The National Coalition of Hispanic Health and Human Services Organizations has sponsored a series of conferences that bring together Hispanic health and human services leaders. This report is the result of in-depth consideration and deliberation by a representative group of Hispanic community health and human services leaders who met in…

This report synthesizes first-phase evaluation results of the Teenage Parent Demonstration program. This program, whose cornerstone is case management, responded to three concerns: (1) rising welfare caseloads; (2) persistently high rates of teenage pregnancies and births; and (3) the high probability that teenage parents will go onto welfare and…

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…

An assessment was made of the initial efforts of the states to implement the Aid to Families with Dependent Children--Unemployed Parent (AFDC-UP) program in accordance with the requirements of the Family Support Act (FSA) of 1988. A mail survey was conducted of each of the 50 state welfare departments. Results indicated that, nationwide,…

Smart Start is a statewide initiative to ensure that all of North Carolina's children arrive at school healthy and ready to learn. A formative evaluation assessed, from the perspective of local participants in the original twelve Smart Start sites, how well these process goals are being met in the implementation process. Focus group and individual…

An assessment of welfare-related experiences and perspectives of Puerto Rican Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) recipients in New York City (New York), Newark (New Jersey), and Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) was conducted. Data were developed through 8 self-contained focus groups involving 63 participants. An additional focus group was…

This paper describes the client assessment package being used in the Philadelphia Urban Saturation Work Program and discusses some of the issues that should be considered in designing and implementing employability assessment components of welfare-employment programs. The original objectives of the assessment component were the following: (1) to…

A group of interested and academically qualified female Aid to Families with Dependent Children recipients was identified to participate in the assessment of a demonstration program to train female Work incentive Program (WIN) participants. Training for electronics technicians was conducted at DeVry Institute of Technology (Chicago) and Ohio…

As federal and state officials consider the reauthorization of the block grants at the center of the 1996 federal welfare reform law, it is critical that they use findings from research regarding the impact of welfare reform to guide their decisions. This special report examines the impact of welfare reform on children and youth, drawing on…

Congress justified the recent reform of federal welfare policy in part by citing the increase in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) caseload since the late 1960s. The caseload, i.e., the number of families using AFDC, is determined by the number of families eligible to participate and by the proportion of these families who use the…

The Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP) is a welfare reform initiative based on enhancing welfare recipients' incentives to get a job and requiring long-term welfare recipients to participate in employment-focused activities. The effects of the MFIP were compared to those of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program through…

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…

A random assignment study evaluated two welfare program case management approaches, traditional and integrated, and was conducted as part of the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work (WTW) Strategies, an evaluation of 11 welfare-to-work programs in 7 sites nationwide. More that 7,000 single parent welfare applicants and recipients deemed…

This guide focuses on these two key challenges that states and localities have identified as important for the long-term success of welfare reform and work force development efforts: helping low-income parents sustain employment (steady work) and advance in the work force (better jobs). The guide consists of five parts and is structured to…

This paper examines the impact of welfare reforms on several measures of child maltreatment. The authors use state-level data from 1990 to 1998 to examine whether recent welfare reforms have increased or reduced the incidence of reported and substantiated cases of maltreatment, the incidence of specific types of substantiated…