The research undertaken to achieve these goals is carried out primarily by the Administration for Children and Families’ (ACF’s) Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), also within HHS. OPRE and ASPE carefully coordinate their research agendas with each other and with other government agencies and private foundations. Many projects involve collaboration and partnerships.

In a 2003 report, Program Evaluation: An Evaluation Culture and Collaborative Partnerships Help Build Agency Capacity, the U.S. General Accounting Office (since renamed the U.S. Government Accountability Office) identified ACF as one of five Federal agencies that have demonstrated a strong evaluation capacity as evidenced by a commitment to self-examination, data quality, analytical expertise, and collaborative partnerships. The report noted that at ACF, the evaluation of State welfare-to-work demonstration programs is part of a network of long-term Federal, State, and local efforts to develop effective welfare policy. It also found that ACF's longstanding and on-going collaborative relationship with ASPE has contributed to the agency's expertise directly through advising on specific evaluations, as well as indirectly through building the expertise of the larger research community that conducts the evaluations.

In a 2001 report, Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition, the National Academy of Sciences also applauded HHS’ broad-based welfare reform research agenda. The Academy, which had convened a Panel on "Data and Methods for Measuring the Effects of Changes in Social Welfare Programs" to provide HHS with unbiased scientific recommendations for studying the outcomes of recent changes in the welfare system, also made recommendations for improvements and expansions in data collection and the development of research questions and methodology. The Department has taken steps to address several of the Panel’s recommendations. For example, HHS’ efforts to build capacity for conducting high-quality program evaluations at the State level and for conducting household surveys of low-income and welfare populations continue. HHS committed resources to help improve national household survey questions including better data on marriage and divorce. Projects to improve the usefulness of State-level administrative data have been undertaken. HHS issued regulations to implement expansions in State data reporting to include recipients of State-funded TANF assistance as called for by the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA). State-specific data sets produced by each of the grantees studying welfare leavers and current recipients were made available for secondary data analyses of welfare outcome measures, and synthesis reports were published based on administrative data findings from all of the ASPE-funded leavers studies and survey data analyses of all of the ASPE-funded TANF caseload studies. Study and consideration of other Panel conclusions and recommendations will continue.

This chapter summarizes recent research and evaluation findings and provides an overview of additional research and evaluation initiatives related to the TANF program undertaken by HHS.

One of ACF’s major initiatives is the Employment Retention and Advancement Project, which is experimentally evaluating a number of alternative approaches to help current or former TANF recipients and other low-income individuals sustain attachment to and advancement in the labor market. ACF’s contractor, MDRC, has been evaluating 16 intervention strategies implemented in sites in eight States (California, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, and Texas). The study also includes an implementation evaluation in each site to document the challenges and successes in implementing and operating the strategies designed.

All of the ERA strategies, including those described in the interim report, are evaluated using a similar evaluation design. Individuals who met the site-specific ERA eligibility criteria were randomly assigned to a program group, usually called the ERA group, or to a control group. Those assigned to the ERA group were eligible to receive the special retention and advancement services (and in some programs, required to participate), while those assigned to the control group were not eligible for the special ERA services but were eligible for other services and supports available from the agency or in the community – including the services provided through the sites’ standard welfare-to-work or post-employment program. Each site’s control group thus represented the benchmark against which the site’s ERA approach was assessed.

Most of the ERA strategies examined were found to be well implemented in accordance with the project plan. Nonetheless, eight of the twelve strategies examined in the interim report have not shown systematic positive impacts on the economic outcomes examined. The four strategies included in this report that were found to have produced positive impacts were operated in Chicago (Illinois), Riverside (California), Corpus Christi and Fort Worth (Texas) and New York City (New York).

The Chicago strategy focused on providing career advancement services through an experienced community-based organization. The strategy focused on individuals who remained on TANF even though they worked 30 hours per week and had maintained employment for at least six consecutive months. It provided a combination of services, including targeted job search assistance and assistance in identifying and accessing career ladders. Riverside implemented two strategies; findings from the Post-Assistance Self-Sufficiency (PASS) program are included in this report. PASS targeted individuals who left TANF due to earned income and provided retention and advancement services and family-based support services delivered by community-based organizations. Texas implemented the new strategy in Corpus Christi, Fort Worth and Houston and targeted TANF applicants and recipients. This strategy provided individualized team-based case management as well as monthly stipends of $200 to those who maintained full-time employment and completed activities related to their employment plan. The New York City PRIDE program was a mandatory employment program targeting welfare recipients with physical or mental health problems that was operated through four nonprofit, community-based organizations experienced in working with people with health problems. It included adult basic education, unpaid work experience and job search/job placement services tailored to account for health problems.

The Chicago, Riverside (PASS) sites and two of the Texas sites, Corpus Christi and Fort Worth, increased two-year average quarterly employment rates by 2.8 to 3.8 percentage points above control group levels, boosted average total (2-year) earnings by $823 to $1,755, produced gains in the percentage of people employed four consecutive quarters ranging from 3.8 to 4.1 percentage points, and increased the percentage earning more than $20,000 during the two-year period by 2.8 to 4.6 percentage points. The New York City PRIDE program produced economic impacts similar in size to those in the other three promising programs in absolute terms. These results were very large in percentage terms due to the control group’s very low employment levels. Subgroup analysis found that impacts tend to be concentrated among sample group members with recent work experience.

While most ERA programs were able to recruit and initially engage substantial proportions of program group members, sustained engagement was difficult to achieve. The Chicago, New York City PRIDE, and the two Texas sites produced positive impacts on measures of ongoing engagement; these impacts were concentrated among sample members with recent work experience.

The report’s findings are based on two to three years of data and patterns are beginning to emerge. However, these findings do not represent the final word on these programs, as the evaluation will ultimately track employment and earnings outcomes for at least three years in every program and longer in selected programs. The experience of the 12 interventions strategies included in this report illustrates the challenges faced by agencies attempting to assist TANF applicants and recipients sustain employment and advance in the labor market. The study found high rates of job loss and limited advancement during the follow-up periods. The positive impacts found in the four sites highlighted here suggest that some strategies can produce positive results.

The TANF Caseload Composition and Leavers Synthesis updated past assessments of the characteristics and success in work engagement of both (a) the TANF caseload and (b) those who have left the TANF caseload (or "leavers"). The purpose of the update was to determine if the caseload of TANF recipients and the population of leavers have become more or less disadvantaged in the last 5 and 10 years. More specifically, this investigation was prompted by two questions:

1. How do the characteristics of the TANF caseload compare with the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)/TANF caseload characteristics 5 and 10 years ago? Is it more or less disadvantaged?
2. What are the characteristics and outcomes for families that recently left the TANF rolls compared with families on TANF, and compared with families that left the TANF rolls 5 and 10 years ago? Are TANF leavers today more or less disadvantaged?

This update was necessary because many recent studies on caseload composition and leavers have concentrated only on the early TANF period (approximately 1997 to 2001), and most of these studies do not use national data sets.

ACF contracted with the Urban Institute to conduct the study, which has two main components. First, the Urban Institute carried out a new synthesis of TANF caseload and leavers research with the most recent studies. Second, to obtain more recent national results, the Urban Institute performed secondary analyses of more recent data from three national data sets: the National Survey of America’s Families (NSAF), the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the Current Population Survey (CPS).

The study found that, in general, there were few changes to the composition of the caseload and the characteristics of leavers in the last 5 to 10 years. Changes that did occur for both recipients and leavers were concentrated in the early TANF period (1997-2001). Typically, changes in the early period were either partially reversed or slowed in the later TANF period (1999-2005).

The Building Strong Families (BSF) Demonstration and Evaluation is a large-scale, multi-site test of marriage and relationship education programs for low-income unmarried parents (adults 18 or over) who are expecting or have just had a child (within the last 3 months). The BSF evaluation provides for implementation evaluation as well as impact evaluation. This specific report documents the early lessons from the program development and pilot stages of the demonstration sites during early 2005 through early 2006. The demonstrations are in Florida (Broward and Orange counties), Georgia (Atlanta), Indiana (Allen, Lake, Marion and Miami counties), Louisiana (Baton Rouge), Maryland (Baltimore), Oklahoma (Oklahoma City), and Texas (Houston and San Angelo).

The report presents information on the number and characteristics of couples enrolled in the demonstration pilot period. The BSF data indicate that the sites are succeeding in enrolling couples during pregnancy (46 percent) and after delivery (54 percent). On average, BSF mothers and fathers in the pilots were in their mid-twenties (24 and 26, respectively) at the time they enrolled in the program. More than three-quarters of BSF couples were cohabiting at intake and almost six percent had married post-conception. In about half the couples, one parent had a child by another partner and about one-quarter of the couples had other children in common (in addition to the child that made them eligible for BSF). About 79 percent of fathers and 21 percent of mothers were working at intake. The percent of fathers working ranged from a high of 90 percent in Texas to a low of 63 percent in Baltimore. Across all sites, 57 percent of the working fathers reported total earnings in the past 12 months of less than $15,000, 28 percent reported earnings between $15,000 and $24,999, and 10 percent reported earnings over $25,000. Across the sites, 46 percent of mothers and 52 percent of fathers entering the BSF pilots indicated they were "almost certain" they would marry their current partner; another 26 percent of mothers and 27 percent of fathers said they had a "pretty good chance" of marrying.

The report also describes how the different sites have implemented services. According to the report, the early BSF experience suggests that, although there are varied ways to develop and implement healthy marriage programs, certain characteristics of host agencies and staff may be particularly helpful, including: a strong commitment to the importance of healthy marriage; organizational experience in delivering services in a group format; utilization of male and female staff and teams; and employing staff with similar cultural backgrounds as their participants. The report also notes that, in order to enroll sufficient numbers of couples, programs must identify sources with a steady flow of potentially eligible couples. The report indicates that for pilot sites, the maternal health care system was a major and efficient recruitment source for the BSF target population, and the most effective recruitment may be achieved with outreach staff who are excited about the program and able to convey that excitement to eligible couples. Nonetheless, the data illustrate the challenge of engaging couples and maintaining participation in a program that requires ongoing attendance. The rate of participant attendance in marriage education classes across all sites was 53 percent. The evaluators conclude that although there were significant drop-offs in attendance, the overall pattern was one of steady but intermittent participation.

A growing body of literature suggests that for people at all economic levels, marriage may have a broad range of benefits including improvements in individual economic well-being, mental and physical health, and children well-being. To investigate the complex relationship between marriage and health, ASPE contracted with Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. to review recent research, and examine the extent to which marriage is a cause of better health outcomes.

The study synthesized recent literature across several fields, including public health, the social sciences, and medical science, focusing on research published in peer-reviewed journals and on studies using the most rigorous statistical methods for determining whether or not the link between marriage and health is a causal one. Focusing on research that is most relevant to the U.S. policy community, the study focused on research conducted with U.S. populations and completed since 1990.

Over the past two decades, HHS has made significant investments in research and evaluation focused on the implementation and impacts of State welfare reform initiatives. These have included projects focused on reforms carried out to test welfare-to-work strategies under the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS) program and a variety of policies to promote work and personal responsibility implemented by individual States under waiver demonstrations, as well as assessments of reforms enacted under TANF.

Prior to the passage of TANF, 43 States and the District of Columbia obtained waivers of certain program requirements in title IV-A of the Social Security Act (the Act), as authorized under section 1115 of the Act. ACF required an evaluation component as a part of each approved waiver. Continuation of evaluations begun under waivers was permitted but not required under the 1996 welfare reform legislation that created TANF. Twenty States were funded to complete ongoing evaluations, either as originally planned or modified. Final reports on these evaluations were released over time, as the States completed their demonstrations; most were released during the period 2000-2003. Findings from the waiver evaluations are particularly relevant to TANF, since these demonstrations first implemented many of the policies now incorporated under State TANF plans.

In recent years, ACF has funded a number of projects related to welfare reform that synthesize results across studies:

As discussed more fully above under "Highlights of Major Research and Evaluation Findings," the TANF Caseload Composition and Leavers Synthesis report reviewed changes in the TANF caseload – and among those leaving the caseload – during the 10 years after welfare reform. The report found that, with the exception of some changes right after the passage of welfare reform, the demographic characteristics, employment, and earnings of both groups have remained relatively stable.

ACF and ASPE have also supported The Project on Devolution and Urban Change, a multi-disciplinary, longitudinal study of the implementation and impacts of welfare reform in four large urban areas. For the Urban Change study, MDRC collected longitudinal administrative data and survey data, conducted an implementation study and an ethnographic study, and observed neighborhood indicators from before welfare reform to 2002. Detailed reports combining findings from all of these components were issued on the effects of welfare reform in Cleveland (Cuyahoga County), Ohio; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Miami, Florida; and Los Angeles, California.

Among the major findings from the Urban Change study are:

• All of the sites applied work participation requirements to a larger proportion of the welfare caseload than they had prior to TANF and succeeded in engaging a higher proportion of recipients in welfare-to-work program activities. The most common work activity was unsubsidized employment. All of the States also increased the amount of money that recipients could keep when they went to work.
• MDRC followed the experiences over time of a survey sample of single mothers who were on welfare in 1995 and who were mostly living in high poverty neighborhoods. Over time, the percentage receiving welfare decreased sharply, the percentage working increased, and average earnings and income also increased. In all four sites, the average wage in 2001 was over $8 an hour. However, the percentage of respondents who had income from neither work nor welfare also increased.
• As this was not an experimental study, there is no control group whose experiences can be used as a reference point. Instead, MDRC attempted to estimate the counterfactual – what would have happened in the absence of welfare reform – by extending the trends from the 1992 to 1996 period. This analysis shows some positive and negative impacts on welfare entry, exit, and recidivism, and on employment, but there is not a consistent pattern of impacts across sites.

In March 2007, MDRC released a follow-up report which looked at the continued effects of welfare reform in the two earliest Urban Change sites, Cleveland, Ohio and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The follow-up extended three of the analyses from the original study—implementation, administrative records, and neighborhood indicators. Of particular interest was the impact of the economic downturn that began in 2001, which led to State budget deficits and increased unemployment across the US and was not examined in the earlier study.

The follow-up study found:

• Over the period observed by MDRC, the number of open welfare cases with adults declined in both counties, even during the economic recession. Although the caseload decline was not as rapid as in the late 1990s, it was consistent with the trend found in the earlier reports. Additionally, case closures for long-term welfare recipients exceeded the rates predicted by MDRC’s estimated counter-factual.
• The recidivism rate of former welfare recipients in Cleveland dropped below the rate predicted by previous trends. Data for Philadelphia was not available for this period.

ACF and ASPE have funded a number of projects to better understand specific aspects of how States are implementing the TANF program. These include projects described more fully in previous reports such as:

In late 2006, ASPE, with ACF support, contracted with Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR) to identify, describe, and assess strategies that States and localities are using the increase the work participation of TANF clients. The work is being undertaken in response to the increases in effective State participation rate requirements under the DRA. After soliciting input from experts on the range of efforts that States and local offices are undertaking, site visits were conducted to identify and document promising strategies. Practice briefs will describe barriers, population targeting, services provided, staffing plans, costs, and timelines for exemplary strategies. These briefs are expected in early 2009.

In 2007, ACF contracted with MPR for a project to titled Identifying Promising TANF Diversion Practices. The study will examine State and local efforts to divert TANF applicants from applying for cash assistance. Information on diversion practices will be obtained through a survey of State TANF directors and site visits to three States. The main objective of this study is to provide State and local TANF offices with information on promising strategies for diverting TANF applicants to employment, or otherwise meeting their need for assistance, and to identify and recommend potential approaches for further study and evaluation of diversion practices. A final report is expected in early 2009.

ASPE is currently examining the characteristics and caseload trends of American Indians and Alaska Natives in State and Tribal TANF programs.  The project will produce a more in-depth look at TANF receipt among these populations in the State and Tribal programs since the addition of Tribal programs after welfare reform.

ACF and ASPE are continuing research in this field. A broad range of projects are described in this section. Ongoing healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood projects include the Building Strong Families (BSF) Demonstration and Evaluation Project, which is being conducted under contract to Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. and is funded by ACF. This large-scale multi-site evaluation involves the development and rigorous evaluation of interventions to increase the well-being of children through provision of voluntary healthy marriage education services to help low-income unwed parents achieve their goals of healthy marriage and positive family functioning. This project builds on research that found that, at the time of the birth of a child, many unwed parents have high hopes of marriage to each other. However, without intervention and supports, only about 10 percent marry within a year. The evaluation will assess impacts of the intervention on the quality and stability of marriages and couple relationships and other measures of well-being including the well-being of children. In FY 2007, seven sites are implementing the BSF package of marriage-related services (marriage education classes, caseworkers, and support services), and the contractor has begun a 15-month follow-up survey to determine program impacts (later, a 36-month follow-up survey will also be conducted). One report, Implementing Healthy Marriage programs for Unmarried Parents: Early Lessons from the Building Strong Families Project, discusses findings from the initial program development and pilot phases of the sites; the report is discussed above under "Highlights of Major Research and Evaluation Findings."

ACF and ASPE also jointly funded evaluations of the Partners for Fragile Families (PFF) demonstrations in nine States. The PFF initiative targeted young fathers (16 to 25 years old) who had not yet established paternity and did not yet have involvement with the child support enforcement system, with the hope that the projects could assist these young parents to become strong financial and emotional resources for their children. The projects tested new ways for State-run child support enforcement programs and community-based organizations to work together to help young fathers obtain employment, make child support payments and learn parenting skills. The evaluations are intended to document the effects of these interventions on poor, young, unwed fathers’ employment, child support payments, parenting and family relationships.

In FY 2003 ASPE and ACF jointly funded a project being conducted by the Lewin Group and the Urban Institute to explore options for the collection of marriage and divorce statistics at the national, State, and local levels. This effort builds on findings and recommendations from the Counting Couples workshop sponsored by the Federal Inter-Agency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. It involves assessing the needs of various marriage and divorce data users, the strengths and gaps in current survey and administrative data on marriage and divorce, and the challenges inherent in modifying such data systems. A major task involves a survey of individuals responsible for the collection and maintenance of marriage and divorce vital records data in each State and in selected local agencies. The researchers will use the information obtained from the various sources to describe the strengths and weaknesses of the various data collections and present potential improvements that could strengthen and divorce data. A series of reports will be released in 2009.

In late FY 2003, ACF funded two additional major evaluation efforts to assess the effectiveness of different approaches to promoting healthy marriages. The Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) evaluation is being conducted by MDRC and uses an experimental research design to assess the effectiveness of programs to support healthy marriage and positive family functioning among low-income married couples with children. Eight organizations in seven States began conducting pilot tests of the SHM program in 2007. Upon successful completion of pilot tests, demonstration programs will be included in the formal SHM evaluation. The first examination of marital and family and child well-being outcomes in SHM demonstrations will be made 12 months after couples are randomly assigned into research groups and a second round of surveys and assessments will be conducted at 36 months after entry into the study. An initial working paper assessing recent descriptive statistics on the formation and stability, characteristics, and quality of marriages in the low-income population of the U.S. has been released (see http://www.supportinghealthymarriage.org/publications/6/workpaper.html).

Also in FY 2005, ACF issued a program announcement that resulted in the award of five multi-year grants to further knowledge about healthy marriage among low-income populations. Two of the grants involve evaluations of intervention services, one assessing the effects of high-school based curriculum and the other evaluating the impacts of a curriculum specifically developed for African American couples. Two others involve analyses of existing data sets to address policy relevant questions and the fifth grant involves collecting primary data to better understand barriers to couples’ participation in marriage education.

In FY 2006, ACF issued a Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Marriage Research Initiative program announcement that resulted in three multi-year grant awards to support evaluations of programs that promote responsible fatherhood and support healthy marriages between low-income parents. All three evaluation studies use an experimental research design to assess the net impact of the intervention on a range of outcome measures.

Further, in 2006, ACF and ASPE initiated a project to evaluate the Marriage and Family Strengthening Grants for Incarcerated and Reentering Fathers and their Partners grants funded through the ACF Responsible Fatherhood grant program priority area five – Responsible Fatherhood, Marriage and Family Strengthening Grants for Incarcerated and Re-entering Fathers and their Partners. The evaluation will lead to improved future marriage and corrections interventions by identifying how best to design interventions for couples involved with the criminal justice system and determining what kinds of marriage education programs can have an impact on stronger families and safer communities. The project includes an implementation evaluation of 14 sites and an impact evaluation, of a smaller number of the sites, designed to help determine what types of programs work best for those involved in the criminal justice system and what effects these programs may have on fostering healthy marriages, families, and children. The evaluation is being conducted through a contract with RTI, International.

In addition, in 2007 ACF and ASPE are beginning a number of new projects. ACF and ASPE are collaborating on a multi-year project to conduct a comprehensive process and outcome evaluation of ten Healthy Marriage Initiative grant projects that serve primarily Hispanic couples. This evaluation will provide an in-depth, systematic analysis of program implementation, operations, and outputs with a special focus on adaptations specifically for Hispanic couples and individuals. ACF and ASPE contracted with The Lewin Group and its subcontractors, MDRC and the Washington University Center for Latino Family Research, to conduct this implementation evaluation. ACF also awarded a contract to MPR to expand knowledge about decision making among low-income couples with regard to key topics such as marriage or cohabitation; seeking, obtaining, or advancing in employment; bearing children; and negotiating and determining parental roles and responsibilities.

Also in 2007, ASPE established the academic-based National Center for Marriage Research through a cooperative agreement with Bowling Green State University. The Center will improve our understanding of how marriage and family structure affect the health and well-being of individuals, families, children and communities by addressing key research questions, establishing a strong network of multi-disciplinary scholars who focus their research on marriage and family structure, develop and train future researchers, improve research methods and data to permit a fuller understanding of the effects of family structure in various domains across the life span, and actively disseminate research findings. In addition, ASPE contracted with Mathematica Policy Research to commission a series of research papers examining the interaction between marriage and health in the African American community. Papers will be presented at a symposium and compiled into an edited volume. Other ongoing ASPE projects include a study to identify the set of family strengths associated with marriage, including analysis of positive outcomes for youth, and a study to help improve the connections among financial literacy and asset accumulation and marriage skills programming for low-income couples. In February 2008, ASPE convened a roundtable which provided an opportunity for experts in the fields of marriage education, asset development, and financial education to exchange knowledge about programs and to explore collaboration.

ACF has funded a range of research to address issues related to increasing employment among welfare recipients. One major initiative in this area, The Employment Retention and Advancement Evaluation (ERA), initiated in FY 1999, builds on earlier experience in order to test experimentally a new generation of approaches to promoting employment retention and advancement. The goal of this multi-year demonstration and evaluation project, being evaluated by MDRC, is to gain knowledge about how best to help low-income families sustain attachment to, and advancement in, the labor market. Sixteen intervention strategies have been implemented in eight States (California, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, and Texas).

All sites are randomly assigned participants to control and experimental groups (except for Cleveland which randomly assigned participating employers) and several important variations on the retention and advancement themes are being tried:

• Cleveland experimented with a cooperative effort between employers and the TANF agency that offered career progression.
• New York attempted to enhance employment retention and advancement among substance abusers.
• Texas offered significant cash incentives to increase participation in its post-employment services program.
• Minnesota provided enhanced services for participants with acute mental health problems.
• Eugene, Oregon targeted newly employed TANF recipients with a variety of flexible education, training, and career development services designed to help participants advance into better jobs.
• South Carolina aggressively reached out to former welfare recipients who had been off the rolls for at least nine months, attempting to locate and work with prior TANF recipients who may need employment-related assistance in order to avoid recidivism.
• Los Angeles, California is testing a variation of "work first" in the form of enhanced job club activities.

Finally, in 2007 ACF initiated a new demonstration project that will test a range of promising strategies to promote self-sufficiency and reduce welfare utilization. The Innovative Strategies for Increasing Self-Sufficiency evaluation represents the next step in a series of evaluations of demonstrations designed to promote employment and self-sufficiency among economically disadvantaged families, including those receiving or at risk of receiving welfare benefits. Conducted by Abt Associates, this project will evaluate multiple employment-focused strategies that build on previous approaches and are adapted to the current Federal, State, and local policy environment. Approaches of particular interest include employment services that involve couples together, those that serve families with barriers such as a disability or a history of substance abuse, employment-focused diversion programs, self-employment programs, strategies involving employers, strategies to increase employment retention, and those designed to promote career advancement. However, other approaches may also be evaluated. Such programs and services will be operating in the context of the requirements set forth in the DRA for the TANF program, which changed the work participation rate calculation among other changes in the TANF program. The goal of this evaluation is to increase empirical knowledge about the effectiveness of programs utilizing varied strategies aimed at helping low-income families sustain employment and advance to positions that enable self-sufficiency. The evaluation will utilize a random assignment design in up to six sites in order to assess the effectiveness of the multiple interventions

State and local TANF officials and other service providers have expressed the need for more information and guidance as they develop employment-focused strategies to work more effectively with TANF recipients who face substantial barriers to employment. These include adults with substance abuse and/or mental health problems, physical or developmental disabilities, learning disabilities or very low basic skills, those who have experienced domestic violence, or those who have a general history of low and intermittent employment. In many instances, agencies will need new methods and strategies to meet the needs of individuals facing one or more of these barriers in order for them to enter and succeed in the labor market.

ACF, ASPE, and the Department of Labor (DOL) are funding a major evaluation project that builds on lessons from earlier work and is intended to increase knowledge about the most effective strategies for helping hard-to-employ low-income parents and individuals find and sustain employment and improve family and child well-being. The Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation project is a multi-year, multi-site effort that began with first identifying agencies and organizations already working or interested in working with such parents and individuals and then working further with promising sites towards designing and implementing programs that address barriers to employment by using state-of-the art methods and approaches. The evaluation utilizes an experimental design to assess program effectiveness and will document the implementation and operational lessons from the perspective of program operators, administrators, and participants. The evaluation is testing intervention strategies in four sites, including: (1) a transitional work and employment support program for recent prison parolees in New York City; (2) an outreach effort in Rhode Island designed to enlist Medicaid recipients with depression into mental health treatment and connect them to employment services, (3) three Early Head Start Programs in Kansas and Missouri involving enhancing and expanding the self-sufficiency components of the program to build both employment gains and positive child impacts; and (4) a program in Philadelphia testing two promising approaches for TANF recipients with significant barriers – a transitional employment approach, and an approach relying on in-depth assessment and an individually tailored menu of employment and support services and intensive case management.

CEO uses a distinctive transitional employment model. After a four-day job readiness class, participants are placed in temporary, minimum wage jobs with work crews that perform maintenance or repair work under contract to city and State agencies. Participants are paid daily. Within weeks, they also receive help finding permanent jobs and follow-up services to promote employment retention. The evaluation targeted a key subset of CEO’s population – ex-prisoners who showed up at the program after being referred by a parole officer.

For the full research sample, CEO generated a large, but short-lived increase in employment covered by unemployment insurance (UI). During the early months of follow-up, when many in the program group worked in CEO crews (jobs covered by UI), the employment rate for the program group was 30 to 40 percentage points higher than for the control group. However, the program group’s employment rate dropped as people left CEO jobs, and the difference between the groups disappeared by the end of the year. Nevertheless, there was a small but statistically significant decrease in felony convictions and incarceration for new crimes during Year 1.

Among those who came to CEO within three months after release, the program produced statistically significant decreases in parole revocations, felony convictions, re-incarceration for new crimes, and overall re-incarceration after Year 1. Effects on these measures are rarely seen in rigorous evaluations. The pattern of employment impacts was similar to that for the full sample, though the impacts seem to have declined more slowly for this subgroup.

To study the labor market factors that affect job retention and wage advancement among TANF recipients and other low-income and disadvantaged workers, ASPE has funded a series of analyses using panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), data from the Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics (LEHD) program housed at the Census Bureau, and data from the Administrative Data Research and Evaluation (ADARE) consortium supported by the Department of Labor. These data programs provide longitudinal information that can be used to track the employment and economic outcomes over time of low-income and other disadvantaged populations, including TANF recipients, former recipients, and those at risk of entering TANF.

Two related ASPE studies using the longitudinal LEHD data on earnings linked with income and health insurance data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) are currently underway. The first examines the long-term employment and earnings outcomes of single mothers with the lowest income levels (i.e., those with total family income in the bottom two income quintiles), and the second examines the relationship between employer-sponsored health insurance coverage and a prior history of instability in the low-wage labor market. Reports for these studies are expected in early 2009.

Many child care policy research projects have looked at child care subsidies and services as a support for employment of low-income, at risk, and TANF-linked families.

The Child Care, Welfare, and Families: The Nexus of Policies, Practices, and Systems, conducted by The Urban Institute, examined the role of welfare policies and practices in shaping the child care subsidy experiences of low-income families, focusing on how these issues affect families’ access and utilization of child care subsidies. Findings from this study may assist States in coordinating CCDF and TANF administrative practices.

A second report, Parents’ Perspectives: Child Care Subsidies and Moving from Welfare to Work focused on parents’ experiences with accessing and retaining subsidies as they move through and off the welfare system. Focus group participants were asked about their child care subsidy experiences, including applying for subsidies, finding a provider, ongoing subsidy requirements, and the transition off welfare. The study found that child care subsidies play an important role for families in terms of supporting parents’ efforts to work and to have their children in a safe learning environment; linking child care and welfare services has important implications for the families receiving these services in terms of how they view subsidies and their experiences with the subsidy program; and, finding child care can be challenging for families and can be made particularly difficult when parents are given little time to find care before their work activity begins. The final phase of the study examined why welfare leavers are not using subsidies and identifies potential strategies to ensure that those who need subsidies are able to access them.

Another paper Child Care Subsidies and Leaving Welfare: Policy Issues and Strategies focuses on what is known about child care needs and subsidy use among those leaving welfare for work, as well as State and local policies that shape subsidy use among this population. Some findings reported include: after PRWORA, most States continued to place a high priority on ensuring that families moving from welfare to work were able to obtain child care subsidies; at the local level, providing child care subsidies to welfare leavers generally requires informing them about the benefit and exchanging information between TANF employment and child care systems on the parents new status and earnings as they leave TANF, and localities differ significantly in the way in which they have implemented these processes; and several factors appear to contribute to the relatively low use of child care subsidies among working families including a lack of awareness of the benefit, a personal decision not to use the assistance, burdensome parental requirements, and administrative and staffing structures that do not facilitate the use of subsidies.

Early Care Settings and School Readiness of Low-Income Children: Cross-Cutting Lessons from Two Complementary Studies, a study conducted by MDRC, used a pooled dataset of seven experimental studies of welfare and employment programs testing several key policies to study the relationship between family characteristics, choice of care and children’s outcomes (the paper has been submitted to peer-reviewed journal). The study found that the effects of welfare and employment programs on economic, child care and children’s outcomes varied by levels of initial disadvantage of the families. These intervention programs had no effect on the least disadvantaged welfare families, and had similar positive effects on employment, earnings, and income among the most and moderately disadvantaged welfare families. Program effects on participation in center-based care and on children’s achievement statistically differed for the children in the moderately disadvantaged families as compared with the most disadvantaged families. Among children in moderately disadvantaged families, these programs increased use of center-based care and improved children’s achievement. Among children in most disadvantaged families, these programs increased use of home-based and mixed care arrangements and had no effect on children’s achievement or problem behavior. While the researchers did not formally test causal pathways, the findings are consistent with the hypothesis that participation in center-based care might have been one mediating pathway to improvements in children’s achievement among preschool aged children in moderately disadvantaged families. Incremental increases in resources available through these programs might have offered the opportunity for moderately disadvantaged families to invest in center-based care. The findings seem to indicate that mothers in the most disadvantaged families are likely entering employment for the first time; might prefer home-based care; lack the resources to purchase center-care; or, their employment patterns might not match the availability of center-based care.

ASPE and ACF have been working collaboratively on a series of projects to improve the use of TANF administrative data, both for program management and for research purposes. One such project has developed user-oriented enhancements to ACF/OFA's web-based TANF reporting system that States use to enter aggregate data for TANF and related programs. The enhancements are intended to make the system more useful to the States and others for program management and monitoring. A second project, recently completed, is making the disaggregated, micro-level TANF data submitted by States to the Federal government available to the research community through the web. A third project has been developing indicators and a new software tool for use by States in analyzing data for program management and performance measurement. To date, 20 indicators have been developed in consultation with ten States and programmed into an initial prototype of a software tool. The indicators are being revised to reflect the new regulations from the DRA, and then the tool will be pilot tested before distribution to interested States. .

In 2007, ACF began "Understanding Two Categories in TANF Spending: "Other" and "Authorized Under Prior Law" project to examine these two large subcategories of reported spending for TANF and State Maintenance of Effort (MOE) which accounted for over 16 percent of the TANF and MOE spending in 2005. The project, being conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., will review existing State program spending reports submitted to the Federal government, TANF State plans, and supporting State documents; document the types of services or activities funded by States with TANF and State MOE funds that are categorized in Federal reporting as "Other" and "Authorized Under Prior Law;" and develop recommendations, as appropriate, regarding potential revisions to the TANF financial reporting form that would provide better documentation of how funds currently reported under both categories are used. A final report is expected in 2009.

Understanding Vouchers as a Tool to Expand Client Choice in TANF and CCDF. Many social service programs are focusing on ways to expand clients’ choice of service provider, to include the choice of faith-based providers. ASPE conducted a study to examine and document how vouchers are used in the TANF and Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) programs and the degree to which this indirect funding mechanism supports the goals of maximizing client choice and expanding the service delivery network to include faith-based organizations (FBOs) among an array of providers. The study, conducted by contractor Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., utilized telephone discussions with State and local officials and site visits to selected programs to gather information. Major findings included:

• Voucher use varies greatly between TANF and CCDF. The federal framework for CCDF requires the use of vouchers and, as a result most, states offer certificates to families that can be redeemed with providers of their choice. In TANF, legislative authority is given for voucher use but there is no specific requirement to use them, and we found only a few examples of their use.
• Some TANF programs integrate client-choice concepts into their contract-based service delivery system by offering clients a choice from among a set of contracted providers. Such models also preserve an element of financial stability for providers who depend on the consistency of contracts to create the organizational and staffing capacity to serve a certain size caseload.
• The use of vouchers alone does not maximize client choice; program policies and procedures also influence the level of choice. The value of vouchers, the provision of information to allow clients to make informed decisions, provider qualifications for program participation, the nature of the voucher-funded service, and the client’s interest in receiving the service all affect client choice.
• While program officials recognize and appreciate the role of faith-based and community organizations (FBCOs) in providing child care and services to the low-income, they do not seem to consider vouchers as a specific means of expanding the role of FBCOs in the service delivery network.

The final report, released in November 2007, can be found at http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/07/vouchers/experiences/index.htm.

The Role of State Faith Community Liaisons in Charitable Choice Implementation. Thirty-three States now have established a formal liaison with the faith community to encourage partnerships with faith-based organizations in the provision of health and social services. ASPE has underway a study that is building on past research to understand further the unique role of Faith Community Liaisons (FCLs) in influencing and promoting States’ effective implementation of Charitable Choice rules that govern how States and localities partner with faith-based organizations. The project will result in a brief that will provide guidance on how States can utilize the FCL function to improve understanding of Charitable Choice, and a final report on promising State models, expected spring 2009.

The Role of Faith-based and Community Organizations in Post-Hurricane Human Services Relief Efforts. After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, faith-based and community organizations (FBCOs) played a critical role in providing emergency services throughout the Gulf Coast region. Their work represented the largest disaster response effort in US history by charitable organizations. In 2006, ASPE launched a study to examine the role of selected FBCOs in hurricane disaster relief, with the goal of helping policy makers know how best to respond to future disasters and how best to utilize the strengths of faith- and community-based private human service providers. The project involves a telephone survey of over 200 FBCOs to learn the nature and extent of the human services provided by selected FBCOs in the aftermath of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, and in-depth visits to eight programs to document their experiences, successes, and challenges in serving the needs of the low-income. The Urban Institute is conducting the study for ASPE, in partnership with a Louisiana State University survey group, two Gulf Region-based associations of nonprofits, and a Technical Advisory Group. A final report is expected in early 2009.

Support for White House Conference on Research Related to the Faith-based and Community Initiative. The White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI) is putting more emphasis on the value of research in helping to guide federal, state and local efforts to improve partnerships with faith-based and community organizations (FBCOs) and increase understanding of their contributions to public assistance programs such as TANF. The OFBCI sponsored a two-day conference June 26-27, 2008, that presented findings on research to date in this area, summarized what has been learned and what still needs to be learned, and considered how best to target and coordinate future research efforts. The conference highlighted research in two tracks: (1) research sponsored by the federal government and nationally known private or nonprofit sector research organizations that examined the results of various FBCO-related federal/state initiatives and programs, and (2) research conducted by emerging scholars studying the nexus between FBCOs and public programs from a variety of perspectives. A key goal of the conference was to generate a proposed research agenda for further exploring and supporting government/FBCO partnerships. Researchers were invited via calls for papers to submit proposals for research to present in the two conference tracks. ASPE supported the conference by funding the production of a compendium of the invited Track 1 research papers and through the development of a conference web site. The compendium of papers was publicly released in hard copy and on various web sites at the time of the conference.