[ Main page of Report | Contents of Report ]
The five-year time limits that the 1996 federal welfare reforms placed on cash assistance, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), heightened the need for programs to help the hardest-to-employ people move into jobs and become self-sufficient. To address this need, Congress authorized the Welfare-to-Work (WtW) grants program as part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Because the WtW grants program gave states and local areas much flexibility in how they could use these funds, WtW grantees developed a variety of program approaches to help hard-to-employ TANF recipients move to work.
This report examines the outcomes for participants in two WtW programs in Philadelphia: (1) the Regional Service Centers (RSCs), and (2) the Transitional Work Corporation (TWC). These programs represent an important contrast in approaches to serving the hard to employ and in target populations. The RSCs offered 30 days of basic job search assistance services to the broad WtW-eligible population, while the TWC provided paid work experience for up to six months and targeted WtW-eligible people who had little or no work experience. The main objective of this study was to examine the employment, earnings, and TANF receipt outcomes of enrollees in these two WtW programs. Table I.1 summarizes our main findings.
| TWC and RSC participants worked more, earned more,
and received less TANF after program entry. |
| Participants in both programs had increases in employment immediately after program entry, followed by declines. At TWC, some of this increase, in the short term, was associated with placement in a subsidized job as part of the program intervention. In the longer term, one and a half years after program entry, participants from both programs still had higher employment rates than before program entry. They also had higher earnings and lower rates of TANF receipt than before program entry. |
| Consistent with the targeting and sequencing of the
programs, RSC and TWC participants differed in their outcomes over time. |
| RSC participants had higher rates of employment, higher earnings, and lower rates of TANF receipt than TWC participants one and a half years after program entry. However, RSC and TWC participants also differed in their employment, earnings, and TANF receipt prior to program entry. Hence, this finding could reflect the way the two programs were created, with the RSCs offering a basic intervention for the general WtW population and TWC offering more intensive services for people facing greater employment challenges. |
| Observable factors explained RSC and TWC
participants’ difference in employment and some of their differences in earnings and TANF receipt. |
| Controllingfor demographic characteristics, prior work and TANF receipt, and economic conditions accounts for the simple observed differences in the percentage of RSC and TWC participants employed one and a half years after program entry. Differences in earnings and TANF receipt remained, with about half the difference explained by these observable factors. |
| Further research is needed to clarify how programs
like the RSCs and TWC contribute to participant outcomes. |
| The results offer a hint that the intensive TWC intervention might have partially made up for the greater employment challenges faced by TWC participants. However, the study raises questions that only a more rigorous random assignment evaluation can answer — most notably, how did TWC participants’ outcomes compare to how they would have fared in the absence of this intervention? Further research could determine the most appropriate targeting and cost-effective pairing of similar interventions. |
In this chapter, we first describe the national WtW grants program, Philadelphia’s WtW program, and the local context of welfare reform in Philadelphia. We then provide background information on this study — its research questions, sample, and data sources. In subsequent chapters, we describe the outcomes of RSC and TWC participants, as well as potential factors associated with these outcomes, and give an interpretation of findings and study conclusions.
[ Go to Contents ]
WtW programs operated based on federal guidelines that the WtW legislation specified. These guidelines allowed Philadelphia to develop WtW programs that addressed the particular needs of its WtW-eligible population and that operated alongside the city’s welfare reform initiatives.
The WtW grants program allocated a total of $2.85 billion in federal funds through formula and competitive grants. WtW formula funds were allocated to states based on their share of the national poverty population and TANF caseload.[1] States, in turn, distributed these funds to local areas. WtW competitive funds were available directly to states and local areas that applied for funds for specific projects. The WtW funds could be used for a range of program approaches, as long as the program emphasized employment.
The WtW legislation contained strict guidelines for program eligibility that initially slowed enrollment. The legislation required that 70 percent of funds be used for long-term TANF recipients who had two of three employment barriers: (1) no high school diploma or GED and low reading or math skills, (2) a substance abuse problem, and (3) a poor work history. The remaining 30 percent of funds could be used for recipients who had characteristics typical of long-term TANF recipients but did not meet the 70 percent criteria. In 2000, Congress relaxed the eligibility criteria, allowing WtW programs to serve more flexibly those long-term TANF recipients who faced barriers that were likely to make their transition to employment difficult.
The Philadelphia Workforce Development Corporation (PWDC) was the local recipient of some of Pennsylvania’s formula WtW funds. PWDC used WtW funds to launch a citywide initiative called Greater Philadelphia Works (GPW) to serve the needs of the hardest-to-employ TANF recipients in Philadelphia. central components of GPW were the RSC and TWC programs. GPW also included support services and programs that targeted teenagers, noncustodial parents, and homeless people. PWDC used $15.8 million in WtW formula funding to operate the RSCs and TWC. In addition, the Pew Foundation provided $4.3 million to cover TWC’s administrative costs.PWDC also received $4.3 million in WtW competitive funding to operate WtW programs for teenage and noncustodial parents.
As originally designed, the RSC and TWC programs were expected to differ in the populations they targeted and the intensity and duration of their service approaches. The RSCs, designed to serve the broad population of WtW-eligible clients, operated in seven locations across the city, providing clients with up to 30 days of job search and placement assistance. Clients attended job search readiness sessions, conducted directed job search, and met regularly with an employment adviser. To promote clients’ job retention after placement, employment advisers followed up with them regularly for up to one year. RSC contractors received bonuses for their participants’ continuous employment at 30, 60, and 90 days and at six months.
In contrast, the TWC program was designed to provide services to the hardest-to-employ among the WtW-eligible population: those who had little or no work experience. The TWC provided clients with 25 hours a week of paid transitional employment for up to six months, followed by placement in unsubsidized jobs.[2] TWC career advisers monitored clients’ progress and helped resolve problems at work. In addition, TWC clients attended 10 hours a week of wraparound training, which included such topics as GED preparation, basic skills, job readiness, and life skills. After clients obtained unsubsidized employment, the TWC offered up to $800 in job retention bonuses and six to nine months of retention-focused case management.Table I.2 provides more information on the services of the RSC and TWC programs.
| Regional Service Centers: Program Description | |
|---|---|
| Program Structure | Provided short-term work readiness and job search assistance services. Provided job placement and retention services for 12 months after placement. |
| Target Population | The RSCs served long-term welfare clients who were nearing, or who had reached, two years of TANF receipt. RSC services targeted more job-ready WtW-eligible TANF clients. |
| Employment-Related Services | After attending a brief general orientation, clients participated in job readiness workshops and directed job search activities. The program’s objective was for clients to find unsubsidized jobs within 30 days. Each RSC had job developers who identified work opportunities by working directly with employers. RSC participants who failed to secure employment within 30 days from enrollment were placed in paid community service positions (while continuing to search for work).Alternatively, they could be referred to the TWC program or back to their County Assistance Office (CAO) caseworker for reevaluation and assignment to another program or exemption from work requirements (as appropriate). |
| Transitional Work Corporation: Program Description | |
| Program Structure | Provides up to six months of subsidized work experience employment, followed by assistance securing unsubsidized employment and job retention services for 12 six to nine months after placement. |
| Target Population | Targets hard-to-serve WtW-eligible TANF recipients who have participated in a mandatory job search required by the TANF agency but did not find a job after basic employment assistance at the RSCs; have limited educational attainment and also lack work experience and work history; or are otherwise considered hard to place. The TWC typically serves long-term welfare clients who are nearing, or who have reached, two years of TANF receipt. |
| Employment-Related Services | Referred individuals are immediately placed on TWC’s payroll, receiving minimum wage ($5.15 per hour) for 25 hours per week for up to six months. Program participation begins with a two-week orientation, which provides an overview of TWC and covers job readiness and behavioral topics. During the second week of orientation, participants interview for, and are placed in, transitional work assignments at government agencies or nonprofit organizations. While in transitional work, TWC participants must attend 10 hours of career development training each week, including modules on literacy, math skills, computer skills, GED preparation, job readiness, and general life skills. While in transitional work, participants receive intensive supervision and support from on-site “work partners” and their TWC career advisers. The work partner is a regular employee, who mentors and supervises the TWC participant daily and provides assessments of the participant’s job performance to TWC career advisers every other week. When TWC participants are judged work-ready (based on their work partners’ assessments) or are close to completing their six months of transitional employment, TWC placement staff help them obtain an unsubsidized job. Participants are offered up to $800 in job-retention bonuses and 12 months of retention-focused case management. |
The relationship and client flow between the RSC and TWC evolved over time.
First, the referral process for the TWC changed in order to address
underenrollment in the TWC program. Initially, staff from the County Assistance
Office (CAO) — the welfare agency in Philadelphia — referred
WtW-eligible clients to the RSCs, and at which time the RSCs identified
appropriate clients for referral to TWC. If clients were determined not to
be job-ready or were unable to find a job after the 30 days of services the
RSCs provided, the RSCs referred them to the more intensive TWC program.
In 2000, because enrollment in TWC was low, the program began to conduct
its own direct outreach, and the CAO began to refer WtW-eligible clients
directly to TWC. Thus, the program evolved to serve a somewhat more general
WtW-eligible population, rather than the hardest-to-serve, as originally
intended.
Second, the process for placing TWC participants in unsubsidized work changed.
Originally, TWC referred participants back to the RSC for placement after
they had completed their TWC experience. In an effort to focus more attention
on the placement of TWC participants, program operations changed in 2001
so that the TWC handles the placement of its participants in unsubsidized
jobs after they complete their transitional work.
Since WtW funds were time-limited, these WtW initiatives could not continue
without additional sources of support and funding. In September 2001, the
RSCs ceased operations as their funding ended. The TWC operations continued
with ongoing support from state WtW funds through February 2004. State TANF
funds support the TWC operations for the rest of the 2004 fiscal year.
Two distinct features of Pennsylvania’s welfare reform initiative set it apart from those of other states and thus created a unique context for the operation of Philadelphia’s WtW program. First, Pennsylvania has a two-year “work-trigger” time limit that requires TANF recipients to participate in work-related activities for a minimum of 20 hours a week by the time they have been receiving TANF for two years, or face a full family sanction. In anticipation of the first cohort of TANF recipients to reach this time limit in March 1999, PWDC developed programs, including the WtW programs, to help work-mandatory persons meet this requirement.
Second, in keeping with the state’s “client choice” philosophy, the CAO offered work-mandatory clients a broad menu of programs and allowed them to decide where to participate. The city offered at least six work activity programs that would meet the two-year work requirement. In addition to the WtW-funded programs, the Philadelphia CAO administered several TANF-funded programs offering similar services.[3] TANF recipients could choose to enroll in any of the programs, and welfare staff did not usually conduct an assessment or recommend which program to attend. In this context, the TWC and RSC programs were just two options among a wide range of choices available to work-mandatory TANF recipients.[4] Because clients could move easily between the work activity programs the CAO and GPW offered, their outcomes over time may have been affected by services they received from more than one program.
[ Go to Contents ]
The WtW Philadelphia outcomes study is part of a congressionally mandated, national evaluation of the WtW grants program, conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR), the Urban Institute, and Support Services International under a contract to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The main evaluation includes three key components: (1) a descriptive assessment of grantees based on two surveys of all WtW grantees nationwide, (2) a process analysis based on visits to 11 in-depth study sites and a program cost analysis in most of these sites, and (3) participant outcomes analysis in most of the in-depth study sites.[5] In addition to these three components in the core evaluation, a special process and implementation study focuses on programs operated by American Indian tribes and Alaska Native villages.
The WtW Philadelphia outcomes study builds on and expands an examination of outcomes for the TWC program, which is included as an in-depth study site in the national WtW evaluation (Fraker et al. 2004). However, the examination of the TWC alone does not provide a full understanding of Philadelphia’s WtW strategy, since the RSCs were an important part of that strategy. To document more fully the outcomes of Philadelphia’s WtW efforts, MPR conducted this study to examine the employment experience of both RSC and TWC participants. Findings from the larger evaluation illustrate the employment experiences of participants in the 11 in-depth study sites. These sites offered similar kinds of services to a similar range of populations as the TWC and RSC programs. Thus, the larger evaluation findings provide a broader context in which to view these findings.
This study is designed to describe the outcomes for RSC and TWC participants. Since it is not based on the random assignment of clients to these programs, differences in the outcomes for RSC and TWC participants do not provide evidence of program impacts or the relative effectiveness of these two program models. The study does, however, provide an overall description of Philadelphia’s WtW participants’ outcomes after program entry and a comparison of the outcomes for different populations served with different program approaches.
The study examines RSC and TWC participant outcomes — employment, earnings, and TANF receipt over time — and addresses two sets of related questions:
What were the outcomes of RSC and TWC enrollees?Were they able to find employment? To what extent did they retain and advance in their employment? What were their earnings over time? Were they able to move off TANF? How different were these outcomes for enrollees in the RSCs and TWC?
What factors were associated with RSC and TWC enrollees’ outcomes?Were there notable differences in the characteristics of enrollees in the RSC and TWC programs before and at program enrollment? To what extent were such factors as enrollees’ characteristics before and at program enrollment, enrollees’ program participation, and economic conditions after program enrollment associated with their outcomes?
The study sample included people enrolled from September 1999 to January 2001 at the RSCs and from September 1999 to April 2001 at TWC. Sample members were enrolled in the study upon their entry into either the RSC or the TWC program during these periods. To enter either program, clients typically were referred by the CAO after screening for WtW eligibility. They could also be referred to the TWC by the RSCs. The TWC sample enrollment period was longer than the RSC one because of TWC’s initially slow enrollment and smaller scale. The final study samples for the RSCs and the TWC are substantial, including more than 2,300 RSC program enrollees and more than 2,500 TWC program enrollees.[6]
Study sample members were identified in different ways. All enrollees who entered the TWC at some point in the sample enrollment period were considered part of the TWC sample. However, if a study sample member enrolled in the RSC study sample but later enrolled in the TWC study sample or was found in the TWC program database, that person was coded as a TWC sample member only, regardless of the person’s participation in the RSC program. Constructing the analysis sample required a substantial effort to sort out which sample members were enrolled in the TWC. Because this study focuses on how the different populations were served differently based on their identified needs, all sample members who received the TWC’s intensive services are considered TWC sample members. About half of those in the TWC sample participated in both the RSC and the TWC. The RSC sample is limited to enrollees who entered only the RSC program.
The study draws on data from four main sources, documented in Table I.3:
| Data Source | Timing of Data | Key Measures | Sample Definition | RSC Sample Size |
TWC Sample Size a |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baseline Information Forms (BIFs) | Program enrollment: September 1999 to January 2001 (for RSCs) and September 1999 to April 2001 (for TWC) | -Demographics - Household structure - Health problems - Education - Employment history - Public assistance receipt |
Program enrollees who completed a BIF |
1,109 | 1,279 |
| 12-Month Follow-up Survey | 12 months after program enrollment | - Household structure - Income - Employment history - Child care - Education/training - Criminal activity - Material well-being |
Program enrollees who completed a BIF and responded to follow-up survey | 944 | 1,110 |
| Administrative Data | Four quarters before and up to eight quarters after program enrollment | - Employment - Earnings - TANF receipt |
Program enrollees who completed a BIF or were in MIS | 2,338 | 2,543 |
| Management Information System (MIS) Data | Ongoing after-program enrollment | Full program participation | Program enrollees in MIS with enrollment date during sample enrollment period | 2,248 | 2,320 |
| a Enrollees who participated in both RSC and TWC programs are included in the TWC sample only. | |||||
Because of lapses in sample enrollment procedures at the program sites, BIF data are not available for all program enrollees during the sample enrollment time period. To compensate for these missing data, and to capture data on all enrollees during the sample enrollment period, MPR collected administrative data either on those who completed a BIF or who were in the MIS data with an enrollment date during the sample enrollment period. Since the follow-up survey sample included only enrollees who had completed BIFs, we weighted survey data using MIS data to adjust for differences among enrollees who completed and did not complete BIFs.
We collected administrative data on TANF receipt and earnings on sample members for four quarters before, and up to eight quarters after, program entry. Because participants entered the programs over time, the number of quarters of data available varies by individual; data for later quarters are available for fewer sample members. The data in the report are restricted to quarters in which data are available for the most sample members. Eight quarters of postenrollment data are available for the RSC sample, and six quarters are available for the TWC sample, because TWC participants enrolled later on average.
This report is organized into four chapters. Chapter II describes RSC and TWC enrollees’ employment, earnings, and TANF receipt over time. Chapter III discusses factors that may be related to the differences in RSC and TWC outcomes, such as enrollees’ characteristics, program participation, and economic conditions. Chapter IV discusses the study findings and presents study conclusions and implications.
[ Go to Contents ]
[1] In January 2004, Congress rescinded unspent fiscal year 1999 WtW state formula funds.
[2] Throughout the report we use the terms paid transitional work experience and paid work experience interchangeably.
[3] Participants in the RSC and TWC programs could receive support services funded through TANF; however, these programs did not initially receive TANF funding.
[4] To participate in the RSC or TWC programs, participants had to be eligible for WtW. However, not all WtW-eligible people were necessarily referred to the RSCs or the TWC.
[5] The evaluation originally planned to use an experimental design to examine the net impacts of the WtW grants program on participants and to analyze the program’s costs and benefits. Because of low enrollment in WtW programs, however, it was not feasible to randomly assign participants to treatment and control groups. As a result, MPR revised the study design to an outcomes analysis.
[6] Since the programs were newly created because of the WtW funding and evolved over time based on their experiences in serving the WtW-eligible population, they were not in a steady state of operations over the course of the study. Thus, the outcomes observed in this study may not be representative of the true potential of the programs, but rather reflect the outcomes achieved during this initial experimental stage.
Main Page of Report | Contents of Report
Home Pages:
Human Services Policy (HSP)
Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation
ASPE)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
(HHS)