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CONNECTING FAMILIES to Jobs CONNECTING FAMILIES to Jobs A GUIDE TO KEY IDEAS, EFFECTIVE APPROACHES,
AND TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE RESOURCES FOR MAKING CONNECTIONS CITIES AND SITE TEAMS
part of a series from the Technical Assistance / Resource Center of The Annie E. Casey Foundation
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Marcia E. Kingslow, President of Kingslow Associates in Chicago, for writing the original draft of this guide. Thanks also to Stewart Wakeling, consultant to the Foundation, for his invaluable contributions. The Center for the Study of Social Policy put the guide in its final form.
A list of Technical Assistance/Resource Center Resource Guides appears on the inside back cover.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation
The Annie E. Casey Foundation is a private charitable organization dedicated to helping build better futures for vulnerable children and families in the United States. It was established in 1948 by Jim Casey, one of the founders of United Parcel Service, and his siblings, who named the foundation in honor of their mother.
Headquartered in Baltimore, the Foundation is the largest private foundation in the nation dedicated solely to the needs of vulnerable children and families, with assets of more than $3 billion. The Foundation’s grants are intended to help states, cities, and neighborhoods improve the life chances of the millions of American children at risk of poor educational, economic, social, and health outcomes. For more information, visit the Foundation’s website at www.aecf.org.
contents
Preface to Family Strengthening Resource Guides P. 2
Executive Summary P. 6
Introduction P. 8
Potential Requests, Opportunities, and Challenges P. 11
A. What Issues Might Neighborhood Residents and Leaders Raise About Connecting Families to Jobs? P. 11
B. What Are the Trends and Opportunities on Which Sites Can Build? P. 12
C. What Challenges Might Sites Face? P. 14
Promising Approaches and Resources P. 15
A. Sectoral Employment Strategies P. 15
B. Engaging Employers in Workforce Development and Job Training P. 16
C. Job Retention and Advancement Strategies P. 18
D. Strategies for the Harder-to-Employ P. 20
P. 20
1. Place-Based Strategies
P. 21
2. Workforce Readiness Strategies
P. 22
3. Public Job Creation Strategies
P. 23
4. Beyond Training: Substance Abuse, Criminal Histories, and Other Problems
E. Getting People to Where the Jobs Are: Transportation Strategies P. 25
F. Making Work Family Friendly P. 26
Resources: People, Organizations, and References P. 28
preface to family strengthening
resource guides
Children do well when their families do well, and families do better when they live in supportive neighborhoods.
This simple premise underlies Making Connections, the centerpiece of a 10- to 15-year commitment by the Annie E. Casey Foundation to improving the life chances of vulnerable children by helping to strengthen their families and neighborhoods. The Foundation is working in 22 American cities to promote neighborhood-scale programs, policies, and activities that contribute to stable, capable families.
Making Connections seeks to help families raise healthy, confident, and successful children by tapping the skills, strengths, leadership, and resilience that exist in even the toughest neighborhoods. The initiative is founded on the belief that families and their children can succeed if the people who live, work, and hold positions of influence in distressed neighborhoods make family success a priority—and if there are deliberate and sustained efforts within the broader community and at the state level not only to connect isolated families to essential resources, opportunities, and supports, but also to improve the material conditions of the neighborhood.
The Foundation is dedicated to helping selected communities engage residents, civic groups, public and private sector leadership, and faith-based organizations in efforts to transform the toughest neighborhoods into family-supportive environments. Making Connections seeks to enable residents in these neighborhoods to live, work, play, earn decent wages, and interact with family, friends, neighbors, and social institutions in a safe, congenial, and enriching environment.
In order to improve the health, safety, educational success, and overall well-being of children,
CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
Making Connections is a long-term campaign aimed at helping selected cities build alliances and mobilize constituencies at the neighborhood level.
Making Connections has identified three kinds of connections essential to strengthening families:
Economic opportunities that enable parents to secure adequate incomes and accumulate savings, thus assuring their families the basic necessities of food, clothing, shelter, and health care. To meet this need, communities must address job development, employment training, wage supplements, and asset-building strategies —all of which help ensure predictable incomes, which in turn bolster healthy child development.
Social networks in the community, including friends, neighbors, relatives, mentors, community organizations, and faith-based institutions that provide neighbor-to-neighbor support and help family members feel more confident and less isolated.
Services and supports, both formal and informal, public and private, which provide preventive as
MAKING CONNECTIONS CITIES
Atlanta Milwaukee Baltimore New Orleans Boston Oakland Camden Philadelphia Denver Providence Detroit San Antonio Des Moines San Diego Hartford Savannah Indianapolis Seattle Louisville St. Louis Miami Washington, D.C.
well as ongoing assistance, and are accessible, affordable, neighborhood based, family centered, and culturally appropriate. These might include high-quality schools, health care, housing assistance, and affordable child care.
How will we know when Making Connections goals have been achieved?
Making Connections will have succeeded in a city when community leaders and residents have built a local movement on behalf of families that has the power and momentum to accomplish the following:
Build on existing efforts and spur neighborhood-scale, family strengthening strategies that reduce family isolation by increasing their connections to critical economic opportunities, strong social networks, and accessible supports and services.
Use these neighborhood-scale initiatives to rethink, revamp, and redirect policies, practices, and resources on a citywide scale to improve the odds that all families succeed.
As this movement grows, it will enable each city to know it is succeeding in a number of other ways:
When parents have the means, confidence, and competence to provide for their families economically, physically, and emotionally;
When residents have people to talk to and places to go for help, support, and camaraderie;
When families feel safe in their homes and in their neighborhoods;
When children are healthy, succeed in school, and go on to college or a job after high school;
When communities offer the resources families need to pass on a legacy of literacy and opportunity to their children.
What do we mean by “family strengthening”?
Family strengthening policies, practices, and activities recognize the family as the fundamental influence in children’s lives. These policies and practices both reinforce parental roles and messages and reflect, represent, and accommodate families’ interests. Family strengthening means giving parents the necessary opportunities, relationships, networks, and supports to raise their children successfully, which includes involving parents as decision-makers in how their communities meet family needs.
A family’s major responsibility is to provide an optimal environment for the care and healthy development of its members, particularly its children. Although basic physical needs — housing, food, clothing, safety, and health—are essential, children also need a warm emotional climate, a stimulating intellectual environment, and reliable adult relationships to thrive.
Threats to a family’s ability to manage its responsibilities come from many sources: externally generated crises, such as a job or housing loss, or internal crises, such as child abuse or estrangement among family members. Unexpected events, such as the birth of a child with a disability or a teen’s substance abuse problems, or more common events, like new jobs, marriages, deaths, and household moves, precipitate potentially destabilizing changes. The family’s ongoing stability hinges on its ability to sustain itself through these disruptions. To help families cope effectively with crises and normal life events, communities need a variety of resources, including adequate and accessible services for children at all stages of their development, effective supportive services for families, and a critical mass of healthy families who can effectively support their neighbors.
Family strengthening policies and practices consider the whole family, not just individual family members. Often, agency protocols and programs
CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
create tensions inadvertently when their focus excludes family needs. A striking example is a well-intentioned nutrition program arranged to ensure that homeless children were fed breakfast, lunch, and dinner at school. The children’s parents and other siblings had no source of food, however, and the program participants had no opportunity to share meals with the rest of their families. Once the program leaders recognized the problem, parents and siblings were included in the school mealtimes, and the program designers learned to reconsider their strategies. Similarly, many welfare-to-work programs report difficulties in job retention because of family stresses—stresses often resulting from the jobs themselves. When a family member finds work, family rituals, logistical patterns, roles, and responsibilities change. More successful programs consider these disruptions ahead of time and develop ways to help the family cope.
What do we mean by “strengthening neighborhoods”?
Families must be helped to thrive within the context of their neighborhoods and broader communities. Job development, for example, should be coordinated with specific local or regional businesses, and community economic development should build on the resources of each unique neighborhood. Connecting families to economic opportunities can have a ripple effect: Just living in a neighborhood where a substantial number of families work can reinforce positive expectations for the children in the neighborhood.
Making Connections recognizes that the informal social networks that are most important to people (their friends, neighbors, faith communities, and clubs) almost always exist at the neighborhood level. Time and time again, these natural helping networks prove most important to families’ abilities to raise their children successfully. One component of strengthening neighborhoods is thus to invest in the
social capital provided by neighborhood-based networks. At the same time, Making Connections seeks to widen the networks that families have at their disposal, thereby broadening their aspirations, attitudes, and opportunities. Linking families to broader networks both within and outside their own neighborhoods promises to open up new possibilities for children and parents alike.
Finally, strengthening neighborhoods means placing formal public services in neighborhoods, and making them comfortable rather than intimidating for families. This requires redefining the jobs of public workers so that professionals from several separate mainline systems — as well as natural helpers or informal caregivers—work together in teams and are deployed to specific neighborhoods to take the necessary steps to help families succeed.
The Technical Assistance/Resource Center
The Foundation’s Technical Assistance/Resource Center (TARC) seeks to connect people in the 22 cities to powerful ideas, skillful people and organizations, examples of what works in other communities, and opportunities to develop leadership skills in their own neighborhoods. It provides assistance to the 22 Making Connections cities on a range of topics, from building alliances that lead to stronger families in healthier, more stable communities, to diverse strategies that community leaders may pursue in terms of jobs, housing, safety, schools, and health care. TARC responds to the sites’ priorities through a “help desk” approach, which seeks to meet sites’ requests for assistance, and “peer consultation,” where colleagues who have successfully addressed a particular problem help their peers in other communities to frame and solve a similar issue. In this way, Making Connections cities can capitalize on the practical knowledge that emerges from on-the-ground innovators.
One component of the Foundation’s technical assistance strategy is a set of Resource Guides, including this one. The Resource Guides articulate the Foundation’s perspective about issues pertaining to Making Connections sites, as well as summarize trends in the field, highlight effective examples, and point to people, organizations, and materials that can provide additional help. The Resource Guides are intended first for Foundation staff, in order to create a common fund of knowledge across a broad range of issues. Second, the guides are intended for residents and other leaders in Making Connections cities who may want to learn more about specific subjects. Making Connections sites, as well as summarize trends in the field, highlight effective examples, and point to people, organizations, and materials that can provide additional help. The Resource Guides are intended first for Foundation staff, in order to create a common fund of knowledge across a broad range of issues. Second, the guides are intended for residents and other leaders in Making Connections cities who may want to learn more about specific subjects.
The precise number of Resource Guides will fluctuate as demand changes, but approximately 1215 guides will be produced during the year 2000 (see the inside back cover for a list). All guides will address topics aimed at both supporting individual families and strengthening neighborhoods. The guides fall into four categories: (1) Economic Opportunities for Families, (2) Enhancing Social Networks, (3) Building High-Quality Services and Supports, and (4) Techniques for Advancing a Family Strengthening Agenda in Neighborhoods.
The guides in the first three categories address substantive areas in which activities can directly lead to better outcomes for children and families as well as strengthen neighborhoods. The first Economic Opportunity Resource Guide, on jobs, for example, provides information about how to connect low-income residents to regional and local labor markets, allowing families to provide for their basic necessities and contributing to family stability. Simultaneously, successful jobs initiatives fortify the neighborhoods in which they operate, making them more attractive places to live and providing strong incentives for younger residents to participate in the labor force.
Likewise, the Resource Guides in the second and third categories were chosen because they affect both individual families and their neighborhoods. For instance, the guide on housing is intended to help communities provide affordable housing to low-income families, which in turn leads to enhanced housing stock and more desirable neighborhoods. The guide on child care seeks to help communities develop plans for increasing the supply of affordable, quality child care—especially the notoriously hardto-find care for infants and school-age children, and care during nontraditional work hours. Achieving this goal not only would improve the developmental preparation of young children, but it also would help stabilize parental employment, enhance the viability of neighborhood enterprises, and promote safer, better-connected communities.
The guides in the last category address techniques for advancing neighborhood-based family strengthening work, such as how to develop a communications strategy and how to use data and maintain accountability for specific outcomes.
Additional guides may be developed as new requests for assistance surface from the sites. This guide is a working draft that may be updated periodically as we receive particular information requests from Foundation staff and Making Connections sites. We view these guides not as an end in themselves, but as a first step in posing and answering some of the most difficult questions we face about how to help families in the toughest neighborhoods. Toward this end, we welcome readers’ comments and thoughts on any of the subjects included in these guides.
Douglas W. Nelson President The Annie E. Casey Foundation
CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
executive summary
This guide presents information on strategies for connecting low-income residents to jobs. The information is provided to assist Making Connections site teams and people in the neighborhoods in determining where they are in regard to economic development, where they want to go, how they might get there, and who can help them. The focus of this guide is on strategies for attaching people to the labor market, including people who are ready to work and those who face substantial challenges to employment.
The Introduction describes the benefits of connecting people to jobs in Making Connections sites. It lists a number of principal goals for jobs programs, including linking residents to neighborhood support services that may help them retain their jobs, promoting family-friendly work environments, and working with employers to develop workforce readiness. Characteristics of successful jobs programs are also identified, including sensitivity to regional economic dynamics that offer job opportunities for residents in particular neighborhoods and a perspective that views employers and workers as customers.
Potential Requests, Opportunities, and Challenges
lists questions that might be raised about connecting neighborhood residents to jobs and the kinds of analyses of local labor markets that might be useful. Three current trends that offer important opportunities for Making Connections sites are described:
(1) Recent welfare reform legislation has given states federal monies for moving low-income residents into the labor market that could be tapped for residents in target sites. (2) The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 calls for, among other things, colocating welfare programs in “one-stop centers” with employment and training services as well as other supportive services, and it mandates state and local workforce investment boards that tailor workforce development to local and regional conditions. (3) Funds are available through federal welfare CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
reform legislation to encourage private employers to hire welfare recipients and to create public and nonprofit sector jobs for them.
Promising Approaches and Resources describes strategies for connecting people to jobs. Under each of five topics, the idea of the strategy is described and examples of innovative and successful responses are provided:
A. Sectoral Employment Strategies seek to leverage changes in employment practices within specific industries to benefit low-income workers. For example, the Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership includes over 40 metalworking firms in southeastern Wisconsin that have banded together to train new workers. B. Engaging Employers in Workforce Development and Job Training includes customized recruitment and training strategies and supportive services to ensure that workers remain employed. For example, Seattle’s Jobs Initiative developed productive relationships with the Washington Aerospace Alliance and the local chapter of the American Electronics Association, both of which have brokered their industries’ employment needs with organizations that recruit and prepare people seeking entry-level work. The result has been community college courses designed to suit the needs of employers and jobseekers. C. Job Retention and Advancement Strategies provide opportunities for continuous education and training and post-placement supports, such as child care and crisis management assistance. D. Strategies for the Harder-to-Employ are listed in four categories: (1) Place-based employment strategies reach people where they live. An example is the Jobs-Plus program at the William Mead Homes in Los Angeles, a public housing development. Jobs-Plus provides job readiness training and addresses a host of factors that impede labor market attachment for its residents. (2) Workforce readiness strategies link training in “soft skills” —general work habits, workplace comportment, and appropriate attitudes— with occupational training as illustrated in a Milwaukee jobs program where residents learn how to follow instructions and show up on time as well as how to operate machines. (3) Public job creation strategies are used to build the basic employment skills of harder-to-employ people with limited labor force experience. Philadelphia has a large job creation program that plans to place up to 3000 welfare recipients in public and nonprofit agencies for six months at the minimum wage while specially trained job coaches act as mentors to help the clients move into private sector jobs. (4) Specific services are provided to help people with substance abuse, mental health problems, criminal histories, and family violence. For example, Sacramento County’s Alcohol and Drug Treatment Initiative screens for alcohol and drug problems when clients first apply for jobs. It furnishes early intervention services, such as education, information, and support groups, until actual treatment slots become available.
E. Getting People to Where the Jobs Are: Transportation Strategies tells how to move jobseekers who have become disconnected from job markets because of where they live. Sometimes called “reverse commuting projects,” these strategies include using private nonprofit van pooling and shuttle services or realigning public transportation routes to accommodate inner-city workers. Chicago’s Suburban Job-Link Corporation, for example, operates a fleet of buses and organizes car pools to transport inner-city residents to jobs in the suburbs. F. Making Work Family Friendly outlines policies for part-time work, job sharing, alternative work schedules such as flextime, child and elder care arrangements, and leave options. Such policies help parents work while still meeting the demands of family life, and they are likely to promote better outcomes for the children as well. Marriott Corporation, for example, is a leader in creating family-friendly work environments, providing job sharing, compressed work weeks, work-at-home options, extended leave for childbirth, and extensive benefits, including child and elder care and excellent health insurance for families. The company maintains that these policies have helped give it a strong edge in the market and an extremely low turnover rate relative to the rest of the industry.
The Resources section contains contact information, brief descriptions of worthwhile programs, and sources for more information on each of the issues discussed in the main text. The information is organized according to the topics addressed in the narrative.
CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
introduction
CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
This is the first of two Resource Guides on connecting families to economic opportunities. This volume, “Connecting Families to Jobs,” focuses on building family self-sufficiency by connecting families to jobs that provide sufficient income to meet their basic needs and to begin to lift them out of poverty. The second volume, “Building Family Assets,” focuses on asset-building strategies and income supports.
Work is essential to the health and well-being of children and families. Increasing socioeconomic status, for example, has a strong correlation with positive long-term outcomes for children. In the most basic sense, income and benefits from work enable families to invest in the well-being of their children: from simply providing adequate nutrition and shelter to obtaining services that might otherwise be beyond their means, such as quality health care. And family-supporting wages enable families to accumulate savings sufficient to purchase homes and to better prepare for and cope with economic downturns and unexpected demands on their earnings, such as the care of aging relatives. A community of wage earners supports local markets and businesses that provide conveniently located and affordable goods and services, ranging from groceries to auto repair shops to building supplies. But these communities also offer such vital benefits as higher levels of civic participation, a safer and more stable environment, and beneficial role models for children. Finally, the ability to provide for one’s family plays a critical role in feelings of self-worth and resourcefulness, essential pillars of every strong family.
Stimulating economic opportunity in Making Connections sites will not be easy. In these neighborhoods unemployment is endemic, long-standing employers are pulling out, and new businesses and industries are reluctant to move in. Furthermore, many communities remain ill-prepared for the continued rapid pace of welfare reform. And if
economic growth slows, the most vulnerable members of the workforce will once again be exposed to increasing levels of poverty. The purpose of this set of Resource Guides, therefore, is to introduce site teams to strategies and programs for promoting workforce development, complementary social service system change, and economic development.
More specifically, however, this guide is organized around various aspects of jobs strategies—the actual approaches used to help people obtain and keep jobs, a process often called “attaching” people to the labor market. The goal of jobs strategies (sometimes also called jobs projects or jobs programs) is to increase access to good jobs for people with a variety of needs and strengths, ranging from people who are ready to work to those who face substantial challenges to employment. This latter group is frequently classified as the “harder-to-employ.” It includes people facing a wide variety of problems: substance abuse, learning disabilities, serious mental health problems, criminal backgrounds, limited
CREATE jobs and connect residents to those jobs. PROVIDE family-supporting wages. LINK residents to neighborhood support services (child care, social services, etc.). PROMOTE family-friendly work, such as flexible work arrangements and community jobs. SUPPORT and encourage life-long skills development and career advancement. BUILD long-term retention in the labor market. REACH people where they are. important GOALS for jobs PROJECTS CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS 9 SUCCESSFUL JOBS PROJECTS: MONITOR market conditions and take an entrepreneurial approach to identifying and leveraging opportunities for job development. VIEW employers and workers as customers and design and change programs to fit their needs. BUILD on jobseekers’ strengths—respecting their talent, dignity, self-reliance, and initiative. NAVIGATE within and across the supply and the demand sides of the workforce system, as well as the workforce development, human services, and economic development fields. RECOGNIZE that systems reform includes public and private systems alike. CONVENE and sustain diverse partnerships that represent the broad civic infrastructure and integrate community-based interests. TRACK regional economic dynamics that offer job opportunities for neighborhood residents. ESTABLISH clear outcome targets and strategies for measuring and achieving them (these are, in turn, seen as an avenue to long-term systems change and not ends in themselves). HAVE lead agencies that “learn”; that is, they test and refine strategies through evaluation and self-assessment. USE strategies that are aligned to local labor force conditions and regional economic realities. FOR MORE INFORMATION: Valuable lessons on design, planning, and systems reform are found in papers on the Casey Jobs Initiative: Making Urban Labor Markets Work for Low-Income Residents: An Investor’s Reflections (working paper), www.aecf.org/jobsinitiative/lessons.htm, 1997. Taylor and Hatcher. Innovations and Products at the Casey Jobs Initiative Sites, www.aecf.org/jobsinitiative/ innovation.htm, 1999. CHARACTERISTICS of successful jobs projects 9 SUCCESSFUL JOBS PROJECTS: MONITOR market conditions and take an entrepreneurial approach to identifying and leveraging opportunities for job development. VIEW employers and workers as customers and design and change programs to fit their needs. BUILD on jobseekers’ strengths—respecting their talent, dignity, self-reliance, and initiative. NAVIGATE within and across the supply and the demand sides of the workforce system, as well as the workforce development, human services, and economic development fields. RECOGNIZE that systems reform includes public and private systems alike. CONVENE and sustain diverse partnerships that represent the broad civic infrastructure and integrate community-based interests. TRACK regional economic dynamics that offer job opportunities for neighborhood residents. ESTABLISH clear outcome targets and strategies for measuring and achieving them (these are, in turn, seen as an avenue to long-term systems change and not ends in themselves). HAVE lead agencies that “learn”; that is, they test and refine strategies through evaluation and self-assessment. USE strategies that are aligned to local labor force conditions and regional economic realities. FOR MORE INFORMATION: Valuable lessons on design, planning, and systems reform are found in papers on the Casey Jobs Initiative: Making Urban Labor Markets Work for Low-Income Residents: An Investor’s Reflections (working paper), www.aecf.org/jobsinitiative/lessons.htm, 1997. Taylor and Hatcher. Innovations and Products at the Casey Jobs Initiative Sites, www.aecf.org/jobsinitiative/ innovation.htm, 1999. CHARACTERISTICS of successful jobs projects English language skills, and even family violence. Often the challenges these problems present to the harder-to-employ are referred to as “barriers to work.” But barriers to work encompass other challenges as well, ranging from a lack of basic skills in math, literacy, and advanced occupational skills to something as basic as a lack of transportation.
While it is clear that jobs strategies should generate substantial numbers of new employment opportunities, practitioners and researchers working in the this field have identified other, equally impor
tant, goals (see previous page). Among the most important of them are efforts to make work both family supporting and family friendly.
As noted earlier, a family-supporting job provides sufficient income to meet a family’s basic needs and to begin to lift them out of poverty. A family-friendly job is one in which work is organized around the day-to-day reality of family life. That is, an important goal of jobs strategies should be to promote family-friendly work through such means as flexible work arrangements, affordable quality
child care, and manageable transportation arrangements. Family-friendly work is emphasized because of the critical support it provides to parents as they raise their children, and the important contribution it makes to sustaining attachment to the labor market.
The programmatic interventions and investments in system change described in this Resource Guide resist being assembled into a checklist or menu. Deciding which ones to pursue and how and when to pursue them is driven by a complicated set of local, regional, and statewide characteristics that are likely to be unique to each site. Indeed, one of the difficult things to grasp in orienting oneself to this field is the complexity of the labor market and workforce development systems. Site teams will need to consider interventions and strategies that deal with at least the following elements: (1) private systems such as business sectors (manufacturing, health, construction, and so on), specific businesses and firms (from small to large ones), and occupations (skilled and unskilled); (2) public systems, such as welfare agencies, social service agencies, and educational programs and institutions (including community colleges, training programs, and technical colleges); (3) the various target populations for jobs programs, which range from those who are job ready to those who face substantial barriers to employment; and (4) how all of these intersect with the families, neighborhoods, and communities that are the focus of this initiative.
One consequence of this complexity is that site teams will need to consider carefully whom among these actors they should consult as they begin to expand economic opportunities for families in their communities.
CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
potential requests, opportunities,
A. WHAT ISSUES MIGHT NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENTS AND LEADERS RAISE ABOUT CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS? Dignified jobs that pay living wages are a priority for everyone living in poor neighborhoods. In community meetings and in efforts to improve life in beleaguered neighborhoods, concerns about crime, health, and civic services eventually give way to a more fundamental concern with making a decent living. One of the most pressing questions that neighborhood leaders will bring to site teams as they begin their work is likely to be “How do we connect people to jobs so that everyone living in a particular neighborhood is assured decent wages?”
Conversely, welfare reform’s aggressive pace is pushing people into the labor market with little attention to the difficulty of supporting families on the minimal wages characteristic of most new jobs, to ensuring for the care of children as people begin work, and to the training and social supports needed for a successful move into the labor market. In a nutshell, this is the second issue neighborhood leaders may bring to site teams: “Help us cope with the aggressive pace of welfare reform!”
Other likely questions are addressed in later sections of this guide:
How do we help even the most disadvantaged, including parents who may have been incarcerated, find employment?
How do we help residents keep their jobs once they get a good job?
How do we encourage employers to pay family-supporting wages, and to promote work environments that are family friendly?
and challenges
How do we help inner-city residents get to better paying jobs in the suburbs?
There are a number of ways site teams can begin to understand the employment terrain in their site. First, site teams may want to develop a solid grasp of the local and regional workforce, workforce development system, and economy as they help the sites evaluate existing jobs projects or consider developing new ones. This exercise, however, may need to
WHAT DO STATE RULES that govern the use of TANF funds suggest about pro-grammatic options for local efforts? WHAT TIME LIMITS govern recipients’ transition to work? Do they leave room for training? WHAT ROLE do the Chamber of Commerce and other business leadership groups play in workforce development? HOW CAN TANF funds be leveraged to support public service job creation programs? DO STATE OR LOCAL laws support a living-wage ordinance or first-source hiring agreement? ARE ANY community-based organizations offering place-based programs? DO TWO-YEAR community and techni-cal colleges support the needs of working family members, the harder-to-employ, and those in need of short-term occupational training? how do we get STARTED? CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
be accompanied by more sophisticated analyses of the local environment. For example, aligning jobs strategies with local conditions requires that partnerships and lead organizations have a clear grasp of the labor force and target population; the components of the workforce development system; and local and regional economies, including growth industries, the spatial distribution of jobs, business clusters and inter-firm relations, employers’ workforce development and business expansion needs, and the systems and institutions that support economic development.
Another valuable exercise consists of undertaking a “jobs gap” analysis (if one does not already exist). This analysis documents the disparity between the number of people looking for jobs (including entry-level jobs) and the number of jobs available, particularly family-supporting jobs. The results are useful in the development of living-wage strategies that attempt to increase wages and stabilize jobs. It’s obvious that few community-based organizations have the time, funds, or expertise to undertake the sort of research and analysis described here. Local universities (especially urban and regional planning departments) and business schools are potential resources, as are a host of national organizations listed in the final section of this guide.
B. WHAT ARE THE TRENDS AND OPPORTUNITIES ON WHICH SITES CAN BUILD? Three current trends offer important opportunities that Making Connections sites can build on to respond to the challenges of providing economic opportunities: (1) recent welfare reform legislation, (2) workforce development legislation, and (3) opportunities for job creation.
1. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) is the primary legislation governing welfare reform. It CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
often is referred to by the abbreviation for its main program, TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). Two key TANF components — near absolute requirements to work and strict time limitations on public assistance—are powerful catalysts for moving people into the labor market. This has resulted in a major shift from pre-employment education and training to a “rapid attachment” approach to job placement and job search activities.
One advantage of the “work-first” approach is that it moves people into jobs very quickly, thereby reducing welfare loads. But its vulnerability lies in its inability to address the needs of harder-to-employ people, many of whom require intensive services to facilitate their transition to work. Moreover, without adequate occupational skills and other supports, the harder-to-employ can become trapped in the low-wage labor market for years and years—and ultimately fail to escape poverty. Generally, work-first strategies make it harder for workers with limited education and training opportunities to attain viable wages or stay connected to the labor market during economic downturns (including localized, cyclical, or sector-specific downturns). However, “rapid attachment plus” strategies that include post-placement training and supports are an important exception — and they are becoming increasingly influential.
Many states and counties are having a hard time spending all of their TANF funds even though that money can be used in a relatively large number of ways. If site teams move quickly, they may be able to leverage these considerable funds on behalf of residents in Making Connections neighborhoods.
2. The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA) seeks to address some of the problems posed by welfare reform through a strategy that connects workforce development to economic development while responding to some of the problems inherent in low-wage labor markets. WIA tries to rationalize workforce development by attending to the needs of jobseekers and employers alike. It emphasizes increasing employment opportunities through improved occupational skills training, increased earnings, and long-term retention in the labor market. The good news is that, with a booming economy and tight labor markets, parts of the business community are paying real attention to the importance of investing in the training and social supports that jobseekers need to get and keep jobs.
WIA gives priority to economically disadvantaged populations, including harder-to-employ people. Notably, it encourages jobseekers to take an active role in their own development. And it promotes the use of Individual Training Accounts, which allow jobseekers to tailor education and training agendas to their needs. WIA also promotes welfare reform in ways that may be valuable to Making Connections sites.
Two opportunities, for example, are emerging now. First, WIA calls for co-locating welfare-related programs in a system of “one-stop centers,” some of which are already in place to centralize the employment and training services and information offered by various government agencies. The purpose of one-stop centers is to streamline programs, provide universal access to a range of services, and integrate workforce investment and welfare reform services. The centers house any programs funded under the
U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration and other government agencies. Many offer services for employers and space for nonprofit service providers. Second, WIA mandates state and local workforce investment boards that provide opportunities for tailoring workforce development to local and regional conditions. Though developed as business planning and policy boards, they offer Making
Connections sites an avenue for contributing to workforce and economic development policies and programs—either through direct participation or through collaboration with board members. WIA expressly encourages government partnerships (across agencies and jurisdictions) and partnerships throughout the workforce development, economic development, and welfare reform systems. These partnerships also offer opportunities to engage community interests, including community-based organizations, unions, educational institutions, and youth (through local youth councils, which have an advisory relationship with these boards).
WHAT ARE THE KEY components of the regional workforce development system? ARE ALL OF THE NECESSARY players engaged? WHAT POLICY DECISIONS has the state made related to welfare reform and WIA? HOW ARE THESE POLICIES being implemented? HOW ARE THE STATE and local WIA boards being configured? DO THEY INCLUDE representatives who are sensitive to the employment needs of residents in the target community? HOW MUCH is the workforce develop-ment agenda influenced by welfare reform? WHAT INSTITUTIONS have done eco-nomic or sector analysis of job opportunities in the region, studies of skill requirements, or job gap studies? about jobs strategies QUESTIONS CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
3. Job creation opportunities include incentives— such as federal income tax credits —to encourage private employers to hire welfare recipients. States also provide tax credits for hiring, and they fund the support services aimed at job retention. PRWORA allows states to use TANF funds to create public and nonprofit sector jobs for welfare recipients. Holding one of these public jobs, often called community service jobs, allows participants to claim the Earned Income Tax Credit, an important asset-building tool for the working poor (which is described in the companion Resource Guide entitled “Building Family Assets”). These and other incentive programs are useful tools for Making Connections neighborhoods. They offer jobseekers multiple means for obtaining the experience, training, education, and support they will need to achieve full and sustained participation in the labor market, as discussed in greater detail below. Finally, site teams should be aware that TANF funds can be used for a wide spectrum of social services. What’s more, these services can be targeted not only to those people actually making the transition from welfare to work but also to other family members and (in some cases) to residents in the immediate community. C. WHAT CHALLENGES MIGHT SITES FACE? Even with these considerable advantages and resources, sites will face substantial challenges as they attempt to connect residents of struggling neighborhoods with decent jobs. To begin with, the pace of welfare reform is quite aggressive, and many communities are ill-prepared to cope with its continuing demands. Second, even though the economy is apparently healthy, inflation, the possibly inflated value of the stock market, and the very newness of the high-tech economy all contribute to the unpredictability of the economy. Shielding the most vulnerable members of the workforce from fluctuations
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in this economy will be a difficult task, especially in the long term.
Several states have embraced rapid attachment to the exclusion of the educational and training opportunities offered by WIA. This has raised the concerns of many experienced practitioners and researchers. They believe there are limits on the ability of low-wage labor markets to absorb increased labor unless there are other economic interventions. These experts are also concerned that low-wage labor markets provide insufficient means for escaping poverty.
Sites will face serious programmatic challenges as well. As noted earlier, the labor market and workforce development systems encompass numerous entities, public and private, and their relationships are exceedingly complex. The public agencies and private interests at work in this field have quite different orientations; clashes in culture and values are likely. Finally, many of the problems of those served are difficult and resistant to intervention. Issues such as substance abuse, mental health problems, and a lack of soft skills require well-designed and sustained interventions to ensure that people move into the job market successfully.
promising approaches
and resources
Before describing strategies to provide family-supporting wages and quality jobs, it may be useful to distinguish two types of strategies with which site teams may come into contact: The first, called dual-customer models, sees employers and jobseekers alike as customers and focuses primarily on the “ready-towork” employee. The second type, called single-customer models, focuses more on jobseekers, and usually the harder-to-employ. Each of these strategies has distinct advantages depending on local and regional economic conditions and the needs and strengths of those served. Making Connections sites will not necessarily choose between these two strategies but will instead carefully assess local conditions to arrive at the optimal combination for serving their communities. In many cases, participants in single-customer programs will eventually move into dual-customer programs.
The dual-customer model appeals to the self-interests of employers and jobseekers to achieve family-supporting wages; jobs with benefits; productive, supportive work environments; long-term retention in the labor market; low employee turnover; advancement opportunities; and continuous education and improvement. On the jobseeker (or supply) side, outreach, recruitment, and post-employment services promote the development of formal and informal support networks necessary to sustain participation in the labor market over time. On the employer (or demand side), occupational and technical skills training is tailored to the needs of specific sectors or occupational clusters, and curricula are customized to employers’ needs. Regional economic information is used to target growing industry sectors and firms. Dual-customer models offer good jobs and career paths within and across sectors, and they rely on brokers or intermediaries to leverage opportunities across both the supply and
the demand sides. This model attempts to integrate workforce development, human services, and economic development. The strong employer relationships and the broad civic engagement present in dual-customer models increase the likelihood of leveraging more and better jobs for urban workers and influencing the regional economic development agenda in favor of disinvested neighborhoods.
Single-customer, or supply side, models recognize that the harder-to-employ face multiple barriers and setbacks on their pathway to employment. The assessment tools and community-based recruitment strategies used in dual-customer models to promote matches between jobseekers and employers are less important in single-customer models, which tend to take people from where they are. This often means that people will take a longer, more circuitous route to labor market attachment and may move in and out of programs and jobs along the way. As a result, single-customer models emphasize intensive case management, and counselors work with a customer for as long as it takes.
The following pages outline dual- and single-customer models spanning a variety of jobs strategies. Examples of successful models are presented.
A. SECTORAL EMPLOYMENT STRATEGIES Sectoral employment strategies—a good example of a dual-customer approach—are aimed at leveraging changes in employment practices within specific industries (or occupations within industries) to benefit low-skilled workers. Organizations operating sectoral employment strategies often function as intermediaries that organize firms, intervene around specific employment and training needs, and leverage improved job opportunities. Developing strong relationships with employers is important to the
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Sectoral strategies promise substantial eco-nomic benefits for jobseekers in disinvested communities, but they require a systematic focus that seems hard to achieve. What, in fact, do some of these programs look like on the ground? Based in the metalworking industry, the Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership (WRTP) includes more than 40 firms that together employ approximately 60,000 workers in southeastern Wisconsin. Founded in 1992, it is now the largest sec-toral training consortium in the country. WRTP requires that member firms dedicate a growing percentage of payroll to training, train according to standards set on a supra-firm basis, and gear hiring and promotions to these standards. In the past five years, WRTP has developed programming in three areas: new worker training, modernization, and future workforce development. The Milwaukee Jobs Initiative (MJI) is a seven-year project to improve the systems that connect central-city residents to jobs. Focusing in the first year on manufacturing, printing, and construction jobs, MJI projects will connect at least 240 unemployed or underemployed central-city residents to family-supporting work. In each sector, MJI will improve the organization, integration, and coordination of actors on both sides of the labor market. One important goal is to systematize the links between employers and central-city residents. SOURCE: Dresser and Roberts. “Networks, Sectors, and Workforce Learning,” in Jobs and Economic Development: Strategies and Practice, Sage Publications, 1998. sectoral INITIATIVES at WORK success of these initiatives. In the past, sectoral employment strategies had an explicit, though not exclusive, demand-side emphasis on providing business development support to promote economic growth (thereby creating more jobs). But the current tight labor market has shifted the focus to the supply side.
A possible sectoral strategy might be built on a scenario in which significant numbers of small firms within specific sectors are in or near target neighborhoods, but disconnected from each other and from mainstream supports for business retention and development. In such poorly networked sectors, workforce development can function as a catalyst for organizing these firms. In this case, the goal would be to stabilize and develop these businesses so they could grow and employ more workers.
B. ENGAGING EMPLOYERS IN WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT AND JOB TRAINING Prior to the economic boom of the 1990s and the corresponding tightening of the labor market, many employers regarded workforce development and employment training programs as poor investments, finding that pre-employment training was often poorly matched to actual on-the-job demands. At the same time, some employers were clearly unwilling to hire minorities and harder-to-employ people, regardless of their training or skills. But tight labor markets and the high cost of employee turnover have made many employers eager to pursue workforce development, to hire jobseekers they might not otherwise consider, and to invest more in job retention. As a result, customized recruitment and training strategies and strong support components to ensure workers remain employed have become a priority for many employers.
The contrasting cultures of the public and private sectors can make employer engagement one of
the more challenging aspects of even the most innovative jobs projects. For example, many employers have little patience with the lengthy, process-oriented decision making common to the nonprofit sector. This should not be mistaken for a lack of willingness to participate, but it should signal a need to carefully consider the way that site teams engage employers (perhaps by focusing on readily achievable objectives or by convening business representatives in subgroups of like-minded stakeholders).
Sectoral strategies afford good opportunities to develop strong employer partnerships. And, as noted, community colleges often have good connections to industry groups. Chambers of commerce and local business leadership groups are also becoming allies in workforce development. The national business and industry trade associations (see the Resources section for contact information) are good sources of information about specific programs and contacts. Finally, faith-based institutions have
Rigorous evaluation studies have demonstrated that traditional up-front training has not signifi-cantly raised the wage or employment levels of trainees. Disconnected employers lack general own-ership in the programs, input into curriculum content and other particular features, and general confidence that graduates will meet their needs. In practice, this failure to engage employers means that programs provide trainees neither direct access to actual hiring opportunities nor sound prepa-ration for the jobs awaiting them. Employer engagement can remedy these defects. The New Orleans Jobs Initiative used a group of employers to design its manufacturing training curriculum. This group had final approval of the curriculum now being used at the local commu-nity college. Other Jobs Initiative sites are facilitating the formation of employer consortia to iden-tify common skill needs. The Philadelphia Area Accelerated Manufacturing Education (PhAME) initiative is also illustrative. Under the leadership of industry and the sponsorship of the Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center, the Community College of Philadelphia, and the Ioccoca Institute at Lehigh University, PhAME conducts a 61-week program in technical manufacturing. In Seattle, the Jobs Initiative has developed fruitful relationships with the Washington Aerospace Alliance and the local chapter of the American Electronics Association. Both trade associations have demonstrated a strong commitment to brokering their industries’ employment needs with organizations that recruit and prepare people seeking entry-level work. The result has been com-munity college courses designed to suit the needs of employers and jobseekers. SOURCE: Taylor and Hatcher. Innovations and Products at the Casey Jobs Initiative Sites, www.aecf.org/jobsinitiative/innovation.htm, 1999. FOR MORE INFORMATION: Two other papers about the Jobs Initiative available on the Annie E. Casey Foundation website also may be helpful: Abt Associates and the New School for Social Research. Private Interests, Shared Concerns: The Relationship Between Employers and the AECF Jobs Initiative, www.aecf.org/jobsinitiative/shared.pdf, 1999. Hatcher. Building Relationships in New Orleans, www.aecf.org/jobsinitiative/building.htm, 2000. jobs initiative LESSONS on EMPLOYER ENGAGEMENT CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
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Living-wage campaigns are not considered conventional workforce development strate-gies, but they are emerging as an important tool for promoting job creation and family-supporting wages. Economic development incentives and subsidies often produce few jobs for inner-city residents. Living-wage campaigns respond by trying to distribute the benefits of economic development throughout the community. These cam-paigns are usually organized by community coalitions that seek to enact ordinances requiring publicly subsidized firms to pro-vide living wages, improve benefits, and increase minority hiring. With welfare reform, living-wage campaigns have broadened to include welfare recipients to minimize downward wage pressure from an increased supply of unskilled workers. Site teams should be aware that living-wage ordinances are opposed almost universally by businesses, who perceive them as driving up costs and creating an inhospitable busi-ness climate. Research has shown these fears are largely unfounded, but site teams need to be aware of the tension such campaigns can create as they forge partnerships with business groups. FOR MORE INFORMATION: Living-wage campaigns are the subject of a publication of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now: Matsakis. Living Wage Successes: A Compilation of Living Wage Policies on the Books, www.livingwagecampaign.org/index.html, 1999. living-wage CAMPAIGNS emerged as strong partners in leveraging employer involvement in community-based efforts.
While strong economic conditions have helped stimulate job opportunities for harder-to-employ people, a major challenge will be to minimize the negative impact to these workers during an economic downturn. In addition to supply-side strategies that enhance workers’ marketability, demand-side strategies are critical. Strong working relationships with employers and support for regional economic development strategies are essential to sustain long-term, labor market attachment for the harder-to-employ.
C. JOB RETENTION AND ADVANCEMENT STRATEGIES Effective jobs strategies recognize that success is not just placing people in good jobs but ensuring that they remain connected to and advance within the labor market. In the past, workforce development programs have seen their responsibilities ending with the completion of job training and placement. But many such programs now see that the most important work to be done with jobseekers occurs after training and placement. Not only must jobs strategies develop effective pre-employment recruitment strategies, but they must also provide opportunities for continuous education and training and post-placement supports (such as child care, transportation, and crisis management assistance).
The advantages for employees include steady income and benefits, the development of good job references, and progression along career ladders— all of which are critical to moving people out of poverty. Innovative efforts to keep people in jobs include community-based strategies such as community coaches who work closely with workers and help them remain employed.
JOB RETENTION and career advancement: emerging lessons learned from the CASEY
For families to move beyond poverty, they need jobs that are sustainable, provide or lead to wages that support families, and have career potential. As a result, job retention and advancement have become core themes in the Casey Foundation’s Jobs Initiative. (And the workforce policy environ-ment is changing with recent federal legislation that stresses outcomes and long-term retention. Sites should be aware that recent TANF regulations permit the use of funds to help working, low-income families, regardless of TANF status.) But exactly what constitutes successful job retention? Project Match in Chicago has produced data that suggest it takes a long time for people to “stick” in the labor market and that progress is not linear. Without the benefit of nationally recognized standards for retention, the Casey Foundation defined its target as one year in the labor market. During the first year of implementation, the Foundation and its Jobs Initiative sites started work on other aspects of the definition of retention. Retention is not limited to one job. A new worker may have several jobs in the first few years of working. Retention does, however, mean that there are only very limited gaps between jobs, gener-ally no more than 30 days. And the wages and benefits associated with the new jobs should be com-parable to or better than those for the previous job. Recently, the Foundation held a meeting with representatives from Jobs Initiative sites to share emerging lessons learned. Some of the key lessons included the following: Jobs projects that involve training help participants to establish relationships with caseworkers, trainers, and job developers. If new workers have problems on a job they are more likely to return for help or re-placement assistance. To put it simply, relationships matter. Jobs projects need committed, caring, and tenacious staff, from management to the front-line worker. Retention services begin at placement; everything from recruitment through post-placement supports contributes to long-term retention. A good example is the Seattle Jobs Initiative’s “men of action” support group. The St. Louis Regional Jobs Initiative’s Work Link program, meanwhile, has developed retention initiatives involving the friends and families of participants as well as alumni who provide advice and inspiration to current enrollees. SOURCE: Giloth and Gerwitz. Retaining Low-Income Residents in the Workforce: Lessons from the Annie E. Casey Jobs Initiative, www.aecf.org/jobsinitiative/retention.htm, 1999. JOBS INITIATIVE CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
But comprehensive job retention strategies also financial support for education and training, and include basic knowledge and skill development, services oriented specifically toward job retention career management services (such as career planning (such as on-the-job conflict resolution and on-theand guidance), family-friendly workplace options, job mentoring and coaching programs).
CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS 20 Jobs-Plus is a place-based employment project for residents of public-housing developments. Its strategies include improving individuals’ job readiness and addressing conditions that impede labor market attachment and economic development. At the William Mead Homes in Los Angeles, Jobs-Plus is moving ahead on several connected fronts. For example, it is training some residents to be child care providers at a center specifically developed to support residents, it operates an on-site substance abuse program for jobseekers, and it conducts “super search” job clubs that address job readiness issues and provide peer support (both through other jobseekers and through mentors who are already employed). The center sponsors a “time dollar” program and a rent incentives plan for working residents. The goal is to substantially change the circumstances for enough residents to have a meaningful influence on neighborhood social and economic conditions. SOURCE: Riccio. Mobilizing Public Housing Communities for Work: Origins and Early Accomplishments of the Jobs-Plus Initiative, Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, 1999. PLACE-BASED strategy connects JOBS and TRAINING 20 Jobs-Plus is a place-based employment project for residents of public-housing developments. Its strategies include improving individuals’ job readiness and addressing conditions that impede labor market attachment and economic development. At the William Mead Homes in Los Angeles, Jobs-Plus is moving ahead on several connected fronts. For example, it is training some residents to be child care providers at a center specifically developed to support residents, it operates an on-site substance abuse program for jobseekers, and it conducts “super search” job clubs that address job readiness issues and provide peer support (both through other jobseekers and through mentors who are already employed). The center sponsors a “time dollar” program and a rent incentives plan for working residents. The goal is to substantially change the circumstances for enough residents to have a meaningful influence on neighborhood social and economic conditions. SOURCE: Riccio. Mobilizing Public Housing Communities for Work: Origins and Early Accomplishments of the Jobs-Plus Initiative, Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, 1999. PLACE-BASED strategy connects JOBS and TRAINING Well-developed retention and advancement strategies are often dual-customer driven, benefiting not only employees but employers as well. In part, these strategies are driven by the high cost to employers of employee turnover—it’s expensive to recruit and train new employees. Retention services to employers include brokering and organizing (such as linking employers to training providers and subsidies) and technical assistance and advice (such as work with employers regarding practices that exacerbate turnover, including poor supervisory skills, cultural insensitivity, workplace hostility, and difficult working conditions).
D. STRATEGIES FOR THE HARDER-TO-EMPLOY Making Connections site teams and local leaders may want to consider four types of strategies that are generally used to connect harder-to-employ people to jobs:
place-based strategies that target specific geographic areas of concentrated poverty;
workforce readiness strategies that tie the development of good work habits to basic skills and occupational training;
public job creation strategies for those who cannot begin work in the private sector; and
special services for those with substance abuse problems and criminal histories.
1. Place-Based Strategies One important attribute of strategies for the harder-to-employ is working with people where they are. These place-based employment strategies respond to the concentration of poverty (usually in inner cities) through a single-customer model that focuses on harder-to-employ people in specific areas. Also called saturation models, place-based strategies rely on intensive case management to provide close relationships and support services during the lengthy process of reaching full and sustained participation in the job market.
Leaving her four children in her sister’s care, Deonca Willingham went looking for a job in March 1997. She walked into a community organization on Milwaukee’s Northside where an employment counselor assessed her skills. She found her aptitude in math made her eligible for a new program, started by the Milwaukee Jobs Initiative in collaboration with manufacturers and a local technical col-lege. Eight weeks later, she was a skilled machinist, earning a starting hourly wage of $8.95 plus benefits—more than she ever earned before. During those eight weeks, Willingham par-ticipated in a training program that not only taught her math, how to read blueprints, and how to use the company’s machining tools, but also helped her get used to the com-pany’s routines: eight-hour shifts; the lan-guage of the machine shop; supervisors’ expectations about being on time, following instructions, and seeking help from supervi-sors when she faced stressful situations. Willingham and seven others who finished the course were hired. “I’m in a good posi-tion,” she said. “I’ve never made better money, I can get into the union, and with the skills I have now, I can keep getting better jobs.” SOURCE: deCourcy Hinds. The Jobs Initiative: Making Connections—A Report to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, www.aecf.org. publications/jobs/index.html, 1997. OCCUPATIONAL and soft SKILLS SOURCE: deCourcy Hinds. The Jobs Initiative: Making Connections—A Report to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, www.aecf.org. publications/jobs/index.html, 1997. OCCUPATIONAL and soft SKILLS Place-based programs are useful where the target population has very limited skills and experience and requires substantial job readiness and basic skills training. In such cases, participants’ life conditions often preclude direct paths to employment. Place-based strategies have been applied to welfare recipients living in public housing and to at-risk populations in targeted neighborhoods. One of the most important objectives of geographic targeting is to substantially change the circumstances for enough residents to influence neighborhood economic conditions. Jobs and training are often connected to neighborhood development initiatives and to support services; that is, insofar as possible, these are comprehensive programs.
2. Workforce Readiness Strategies Some employment challenges stem from a lack of appropriate job skills, ranging from very basic math and literacy to advanced occupational skills required in, for example, some manufacturing and high-tech industries. Increasingly, the importance of soft skills—general work habits such as punctuality, workplace comportment, and anger management— has come to the fore. In many cases these skills are deemed more important than conventional occupational skills.
Site teams should be prepared to hear the term “soft skills,” which refers to general work habits, workplace comportment, and other attitudes and behaviors that indicate work readiness. While many employers feel technical (or occupational) skills can be developed on the job, they increasingly demand soft skills prior to employment. The lack of suitable soft skills is cited by employers as a particularly potent barrier for harder-to-employ people and is sometimes used to screen out minority jobseekers. Responses to this problem include workplace readiness training models, innovative assessment tools to
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An interesting innovation comes from Seattle, where a trade association has teamed with a local community college to restruc-ture the way the school delivers classes. Seattle’s Shoreline Community College, working with the Washington Aerospace Alliance, has restructured its CNC (com-puter numerically controlled) preparation programs into smaller modules, with each one offered in a compact period of time. A participant can complete one module, get a job, and return later for a more advanced module. Each module is designed according to specifications provided by employers, and classes are offered in the evenings and on weekends to fit working schedules. SOURCE: Taylor and Hatcher. Innovations and Products at the Casey Jobs Initiative Sites, www.aecf.org/jobsinitiative/innovation.htm, 1999. education and workforce DEVELOPMENT help jobseekers determine their own work readiness, and employer training to counter biases that contribute to using soft skill deficits to screen out minorities. Increasingly, organizations offer training in soft skills in conjunction with occupational training. This greatly increases the likelihood that workers will have both the basic occupational skills and the soft skills they will need when they begin work. Soft skills and work readiness prerequisites vary across industries and employers. Training programs should be customized to employer needs and industry standards (once again underscoring the importance of employer participation in training design).
Community colleges that have well-developed links to industry groups and advisors can serve as effective intermediaries between community-based
training providers and businesses and can also help design training curricula. However, not all community college programs are sensitive to the needs of low-income workers who are balancing jobs, continuing education, and families. The schedule and location of course offerings and other services are sometimes impossible to coordinate with the demands of work and family. Moreover, the great length of some training and certification programs also creates hardships for jobseekers and the newly employed. Some of these problems are due to the community college “transfer” mission—preparing students to earn two-year associate degrees and transferring them to four-year colleges. In areas where educational attainment levels are low and few people pursue four-year degrees, this mission deserves special scrutiny. In such cases, business groups can (and should) play a vital role in lobbying for changes within community college systems.
3. Public Job Creation Strategies Public job creation strategies are another important approach for people with very limited skills and work experience. These programs use government funds to create jobs in the public sector. The jobs these programs generate are often tied to projects that address the community development needs of distressed neighborhoods. Public jobs are an especially important tool for building the basic employment skills of harder-to-employ people with limited labor force experience. They are therefore targeted to groups such as new immigrants with limited basic skills, ex-offenders, and people with serious, chronic substance abuse problems.
Public jobs are frequently jobs of last resort. They pay minimum or sub-minimum wages with the expectation that low wages coupled with newly acquired skill sets, work experience, and ongoing support services will gradually enable people to seek and obtain better jobs in the private sector. Recent
Under a new program called Philadelphia @Work, the city plans to place up to 3000 welfare recipients in publicly funded jobs over the next two years. These transitional jobs in public and nonprofit agencies pay minimum wages, provide an average of 25 hours per week of work, and last no longer than six months. Participants spend an additional ten hours per week in training, education, and job search activities. Specially trained job coaches act as mentors, oversee participants’ skill development, and assist them in finding unsubsidized jobs. Participants who find jobs and leave the program before the end of the six-month period will receive cash bonuses. A newly established nonprofit organization is administering the program. By the end of 1998, about 200 welfare recipients were participating in the program. Philadelphia is using a combination of TANF funds pro-vided by the state, federal welfare-to-work grants, and private foundation funds to finance this effort. SOURCE: Hull, Johnson, and Schweke. Creating Jobs, Corporation for Enterprise Development, 1999. EMERGING public job STRATEGIES SOURCE: Hull, Johnson, and Schweke. Creating Jobs, Corporation for Enterprise Development, 1999. EMERGING public job STRATEGIES strategies have attempted to link public jobs to career paths, apprenticeships, educational opportunities, and other advancement strategies—often leveraging opportunities within municipal labor unions. As with place-based strategies, public job creation strategies are often productively linked to support services carefully designed around the needs of this population.
Provisions in the new welfare law allow states to use federal TANF and state funds to create public (or community service) jobs. This is an important option since some analysts doubt that private sector subsidies will be sufficient to stimulate the number of entry-level private jobs needed to accommodate welfare-to-work objectives. As in the Philadelphia@ Work program, TANF funds can be leveraged for public job creation.
4. Beyond Training: Substance Abuse, Criminal Histories, and Other Problems While training and skill building are essential to connect people with jobs, the needs of many of the harder-to-employ go beyond training. This group may also be struggling with issues such as substance abuse, mental health problems, learning disabilities, criminal histories, and family violence. In order to ensure that they can move into and keep jobs, training and skill building must be linked to ongoing services. What’s more, these services must be available not only to jobseekers but also to the employers who hire them. Two problems in particular are presented to illuminate some of the programmatic challenges that efforts for the harder-to-employ must address.
Researchers estimate that one in five families on welfare has an adult with an alcohol or drug problem. Some practitioners estimate a much higher proportion. There are more stressors among low-income families that can lead to drug or alcohol abuse, and neighborhoods with high concentrations of poor families tend to have fewer employment opportunities and higher levels of drug activity (and associated criminal activity). The problems attendant to substance abuse frequently interfere with employment. As a result, people with drug problems tend to cycle in and out of jobs. Most individuals with a drug or alcohol addiction require intervention before they can maintain steady employment—
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Expanding alcohol or drug (AOD) treatment capacity will be an important challenge for areas with substantial harder-to-employ populations—and for those with high concentrations of individuals with AOD problems who are otherwise ready to work. Sacramento County’s Alcohol and Drug Treatment Initiative consists of two basic components, both of which represent notable efforts to expand AOD treatment capacity. Note that both of these components incorporate community-based organizations in the treatment system. Training to help social workers, public health nurses, Cal Works Staff, and neighborhood-based service staff (these groups should also include staff involved in soft and basic occupational skills programs) to recognize, assess, and work with clients who have alcohol and drug problems. The concept behind this element of the initiative was to transform the agency’s front-line workers into treatment specialists who could screen for alcohol and drug problems among clients and fur-nish early-intervention services (including education, information, and support groups) until actual treatment slots were available. Expanding department and community treatment resources, including an automated service requisition and client-tracking system. Officials envision this as eventually including central intake of treatment referrals, a computerized census of available treatment resources, and a capacity to match them. This represents an impor-tant effort to increase the scale of services to accommodate the many new jobseekers and workers who may require assistance with AOD problems. SOURCE: Legal Action Center. Making Welfare Reform Work: Tools for Confronting Alcohol and Drug Problems Among Welfare Recipients, 1997. FOR MORE INFORMATION: The Casey Foundation commissioned a paper on programs for the hard-to-employ that may be especially helpful: Dion, et al. Reaching all Job-Seekers: Employment Programs for Hard-to-Employ Populations, www.mathematica-mpr.com/hdemploy.pdf, 1999. expanding system capacity to address ALCOHOL and DRUG PROBLEMS SOURCE: Legal Action Center. Making Welfare Reform Work: Tools for Confronting Alcohol and Drug Problems Among Welfare Recipients, 1997. FOR MORE INFORMATION: The Casey Foundation commissioned a paper on programs for the hard-to-employ that may be especially helpful: Dion, et al. Reaching all Job-Seekers: Employment Programs for Hard-to-Employ Populations, www.mathematica-mpr.com/hdemploy.pdf, 1999. expanding system capacity to address ALCOHOL and DRUG PROBLEMS CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
and they may require interventions across multiple dimensions (parenting, for example).
Researchers have found that unemployed adults have substantially higher rates of drug abuse than those who are employed. And this is a problem that is likely to feed on itself: The behaviors associated with addiction may contribute to the difficulty of finding and keeping a job, while the discouragement
associated with unemployment can lead to or exacerbate addictive behavior. Programs are beginning to emerge that attempt to address both areas simultaneously, rather than consecutively. Emerging state and local programs to address the employment needs of individuals with drug or alcohol dependencies are characterized by an approach that requires participants to work concurrently at recovery from addiction and at improving their employability.
Sites with high concentrations of ex-offenders may find it worthwhile to tailor programs to this population’s specific needs. This may not only move these often harder-to-employ people into the workforce, but also could reduce the incidence of re-offending, a clear benefit for these areas. First established in 1978 by the nonprofit Vera Institute, New York City’s Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) Neighborhood Work Project provides immediate, transitional work opportunities for men and women returning from jail or prison. Ex-offenders are placed in small crews that perform a wide range of services, including basic maintenance, groundskeep-ing, and painting, under contract to govern-ment agencies. This crew work emphasizes highly structured work habits and tests par-ticipants’ work readiness while also enabling them to earn income that will help meet their basic needs. Through aggressive job placement and job development efforts, CEO attempts to move participants into permanent full-time unsubsidized jobs that provide benefits and above-minimum wages. Since 1992, CEO has had a placement rate of around 70 percent. Fees for services provided by work crews also generate about 60 percent of CEO’s total funding. SOURCE: Hull, Johnson, and Schweke. Creating Jobs, Corporation for Enterprise Development, 1999. jobs for EX-OFFENDERS SOURCE: Hull, Johnson, and Schweke. Creating Jobs, Corporation for Enterprise Development, 1999. jobs for EX-OFFENDERS The employment needs of ex-offenders are strikingly different from those of other job-seeking adults in one important aspect. Although ex-offenders may face challenges in keeping a job, their
biggest difficulty is finding one. For example, employers may refuse to hire ex-offenders because of the increased risk they may bring to the workplace. As a result, most employment programs include a particularly strong focus on helping ex-offenders find jobs. This includes working with prospective employers to ease their concerns about hiring people with a criminal background. Other factors complicate the task of assisting ex-offenders in their search for employment. For example, by law some ex-offenders may be barred from certain jobs. And ex-offenders often struggle as they make the transition from structured prison life to the mainstream social environment. These and similar problems function as potent barriers to employment. Ironically, at the same time employment itself is critical in reducing the possibility of a return to criminal behavior.
E. GETTING PEOPLE TO WHERE THE JOBS ARE: TRANSPORTATION STRATEGIES The movement of jobs from urban to suburban areas, the growth of suburban service sectors, and the dispersal of industry clusters throughout metropolitan regions have disconnected jobseekers from job markets. The absence of responsive public transportation systems in many regions makes it difficult to connect jobseekers and work. Innovative strategies are starting to emerge, and some longstanding approaches are getting a fresh look as welfare-towork initiatives expand. Such transportation-based strategies, sometimes called reverse commuting projects, include private nonprofit van pooling and shuttle services and strategies that realign public transportation routes to accommodate inner-city workers. They may also include driver’s license recovery programs. Effective reverse commuting projects are often combined with job readiness training and support services. Emerging research is showing that public transportation systems are not
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the only means of responding to transportation problems. In some cases, automobile ownership is not only the optimal strategy but (somewhat surprisingly) a practical one as well.
Strategies that leverage changes in public transportation systems to benefit residents of inner-city neighborhoods are key components of regional development efforts. Even with the emergence of promising solutions, site teams should be aware that transportation barriers may be severe constraints to
workforce participation since TANF funds do not cover transportation costs.
F. MAKING WORK FAMILY FRIENDLY Developing family-friendly workplaces is of central importance to Making Connections, but it is a challenge for which solutions are just beginning to emerge. Employer efforts to attract highly qualified workers drove the early development of family-
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One example of an innovative transportation strategy is Chicago’s Suburban Job-Link Corporation. While working to identify job openings for men and women living in Chicago’s poorest neighbor-hoods, Job-Link recognized that many jobs for these workers were in the suburbs. The program was expanded to develop closer ties with suburban employers; to refer potential workers to appro-priate job-training services; and to provide reverse commuting services for inner-city residents working in the suburbs. Job-Link operates a fleet of buses, organizes car pools, and follows the progress of people after placement. It is able to charge less than most public transportation and is faster and more convenient. Another approach is illustrated by the Southeast Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA), which links inner-city workers to growing employment opportunities in outlying areas. The initiative began when the owners of several large office complexes approached SEPTA about improving transportation to their locations. SEPTA started a new bus link, but failed to find ridership suffi-cient to pay for the service. Employers quickly agreed to make up the difference and then helped by promoting the bus link among their employees. Ridership increased, the need for the employer subsidies declined, and the revenue contributed to new bus routes connected to the regional rail system. Seattle developed a driver’s license recovery program when it realized that many low-income residents share a common but hitherto undiagnosed problem. These individuals had lost their licenses due to unpaid traffic tickets. The Read to Earn Fund helps low-income residents get their parking and driving infractions’ fines reduced through community service or reduced repayment linked to work. SOURCE: Dewar and Scheie. Promoting Job Opportunities: Toward a Better Future for Low-Income Children and Families, Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1995. Taylor and Hatcher. Innovations and Products at the Casey Jobs Initiative Sites, www.aecf.org/jobsinitiative/innovation.htm, 1999. getting people to WHERE THE JOBS ARE CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS 27 Marriott International estimates that half of its hourly workforce has earnings below the poverty level. Yet raising wages substantially is not a realistic business strategy for the company. How then to build a loyal workforce committed to customer service (a key to success in the hospitality industry)? Marriott’s primary strategy has been to promote family-friendly work. The company offers job training; it trains supervisors and managers in effective human relations practices; it provides job sharing, compressed work weeks, work-at-home, and leave for childbirth; and it provides extensive benefits, including child and elder care and health insurance. The guiding principle of the company’s Work-Life Programs Department is to provide Marriott employees the environment they need to pursue a career while balancing the demands of their personal lives. Marriott’s commitment is rare both within and outside of the hospitality industry. One result is a workforce with a strong reputation for customer service, which gives it an edge in the market and a turnover rate (45 percent) far below the industry’s average (100 percent). SOURCE: Whiting, Taylor, and Kazis. Job Retention and Advancement Strategies for Low-Wage Young Adult Workers, Jobs for the Future, 1997. FAMILY-FRIENDLY jobs and the low-wage WORKFORCE 27 Marriott International estimates that half of its hourly workforce has earnings below the poverty level. Yet raising wages substantially is not a realistic business strategy for the company. How then to build a loyal workforce committed to customer service (a key to success in the hospitality industry)? Marriott’s primary strategy has been to promote family-friendly work. The company offers job training; it trains supervisors and managers in effective human relations practices; it provides job sharing, compressed work weeks, work-at-home, and leave for childbirth; and it provides extensive benefits, including child and elder care and health insurance. The guiding principle of the company’s Work-Life Programs Department is to provide Marriott employees the environment they need to pursue a career while balancing the demands of their personal lives. Marriott’s commitment is rare both within and outside of the hospitality industry. One result is a workforce with a strong reputation for customer service, which gives it an edge in the market and a turnover rate (45 percent) far below the industry’s average (100 percent). SOURCE: Whiting, Taylor, and Kazis. Job Retention and Advancement Strategies for Low-Wage Young Adult Workers, Jobs for the Future, 1997. FAMILY-FRIENDLY jobs and the low-wage WORKFORCE friendly workplace policies. The development of these policies accelerated and expanded as women began entering the labor market in increasing numbers. Family-friendly policies include part-time work, job sharing, alternative work schedules (such as flextime), child and elder care arrangements, and leave options. The purpose of these efforts is to shape the demands of work around the realities of family life and to promote better outcomes for children, for example, by increasing the time parents are able to spend at home. Of course, few low-income workers have the resources, financial and otherwise, to independently secure the benefits provided in a family-friendly workplace. The result is that personal and family barriers hinder their ability to enter and remain in the labor market. These barriers— health problems, substance abuse, domestic violence,
housing instability, behavioral problems of children, limited skills, and learning disabilities—can be particularly limiting for harder-to-employ populations. On the individual level, addressing these issues begins with assessing and intervening in the family-related issues or conditions that impede a worker’s ability to succeed. It can also include encouraging other family members to improve their education, training, and life management skills.
resources: people, organizations,
and references
This section lists people, organizations, and materials that may be useful to site teams and community leaders who want additional help as they develop economic opportunities in their neighborhoods. Resources are listed according to the topics described in this guide.
Current Opportunities for Building Jobs Strategies: Welfare Reform and Workforce Development Legislation
REFERENCES
Bardoe, Cheryl. Employment Strategies for Urban Communities. Chicago: Center for Neighborhood Technology, 1996. A user-friendly guide that provides examples of economic and community development projects for developing and securing good jobs.
Dewar, Thomas, and David Scheie. Promoting Job Opportunities: Toward a Better Future for Low-Income Children and Families. Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1995. A condensed version of the report that helped shape the Casey Jobs Initiative.
Elliott, Mark, Don Spangler, and Kathy Yorkievitz. What’s Next After Work First? Philadelphia: Public/Private Ventures, 1998. A concise discussion is given of strategies to enhance rapid attachment approaches: employer engagement, education and training, and post-employment supports. Includes short case studies and contact information.
Giloth, Robert P. (Ed.). Jobs and Economic Development: Strategies and Practice. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1998. Useful essays about integrating economic development, workforce development, social services, and community development approaches and policies.
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Harrison, Bennett, and Marcus Weiss. Networking Across Boundaries: New Directions in Community-Based Job Training and Economic Development. Boston: Economic Development Assistance Corporation, 1998. Case studies on community-based organizations as workforce hubs; peer-to-peer workforce development networks; and regional intermediaries that bridge business and community development.
Landini, Michael. Workforce Investment Act of 1998. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Contract No. K-5548-5-00-80-30. Highlights major components of the new law.
Strawn, Julie. Beyond Job Search or Basic Education: Rethinking the Role of Skills in Welfare Reform.
Washington, D.C.: Center for Law and Social Policy, 1998. Available at www.clasp.org. Compares skill-building strategies and rapid attachment approaches for promoting labor market retention. Describes model programs.
Designing Effective Jobs Strategies: Conducting Economic Analyses
The following resources may be helpful to sites if they wish to conduct economic analyses before they design new jobs programs.
PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS
The Rensselaerville Institute (TRI) helps grow high-performing communities and organizations by providing the tools and mindsets for leading change, solving problems, and seizing opportunities.
Contact:
William Phillips The Rensselaerville Institute 63 Huyck Road Rensselaerville, NY 12147 518-797-3783 518-797-5270 (fax) www.tricampus.org
Jobs for the Future provides applied research and technical assistance in employment, education, and training. Its main program areas involve increasing access to economic opportunity, building effective workforce development partnerships, and creating successful transitions for youth. Its website is very useful.
Contact:
Marlene Seltzer Jobs for the Future 88 Broad Street, 8th Floor Boston, MA 02110 617-728-4446 617-728-4857 (fax) www.jff.org
Regional Technology Strategies is a resource for linking communities to broader economic activity, promoting high-wage business development for small and medium-sized manufacturing firms via networking, and building the capacity of community colleges to address supply- and demand-side needs.
Contact:
Stuart Rosenfeld, Principal Regional Technology Strategies, Inc. 205 Lloyd Street, Suite 210 Carrboro, NC 27510 919-933-6699 919-933-6688 (fax) www.rtsinc.org
Mt. Auburn Associates offers local and regional economic development analysis and planning, including workforce, small business, industry sector,
and organizational development, with particular emphasis on economically distressed communities and disadvantaged populations.
Contact:
Peter Kwass, Principal Mt. Auburn Associates 408 Highland Avenue Somerville, MA 02144 617-625-7770 617-623-5943 (fax) www.mtauburnassociates.com
REFERENCES
Abt Associates and the New School for Social Research. Evaluation of the Jobs Initiative: First Annual/Cross-Site Report Executive Summary. Cambridge, Mass.: Abt Associates, 1997. Insightful summary of the application and planning phases of the Jobs Initiative.
Annie E. Casey Foundation. Making Urban Labor Markets Work for Low-Income Residents: An Investor’s Reflections (working paper). Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1997. www.aecf.org/jobsinitiative/ lessons.htm. Key early lessons from the Jobs Initiative on design, planning, and system reform.
Clark, Peggy, and Amy J. Kays. Labor Market Profiling: Case Studies of Innovative Information-Gathering Techniques for Employment Projects. Washington, D.C.: Aspen Institute, 1997. (Commissioned by AECF.) Focuses on data collection in the design and implementation of jobs projects, with an eye toward user-friendliness. Also offers tools for conducting industry analysis and collecting information on employers and participants. Includes case studies.
Jobs for the Future et al. Leverage Points for Informing State Workforce Development Policy. Boston: Jobs for the Future, 1997. (Commissioned by AECF.) Proposes developing workforce strategies that respond to worker and employer needs. Also suggests
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entry points for influencing policy on job-centered economic development.
John, DeWitt, and Susan Rees. Building Civic Infrastructure for Jobs Creation. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Public Administration, 1995. (Commissioned by AECF.) Offers a framework for assessing the capacity of multiple stakeholders to work together on social and economic problems, while focusing on jobs and economic opportunity.
Mt. Auburn Associates. Study of Model Development Intermediaries for the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Jobs Initiative. Somerville, Mass.: Mt. Auburn Associates, 1996. Includes case studies of successful development intermediaries operating in various workforce, economic, and community development capacities.
Neighborhood Funders Group. NFG Jobs Toolbox: A Funder’s Guide to Jobs. McLean, Va.: Neighborhood Funders Group, 1999. Available to NFG members at www.nfg.org. A useful guide for local funders. Topics include workforce development, welfare-towork, and sectoral development strategies.
Taylor, Judy, and Ed Hatcher. Innovations and Products at the Casey Jobs Initiative Sites. Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1999. www.aecf.org/ jobsinitiative/innovation.htm. Captures innovative approaches and key lessons emerging from the sites.
The Regional Economic Information System database is drawn from Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) data. It is available at the national, regional, state, county, MSA, and BEA Economic Area levels, and is accessible online at http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/reis. See www.bea.doc.gov for other BEA data.
Online Sources of Socioeconomic Data (http:// users.cnu.edu/~sdaleski/sources.htm) provides a list of various socioeconomic data useful for economic development analysis.
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Sectoral Employment Strategies
PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS
The Sectoral Employment Development Learning Project is a three-and-one-half year, intensive learning evaluation of the outcomes, strategies, and industry relationships of six leading sectoral programs. These programs combine employment and training strategies with enterprise creation, business technical assistance, or other employer engagement strategies to improve job access, job quality, and wage rates for low-income individuals. The six participating programs and their sectors are Asian Neighborhood Design, San Francisco (building trades and casegoods manufacturing); Focus: HOPE, Detroit (machining), Garment Industry Development Corporation, New York (garment industry); Jane Addams Resource Corporation, Chicago (metalworking); Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, Bronx (home health care); and Project QUEST, San Antonio (health care and business services).
Contact:
Sectoral Employment Development Learning Project Aspen Institute One Dupont Circle, NW, Suite 700 Washington, DC 20036 202-736-1071 202-467-0790 (fax) www.aspeninst.org/eop/eop_sedlp.asp
The National Economic Development and Law Center (NEDLC) in 1989 launched its first national sector demonstration projects in Denver, Milwaukee, and Portland, Oregon. Since then, the NEDLC has provided technical assistance in the development of sector projects in California, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. Currently, NEDLC is spearheading the development of a national network of sector practitioners to develop, support, and expand the field of sector intervention.
Contact:
Tse Ming Tam National Economic Development and Law Center 2201 Broadway, Suite 815 Oakland, CA 94612 510-251-2600 510-251-0600 (fax) www.nedlc.org
Public/Private Ventures (P/PV) is evaluating the Mott Foundation’s Sectoral Employment Initiative and providing technical assistance to the sites (which are potential technical advisors or peer-learning partners).
Contact:
Mark Elliott, Vice President and Director Labor Market Initiatives Public/Private Ventures 122 E. 42nd Street New York, NY 10168 212-822-2402 212-949-0439 (fax) www.ppv.org
REFERENCES
Clark, Peggy, and Steven L. Dawson. Jobs for the Urban Poor: Privately Initiated Sectoral Strategies.
Washington, D.C.: Aspen Institute, 1995. Provides a framework for defining sectoral employment development, and includes case studies and project descriptions of sectoral projects nationally.
Elliott, Mark, and Elizabeth King. Labor Market Leverage: Sectoral Employment Field Report. Philadelphia: Public/Private Ventures, 1999. Identifies characteristics important to sectoral employment systems reform. Provides program descriptions for the Mott Foundation Sectoral Employment Initiative.
Siegel, Beth, and Peter Kwass. Jobs and the Urban Poor: Publicly Initiated Sectoral Strategies. Somerville, Mass.: Mt. Auburn Associates, 1995. Examines state and local sectoral economic development. Useful for its
explanation of the importance of connecting economic and workforce development in sectoral initiatives.
Engaging Employers in Workforce Development and Job Training
PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS
Boston’s Private Industry Council (PIC) has taken a proactive role in regional education and training issues (particularly school-to-work issues) and is engaged in multiple-stakeholder partnerships.
Contact:
Neil Sullivan, Executive Director Boston Private Industry Council 2 Oliver Street Boston, MA 02109 617-488-1363 617-423-1041 (fax)
IndEx is a labor market intermediary that targets welfare recipients, out-of-school youth, and nonviolent offenders from the Department of Corrections. Customized workplace-based occupational skills and classroom-based basic skills are provided.
Contact:
Wayne Rowley, President Industrial Exchange, Inc. Metropolitan Tulsa Chamber of Commerce 616 S. Boston Avenue, Suite 100 Tulsa, OK 74119 918-585-1201 918-599-6146 (fax) www.tulsachamber.com waynerowley@tulsachamber.com
National Business and Industry Trade Associations:
National Alliance of Business 1201 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 700 Washington, DC 20005 800-787-2848 202-289-1303 (fax) www.nab.com
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National Association of Manufacturers 1331 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20004 202-637-3000 202-637-3182 (fax) www.nam.org
National Association of Private Industry Councils 1201 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 350 Washington, DC 20005 202-289-2950 202-289-2846 (fax) www.work-web.com/napic
U.S. Chamber of Commerce 1615 H Street, NW Washington, DC 20062 202-463-5525 202-463-5730 (fax) www.uschamber.org REFERENCES
Brown, Amy, et al. Business Partnerships: How to Involve Employers in Welfare Reform. New York: Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, 1998. Provides suggestions for planning and implementing business partnerships within the current policy context. The appendices offer valuable resources. MDRC’s website (www.mdrc.org) has other reports from the ReWORKing Welfare series.
Buck, Maria L. Tulsa’s IndEx Program: A Business-Led Initiative for Welfare Reform and Economic Development. New York: Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, 1997. IndEx is an employer-driven welfare-to-work program to address industrial retention and low-wage labor needs. It functions as a labor market intermediary, linking the supply and demand sides. This case study presents program design and outcomes information.
Holzer, Harry J. What Employers Want: Job Prospects for Less-Educated Workers. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1996. Documents barriers faced by
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low-skilled jobseekers from an employer perspective (considered a classic).
Hyland, Jill. Meeting Employer Demands: Emerging State Practices in Workforce Development. Washington, D.C.: National Governors’ Association, 1998. Focuses on engaging employers in workforce development while providing quality opportunities through work-based learning, post-employment supports, interfirm cooperation, and partnership incentives. Includes descriptions of model programs and contact information. See the National Governors’ Association’s Working the Demand Side: Emerging State Practice in Workforce Development (1998) for more detail.
Roberts, Brandon, and Jeffrey D. Padden. Welfare to Wages: Strategies to Assist the Private Sector to Employ Welfare Recipients. Flint, Mich.: Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, 1998. Available at www.mott.org. Examines strategies for moving people from welfare to private sector jobs. Focuses on developing strong relationships with business and changing nonprofit practices. The companion volume of case studies is helpful.
The Value of Living-Wage Campaigns
PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) focuses on organizing activities that include work on living wage campaigns. The ACORN Living Wage Resource Center provides material and organizing strategy support to living-wage campaigns all over the country.
Contact:
Jen Kern Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now 739 8th Street, SE Washington, DC 20003 202-547-2500 202-546-2483 (fax) www.livingwagecampaign.org
United for a Fair Economy conducts research and advocacy on issues related to wage and wealth inequality. conducts research and advocacy on issues related to wage and wealth inequality.
Contact:
United for a Fair Economy 37 Temple Place, 2nd Floor Boston, MA 02111 617-423-2148 617-423-0191 www.ufenet.org
JOBS NOW is made up of more than 100 organizations working statewide on employment policy through research, education, and advocacy. Through its family budget research, JOBS NOW has defined minimum income levels needed for self-sufficiency and then linked this work to living-wage campaigns.
Contact:
JOBS NOW Coalition 400 Selby Avenue, Suite Q St. Paul, MN 55102 651-290-0240 651-290-0162 (fax)
REFERENCES
Matsakis, Niko. Living Wage Successes: A Compilation of Living Wage Policies on the Books. Washington, DC: Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 1999. ACORN provides a list of ordinances linking living wages to public contracting. It is available from www.livingwagecampaign.org/ index.html.
The website of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (www.igc. org/afscme/livingwage/lwmap.htm) provides a national map linked to minimum-wage and living-wage information by state.
Job Retention and Advancement Strategies
PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS
Jobs for the Future—see page 29
Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. evaluated the Postemployment Services Demonstration (PESD), which examines job retention strategies. Reports commissioned by the Annie E. Casey Foundation on this evaluation and on strategies for the harder-toemploy are available on Mathematica’s website or from its publications department, 609-275-2350.
Contact:
Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. PO Box 2393 Princeton, NJ 08543 609-799-3535 609-799-0005 (fax) www.mathematica-mpr.com
REFERENCES
Kramer, Fredrica D. Job Retention and Career Advancement for Welfare Recipients. Washington, D.C.: Welfare Information Network; Vol. 2, No. 13, 9/98. Available at www.welfareinfo.org. Identifies key policy and dual-customer program design considerations for labor market retention and advancement, including high-wage markets. Contains best practice, contact information, resources, and references.
Proscio, Tony, and Mark Elliott. Getting In, Staying On, Moving Up: A Practitioners Approach to Employment Retention. Philadelphia: Public/Private Ventures, n.d. The experiences of the Vocational Foundation, Inc., a New York nonprofit employment training program, illustrate issues of job training, placement, and retention.
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Whiting, Basil J., Judith C. Taylor, and Richard Kazis. Job Retention and Advancement Strategies for Low-Wage Young Adult Workers. Boston: Jobs for the Future, 1997. (Commissioned by AECF.) Offers a framework and strategies for moving beyond placeJob Retention and Advancement Strategies for Low-Wage Young Adult Workers. Boston: Jobs for the Future, 1997. (Commissioned by AECF.) Offers a framework and strategies for moving beyond placement to long-term retention in the labor market and advancement to quality, family-supporting jobs. Underscores the importance of post-placement supports. Extensive resource lists and case studies.
Place-Based Strategies
PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS
The Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) is developing place-based employment programs for homeless and at-risk populations living in transitional housing. CSH focuses on identifying and creating job opportunities in supportive housing environments.
Contact:
Jack Krauskopf Next Step: Jobs Initiative Corporation for Supportive Housing 50 Broadway, 17th Floor New York, NY 10004 212-986-2966 212-986-6552 (fax) www.csh.org
Project Match, a research and service welfareto-work initiative in inner-city Chicago, offers a case management model emphasizing long-term, individualized support services to jobseekers. It includes incremental benchmarks that reflect the nonlinear pathways disadvantaged jobseekers follow, as they make the transition into the mainstream labor market.
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Contact:
Toby Herr, Director Project Match Erikson Institute 420 N. Wabash Avenue, 6th Floor Chicago, IL 60611 312-755-2250 312-755-2255 (fax)
Jobs-Plus Community Revitalization Initiative for Public Housing Families is a place-based employment project for residents of public-housing developments. Its strategies include improving individuals’ preparation for work, enhancing the financial incentives for them to work, and cultivating a social environment and social networks that promote and support work.
Contact:
Judy Greissman Jobs-Plus Community Revitalization Initiative Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) 16 E. 34th Street, 19th Floor New York, NY 10016 212-532-3200 212-684-0832 (fax) www.mdrc.org
REFERENCES
Dressner, Juliane, et al. Next Door: A Concept Paper for Place-Based Employment Initiatives. New York: Corporation for Supportive Housing, 1998. Presents CSH’s strategy for developing job opportunities for at-risk populations in targeted neighborhoods.
Herr, Toby, and Suzanne L. Wagner. Understanding Case Management in a Welfare-to-Work Program: The Project Match Experience. Chicago: Erikson Institute, 1995. Documents Project Match (see above).
Proscio, Tony. Work in Progress 2: An Interim Report on “Next Step: Jobs.” New York: Corporation for Supportive Housing, 1998.
Work Readiness Strategies
PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS
STRIVE’s mission is to help people find jobs and achieve financial independence and to encourage effective employment policies and practices nationwide. Since 1984, STRIVE has maintained a 75-80% employment retention rate. Visit its website for a list of replication projects in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and San Diego.
Contact:
Robert Carmona, President & CEO East Harlem Employment Service/STRIVE 240 East 123rd Street, 3rd Floor New York, NY 10035 212-360-1100 212-360-5634 (fax) www.strivecentral.com
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies has documented job readiness programs nationally and offers information about best practices.
Contact:
Wilhelmina Leigh Margaret Simms Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies 1090 Vermont Avenue, NW, Suite 1100 Washington, DC 20005 202-789-3522 202-789-6390 (fax) www.jointctr.org/index.htm
The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) is the trade association for two-year community and technical colleges. It conducts research and has special initiatives related to the role of community colleges in welfare reform and economic development. Also see the National Community College Workforce Development Database at www.ttrc.doleta.gov/network.
Contact:
James McKenney, Director of Economic Development American Association of Community Colleges One Dupont Circle, NW, Suite 410 Washington, DC 20036 202-728-0200, ext. 226 202-833-2467 (fax) www.aacc.nche.edu
The Center for Employment Training’s short-term, classroom-based approach has achieved strong outcomes for the hard-to-employ. Context-based basic and occupational skills training is often integrated with readiness training. Its West Coast programs offer the best examples of success.
Contact:
Richard Zuniga, Planning and Research Director Center for Employment Training (CET) 701 Vine Street San Jose, CA 95110 408-287-7924 408-294-7849 (fax)
The League for Innovation promotes community-based education opportunities through community colleges that include associate’s degree, certificate, and workforce development programs.
Contact:
Mark David Milliron, President League for Innovation in the Community College 26522 La Alameda, Suite 370 Mission Viejo, CA 92692 949-367-2884 949-367-2885 (fax) www.league.org/league/about/wkfcinit.htm
Twin Cities RISE! is a nonprofit skills development organization that provides low-income adults, primarily men of color, with long-term, intensive work skills training, education, and support services. Training focuses on basic skills, personal develop-
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ment skills, and job readiness and technical training. Training lasts between 6 and 18 months, depending on need. When TCR! places a participant in a living-wage job, the company pays a training and development fee for the service. The program’s objective is to test a new market-driven approach to job preparation and long-term retention that will have a meaningful impact on concentrated poverty.
Contact:
Twin Cities RISE! 112 N. Third Street Minneapolis, MN 55401 612-338-0295 612-338-0191 (fax) www.usinternet.com
REFERENCES
Annie E. Casey Foundation. “Race and Readiness Meeting, August 6-7, 1998: Pre-Readings.” Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1998. A collection of reports, articles, and background material on soft skills.
Conrad, Cecilia A. Soft Skills: Annotated Bibliography. Washington, D.C.: Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, 1997. This well-developed bibliography is organized according to seven curricula, including demand for soft skills, assessing soft skills, and soft skills and race.
Denver Workforce Initiative. Work Readiness Index. Denver: Denver Workforce Initiative, n.d. This assessment tool helps jobseekers determine readiness for work in four areas: work habits and behavior; work attitude and values; interpersonal skills; and personal and environmental-coping skills.
Fitzgerald, Joan, and Davis Jenkins. Making Connections: Community College Best Practice in Connecting the Urban Poor to Education and Training. Chicago:
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University of Illinois at Chicago, 1997. (Commissioned by AECF.) Examines the importance of partnerships between community colleges and community-based organizations, government, and social service providers for linking workers to career opportunities (through case studies).
Freeman, Lloyd. The Workforce Investment Act: Implications for Community Colleges. Washington, D.C.: American Association of Community Colleges, 1998. Discusses the role of and challenges facing community colleges under the new law.
Harrison, Lorenzo. “Ready for Work: The Story of STRIVE,” Chapter 8, in Giloth, Robert P. (Ed.).
Jobs and Economic Development: Strategies and Practice.
Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1998. Describes the STRIVE approach to labor market attachment, based on a readiness training model that employs intensive attitudinal training and long-term follow-up.
Kramer, Fredrica D. The Hard-to-Place: Understanding the Population and Strategies to Serve Them.
Washington, D.C.: Welfare Information Network, Vol. 2, No. 5, 3/98. Summarizes the challenges faced by state and local governments in working with harder-to-employ populations. Policy considerations, program options, and best practices (with contact information) are identified.
Leigh, Wilhelmina A., et al. Soft Skills Training: Selected Programs. Washington, D.C.: Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, 1998. (Commissioned by AECF.) An inventory of the soft skills components of selected training programs.
Melendez, Edwin. Working on Jobs: The Center for Employment Training. Boston: Mauricio Gaston Institute, 1996. Documents the CET model, a short-term, classroom-based training approach that has achieved strong outcomes for the harder-to-employ.
Public Job Creation Strategies
PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) is initiating a new Public Jobs Creation Project. Clifford Johnson has prepared several short papers on public job creation projects, all of which are available on CBPP’s website.
Contact:
Clifford Johnson, Senior Fellow Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 820 First Street, NE, Suite 510 Washington, DC 20002 202-408-1080 202-408-1056 (fax) www.cbpp.org
The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) is an excellent resource on legal and technical aspects of creating public jobs.
Contact:
Steve Savner, Senior Staff Attorney Center for Law and Social Policy 1616 P Street, NW, Suite 150 Washington, DC 20036 202-328-5140 202-328-5195 (fax) www.clasp.org
The National Urban League (NUL) is overseeing a five-site demonstration (Baltimore, Chicago, Memphis, Rochester, and Sacramento) to develop public service employment strategies. (Funded by AECF.)
Contact:
Janet Zobel National Urban League 120 Wall Street New York, NY 10005 212-558-5350 212-344-5332 (fax) www.nul.org
The Center for Community Change is a good source of information about public jobs and other economic development issues related to low-income communities.
Contact:
Lisa Ranghelli Center for Community Change 1000 Wisconsin Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20007 202-342-0567 202-333-5462 (fax) www.communitychange.org/default.html
REFERENCES
Hull, Matt, Cliff Johnson, and William Schweke. Creating Jobs. Washington, D.C.: Corporation for Enterprise Development, 1999. (Commissioned by AECF.) A very useful examination of public and private job creation strategies. Provides an overview of public and private job creation, model programs, and lessons learned.
Jones, Jerry. Federal Revenue Policies That Work: A Blueprint for Job Creation to Support Welfare Reform.
Washington, D.C.: Center for Community Change,
n.d. Examines the public sector role in job creation for residents of poor neighborhoods. Beyond Training: Substance Abuse, Criminal Histories, and Other Problems
PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS
The Legal Action Center is a source for information on best practices and policy related to substance abuse and welfare reform, as well as community-based substance abuse programs.
CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
Contact:
Gwen Rubinstein, Director of Policy Research Legal Action Center 236 Massachusetts Avenue, NE, Suite 505 Washington, DC 20002 202-544-5478 202-544-5712 (fax) www.lac.org
The Safer Foundation of Chicago has been helping ex-offenders find jobs since 1972. The program’s core employment services include intake and assessment, job readiness training, placement, and job retention. The foundation also provides a variety of case management and supportive services as well as innovative educational programming.
Contact:
Ron Tonn Safer Foundation 571 W. Jackson Boulevard Chicago, IL 60661 312-922-2200 312-922-0839 (fax)
Cleveland Works (CW) has been providing training and employment services to the low-income population since 1986, specializing in serving the hard-to-employ, particularly offenders, ex-offenders, and people with long histories of welfare receipt.
Contact:
David Roth Cleveland Works, Inc. 3400 Hamilton Avenue Cleveland, OH 44114 216-589-9675 216-391-4163 (fax)
The Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) administers an employment program for ex-offenders in New York City. Services include life skills and job readiness training, day-labor work
CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
crews, job development and retention, subsidized employment, and supportive services.
Contact:
Mindy Tarlow Center for Employment Opportunities 32 Broadway New York, NY 10004 212-422-4850
REFERENCES
Dion, M. Robin, et al. Reaching All Job-Seekers: Employment Programs for Hard-to-Employ Populations. Princeton, N.J.: Mathematica Policy Research, October 1999. Available at www.mathematica-mpr.com/ hdemploy.pdf. A useful, comprehensive report on programs for the hard-to-employ.
Kirby, G., L. Pavetti, J. Kauff, and J. Tapogna.
Integrating Alcohol and Drug Treatment into a Work-Oriented Welfare Program: Lessons from Oregon. Washington, D.C.: Mathematica Policy Research, June 1999. Available at www.mathematica-mpr.com, or by calling 202-484-9220. Oregon has developed an innovative approach to integrating drug and alcohol treatment into its work-focused welfare program. This report discusses the key decisions, challenges, and lessons based on Oregon’s experience in this area.
Legal Action Center. Making Welfare Reform Work: Tools for Confronting Alcohol and Drug Problems Among Welfare Recipients. New York: Legal Action Center, 1997. Offers strategies to help states develop policies and practices that assist jobseekers with alcohol or drug problems, emphasizing community-based treatment and prevention programs.
Motiuk, Larry. “Targeting Employment Patterns to Reduce Offender Risk and Need.” Correctional Research and Development. Vol. 8, No. 1, January 1996. Offenders with unstable employment patterns are at much greater risk of re-offending than are those who have steady work.
Mukamal, Debbie. Criminal Histories as a Barrier to Employment: Implications for the Jobs Initiative. BalCriminal Histories as a Barrier to Employment: Implications for the Jobs Initiative. Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1997. (Commissioned by AECF.) Identifies barriers to the labor market and examines innovative approaches.
Young, N. Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment: Policy Choices in Welfare Reform. Washington, D.C.: National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors, 1996. A concise, useful clarification of policies and practices for assisting jobseekers with alcohol or drug problems.
Getting People to Where the Jobs Are: Transportation Strategies
PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS
The Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) offers extensive information on promoting responsive regional transportation systems (also addresses spatial mismatch issues).
Contact:
Scott Bernstein, President Center for Neighborhood Technology 2125 W. North Avenue Chicago, IL 60647 773-278-4800 773-278-3840 (fax) www.cnt.org
The Community Transportation Association of America’s online publication, Access to Jobs: A Guide to Innovative Practices in Welfare-to-Work Transportation (rev. 1/99), describes innovative transportation projects. Useful contact information and sources of technical assistance. Printed copies are also available at no charge. More information and technical support about employment transportation also available.
Contact:
Community Transportation Association of America 1341 G Street, NW, Suite 600 Washington, DC 20005 800-527-8279 202-737-9197 (fax) www.ctaa.org/ntrc/atj/pubs/innovative
The Suburban Job-Link Corporation’s approach to the spatial mismatch issue includes a unique emphasis on combining transportation strategies with job readiness training and support services.
Contact:
John Plunkett, President Suburban Job-Link Corporation 2343 S. Kedzie Avenue Chicago, IL 60623 773-522-8700 773-522-8098 (fax)
The U.S. Department of Transportation website provides good information about job access, reverse commuting, and other transportation issues related to welfare reform. Related links are provided.
Contact:
U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Transit Administration Welfare-to-Work Information Notebook www.fta.dot.gov/wtw/notebk.html REFERENCES
Palubinsky, B. Z., and B. H. Watson. Getting From Here to There: The Bridges to Work Demonstration— First Report from the Field. Philadelphia: Public/ Private Ventures, 1997. See http://epn.org/ppv/ ppbrid.html. A five-city demonstration (Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee, St. Louis) developed transportation strategies to connect residents of inner-city neighborhoods to job opportunities in suburban areas.
CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
Pugh, Margaret. Barriers to Work: The Spatial Divide Between Jobs and Welfare Recipients in Metropolitan Areas. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1998. Examines how the spatial mismatch issue manifests itself in different types of cities. Barriers to Work: The Spatial Divide Between Jobs and Welfare Recipients in Metropolitan Areas. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1998. Examines how the spatial mismatch issue manifests itself in different types of cities.
Making Work Family Friendly
PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS
The Working For America Institute, a nonprofit organization founded by the AFL-CIO, seeks to create family-supporting jobs in a competitive business environment through partnerships among business, labor, and community-based organizations.
Contact:
Bruce Herman, Executive Director The Working For America Institute 815 16th Street, NW Washington, DC 20006 202-638-3912 202-466-6147 (fax) www.workingforamerica.org
University Settlement offers services for participants’ family members in its job training and referral work to promote participants’ success.
Contact:
Project Home University Settlement Society of New York 184 Eldridge Street New York, NY 10002 212-505-1995 212-614-0074 (fax)
Families and Work Institute (FWI) is a nonprofit center for research that provides data to inform decision-making on the changing workplace, changing family, and changing community, including work-life issues for low-income employees. FWI
CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
offers strategies for improving the quality and affordability of early childhood education and care and methods for supporting the involvement of fathers in the lives of their children.
Contact:
Ellen Galinsky, President Families and Work Institute 330 Seventh Avenue New York, NY 10001 212-465-2044 212-465-8637 (fax) www.familiesandwork.org
Founded by the Bay Area AFL-CIO, the Labor Project for Working Families provides advocacy, research, and technical assistance to unions and others on family-friendly workplace issues.
Contact:
Labor Project for Working Families 2521 Channing Way, #5555 Berkeley, CA 94720 510-643-7088 510-642-6432 (fax) laborproject.berkeley.edu
REFERENCES
Burwick, Andrew. “Job-Friendly Balance: Meeting the Needs of Low-Income Workers” in NT/FD Economic Opportunity (EO) Charette. Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation (October 1-2, 1998). Considers prospects for building family-friendly workplace policies in low-wage jobs.
Public/Private Ventures. “Families That Work: The Role of Families in Workforce Development” in
NT/FD Economic Opportunity (EO) Charette.
Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation (October 12, 1998). Family support services are necessary to ensure successful labor market attachment and promote comprehensive family development.
Smith, Martha Scott. Family-Friendly Workplace Guide. Columbia, S.C.: Supporting Success by 6, 1998. Offers a comprehensive overview of family-friendly workplace issues for those exiting the public welfare system. Available at www.uway.org/sb6/ family/family.htm. Family-Friendly Workplace Guide. Columbia, S.C.: Supporting Success by 6, 1998. Offers a comprehensive overview of family-friendly workplace issues for those exiting the public welfare system. Available at www.uway.org/sb6/ family/family.htm.
The Growing Up In Poverty Project. Remember the Children: Mothers Balance Work and Child Care Under Welfare. University of California, Berkeley, and Yale University. October 1999.
U.S. Department of Agriculture. USDA Family-Friendly Workplace Guide. Washington, D.C:. USDA, Departmental Administration, n.d. Available at www.usda.gov/da/employ/ffwg.htm. Provides an overview of key family-friendly workplace arrangements for public employees. CONNECTING FAMILIES TO JOBS
Pavsner
on all books run blank pages when you need to add pages (on this onepp. 42-44)
As part of the Making Connections Technical Assistance/ Resource Center, the following Resource Guides are scheduled to be produced before the end of 2001: Economic Opportunities for Families Connecting Families to Jobs Building Family Assets Enhancing Social Networks Family Support Residents Engaged in Strengthening Families and Neighborhoods Building High-Quality Services and Supports Building More Effective Community Schools Community Safety and Justice Child Care for Communities Meeting the Housing Needs of Families Community Partnerships to Support Families Improving Health Care for Children and Families Developing Community Responses to Domestic Violence Techniques for Advancing a Family Strengthening Agenda in Neighborhoods Using Strategic Communication to Support Families and Neighborhoods Connecting Families to Computers and On-Line Networks Outcomes-Based Accountability resource GUIDES As part of the Making Connections Technical Assistance/ Resource Center, the following Resource Guides are scheduled to be produced before the end of 2001: Economic Opportunities for Families Connecting Families to Jobs Building Family Assets Enhancing Social Networks Family Support Residents Engaged in Strengthening Families and Neighborhoods Building High-Quality Services and Supports Building More Effective Community Schools Community Safety and Justice Child Care for Communities Meeting the Housing Needs of Families Community Partnerships to Support Families Improving Health Care for Children and Families Developing Community Responses to Domestic Violence Techniques for Advancing a Family Strengthening Agenda in Neighborhoods Using Strategic Communication to Support Families and Neighborhoods Connecting Families to Computers and On-Line Networks Outcomes-Based Accountability resource GUIDES printed on recycled paper / cover photo: Susie Fitzhugh
The Annie E. Casey Foundation
701 St. Paul Street Baltimore, MD 21202 410.547.6600 410.547.6624 fax www.aecf.org