While many organizations provide skills training to help low-income people attain and maintain employment, very few provide strategies to aid in the development of employment networks. This article reviews promising practices from around the country on developing and expanding employment networks for low-income people.

This article, through Mathematica Policy Research, reviews the role that the Pathways Case Management System has had in helping States achieve universal engagement. Pathways includes tools to help frontline TANF staff give recipients the supports they need to transition into employment. "Pathways is based on the belief that all recipients can participate in activities that will help them improve their life circumstances, that they should be required to do so, and that, through this experience, they will eventually become as self-sufficient as possible, given their circumstances." This article includes lessons learned from the Pathways program to achieve universal engagement.

This newsletter from the Family and Youth Services Board (FYSB), reviews strategies for combining education and employment to help support families and youth on the transition to adulthood. Specifically, the FYSB runaway and homeless youth program, which includes Transitional Living Program grants, offer educational and employment-focused assistance for youth.

This guide reviews how States have shaped their welfare reform strategies since 1996, in light of the flexibility afforded them by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. It describes how most States used their new responsibilities and flexibility to implement policies concerning: requiring work, making work pay, and time-limiting welfare benefits. It also synthesizes findings from studies of welfare reform's effects on poor families and government budgets.

Over the past thirty years, Federal and State policymakers have created various programs with the common goal of moving people from welfare to work. A long debated issue has been how to increase employment among welfare recipients. This research synthesis presents lessons learned from the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies (NEWWS) and provides answers to critical questions in the welfare-to-work policy discussion.

Drawing from administrative records and survey data collected for the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies (NEWWS) during the 1990s, this report extends MDRC's research on whether mandatory employment-focused and education-focused welfare-to-work programs help people find jobs, attain stable employment, and earn more over time. The focus is on a subgroup that accounts for nearly 20 percent of the full NEWWS sample: single parents who were age 20 to 24 when they entered the study. Based on a rigorous random assignment design, the report finds that both types of programs led to higher earnings by young adults over a five-year follow-up period, and -- for young adults who lacked educational credentials -- education-focused programs also led to a relatively large impact on receipt of a GED. However, not all education-focused programs succeeded for this subgroup.

Authored by Diane Paulsell and Melissa Ford. This report is a recently released product from the Economic Research Service (ERS) within the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

This resource manual was produced by Policy Research Associates and was sponsored by the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Employers are important partners in workforce development. This resource outlines promising strategies employed by three workforce development organizations to successfully engage employers. Strategies used by Jewish Vocational Service, San Francisco; Training, Inc., Boston and WIRE-Net, Cleveland include involving employers on the Board of Directors to using employers to teach training classes.

Authored by Paul T. Decker and Irma L. Perez-Johnson. This Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. report discusses the effects and impacts of Personal Reemployment Accounts (PRAs). PRAs provide additional assistance and incentives to unemployed workers who are likely to exhaust their unemployment insurance by offering maximum flexibility in seeking the services that will best help them prepare for and find a new job. Drawing on a variety of research sources, the authors address the likely impacts of the reemployment bonus feature on recipients, ways States and local areas could set the amount and decide on who is allowed to participate, and procedures to manage and monitor the accounts.