This report introduces the MyGoals for Employment Success demonstration. MyGoals is an employment coaching program that helps participants set and achieve goals. It seeks to do so by explicitly focusing attention on participants' executive skills. MyGoals also offers participants a set of financial incentives to encourage, facilitate, and reward…

Discusses the growth in Social Security Administration (SSA) disability programs and suggests that one means of assisting SSA beneficiaries to reduce dependence is for the SSA to directly or indirectly fund competitive employment initiatives focusing on vocational rehabilitation for individuals who are currently served in nonremunerative day…

The Job Opportunities and Basic Skills program (JOBS) is an ambitious federal effort at welfare reform but the federal government has given local operators little direction on how to run it. JOBS can be improved using existing evaluations and analyses of administrative data. Reform depends mostly on capable local administration. (JOW)

The six sections of this brief provide the following information: (1) the types of public incentives available to employers for hiring and training of employees, including increasing economic activity and increasing labor market supply; (2) federally operated incentive programs (Welfare-to-Work Tax Credit, Work Opportunity Tax Credit, Employee…

A project created linkages in Service Delivery Area 12, Clermont and Warren Counties, Ohio, to improve services for welfare recipients. During the project, the original grant seed money of $22,000 grew to more than $220,000 in grants for cooperative programs. In addition, integral, completed linkage treaties were forged between various agencies…

A study was conducted to provide much-needed, in-depth qualitative information and direction regarding the experiences, attitudes, value systems, and aspirations of various segments of the Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) recipients. Eight focus groups, each composed of 8 to 10 persons, were conducted in May 1990 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Discussion…

The Richland County (Ohio) Welfare Coordination Project had three main goals: (1) to examine the roles, functions, and allowable service activities of each of four agencies involved in adult education, training, and job placement efforts; (2) to develop a systematic approach to the selection of service providers for clients; and (3) to develop…

This report describes the programs provided by the Illinois Department of Public Aid and the initiatives that the department has begun to help welfare recipients find work and get off welfare rolls. Programs described include the following: (1) AFDC (Aid for Families with Dependent Children) Job Opportunities and Basic Skills program (JOBS), which…

The Job Opportunities and Basic Skills (JOBS) program, a component of the 1988 Family Support Act, emphasizes education and occupational training for welfare recipients, but it has not provided sufficient corrective measures to promote work among recipients of Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). The most serious deficiency of JOBS is…

This book describes a 10-state study of work force development efforts in Florida, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, and Wisconsin. The book is organized in eight sections. Section 1 describes the overall visions and practices that states have created, examining the difficulties in implementing these…

Jobs-Plus is an intensive, place-based initiative for increasing employment among public housing residents. Closely aligned with the goals of the 1998 federal Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998, Jobs-Plus aims to transform public housing communities by increasing employment among residents. Tests of this new employment approach…

The Toledo Area Welfare Coordination Task Force, coordinated by the Private Industry Council and funded by the Job Training Partnership Act, brought together more than 20 community leaders representing private and public organizations that have a role to play in implementing the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills (JOBS) program in Lucas and Wood…

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 places vast new information burdens on state and local governments and the nonprofit and private sectors. Three classes of problems confront program and information managers implementing welfare reform: developing information infrastructure, redesigning applications to…

Workforce Investment Act (WIA) and the TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) programs can be coordinated in a number of ways, some of them especially focused on women. For example, research suggests the following: (1) WIA and TANF can be coordinated to improve low-income women's human capital development; (2) many states and localities…

This publication is designed to help TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] agencies create specific program interventions to serve TANF recipients in place-based (in particular, housing-based) programs that help welfare recipients find and keep jobs. TANF programs increasingly serve welfare recipients with multiple barriers to steady…