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This article examines the impacts of the Youth Transition Demonstration, an initiative of the Social Security Administration (SSA) to improve employment outcomes for youth with disabilities. Based on a random assignment design, the analysis uses data from a one-year follow-up survey and SSA administrative records for 5,203 youth in six research sites to estimate demonstration effects. Three of the six demonstration projects had positive impacts on the rate at which youth were employed during the year after they entered the evaluation. Those impacts were concentrated in sites where the projects provided more hours of services, counterfactual services were weak, and the target population of youth had more severe disabilities.

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The Social Security Administration (SSA) is conducting the Youth Transition Demonstration (YTD) as part of a broader initiative to encourage disability beneficiaries to return to work. The purpose of the YTD is to assist youths aged 14 to 25 with disabilities to successfully transition from school to economic self-sufficiency. Successful transitions include pursuing a post-secondary education or employment. Through agreements with community-based agencies at six sites in five US States, YTD provides a broad array of transition-related services and supports to participants. The YTD staff also established partnerships with other agencies and with employers to improve employment and educational outcomes. Services include: individualized work-based experiences; youth empowerment; family supports; system linkages; social and health services; and benefits counseling. Recognizing that a major barrier to employment for youths with disabilities is the fear of losing Social Security benefits, the YTD provides five waivers of program rules designed to allow participants to keep more of their earnings and encourage both savings and their continued education.

Mathematica Policy Research was contracted to conduct an evaluation of the YTD projects. The evaluation includes a process analysis of the implementation of the seven original projects; this report focuses on those implementation experiences. For the three projects that were subsequently selected into the random assignment evaluation, the analysis is limited to their pre-random assignment, or pilot, experiences. For the remaining four, information from the full period of program operations is included. YTD featured a widely varied range of service delivery approaches and program components. In addition, there was diversity among the projects in terms of geographic scope, number of participants, type of lead organization, and staffing structure. This diversity provided an opportunity to explore some of the factors that lead to successful program implementation. That exploration was the basis for this report. Based on information obtained through interactions with the seven original YTD projects, as well as a review of early project documents, the report outlines six lessons emerging that may help policymakers and administrators develop, fund, and provide interventions for youth with disabilities who are making the transition from school to adulthood.

Edited excerpts from publication and publisher's website. Show less

The transition to adulthood for youth with disabilities, particularly youth receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or other disability program benefits, can be especially challenging. In addition to the host of issues facing all transition-age youth, young people with disabilities face special issues related to health, social isolation, service needs, and lack of access to supports. These challenges complicate their planning for future education and work, and often lead to poor educational and employment outcomes, high risk of dependency, and a lifetime of poverty. Recognizing the importance of service intervention at this critical juncture in youths' lives, the Social Security Administration (SSA) initiated the Youth Transition Demonstration (YTD) evaluation. SSA is providing funding to develop and rigorously evaluate promising strategies to help youth with disabilities become as economically self-sufficient as possible as they transition from school to work. Hallmark features of the YTD evaluation include (1) strong, policy-relevant demonstration projects that serve relatively large numbers of youth with disabilities compared with other programs, and (2) a rigorous evaluation design based on random assignment. The YTD evaluation provides SSA with a valuable opportunity to identify program components and strategies that can show successful employment and earnings outcomes for youth. The demonstration is doing this by supporting and testing a multisite study with six interventions, all with a strong focus on employment, and with considerable leveraging of community services. The demonstration also includes waivers of certain SSI rules to help youth who work keep more benefits and provide them with incentives to obtain and retain employment. By testing a variety of service delivery models on the target population of youth with disabilities, combined with the provision of SSA waivers, this demonstration provides a unique opportunity to learn about effective interventions to increase employment and earnings for youth with disabilities, and eventually reduce their reliance on SSA disability benefits. This report profiles the six YTD projects that have been selected for rigorous evaluation. The following chapters discuss each of these projects in turn. A profile of each project is provided, focusing on the services provided. Before turning to the project profiles, we briefly describe the conceptual framework underlying the YTD interventions and the process for selecting these projects.

Excerpts from published summary reprinted by permission of the copyright owner.

A related publication is indexed at TD/TNC 95.61. Show less