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Executive Summary
Rural low-income families trying to find jobs, maintain employment, and secure longer-term well-being face distinct challenges. In rural labor markets, jobs tend to be scarcer than in urban ones, and the jobs that are available more often involve minimum-wage or part-time work. Education and training opportunities and such support services as health and mental health care also are more likely to be difficult to obtain. Moreover, lack of public transportation common in rural areas can make existing jobs and services difficult for a dispersed population to access.
This report chronicles the implementation experiences of the three demonstration programs participating in the Rural Welfare-to-Work (RWtW) Strategies Demonstration Evaluation. Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR) and its subcontractors, Decision Information Resources and the Rural Policy Research Institute, are conducting the evaluation with funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families. Although it does not present findings on the impact of the demonstration programs—impact and cost-benefit research is still in progress—the report does share an early assessment of how the programs operate and the successes and challenges they have encountered so far. Researchers gathered information for the process and implementation study through in-depth site visits to each program (conducted between February 2002 and August 2003) and management information systems (MIS).
The Rural Welfare-To-Work Demonstration Programs
The RWtW demonstration programs use diverse approaches to address employment barriers common in rural places (key features of the programs are summarized in Table 1). They include:
- Illinois Future Steps, which offered intensive, employment-focused case management to prepare participants for work and to help them find and keep good jobs.
- Building Nebraska Families (BNF), which provides preemployment education to improve the basic life skills of hard-to-employ people so they can engage in job search and training activities and address personal and family barriers to self-sufficiency.
- Tennessee First Wheels, which offers no-interest car loans to low-income families who need transportation to get to work and improve their quality of life.
| Illinois Future Steps | Building Nebraska Families | Tennessee First Wheels |
|---|---|---|
| Program Model | ||
| Employment-focused case management including job placement assistance and postemployment support | Preemployment life skills education | Interest-free car loans with ongoing support for car and loan maintenance |
| Notable Program Features | ||
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| Partner Organizations | ||
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| Target Population | ||
| TANF recipients required to work and other low-income volunteers (mainly food stamp or Medicaid recipients) | Hard-to-employ TANF recipients unsuccessful in other activities | Employed current and former TANF recipients and employed recipients of food stamps or child care subsidies |
| Key Staff | ||
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- Tennessee First Wheels, which offers no-interest car loans to low-income families who need transportation to get to work and improve their quality of life.
Key Implementation Experiences Of The Rural Welfare-To-Work Programs
The demonstration programs implemented many elements of their program models successfully. All three programs provide the core services stipulated in their designs, and the characteristics of clients who actually enroll in the programs appear to match the populations targeted. The programs also have been able to find and hire the number of employees they projected. Staff turnover has occurred in each program, temporarily affecting operations but not interrupting services substantially.
Although most services are delivered as intended, some elements of the program models materialized only partially or not at all. These elements were secondary services or activities—job training for Future Steps clients, tailored to the needs of local employers; volunteer placements for BNF clients; and reporting of First Wheels clients’ successful payment histories to credit bureaus, so that the clients might start positive credit records.
Future Steps and BNF have served the number of rural clients planned, but First Wheels has not been able to accomplish this goal. Several factors appear to have hindered enrollment into First Wheels. First, state and regional staff did not issue consistent and strong directives to identify and recruit clients for the program. Administrators and line staff in many local offices face competing priorities, and without encouragement from state officials, other activities have taken precedence at the local level. In general, program outreach responsibilities are not clearly allocated between the state welfare agency and its partner organization, and the two entities have had difficulty developing a coordinated outreach strategy. In addition, some caseworkers perceive the First Wheels application, which involves several steps, to be burdensome. To streamline the First Wheels application process, some offices have designated a First Wheels specialist, whose responsibilities include managing program applications. Most offices have not reorganized staff this way, however. Finally, identifying potential First Wheels participants may be challenging because of relatively strict eligibility requirements: most clients must secure and retain employment in order to apply for a loan.
Clients of the demonstration programs receive services that address a wide range of specific issues and employment barriers. For example, Future Steps career specialists provide employment-related services, including job search and placement assistance, to nearly all clients, but also counsel clients on a variety of other topics, most commonly, transportation, family issues, and child care. Similarly, BNF educators cover a variety of issues during their lessons with clients. Large proportions of BNF clients have studied such diverse topics as parenting, problem solving, goal setting, and stress management. The programs range in the intensity and personalization of their services. First Wheels program managers must work closely with some clients to ensure that clients make regular and timely loan payments. In contrast, Future Steps and BNF generally entail more concentrated and frequent interaction with clients. The relatively small caseloads that Future Steps and BNF staff carry make it easy for clients to participate intensively.
Most clients who participated in focus groups felt that the programs’ services have been valuable. In addition to mentioning the tangible benefits of program participation, these clients reported that the programs helped improve their outlook and motivation to gain employment. Many Future Steps and BNF clients enter paid employment, although this outcome cannot necessarily be attributed to program participation. (Most First Wheels clients must be employed to qualify for a loan.) MIS records and staff reports indicate that about two-thirds of Future Steps clients became employed at least once after entering the program, and that about 45 percent of BNF clients have been able to maintain employment for at least one month.
Meeting Rural Challenges Through Institutional Partnerships And Local Connections
Institutional partnerships and active connections with local employers and other service providers are among the strategies that the programs use to meet the demands of rural program implementation. State welfare agencies in all three sites collaborated with well-known, well-respected partner organizations to deliver the demonstration programs. The positive reputations of partner organizations helps reduce any stigma that clients may feel as participants in a welfare-to-work program. Institutional partners also provide an infrastructure that helps extend services to rural areas. For example, the University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension has offices in nearly all counties in the state.
The demonstration programs link with other service providers to help clients access the assistance they may need to move toward self sufficiency. Clients benefit from these connections not only by receiving referrals to outside services, but also by having the endorsement of program staff as they interact with employers and other members of the community. Future Steps program records indicate that more than two-fifths of the program’s clients were referred to another provider at least once, often for training or education. About two-thirds of BNF clients received some type of noneducational support, including referrals to mental health providers and other sources of assistance. Many First Wheels clients benefit from the program’s links with vehicle suppliers, insurance providers, and mechanics.
Delivering Services In Dispersed Areas: Program Outreach, Staffing, And Management
It appears that the demonstration programs are most likely to achieve a steady flow of new clients if both welfare agency caseworkers and program staff members take active roles in recruiting throughout the service area. Clear incentives and alignment between welfare agency and program goals also promote active recruitment. For example, because BNF is paid a fixed amount per client per month, BNF administrators have a strong financial incentive to ensure that educators have full caseloads. If welfare agency staff believe that a program’s services will help clients accomplish key goals, they are more likely to make a referral. Future Steps’ focus on rapid employment made the program an appealing referral opportunity to caseworkers from the Illinois Department of Human Services, for instance, because agency performance standards emphasized work activities for clients. In contrast, some caseworkers in Tennessee expressed the opinion that First Wheels services are less helpful because they are restricted to clients who already have jobs.
Staff of the RWtW initiatives are often based in separate locations from program administrators and exercise substantial discretion and autonomy in their daily work. To work effectively with this level of independence, staff must have a high degree of maturity and professionalism, as well as broad skills. Managers of the demonstration programs use case note reviews and other methods to monitor staff activities. They also support staff and encourage program cohesion by communicating regularly by email and telephone and by holding regular staff meetings.
Lessons Learned
The experiences of the three Rural Welfare-to-Work demonstration programs offer several lessons on program operation in a rural context.
- Welfare-to-work programs may be most valuable for rural clients when they both focus on improving employment prospects and provide assistance on a range of other issues. Although each demonstration program has an area of specialization, staff members of all three programs often address a wide variety of personal and logistical issues as they help clients. This wide-ranging, individualized assistance may be especially important in rural places where few service providers operate.
- Program staff can help to overcome rural challenges related to clients’ poor personal reputations by vouching for them with potential employers and other service providers. As staff of the demonstration programs help clients identify, and take advantage of, available job opportunities and services, they also serve as personal references. Their backing has special value in tight-knit rural communities, in which a poor personal or family reputation can negatively affect a person’s economic prospects. The support may persuade employers to offer clients jobs and can facilitate clients’ interactions with other service providers.
- Partner organizations in the demonstration programs offer the advantages of location and reputation, which have particular significance in rural areas. The partners’ physical presence and history of working in rural communities enhance efforts to conduct outreach and provide welfare-to-work services in these places. As locally recognized institutions, their involvement may help generate support for a program and reduce the strong stigma often attached to welfare programs in rural areas.
- Outreach must be aggressive to reach potential clients in rural places. Clear incentives and strong coordination between a welfare agency and its partner organization promote successful recruitment. Rural welfare-to-work programs face a significant challenge in recruiting clients from a dispersed population of potentially eligible people. Outreach to rural clients appears to be most successful when both the welfare agency and its partner organization participate actively. For welfare agency caseworkers, a clear understanding that the program will help clients accomplish key goals is an important factor in referral decisions. Linking compensation for services to enrollment appears to be an effective incentive for partner organizations to actively pursue referrals.
- Operating programs in large, sparsely populated service areas requires independent staff members who are familiar with their communities. Program leaders must be prepared to actively support staff members and monitor their work from a distance. Because staff members of rural welfare-to-work programs often work far from their managers, they must be able to independently manage their day-to-day activities and tap into local resources. Active managerial support, through frequent communication and other monitoring tools, is critical for creating staff cohesion and for ensuring that programs are implemented consistently across large service areas.
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