Service delivery and institutional linkages: early implementation experiences of Employment Retention and Advancement programs

The Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) project, launched in 1999 and slated to end in 2009, aims to discover what approaches help welfare recipients and other low-income people stay steadily employed and advance in their jobs. It encompasses 15 programs and uses a rigorous research design to analyse the implementation and impacts of each one. The project's evaluation component investigates each program in the areas of: implementation, i.e. what services are provided, how are they delivered, who receives them, and how are problems addressed; and impacts, i.e. to what extent does the program improve employment retention, advancement, and other key outcomes. This report describes the initial experiences of 15 ERA programs in eight states, focusing on implementation issues and on connections among the agencies and institutions that deliver retention and advancement services to low-income workers and hard-to-employ populations. Based on early program assessments, findings indicate that while the ERA sites have been fairly successful in contacting and initially engaging participants, encouraging participation in ongoing program activities has been more difficult.

Documents from the ERA project are indexed from TD/TNC 88.121 to TD/TNC 88.126. Show less