Examines challenges Asian children and families face in accessing the child welfare and day care systems and explores challenges to political organizing in terms of attitudes and processes. Some successful interventions in building coalitions to advocate for Asian American children are highlighted. (SLD)

As part of the Assessing the New Federalism project, this report describes the child care assistance system in place just before the implementation of the Personal Responsibility and Work opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) and provides some early indications of how states will use the increased freedom of the Child Care and…

This evaluation of Massachusett's Employment and Training Choices (ET) program indicates that instead of saving taxpayers money, the program has been costly and has contributed little or nothing to reduce the state's welfare caseload. ET offers welfare recipients a wide variety of employment services, including career planning and job search,…

This report describes the context, design, and findings of an evaluation of a welfare reform initiative, the Recycling Fund Concept, in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. The proposed fund would allocate money to parents of preschool children who receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). The concept assumes that lack of child care…

This report details inequities in how preschool and child care opportunities are distributed among 4 California counties, across communities situated within these counties, and among the state's 200 localities with the most families receiving welfare benefits. Analysis of uniform data on the state's 8,831 licensed preschools and 30,730 family…

A June 1992 survey was conducted to determine the number of teenage mothers receiving Aid for Dependent Children (AFDC) who were participating in the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills (JOBS) program of the Family Support Act of 1988, and who were receiving education, job training, and child care. Some of the findings from the statistics gathered…

The sweeping changes of welfare reform embodied in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, and which created the Child Care and Development Block Grant, raise many questions about how states will implement subsidy programs to help an increasing number of low-income families meet their child care needs. At the…

North Carolina's Work First (WF) program, like other welfare reform programs, incorporates personal responsibility contracts; paid work, volunteer work, or school requirements; and time limitations. Using telephone interviews, this study examined perceptions of 31 former welfare recipients who were enrolled in the North Carolina Work First (WF)…

To learn more about how welfare reform affects children, a child-focused study was conducted as part of the larger Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS) evaluation. This study assess the impacts of mothers' mandatory participation in welfare-to-work programs on outcomes for children using a sample of 790 participants. It provides an…

"Confronting the New Politics of Child and Family Policy in the United States" is an 18-month project designed to help states, local government, and the voluntary sector as they respond to the social policy debates and changes precipitated by the 104th Congress. The project's main vehicle, aside from exploratory and analytic work, is a series of…

This report presents new findings on the effectiveness of Ohio's Learning, Earning, and Parenting (LEAP) Program in Cleveland as well as initial results from the Cleveland Student Parent Demonstration, a special project undertaken as part of the LEAP evaluation. LEAP is a statewide initiative that uses financial incentives and penalties to promote…

This paper provides an early analysis of child care subsidies under welfare reform. The paper reviews the literature on child care subsidies and discusses the potential for such subsidies to be an effective part of the effort to make low-income families economically self-sufficient. The paper then uses data from the National Survey of America's…

Most discussions of welfare reform ignore two factors: its effect on children; and the fact that a welfare reform law, the Family Support Act of 1988 (FSA), already exists. FSA created state Job Opportunities and Basic Skills (JOBS) welfare-to-work programs, and if the JOBS program is adequately funded, it can improve the lives of welfare…

Noting Congressional interest in encouraging low-income mothers to seek employment as an alternative to receiving welfare, this report describes a study of the impact of child care expenditures on mothers' decision to work and compares the differences in costs for poor, near-poor, and non-poor mothers. The study developed measures for predicted…

Access to affordable, quality child care is a major barrier to successful employment for many families. About one-fifth of families return to welfare within a few months of leaving, with lack of accessible child care and transportation being the most frequently cited reasons. These issues are likely to be compounded in the rural South. Information…