The HPOG Training Opportunity: Participant Perspectives on Finding Motivation While Working and Taking Care of Family

This is the third brief in the HPOG 2.0 Participant Perspectives series, funded by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE). Many studies of career pathways programs are ongoing, but firsthand accounts of participants’ experiences are limited. This brief shares insights from such firsthand accounts and thereby adds to our understanding of participant experiences in career pathways programs.

This brief describes how participants balance caregiving responsibilities with their training. Key findings include:

• Despite the availability of HPOG assistance for child care, options in many service areas were limited or nonexistent. Interviewees still needed to manage the demands of working nontraditional hours while managing child care—picking up children from school or caring for children when not in care—using a variety of strategies so they could continue working and pursuing the training.
• Some interviewees experienced substantial health, socioemotional, and financial costs from having to balance caring for family members, working, and pursuing healthcare training.
• Some interviewees reported that conflicting work, family, and training demands depressed their academic performance or reduced their interest in doing additional training immediately after completing one training.
• Interviewees were strongly motivated to persist and complete their training by their desire to be a positive role model for their children.

This brief reports themes from in-depth, in-person interviews conducted between October 2019 and January 2020. The sample includes 153 program participants across 14 local HPOG 2.0 programs. We supplemented the interview data with information collected for the implementation study associated with the broader HPOG 2.0 National Evaluation. This brief focuses mainly on the experiences of 89 interviewees who were working while in training, 76 of whom were also caring for children or other family members. Participation in the interviews was voluntary. Interviews were semi-structured and usually lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. The conversational interviews covered a common set of topics: career pathways; employment and education histories; experience of the HPOG 2.0 training; managing work, family, and training; and finances. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using qualitative software.

Thomas, Hannah and Anna Jefferson. 2022. The HPOG Training Opportunity: Participant Perspectives on Finding Motivation While Working and Taking Care of Family, OPRE Report 2022-114. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.