[Section D] [Table of Contents] [Section F]

Early Implementation
of the
Welfare-to-Work Grants Program:

E.   STARTUP AND EARLY IMPLEMENTATION PROGRESS

After grantees are awarded WtW funding, program implementation unfolds in stages.  Staff may have to be hired or transferred from other duties.  Grantees must start processes for recruiting or obtaining referrals from other organizations.  Expectations for the success of referral and recruitment approaches must be tested against reality and, in some cases, revised to meet targets for participation and service delivery.  Services associated with recruiting, intake, and assessment may get under way first, with some delay before the earliest entrants are placed in jobs or other workplace activities.  Arranging some types of employment activities and placing participants in them may be accomplished more readily than doing so for other types.  The roles of cooperating organizations, negotiated in concept at the grant application stage, must be translated into specific assignments for agency units and individual staff.  Considerable variation across grantees can be expected in which of these start­up elements go smoothly and which do not.

The survey conducted at the end of 1998 found WtW grantees in varying stages of this process, which could be expected since grants were received at the local level in stages throughout the year.  The survey data from 415 grantee respondents can help document several aspects of start­up and early implementation progress:

1.  Program Startup Is Occurring Mostly in Late 1998 and Early 1999

Since the first grantee survey was designed and conducted as WtW funding was still being distributed to the local level in many states, the survey was planned with the assumption that many survey respondents would not yet be delivering their proposed services.  The survey responses confirm this assumption (Table E.1).  Of the 415 grantees who responded to the survey, half said they had begun delivering WtW services.  Grantees that had not yet begun delivering services were asked when they expected to do so.  The combination of actual reported service start­up dates and projected start­up dates creates a timeline of actual and expected service implementation dates.  Almost two­thirds of the WtW grantees responding to the first survey started or will start their service delivery in the last quarter of 1998 or early 1999.

This result reflects what seems to be about a one­quarter lag (3.6 months) on average between grantees' receipt of their grant notifications and the timing of service startup.  About 41 percent of grantees reported a lag of three months or less between their grant notification and the start of WtW service delivery, but about the same percentage reported a lag of three to six months, and about 17 percent reported lags of more than six months.  Conversations with grantees suggest that this interval is often taken up with the preparations mentioned at the beginning of Section E.

TABLE E.1

PROGRAM STARTUP AND ENROLLMENT


Responding Grantees
(Percentage)
Start of Services
WtW Services Begun by Time of Survey?
Yes 49.9
No 50.1
Month/Year of Actual/Expected Start of Services
January­March 1998 or earlier 4.7
April­June 1998 8.6
July­September 1998 21.2
October­December 1998 30.0
January­March 1999 33.3
Later than March 1999 2.2
Projected Enrollment and Enrollment to Date 
Projected Overall Participants to Be Served with WtW Funds 
100 or less 25.8
101 to 250 26.9
251 to 500 21.7
501 to 1,000 14.5
1,001 to 2,000 7.0
More than 2,000 4.1
Projected Number to Be Served:  Average = 537
Median = 229
Percent of Responding Grantees That Had Enrolled Participants by Survey Completion Date 43.4
Number Enrolled per Grantee with Enrollees
1 to 10 10.6
11 to 20 7.1
21 to 50 9.4
51 to 100 10.2
More than 100 6.1
Number of Enrollees per Grantee: Average = 64
Median = 34
Source:  National Evaluation of the Welfare­to­Work Grants Program, First Grantee Survey (November 1998­February 1999).

2.  Early Enrollments Are Proceeding at a Modest Pace

Even after WtW grantees begin their planned activities, some time may pass before they actually enroll participants.  Arranging for referrals, obtaining referral lists or conducting outreach in the community, and holding orientation sessions and assessments may create lags before individuals are considered enrolled as WtW participants.  Such lags can explain why 50 percent of grantee respondents to the survey reported they had "begun delivering services," but fewer (43 percent) said they had enrolled participants.

Grantees have made a modest start toward fulfilling their plans for enrollment and services.  Grantees set their own targets for the number of participants they will eventually serve with their WtW grants.  On average, the respondents to the survey reported that they will eventually serve 537 participants (Table E.1).  Considerable variation exists in program size, however; more than half of the grantees expect to serve fewer than 250 participants.  Among the 43 percent of grantees that had begun enrollment by the time they responded to the survey, the average grantee had enrolled about 64 participants (Table E.1), with a range from 1 WtW participant (for nine grantees) to 1,084 (for one grantee).

If expected enrollments are to be achieved, the early pace of enrollment in WtW programs must increase.  The grantees that had started enrollment by the time of the survey had begun delivering services at different times during 1998, but the average rate at which they had enrolled participants was 21 participants per month.  Given their own enrollment targets and their monthly enrollment rates to date, these grantees would, on average, take over five years (66 months) to reach their targets if they continued at the enrollment pace achieved in their early months of operation.  Some grantees, however, are enrolling participants more rapidly even in the early stages; for half of the grantees, enrollment targets could be achieved in 24 months or less even at their early enrollment rate.  A quarter of grantees, in fact, appear on a pace to reach their overall enrollment target in a year.  At the other extreme, however, are grantees that have started enrollment, but very slowly; more than a fifth of the grantees with enrollees would take more than five years to reach their target at their early enrollment rate.

The modest pace of early enrollment undoubtedly reflects the normal kinds of start­up issues that all programs encounter, but discussions with grantees suggest that, in many places, other factors also are at work.1  Grantees have commonly used the reported numbers of WtW­eligible recipients still on the rolls as a basis for estimating likely numbers of referrals to the WtW program or of individuals who might be recruited.  Grantees have frequently noted that, when the referral process or recruitment outreach begins, the number of real participant prospects is more limited.  They have cited various reasons for this, such as (1) a strong local economy, which allows TANF recipients to respond to "work first" requirements by finding a job on their own rather than by entering a WtW program; (2) substantial rates of medical exemptions from TANF work participation requirements; (3) stubborn resistance to employment or program participation among a core of even those TANF recipients who could face loss of benefits when they reach an approaching time limit; and (4) the restrictive effects of the WtW eligibility criteria (see Section F).

FOOTNOTES

1.  These discussions have occurred as grantees call with questions about the survey and as evaluation staff pursue the possibility with interested grantees of their participation in the in­depth component of the evaluation.

[Section D] [Table of Contents] [Section F]