This publication highlights key messages and themes of a conference to discuss critical questions, challenges, and opportunities facing California's welfare and workforce development systems. It is intended as a resource manual that presents the most up-to-date thinking on how policies and services can be designed to better meet the needs of California's working poor. Information on conference day 1 provides an overview of national trends in welfare and workforce development and discusses the current situation in California. Statements, presentations, addresses, and plenary panel explore factors that impact how national and state systems will serve the working poor and hard-to-place clients and the implications of the increased prevalence of the hard-to-place among the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program in California--CalWORKs recipients. Information on day 2 provides overviews of presentations on the latest research on proven, effective strategies for serving low-income families and new approaches to explore and test. Nine panels consider strategies that speak to a variety of goals, increasing job retention and career advancement among the working poor, improving the financial standing of low-income families, and helping the hard-to-place move into the workforce. They also discuss how programs affect employment and earnings and broader impacts on family well-being. Information on day 3 provides overviews of four panels and plenary panel on the following: (1) the role of institutional relationships in providing a more comprehensive, more accessible set of services to low-income families and fostering a more effective use of funds and resources; (2) challenges to integrating the welfare and workforce development systems; (3) role of specific institutions--community colleges and Workforce Investment Act One-Stops--in serving the working poor; and (4) how community-focused initiatives create networks and relationships that support employment and self-sufficiency. (YLB)