The Annie E. Casey Foundation launched the Generation Work initiative in 2016 to connect more of America’s young adults—especially those of color from low-income families—with meaningful employment by changing the way public and private systems prepare them for and support them in jobs. Generation Work asked grantees to form partnerships of organizations in workforce development systems (such as training programs, government agencies, funders, employers, and trade unions) to better serve young people ages 18 to 29 years. The first phase of the initiative was implemented in five cities: Cleveland, Hartford, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, and Seattle. MDRC was selected by the Casey Foundation to study the Generation Work initiative and investigate how it unfolded, uncover challenges, and identify best practices. This Issue Focus explores some of the ways Generation Work partnerships sought to change their local workforce development systems and previews some of the study’s findings.

This article notes that while the financial return from a bachelor’s degree is softening, even as the price of tuition and average debt load for college students remain high, high school graduates are so effectively encouraged to get a bachelor’s that high-paid jobs requiring shorter and less expensive training are going unfilled. Updated from 2018, the article features real life examples of skilled trade workers and data and statistics reflecting 2023 economic and workplace conditions. While the article focuses on Washington State, these labor shortages and trends are occurring nationally.

The Agricultural Act of 2014 authorized $200 million for the development, implementation, and evaluation of pilot projects to test innovative strategies to reduce dependency on and increase employment among Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants. California, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Mississippi, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington received grants in March 2015 and began implementing their pilots between January and April 2016. Resource materials in this post include a summary of findings from these 10 pilots and a set of four issue briefs. These issue briefs present cross-pilot findings that cover participation patterns in selected Employment and Training (E&T) activities, effectiveness of work-based learning, employment patterns after occupational skills training, and how sanctions affect participants in mandatory SNAP E&T programs.

The Child Welfare Information Gateway created a five-part podcast series that illustrated ways that states and tribal jurisdictions have supported kinship caregivers. Part 2 of this series focused on Washington State’s approach to providing kinship support services. Topics discussed included:

• Differences in formal and informal kinship caregivers and the differences caseworkers may have to navigate when working with each,
• Cultural considerations caseworkers and others should be aware of when working with rural and Latinx communities and families,
• The importance of building relationships across a community, not just with kinship families, and
• Implementation of one-time stipends for kinship families in Washington State.

This Annie E. Casey Foundation brief shares six pivotal strategies for coordinating and funding community efforts to support families at risk of entering the child welfare system: invest in infrastructure at the state and local levels, create funding structures that maximize prevention funds, support community-led planning and design, align programs at the state level to better serve families, invest in evaluation, and leverage private and local dedicated funding streams. Strategies presented in this brief include practices from Colorado, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, Washington State, and the District of Columbia.

This report identifies the four components of youth apprenticeship programs and how they fit together to offer a set of principles for adoption that improve program quality. These distinguishing components are 1) structured and paid on-the-job learning under the supervision of skilled mentors, 2) classroom-based or technical instruction aligned to the workplace environment, 3) ongoing assessment, and 4) attainment of portable, industry-recognized credentials. To illustrate these components, the report presents the Aerospace Joint Apprenticeship Committee (Washington State), the Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeship program (South Carolina), and Early Care & Education Pathways to Success (California).

This report evaluates four grantees of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Ready to Work (RTW) Partnership Grant (RTW) program. RTW assists the long-term unemployed—persons who have been out of work for at least 6 months—in finding jobs and succeeding in the labor market. Support services include career guidance, occupational training, employment readiness, job search assistance, and work-based training. The evaluation, which covers a four-year period from 2014 to 2018, reviews RTW implementation among four grantees: the Maryland Tech Connection program at the Anne Arundel Workforce Development Corporation; California Skills to Work in Technology/Job Search Accelerator at San Francisco’s Jewish Vocational Service; Finger Lakes Hired at RochesterWorks! (Monroe County, New York); and Reboot Northwest at Worksystems, Inc. in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington.

On September 27, 2024, the Office of Child Support Services (OCSS) announced their awarding of $4.7 million to help states and tribes develop and refine child support-led employment efforts for noncustodial parents under the Next Generation Child Support Employment (NextGen) grant. OCSS awarded an additional $3.4 million to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to provide technical assistance and evaluate the NextGen demonstration projects. This OCSS announcement highlights the demonstration grants recipients, including six states and two tribes.

Social Policy Research Associates (SPR) partnered with the Washington Employment Security Department to evaluate a workforce development model and poverty reduction initiative, the Economic Security for All (EcSA) initiative. EcSA provides increased skills development, supportive services, and coaching that helps low-income families move out of poverty, an approach that SPR termed “WIOA Plus.” This SPR resource highlights their findings, including that participants’ median quarterly wages increased by 71 percent after completing EcSA. Although the new program has not yet been rigorously studied, the evaluation of its first few years suggests that its model of increased service intensity and individualized case management is a promising approach to addressing the needs of low-wage workers that could be adopted elsewhere.

The Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency-Next Generation (BIAS-NG) project aims to make human services programs work better for the people receiving services by reshaping program processes using lessons from behavioral science. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation newsletter provides insights from New York and Washington, focusing on improving employment and training services for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families clients.