The National Evaluation of the Welfare-to-Work Grants Program, Final Report:

Chapter III:
Program Models and Services

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Contents

1. Program Models
   1. Employment Model
   2. Pre-Employment Model
   3. Rehabilitative Model
   4. Post-Employment Model
2. Services Actually Received
   1. Employment Preparation Services
   2. Skill Enhancement Services
   3. Transitional Employment
3. Comparison of Services with Program Models

• Endnotes

WtW grantees, allowed considerable discretion to design programs, came up with a variety of approaches to serve the enrollees described in the previous chapter. The underlying goal of the WtW grants program was to promote the long-term economic self-sufficiency of people with serious employment difficulties, particularly welfare recipients and noncustodial parents of children on welfare. In pursuing this goal, grantees generally offered similar services classified as allowable under the authorizing legislation. All the grantees in this study offered pre-employment services such as needs and skills assessments, job readiness instruction, and job search assistance. They also offered, at least to some enrollees, more intensive activities such as education, occupational training, transitional subsidized employment, or supported work experience. Some provided job retention services. Grantees diverged, however, in the relative emphasis they placed on different services, each attempting to address the needs of their target population, as they understood them.

The approaches grantees took to the provision of services can be looked at from two perspectives. First, we can classify programs into general models based on grantee service plans and descriptions of their activities, and on our observations of program services. Section A distinguishes four such program models on this basis. Second, we can examine the actual services enrollees received to determine which of the allowed WtW services were most commonly used by recipients, and how these patterns varied across sites. Section B uses data from program management information systems and follow-up interviews with enrollees to characterize the types of services received and the duration of enrollees’ activities. Patterns of actual service receipt may illustrate how some program model distinctions lead to different enrollee experiences. However, these two perspectives may not always be consistent. In Section C, we examine whether patterns of enrollee activity in WtW services coincide with distinctions in program models based on grantee plans and designs.

Distinctions among WtW programs, whether based on program operators’ plans or patterns of enrollee experiences, are typically subtle rather than dramatic. One reason is that some grantees — especially large ones like the Chicago site — used their WtW funds to support multiple programs, often serving distinct target populations with different service emphases. A second reason is that despite grantees’ plans, their experiences with program implementation often resulted in shifts in actual practice, sometimes in ways that muted the distinctiveness of their original program ideas. Distinctions evident in program designs, moreover, may be less evident in the patterns of enrollees’ activities and their paths into employment, which were also a result of whether the enrollees persevered in programs long enough to be exposed to the full menu of services. Finally, it must be remembered that all grantees were focused on employment as a near-term outcome; program models involving extensive job skill training or education before entry to employment, for example, were not among the model options. Thus the programs in this study can be expected to differ only within a limited range.

A. Program Models

The grantees we studied provided three main services beyond initial needs assessments: (1) all offered some form of pre-employment preparation, including job readiness instruction, job search assistance, and job placement; (2) all offered some degree of education and training services; and (3) some offered job retention services to help people stay employed after finding a job. Sites differed in the emphasis their program designs placed on these services. These differences suggest four program models — the employment, pre-employment, rehabilitative, and post-employment models — as summarized in Exhibit III.1 and discussed below.

1. Employment Model

The primary objective of the employment model was to move enrollees as quickly as possible into jobs. This did not mean that programs following this model focused solely on job placement. Job preparation services were typically accompanied by individualized counseling and support, social services, and even post-employment follow up, including education in some cases. Four of the sites followed the employment model. In two of these (Phoenix and Yakima), staff generally provided substantial counseling and employment assistance to the enrollees. Grantees in Chicago and Ft. Worth each funded over a dozen separate programs that implemented various models, but most enrollees were in programs that relied heavily on self-directed job search.

2. Pre-Employment Model

This model is characterized by an intensive emphasis on pre-employment preparation. In addition to job search preparation, programs we consider exemplars of this model offered structured pre-employment activities such as group counseling, remedial education, or occupational preparation, and often some type of transitional employment. In Boston and Philadelphia, for example, wage-paying transitional employment was a major component, usually following several weeks of preparatory activities. HRDF in West Virginia combined group job readiness workshops with unpaid work experience, and wage supplements to those who obtained low-wage jobs. Nashville Works/Pathways emphasized ongoing supportive peer groups, intensive case management, and job coaching.

3. Rehabilitative Model

An emphasis on recovery came through in the rehabilitative model. The Milwaukee NOW program was unique among the study sites in that it exclusively served fathers on parole or probation. Program staff provided individual and structured services that could include rehabilitation activities, referral to counseling or treatment, and short-term work experience in addition to job search and placement services.

4. Post-Employment Model

Retention and advancement in employment were the hallmarks of the post-employment model. While all WtW-funded programs in the study sites included some post-employment services, the JHU program, administered by community colleges, was explicitly designed to serve people who were already employed. The program supported “workplace liaisons” who worked with enrollees and their workplace supervisors to assess enrollees’ soft skills, encourage supervisors’ strategies for strengthening skills, and mediate conflicts or misunderstandings between employees and supervisors. A “career transcript system” was designed to test enrollees’ soft skills and document their development.

B. SERVICES ACTUALLY RECEIVED

The services that WtW enrollees actually received were heavily tilted toward employment preparation services as opposed to skill enhancement services, reflecting the requirement that WtW-funded programs complement PRWORA’s “work first” philosophy.⁽²⁵⁾ Employment preparation services either help individuals overcome barriers that prevent them from securing employment or facilitate their progress in finding and maintaining work. Such services typically address specific problems and are of short duration. In contrast, skill enhancement services help individuals qualify for better jobs than they otherwise would. These services, typically education or training, are designed to broadly increase human capital and may be of longer duration. The BBA restricted the provision of skill enhancement services funded by WtW grants to the post-employment period.⁽²⁶⁾ However, the 1999 amendments to the BBA expanded the list of allowable pre-employment services to include education and training, but capped the duration of these services at six months.⁽²⁷⁾ This evaluation’s report on the implementation of the WtW grants program states that, following the amendments, the programs did not change much with respect to the provision of pre-employment education and training because they had already established particular program models and approaches (Nightingale et al. 2002, page 54).⁽²⁸⁾

This evaluation’s 12-month follow-up survey asked WtW enrollees a series of questions on the employment-related services they received during the year following program entry. Respondents to the survey did not necessarily know whether WtW-funded providers or other organizations delivered the services. However, the types of services that they reported are broadly consistent with earlier findings on the services provided by the WtW programs in the study sites (Nightingale et al. 2002). Consequently, we believe that WtW-funded providers delivered many or even most of the services that enrollees reported receiving. This section uses the 12-month follow-up survey data to describe enrollees’ receipt of employment preparation and skill enhancement services. It also uses information gathered as part of the evaluation’s implementation study to describe opportunities for participation in transitional employment programs.

1. Employment Preparation Services

Most WtW enrollees in the 11 study sites received employment preparation services sometime during the year following program entry. These included two core services: job readiness training (instruction on appropriate behavior on a job) and job search assistance (resume preparation, interview practice, and help in finding a job); and eight ancillary services measured in this evaluation.⁽²⁹⁾ The rate of receipt of any of these services was high and did not vary dramatically across the sites — ranging from a low of 68 percent in Ft. Worth to a high of 89 percent in Philadelphia (Exhibit III.2).

The employment preparation services most frequently received by WtW enrollees in all of the study sites were the two core services. Job readiness training was received by more than half of the WtW enrollees in seven of the study sites and by about four in ten enrollees in the remaining sites (Exhibit III.3). Job search assistance was equally common, with a very similar pattern of receipt across the study sites. Enrollees in Philadelphia were most likely to receive job readiness training and job search assistance, while enrollees in Ft. Worth were least likely to receive them.

Fewer enrollees received ancillary services. The most common of these were life skills training, which was received by roughly 25 to 50 percent of enrollees, and counseling, received by roughly 20 to 35 percent of enrollees (Exhibit III.3). The remaining ancillary services, including mediation and substance abuse treatment, were generally received by no more than 15 percent of enrollees in a site, with the following notable exceptions:

• Consistent with the emphasis of the JHU program model on job retention, skills development, and job advancement, WtW enrollees in Baltimore County and St. Lucie County received counseling and mediation services at higher rates than enrollees in most of the other study sites, but had lower rates of receipt of job readiness training and job search assistance.⁽³⁰⁾
• The Project Match model on which the Nashville Works/Pathways program was based specifies the provision of intensive case management and a broad range of ancillary services in a supportive peer-group environment. Accordingly, the Nashville enrollees were more likely to receive life-skills training, counseling, structured peer support, and mediation services than those in most of the other study sites.
• Enrollees in Milwaukee had relatively high rates of receipt of life-skills training, counseling, and additional ancillary services that were rarely received by WtW enrollees in other sites — including participation in peer support groups, legal assistance, and substance abuse treatment.

The typical design for employment preparation services specifies several weeks of job readiness training followed by a week or so of job search/placement assistance. But even programs in the evaluation that were broadly consistent with this design tended to incorporate significant modifications. For example, programs in some of the study sites reflected a philosophy that employment outcomes could be optimized by the provision of extended job readiness training prior to job search/placement. Conversely, job readiness training was downplayed in some other programs that targeted individuals who had already demonstrated their employability.

The duration of job readiness training reflected the diverging models adopted by the site grantees. Among enrollees who received training, the median days ranged from 6 in Ft. Worth and St. Lucie County and 8 in Baltimore County to 44 in Boston and Philadelphia.⁽³¹⁾ The short duration of job readiness training in Baltimore County and St. Lucie County reflected the fact that the JHU program was designed to assist people who were already employed. In Ft. Worth, the short duration of training was consistent with the program’s emphasis on rapid transition to employment. In contrast, the long duration of training in Boston and Philadelphia reflected structured sequences of service components leading to a paid internship or transitional work experience, and may have also reflected survey respondents’ perception of services they received even after their placement in a transitional job.

The design and execution of job search assistance was more consistent across sites, with much lower and less varied durations. The median duration of job search assistance was just 4 days or less in 7 of the sites, and exceeded 10 days only in Boston.

The duration of ancillary services depended on their nature, the severity and complexity of the problems they were designed to address, and enrollees’ capacity to persist in the activity. WtW enrollees typically received counseling, mediation, and legal services for short durations — 10 days or less for counseling and 4 days or less for mediation and legal services. In contrast, enrollees often received mental health services and substance abuse treatment for long durations. For example, WtW enrollees in Baltimore County and Boston who entered substance abuse treatment programs typically received services from those programs for about 100 days.

2. Skill Enhancement Services

Skill training was clearly less common than basic employment preparation. In keeping with the federal WtW legislation, which de-emphasized pre-employment training to develop work skills, enrollees in the 11 study sites were only about half as likely to receive skill enhancement services during the year following program entry as they were to receive the employment preparation services discussed in the previous section. Aside from the two JHU sites that by design encouraged post-employment skill development, Nashville was the only site where more than 40 percent of enrollees participated in education or training (Exhibit III.4). The Nashville program emphasized human development and operated under Tennessee’s federal TANF waiver that expanded the allowable services to permit a broader set of activities to satisfy work requirements. Only between 24 and 37 percent of enrollees in the other study sites received skill enhancement services during the year after program entry.

The most common types of skill enhancement activities were high school completion or GED programs and advanced vocational or technical training. With the exception of the Milwaukee, Nashville, and JHU sites, about 10 to 20 percent of WtW enrollees in the study sites participated in GED/high school programs and about the same proportion participated in advanced education programs (Exhibit III.5).⁽³²⁾ Only 5 to 10 percent of enrollees participated in adult basic education (ABE) and virtually none in any site except Boston participated in English as a Second Language (ESL) programs. Restrictions on the receipt of TANF by recent immigrants may have limited the number of WtW enrollees who could benefit from ESL instruction.

Enrollees in Milwaukee and Nashville participated in GED or high school programs at relatively high rates (23 and 24 percent, respectively). Nashville enrollees also had relatively high rates of participation in ABE and in advanced education programs. Given that community colleges implemented the JHU program, it is not surprising that 28 percent of enrollees in Baltimore County and 31 percent in St. Lucie County participated in advanced education programs (Exhibit III.5).

Skill enhancement services represented a substantially larger investment in human capital than employment preparation services. The skill enhancement services received by WtW enrollees typically lasted for two to six months and entailed a commitment of 10 to 20 hours per week (Fraker et al. 2004, Exhibit III.6). Enrollees in the Milwaukee NOW program who participated in GED or high school education programs did so for 12 hours per week for five months, on average. Their counterparts in Nashville were even more intensively engaged in these programs, averaging 20 hours of participation per week for six months. Enrollees in the Baltimore County and St. Lucie County JHU programs who participated in advanced education programs did so for roughly 15 hours per week over an interval of three to four months, on average.

3. Transitional Employment

Even with access to employment preparation services and, under certain conditions, skill enhancement services such as job training and education, some WtW enrollees faced a difficult road to employment. TANF work requirements in some states prompted TANF-funded and WtW-funded programs to create subsidized, transitional jobs to ensure that all enrollees required to work did so. Most WtW enrollees could satisfy work requirements for a short initial period by participating in job readiness workshops. WtW program staff pointed out, however, that individuals with serious problems, such as physical or mental disabilities or low basic education attainment, often had great difficulty moving from a short job readiness activity into the unsubsidized labor market.

Transitional employment components addressed several concerns. For enrollees unable to find employment quickly, subsidized transitional employment made it possible to continue meeting TANF work requirements while developing potentially marketable skills. This was especially relevant for enrollees who were unsuccessful in finding an unsubsidized job through the front-end job readiness and placement components of a WtW program. Transitional employment could also be a bridge to unsubsidized employment. In some programs, transitional employment components were structured in such a way that participating employers were expected to hire a worker who successfully completed a trial work period.

In the WtW study sites, grantees instituted several different forms of transitional employment, with slightly different entry and exit paths:

• Temporary Work Experience. Some Chicago programs placed individuals in a temporary work experience assignment after a brief job readiness workshop. In West Virginia’s HRDF program, after a four-week job readiness workshop, about two-thirds of enrollees were placed for up to six months in unpaid work experience at nonprofit organizations, with no expectation of permanent employment.
• Simple Private Sector Transitional Jobs. More capable and job-ready enrollees in West Virginia were placed for up to one month in unpaid positions at private businesses or in paid on-the-job training (OJT) positions for up to six months, with the understanding that the employer would offer a job upon successful completion.
• Enhanced Transitional Jobs. In Philadelphia, TWC targeted individuals with little or no work experience who, soon after program entry, were placed in transitional jobs for 25 hours per week for six months, and participated in 10 hours of education or group training each week, but with no prospect of continuing employment.
• Sectoral Employer Partnerships. Collaborations were formed in Boston with particular employers or industries. After a pre-employment component of three or four months of job readiness skills development, WtW enrollees were placed in paid transitional “internship” jobs at partnering firms for four to six months, with a focus on building basic job-specific or firm-specific skills. Firms agreed to hire enrollees as regular employees at the end of the internship period.

These transitional employment variants differed with respect to the payment of wages. While enrollees were generally paid in supported/transitional work, this was not always the case. When paid, enrollees in the study sites were most likely to receive either the minimum wage (Philadelphia TWC, Yakima, and several subcontractor programs in Chicago and Ft. Worth) or the “going” rate for what were usually entry-level jobs. If the position was a formal OJT slot — generally with a commitment to hire and provide job-specific training over a six-month period — enrollees were paid at the same regular hourly as other new hires in the same positions. In some programs in Ft. Worth, enrollees received no payment for work experience hours, though they may have received some compensation for work-related expenses. In the West Virginia HRDF work experience positions, enrollees were generally unpaid but continued to receive their TANF cash grant, food stamps, and a work-related expense payment of $1.60 per hour.

Grantee descriptions of their programs indicated that all study sites made some use of transitional employment, but the emphasis on this component varied. Gauging levels of participation accurately is more difficult than with other WtW activities because respondents to the two follow-up surveys often had trouble distinguishing a regular job from a transitional job, and program MIS files often failed to clearly classify transitional jobs. However, it appears from MIS files that in West Virginia and Philadelphia, as many as 68 and 75 percent of enrollees, respectively, participated in some kind of transitional employment.⁽³³⁾ In Chicago, it is possible that as many as 50 percent of WtW enrollees overall had some kind of transitional placement; and we know that such placements were a core activity in Boston, although we do not have MIS files to quantify participation rates. In most of the other study sites, MIS files suggest that transitional employment involved far fewer enrollees — ranging from about 5 percent in Ft. Worth to 10 percent in Phoenix, and perhaps as many as 22 percent in Nashville. Although these MIS data do not provide clear-cut documentation of transitional employment, they do appear consistent with the emphasis that program grantees reported placing on this component.

C. COMPARISON OF SERVICES WITH PROGRAM MODELS

The services that WtW enrollees actually received were broadly consistent with the program models in their respective study sites. Exhibit III.6 shows that enrollees in the four sites that adopted the pre-employment model had high rates of receipt of job readiness training (60 percent or higher), and that training was of relatively long duration, ranging from 18 days in Nashville to 44 days in Boston and Philadelphia. This training may have delayed the entry of enrollees into jobs, as the elapsed time from program entry until the first job was relatively high, averaging 4.7 months across these sites. The two sites that implemented the JHU post-employment model had relatively low rates of receipt of employment preparation services among their enrollees. But in these sites, three in ten enrollees received advanced education or training — double the proportion in sites that had adopted other program models. Enrollee statistics for the four sites that adopted the employment model differ from those of the pre-employment sites in two respects that are consistent with differences between the program models. The employment sites had a lower proportion of enrollees who received job readiness training (56 percent) and shorter duration of training (16 days on average across the four sites). The elapsed time until the first job was also lower, averaging 4.4 months.

The Milwaukee site adopted a distinctive rehabilitative model that focused on the reintroduction of recently released prisoners into society and the labor force. The enrollee statistics presented in Exhibit III.6 clearly distinguish this site from those that adopted other program models. Enrollees in the NOW program were less likely to receive employment preparation services and required substantially more time (5.8 months on average) to enter their first post-enrollment job than enrollees in the other sites. As presented in Exhibit III.3, Milwaukee enrollees were more likely than those in most of the other study sites to have participated in peer support groups (28 percent) or to have received counseling (32 percent), legal assistance (14 percent), or substance abuse treatment (21 percent). The time that enrollees took to participate in these ancillary services may partially account for the long duration between their entry into WtW and the start of their first job.

Chicago and Ft. Worth are the study sites for which the services received by WtW enrollees were least consistent with our program model classification scheme. This chapter concludes with brief discussions of these two sites.

The large number and diversity of WtW programs in the Chicago study site — with its 20 individual programs — made the assignment of this site to a single program model problematic. Some of the programs emphasized job readiness instruction prior to job placement, others featured transitional employment in subsidized jobs, and yet others focused on the rapid attachment of enrollees to unsubsidized jobs. However, a strong work first emphasis cut across all of the WtW programs in Chicago, and most enrollees entered rapid-attachment programs. Consequently, Exhibit III.6 lists the Chicago site as having adopted the employment model. The diverse programs in Chicago account for its distinctiveness among the employment-model sites in that the Chicago enrollees received both job readiness training and job search assistance at high rates (72 percent and 66 percent, respectively) and for long periods (medians of 30 and 9 days, respectively).

Ft. Worth also stands out among the sites that adopted the employment model. Here, enrollees there were much less likely to receive employment preparation services and required an additional month, on average, to find jobs. Only 39 percent of the Ft. Worth enrollees received job readiness training and just 44 percent received job search assistance; they required an average of 5.2 months to find their first job. In principle, participation in ancillary employment preparation services might account for the delayed entry of Ft. Worth enrollees into employment — but in reality, these enrollees had very low rates of receipt of such services. Earlier in this chapter we characterized the Ft. Worth site as providing primarily self-directed rather than staff-guided job search activities. The summary statistics in Exhibit III.6 suggest that the Ft. Worth enrollees might have benefited from more staff attention.

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Endnotes

(25) DOL’s interim rules for the WtW grants state that, “Activities conducted with WtW funds must be grounded in the ‘work first’ philosophy which is a fundamental tenet of the Act (PRWORA). Although a variety of activities are authorized under WtW, these activities should be viewed as employment-based developmental steps for helping individuals secure and retain unsubsidized employment” (DOL 1997, pages 61593-61594).

(26) DOL states, “While the legislation (PL 105-33, 1997) does not permit stand-alone training activities independent of a job, allowing them as post-employment activities only while the participant is working in a subsidized or unsubsidized job reflects the basic ‘work first’ thrust of the legislation” (DOL 1997, page 61594).

(27) Public Law 106-113 (1999).

(28) The allowance of limited pre-employment services under WtW in the 1999 amendments had little effect on program services because many WtW grantees had already established procedures with TANF agencies regarding eligibility, referrals, cost sharing, etc. Additionally, some grantees had already issued contracts to organizations to operate programs consistent with program models that had been specified prior to the amendments.

(29) The evaluation’s 12-month follow-up survey inquired about the receipt of each of eight ancillary services: (1) life-skills training, (2) mental health services, (3) substance abuse treatment, (4) medical attention to correct a work-limiting physical condition, (5) legal assistance, (6) counseling, (7) peer support/discussion group, and (8) mediation services. Longer-run education and training programs are discussed in Section B.2.

(30) Referral to education and training programs was also a distinctive feature of the JHU program design. Evidence presented later in this section documents that WtW enrollees in Baltimore County and St. Lucie County were more likely to have participated in education and training programs than enrollees in most of the other study sites.

(31) Findings on the duration of services were originally reported by Fraker et al. 2004. The results cited in this and the succeeding two paragraphs are presented in Exhibit III.3 in that report.

(32) The 12-month follow-up survey gathered information on participation in vocational or technical training, occupational skills training, and college programs.

(33) The program design in Philadelphia included transitional employment placement for all enrollees; thus, it is clear that some enrollees dropped out of the program or found a job before receiving this service.

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