Partnering with employers and support workers in the workplace is important to helping TANF participants reach stable employment opportunities. A successful collaboration with employers can help support job retention among participants to maintain stable employment and gain necessary work experience. Moving participants immediately into work activities renders the importance of providing needed supports while on the job. Participants at the Urban Partnerships National Academy held in Atlanta, GA in May heard successful strategies and innovative programs for partnering with local employers from Kansas City, Memphis, and Dallas/Fort Worth. These presentations give information on effective job readiness and placement services, and provides guidance for entities that are determining collaborative roles and responsibilities, including willingness to collocate services and staff.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) Welfare Peer Technical Assistance Network conducted this workshop in collaboration with the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC). The purpose of the event was to provide and share information on Welfare-to-Work (WTW) transportation and related issues. Furthermore, the workshop provided a forum for discussing the effectiveness of current initiatives, which provide the foundation for solutions to as yet unresolved transportation dilemmas. Specific topics addressed included building upon existing resources; providing affordable, accessible, and reliable transportation to all urban, suburban, and rural areas; coordination between transportation, workforce development, and human service agencies to overcome transportation barriers, and combining resources to achieve these objectives.

The Welfare Peer TA Network sponsored this statewide Roundtable event that took place in Baton Rouge, LA, from October 25-26, 2004. Attended by over 80 Federal, State, and local representatives, this Roundtable was designed to impart the tools and knowledge to implement a statewide Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) awareness and outreach campaign.

The OFA Peer Technical Assistance Network coordinated a workshop on behalf of the Philadelphia County Assistance Office. The purpose of this one day technical assistance event was to identify barriers that large urban areas such as Philadelphia encounter in their efforts to move Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) clients from welfare to meaningful employment, and to explore strategies to overcome these barriers. Two focus groups were set up to obtain information about barriers identified from both an operational perspective and an administrative perspective from within the Philadelphia County Assistance Office. TANF provider representatives from Los Angeles, Chicago, and Indiana shared information about some of the obstacles that they had encountered and successfully addressed within the past year. The workshop concluded with a discussion of strategies that the Philadelphia County Assistance Office could implement, resources available to assist with the implementation of these strategies, and next steps.

The ability of States and counties to meet TANF participation goals through the use of subsidized employment, work experience and community service strategies has been a central part of TANF. Recognizing these realities, especially those facing large urban centers, the California Department of Social Services made a Technical Assistance (TA) request on behalf of their largest urban center (Los Angeles) and on behalf of four very similar urban centers (Chicago, Houston, New York City and Philadelphia.) The five target cities were led through a series of facilitated discussions involving the core subject areas of performance management and contracting, saturation engagement, diversion and immediate employment, and re-engagement and sanctions.