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General Information
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| Evaluator(s) |
MDRC
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| Investigator(s) |
Stephen Freedman
(MDRC)
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| Sponsor(s) |
Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services
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| Funder(s) |
Ford Foundation
US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families
Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services
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| Domain |
Income Security/TANF
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| Status |
Completed (final report released)
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| Duration |
Jan 1995 - Jun 2000
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| Type |
Research and/or Program Evaluation
Policy Analysis
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| Goal |
To evaluate the Los Angeles Jobs-First GAIN program.
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| Program/Policy Description |
Jobs-First GAIN was Los Angeles County's mandatory welfare-to-work program, operated from January 1995 through March 1998 by the County Department of Public Social Services (DPSS) in cooperation with the County Office of Education. Jobs-First GAIN was an innovative, strongly employment-focused program that offered job search assistance as its primary service and encouraged welfare recipients to start working as soon as possible. The program combined services and mandates that had worked in other settings (notably, in neighboring Riverside County) and some that were relatively new. CalWORKs, California's TANF program, replaced Jobs-First GAIN in April 1998, but continues most of Jobs-First GAIN's services, mandates, and messages.
Key features include:
1. an unusually intensive program orientation aimed at motivating new enrollees to find work quickly;
2. high-quality job clubs, whose leaders taught job-finding skills and engaged participants in activities aimed at boosting their self-esteem and motivation to work;
3. job development activities to increase job opportunities and match people with prospective employers;
4. a strong Work First message communicated through written handouts and group presentations, and in individual meetings with program staff;
5. a warning, repeated orally and in writing, that California would impose time limits on welfare eligibility for those who did not work;
6. a concerted effort to teach people that California's relatively generous rules for calculating welfare grants would help them increase their income in the short term by combining work and welfare;
and
7. a relatively tough, enforcement-oriented approach to encourage people to complete the activities and find work quickly.
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| Notes |
MDRC is conducting several other studies of welfare recipients and other low-income populations in Los Angeles, including: The Project on Devolution and Urban Change; the Jobs-Plus Initiative; Opening Doors to Earning Credentials; and the Employment Retention and Advancement Project. See www.mdrc.org for project descriptions and publications.
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| Last Updated |
03/07/03
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| Type of Summary |
Reviewed
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| External Reviewer(s) |
Stephen Freedman
(MDRC)
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| Contact(s) |
Stephen Freedman (stephen.freedman@mdrc.org)
MDRC
16 East 34th Street
19th Floor
(T) (212)-532-3200
(F) (212)-684-0832
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Populations Studied
| Target Population |
Recipients/participants/clients
Single parent families
Two-parent families
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| Subgroups Analyzed |
Other
Immigrants
Minority populations
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| Sample Size and Unit |
Based on random assignment of 21,000 single parents and members of two-parent households. It contains nearly every adult who showed up to enroll in the program from April 1 through September 11, 1996.
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Sites Studied
Los Angeles, CA
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