assistance to two of the localities regarding strategies for reducing their TANF caseload.
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) overhauled the nation's welfare system and provided, for the first time, a limit on the number of months families could receive federally funded assistance. In late 2001, the first families will be reaching the 60-month federal time limit on receipt of TANF benefits. ASPE is joining with ACF to fund a study of the early experiences of states in implementing both the federal time limit and shorter state time limits, in order to be able to answer questions about these policies that come up as part of the debate regarding TANF reauthorization. The Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) will collect this information based upon a review of the literature, a series of site visits to states, and a 50-state (plus DC) survey of TANF administrators.
In FY 2000, ASPE issued a task order to the Urban Institute to analyze and synthesize available information on state welfare and related support policies and assess which characteristics of state programs or background characteristics are most significant in predicting outcomes. As part of this project, Urban convened a technical work group (TWG) of researchers to make recommendations on which existing typologies were most promising and on directions for analysis. The TWG recommended that Urban develop new typologies, rather than modifying existing typologies, and suggested that cluster and factor analysis be used to determine which policies were most significant in differentiating between different packages of state policy choices. Therefore, under the revised task order, Urban Institute will develop six typologies, each containing the variables that are expected to affect a specific outcome (such as recipient job entry or the poverty rate). These will be entered into a public use database for use by researchers. Urban will also conduct cluster and factor analysis on the recipient job entry typology as an example of what can be learned through these approaches.
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Our strategy in the children and youth area focuses on early childhood, youth, and children's services systems. Policy areas of interest include improving our understanding of early childhood education, promotion of youth development and prevention of teen risk behaviors, and the examination of child protection and child welfare service systems.
In FY 2001, there was a new community based abstinence education grant program created in the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). These community grants provide support to public and private entities for the development and implementation of abstinence education programs in communities. ASPE has been given responsibility for the evaluation activities. This project, to be conducted by Abt Associates will explore the programmatic and evaluative information that currently exists in the area of abstinence-only education and related fields. It will develop design options for evaluation activities. This work will be coordinated with the ongoing evaluation of the state formula grant program activities.
ASPE/HSP continues to manage an existing $6 million multi-year contract with Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR) to conduct a Congressionally mandated evaluation of selected programs under Title V, State Abstinence Education Program. This large and complex, rigorous evaluation is taking an empirical look at the differential effectiveness of several types of abstinence programs. It will measure the success of different program models in altering adolescent attitudes and intentions about premarital sex, reducing sexual activity among teens, convincing adolescents who have had sex to become abstinent, and lowering exposure to sexually transmitted diseases and nonmarital births. The 2001 ASPE funds will allow the evaluation to follow adolescents for longer periods of time and to coordinate with the newly mandated community-based abstinence education evaluation. The final impact findings will be available in 2005.
Research has shown that youth violence is a complex problem which requires multi-layered solutions. As a result, there are numerous federal Departments and divisions within Departments whose missions address youth violence in some way. Over the last two years, ASPE has played a central role in helping coordinate youth violence research being conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Substance Abuse, and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), as well as by divisions in the Departments of Education and Justice. These agencies are all interested in advancing coordinated work and are making financial or in-kind contributions to a working group's efforts. ASPE's funding will support a forum for the federal agencies to identify research gaps and promote collaborative work to address these gaps. Funding will support convening and logistics costs, outside speakers, meeting summaries, and the development of a report on current federal activities and recommendations for future partnerships. Funding also will support updating "Combating Violence and Delinquency: The National Juvenile Justice Action Plan," developed in partnership with the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
As a complement to work on national indicators, ASPE sponsored an initiative to assist 14 states in developing and monitoring indicators of the health and well-being of children and youth as changes occur in welfare and other key policy areas. These states and other states are interested in doing more work to develop youth indicators. States also would like to learn more about how national research initiatives can inform state-level work. There are a number of national projects which have been focusing on improving youth outcomes measures in population-based surveys and for program evaluation purposes. Under this project the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago and Child Trends will bring these various efforts together. They will create inventories of national and state efforts to improve youth measures, work with states to design and conduct a meeting on youth indicators, develop dissemination materials, and identify the best opportunities for HHS to assist states in the future.
The rapid increase in funding and services for low-income preschoolers has been one of the most dramatic developments in the field of early childhood care and education in recent years. State funding for prekindergarten has risen dramatically, and a few states have invested enough federal and state funds in services to this age group to serve all eligible children (i.e., Georgia's universal prekindergarten program and Ohio's Head Start program). Child care experts in states with significant new investments in preschool programs are observing unexpected impacts on the supply and cost of care for infants and toddlers. Under contract to NICHD, Child Trends will convene a meeting of experts in the field and produce a feasibility paper on the implications of the growth of programs for preschoolers on the cost, staffing, or availability of programs for infants and toddlers. The feasibility paper will involve a review and synthesis of the literature on this issue, an assessment of the adequacy of the data, consideration of existing policies on the state level, and identification of data needs and topics for further research.
ASPE has partnered with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Administration on Children and Families (ACF), and the Drug Court Programs Office at the Department of Justice to conduct an evaluation of several family drug treatment courts. These courts are adapting the concept of drug courts developed in the criminal justice arena and applying the model to child abuse and neglect proceedings where a parent's drug abuse contributed to the abuse or neglect. Though very promising, no thorough evaluations of these programs have yet been conducted. This evaluation, to be conducted by ROW Sciences (and subcontractor Children and Family Futures) would use rigorous methods to examine whether this model improves outcomes for children and families. ASPE's contribution will support these efforts and assure a broad focus on family outcomes and continued attention to child welfare issues. This project is one of the ways the Department is following up on the Report to Congress on Substance Abuse and Child Protection, the development of which ASPE led in 1999.
States and counties across the nation report difficulties recruiting and retaining an adequate supply of foster parents. Under this study, the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) will assess how administrative data on foster parents can be used to look at the "career path" of foster parents. That is, what are the demographic characteristics of foster parents, how long do they serve as foster parents, how many children pass through their households and in what patterns, and, to the extent information is available, for what reasons do they cease serving as foster parents. By better understanding the patterns of foster parenting we may be better able to inform efforts to recruit and retain future foster parents. This effort will develop a methodology for examining the experiences of foster parents and will conduct analysis on one or two states' data to test the methodology.
While some experimental studies of welfare to work programs have measured outcomes for children, broader discussions of welfare policies and changes are rarely framed around issues for children. As we approach the reauthorization of TANF, the question of how children are affected by welfare policies is one of the most critical issues for policymakers to address. Under this project, Mathematica Policy Research (and subcontractor Child Trends) will release a series of issue briefs, which will summarize the current body of knowledge regarding specific policy questions about how some aspect of welfare reform affects children (either all children or a salient subgroup), identify paths for future research, and discuss the implications for policymakers. The briefs will be written in a non-technical manner, with a user-friendly layout designed to make the findings accessible to busy audiences. Possible topics for issue briefs include: pathways in which welfare and related programs affect child outcomes, service delivery systems, family types, adolescents, child support, and child-only cases.
Under this study, sponsored in conjunction with the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), the Urban Institute will examine the role of fathers in permanency planning and child welfare casework. Study methods will include a literature review; interviews with child welfare caseworkers about their efforts to locate and involve fathers; and visits to several child welfare systems implementing practices to improve their capacity to search for and involve fathers in child welfare casework. In addition, if feasible, the study will test the utility of applying to child welfare cases two methods of identifying and locating fathers commonly used in child support enforcement, the Federal Parent Locator Service (FPLS) and a search of birth records.
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health ("Add Health") is currently the preeminent longitudinal study of adolescents in grades seven to twelve. The survey is collecting information on teen physical, mental, and emotional health status, and health behaviors. Add Health has already produced significant findings about the importance of family and school connection on adolescent outcomes. The Add Health cohort is aging into adulthood and represents an opportunity to track transitions into adulthood (e.g., family formation, welfare receipt, labor market transitions). ASPE's contributions will keep us involved in the development of this important survey, and will help ensure that we are informed of studies coming out of the data set in a timely manner.
The report on Trends in the Well-Being of Children and Youth provides information on more than 80 indicators. It is updated annually to provide new data in areas already covered and to broaden the coverage of issues as new data become available. This document, compiled and produced for us by Westat, is a valuable tool for the field and has contributed to the social indicators arena.
ASPE has supported the work of the Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics ("ChildStats") in a variety of ways over the past four years. Each agency involved in the Forum makes a financial contribution to support all aspects of the Forum's work. These funds are allocated by the Forum to specific agencies for funding publication of the Forum's annual indicators report, the publication of other reports, and support for other collaborative efforts.
SEED promotes collaborative work among federal agencies to fill gaps in the early childhood science base in areas that have implications for social policies for young children and their families, with a focus on low-income populations. Collaborating agencies currently include NICHD, NIMH, NIDA, ACF, ACYF, CDC, DoED. Funds will be used to convene researchers and policy makers on key issues in the early childhood area. Activities include developing and conducting a major meeting or a series of smaller meetings in a key substantive area for research and policy on early childhood issues. These activities will be modeled on the successful SEED meetings which ASPE helped to sponsor on child care issues. Activities are designed and conducted in collaboration with SEED partners. Research on school readiness will be the focus of work this year.
With other federal and private funders, ASPE and ACF are working with states to improve measurement of child health and well-being outcomes in state welfare evaluations. Five states are using a common protocol to add child outcome measures to their welfare reform evaluations. Continuation funding is enabling states and their evaluators to receive research technical assistance on collecting survey data using the common core of instruments, using administrative data sources, and developing and coordinating data analysis and reporting strategies. The focus of the current phase of work is the production of a synthesis of the findings from the state evaluations. The research technical assistance is provided by the NICHD Research Network on Family and Child Well-Being under Child Trends' Leadership.
The Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative (SS/HS) is an innovative collaboration between the Departments of Education, Justice, Labor, and Health and Human Services. The Initiative provides funding to schools and communities for implementing comprehensive community-wide strategies to create safe and drug-free schools and promote healthy child development. The SS/HS National Evaluation, being conducted by the Research Triangle Institute (RTI), is collecting and analyzing data to assess the overall impact of the SS/HS Initiative across the 77 SS/HS sites. The primary objective of the Evaluation is to examine the impact of using local collaborations to plan and implement comprehensive strategies to promote healthy child and youth development and safe school environments. The Evaluation also will determine whether the Initiative has produced desirable changes across the sites in each of the Initiative's six domains.
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Our strategy in the family formation area is to increase our focus on understanding family structure and functioning, particularly family composition and poverty and health insurance status. We are continuing our focus on issues related to fertility, the impact on welfare reform on marriage and the living arrangements of children, and how parents are fulfilling their economic and emotional responsibilities to their families.
One of the four purposes of TANF is to "end the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work and marriage." While researchers and policy makers have focused substantial attention on increasing labor market participation among TANF recipients and the caseload declines that have followed, there has been far less focus on efforts to promote marriage. This project, being conducted by the Lewin Group, will inventory state-level policies directly aimed at promoting and supporting marriage, including policies specific to TANF as well as broader policies. The findings also will highlight examples of the language and history behind some policies. The researchers will use a variety of sources, including list-serves such as Smartmarriages, a survey of existing documentation at the state and national level, and interviews with key people knowledgeable about policy developments around the country related to marriage.
Welfare reform's effects on family formation and composition as well as how such changes can affect the financial resources and material well-being of members of low-income households are issues of strong interest to policy makers. Through a literature review, The Urban Institute will document what is currently known about the effects of welfare policies on family formation and resource sharing. The review will provide an overview of existing research across disciplines (e.g., anthropology, sociology and economics). The study also will summarize key data sources on this issue (e.g., SIPP, CPS, NLSY, SPD, National Survey of America's Families, National Survey of Family Growth) and their strengths and weaknesses for investigating family composition and household resource and well-being issues.
Recently released findings based upon a small sample from the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation's (MDRC) evaluation of the Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP) suggest that the program had significant positive impacts on the marital stability of two-parent families. MDRC plans to conduct a follow-up study of all two-parent recipient families in the sample to determine if the robustness of their findings can be replicated in the larger sample. This work is a necessary first step before a decision is made about conducting a longer-term follow-up analysis of well-being outcomes for these families. Initially, ASPE will fund the first step of this MFIP follow-up work — the testing of the marital stability finding for a larger sample (estimated by MDRC to cost about $70,000). If the original findings hold up for the larger sample, the balance of the funds will be committed through a task order to partially fund measurement of longer-term, well-being outcomes under MFIP. MDRC is seeking multiple funders for this work.
In FY 2000, ASPE began work under contract with The Urban Institute looking at families and children affected by the high rates of incarceration in some low-income communities. This project, also being conducted by The Urban Institute, will provide essential information about the issues for and choices made by states as they implemented cross-cutting strategies that involve criminal justice and health and human services systems, and as they worked with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals and their families. Many of these families are current or former welfare recipients. A State Symposium will be held in the winter of 2001, bringing together the collaborating agency heads and other key stakeholders from selected states to obtain information on both the development and implementation phases of these state efforts. Key areas to be explored are resource needs, identifying barriers, partnership building, and implementation lessons. National organizations, such as the National Governors' Association and National Conference of State Legislatures, and other federal and private sector representatives will also be invited to the Symposium.
In the area of medical child support, states have identified coordination with State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) agencies and private insurers as the number one issue for which they need federal assistance. Also, the HHS/DoL Medical Child Support Working Group recommended that further research be conducted on states' efforts to coordinate health care coverage availability between child support, Medicaid, and SCHIP (Recommendation 70). This project, which is being conducted by The Urban Institute, will describe and analyze state efforts to coordinate between these three programs in order to secure appropriate health care coverage for child support-eligible children; the effects of federal policy on this cross-program coordination; and barriers to these efforts. The project has two components. The first involves convening a panel of experts to discuss why state agencies collaborate, what the barriers to collaboration are perceived to be, and the effects of federal policy on the decision to coordinate. Second, a series of case studies of several sites where coordination between child support, Medicaid, and SCHIP is underway will document the nature of the coordination, identify innovative practices and barriers, and describe the effects of federal policies. The project is being jointly monitored with the Office of Health Policy (HP).
Between fiscal years 1999 and 2002, HHS will have made up to $400 million in awards for the Bonus to Reward Decrease in Illegitimacy Ratio, a provision of Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 (PRWORA). As reauthorization approaches, it is important to examine recent state experiences in their efforts to reduce nonmarital births, and the role the Bonus has played in those efforts. The project will gather information from a sample of states to learn more about what programs aimed at reducing out-of-wedlock births were in operation before and after the Bonus, and about what factors encouraged or hindered development of state initiatives to reduce out-of-wedlock births, including competition for and receipt of the "Illegitimacy Bonus." This information will be gathered through panel discussions with state policy-makers, and from existing surveys of state efforts.
The Partners for Fragile Families (PFF) demonstrations are designed to help fragile families (young unwed parents and their children) by helping fathers work with mothers in sharing the legal, financial, and emotional responsibilities of parenthood. In March 2000, the Department approved ten state waivers for the PFF demonstration projects. The PFF projects will test new ways for state-run child support enforcement programs and community-based organizations to work together to help young fathers obtain employment, make child support payments and learn parenting skills; and to help parents build stronger partnerships. Unlike previous efforts which have focused on fathers with unpaid child support obligations, the PFF projects will test approaches to serving young, never-married, non-custodial parents who do not have a child support order in place and may face obstacles to employment. The evaluation, which is being conducted by The Urban Institute, has three broad purposes: to increase knowledge about systems change; to build knowledge about program operations and delivery of services to fragile families; and to describe client behavior. Process and outcome evaluations will be conducted by interviewing all service providers, including child support enforcement, community-based organizations, and partner agencies; and by analyzing client data and follow-up surveys. An ethnographic study will also be conducted. This project is jointly supported by ASPE and the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE).
The Department of Education's Early Childhood Longitudinal Birth Cohort Study (ECLS-B) is the nation's first study of a representative sample of over 10,000 children from birth through age five (or longer). ASPE funds will continue to support a focus on strengthening one or more of the following areas: measuring policy contexts at state and possibly local levels, expanding the sample of fathers to include non-resident fathers, supporting sample retention for low-income children, and/or addressing measurement issues for minority children. The omission of non-resident fathers would leave a major gap in the knowledge base for understanding basic developmental processes and for understanding a group of children and families of key interest in policy, especially poor children in minority families. The study is proceeding well, but has had to overcome a number of early design and measurement hurdles to satisfy state review boards and pilot test instruments. These changes have resulted in overall increased costs being shared by the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and study partners.
The Early Head Start (EHS) Research Network, working with ACF and Mathematica Policy Research, is continuing the longitudinal core evaluation of the Early Head Start Program through the preschool school years and is currently developing a funding strategy for continuation through kindergarten and into first grade. NICHD is committed to continuing its ongoing support for the Fathers Studies component of the Early Head Start Evaluation, however, additional dollars will not be available until the start of FY 2002. This project, in concert with ACF/ACYF would provide bridge funding to the Early Head Start Evaluation/Fathers Studies Project to provide resources to maintain contact with the fathers between interviewing cycles and to support the Network in the development of the father interview protocols for fathers of children who are turning five years of age and are entering kindergarten. The Early Head Start Evaluation is measuring both child and program outcomes and is one of the only father-involvement studies that has randomly assigned treatment and control groups. The bridge funding will make it possible for the EHS Research Network to take advantage of the NICHD grant and will keep interview schedules in their appropriate time sequences.
The National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) is the most important national survey for understanding issues around fertility and family formation. In the past, the survey has asked questions of a random sample of about 13,000 women ages 15 to 44. In Cycle 6, based on the recommendations of the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS, which produces the NSFG data and reports) plans to add direct interviews of 7,000 men to obtain information from them about fertility and family formation, similar to what is already asked of women. While we know from other research that gender influences decision making around sex and family formation, our ability to understand these dynamics has been greatly constrained up until now by a lack of solid information from men regarding their attitudes and behaviors. This expansion of the NSFG is intended to integrate, over time, independent survey work that has been done with young men and to include in subsequent NSFG cycles noncivilian and institutionalized populations of men. This new data will have implications for policy development in the areas of teen pregnancy prevention, out-of-wedlock childbearing, welfare, child support and paternity establishment, and father involvement.
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Our strategy in the special populations and local service delivery issues area is to examine innovative approaches for delivering services while ensuring accountability. The research in this area is designed not only to improve the effectiveness of assistance and services delivered to communities in general, but also to reach and effectively serve populations which have the greatest difficulty in succeeding in employment and thus may be left behind. Issues related to substance abuse, mental health, and domestic violence, as well as research on immigrants, are included in this section.
With the devolution of responsibility for welfare programs under TANF, many state and local governments have turned to non-profit, and increasingly for-profit, organizations to carry out human services functions that have traditionally been provided by the public sector. As a result, there has been an increase in the prevalence of performance-based contracts, as state and local governments attempt to maintain accountability while testing the effectiveness of these non-traditional service providers. Under this project, Mathematica Policy Research will undertake six case studies of local human services agencies that have privatized services funded under the TANF block grant. Agency administrators and front-line workers will be interviewed to determine the types of services that have been privatized and the performance measures used by government entities in their relationships with private organizations. A final report will describe emerging positive trends and problem areas, in both the services delivered and the types of contracts used.
The New Immigrant Survey is a large, longitudinal survey of recently arriving immigrants beginning in 2000. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD of the National Institutes of Health) are the principal funders of the survey. ASPE has contributed to this effort and also has provided input to the planning of the study and the development of the pilot instruments. ASPE's contribution helps ensure that comprehensive and relevant data are collected and analyzed about program utilization and hardship and well-being over time among newly arriving low-income immigrant families in different states. In particular, ASPE's continued support will ensure that the study focuses on what is happening to children in these families under welfare reform.
ASPE is a partner, based on a Memorandum of Understanding with seven other HHS and DOJ agencies, in planning and implementing a major demonstration initiative addressing the link between domestic violence and child maltreatment. Specifically, the initiative will test out whether implementing guidelines published by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges has a positive effect on outcomes for battered mothers and their children. In FY 2000 and early FY 2001, the consortium of federal agencies selected six sites to conduct the demonstration, began implementation of an evaluation, and funded the National Council and several of its partners to provide technical assistance to the sites. With FY 2001 funding, ASPE will continue its contribution for the evaluation, which is being conducted by Caliber Associates. This initiative has the potential for having a major impact on the way that battered women and their children are assessed, served, and protected by family courts, child protective services, domestic violence service providers, and community health and social service programs.
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HSP also funded some ongoing efforts and miscellaneous items in FY 2001 that are not covered in other parts of HSP's plan.
ASPE funds two poverty research centers, the Joint Center for Poverty Research at Northwestern University/University of Chicago and the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin. These multi-year grants were awarded to the two centers in 1996 to conduct research focusing specifically on poverty. Major tasks include analyzing the causes and consequences of poverty, recruiting and training young researchers interested in poverty, and improving methodologies for measuring the effectiveness of government programs serving the poor.
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Last updated: 02/04/04