The Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) program is a federal-state partnership: state VR agencies administer the program with oversight from the Rehabilitation Services Administration in the U.S. Department of Education. The program offers tailored services and supports to help people with disabilities obtain or retain employment and become economically self-sufficient. VR services range from the provision of specialized equipment and transportation to work to the provision of supported employment experiences. This Mathematica brief examines case-level VR administrative data to explore how customer characteristics predict program outcomes. This brief focuses on two outcomes -- employment status and service receipt status at program exit.

Employment coaching involves trained staff working collaboratively with participants to help them set individualized goals related to employment and providing motivation, support, and feedback as participants work toward those goals. Recently, there has been growing interest among policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in using employment coaching to assist Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients and other adults with low incomes become economically mobile. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report highlights the evaluation that was designed to assess the implementation and effectiveness of the four programs participating in the Employment Coaching for TANF and Related Populations study. The report answers the following research questions: In what contexts were programs implemented? How did the designs of the programs vary and differ? How was coaching implemented across programs? The programs highlighted in this evaluation are: • Family Development and Self-Sufficiency, which serves TANF recipients and their family members in Iowa. • Goal4 It!TM, which provides employment coaching to TANF recipients in Jefferson County, Colorado in lieu of traditional case management. • LIFT, which is a voluntary coaching program operated in four U.S. cities. • MyGoals for Employment Success, which serves recipients of housing assistance in Baltimore, Maryland, and Houston, Texas.

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Research clearly demonstrates that youth and young parents experience poverty at a disproportionate rate with severe consequences to not only their current and future well-being (mental, physical, and financial), but also for the overall health of the family unit. Organizations specifically designed to serve youth often are not equipped to utilize a consistent, evidence-informed approach. They may lack the tools needed to effectively support economic mobility. This EMPath paper provides an overview of the evidence surrounding the impacts of poverty on youth and young families, and the benefits of promoting family economic stability and mobility for these populations. It highlights the experiences and learnings from the cohort of youth-serving organizations to effectively engage and support their program participants with economic mobility coaching.

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Some employment coaching programs and other human services programs offer financial incentives to reward desired behaviors such as engaging in specific activities or achieving certain goals. Employment coaching involves trained staff working collaboratively with participants to help them set individualized goals, directly or indirectly related to employment, and providing motivation, support, and feedback as participants work toward those goals. By addressing financial needs, the incentives can reduce some of the stress related to having low income and thus help participants focus on reaching their goals. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief highlights lessons learned from studying the experience of two employment coaching programs serving adults with low incomes that offered financial incentives: (1) LIFT and (2) MyGoals for Employment Success.

Economic Mobility Pathways will host a virtual session on September 27, 2023 from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. EDT during which youth-centered programs will share their innovative strategies in the outreach, engagement, and implementation of holistic economic mobility coaching practices for youth and young parents. Topics include differences in goal setting, community building, managing burnout, and more.

Over the past few years, Vermont’s Reach Up program has increasingly moved to a family-centered coaching model of supporting TANF participants and their families. This video provides a contextual overview of the merits of transitioning to a coaching model, highlights how this model works in Vermont, and provides an insider look into the various ways case managers can coach participants to achieve their own goals.

This webpage profiles EMPath’s Mobility Mentoring^® model, which is defined as the professional practice of partnering with participants so that over time they may acquire the resources, skills, and sustained behavior changes necessary to attain and preserve their economic independence. Included on the webpage are links to a set of four blogs which cover the model’s four essential elements: Coaching for Economic Mobility, the Bridge to Self-Sufficiency^®, Goal Setting, and Recognition.

The Family First Prevention Services Act (Family First) authorized new federal Title IV-E funding for evidence-based programs (EBPs) that have been rated and approved by the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse. One such EBP, Motivational Interviewing (MI), has the potential to change the way child welfare professionals work with and support families. MI creates affirming and transformative service experiences through which workers and clinicians have been trained to reach, engage, and empower families; MI represents an opportunity for agencies to deliver improved outcomes for children and families using a practice that is approved for federal funding under Family First. Available for downloading, the Motivational Interviewing Guide is designed to assist state and local Title IV-E agencies with implementing MI as a well-supported EBP in their Title IV-E Prevention Plans.

Recent research has led policymakers and scholars to argue that some people might not achieve economic independence in part because of difficulty applying the self-regulation skills—sometimes referred to as soft skills or executive functioning skills—needed to get, keep, and advance in a job. Evidence suggests that facing poverty, and the multiple stresses that accompany it, can make it particularly difficult to develop and use self-regulation skills. However, emerging research suggests that employment coaching from a trained staff member may strengthen self-regulation skills, and these skills, in turn, may improve employment outcomes for low-income people. This 2022 Research and Evaluation Conference on Self-Sufficiency (RECS) session presents initial implementation and impact findings from ACF’s Evaluation of Employment Coaching for TANF and Related Populations. The session also included a practitioner’s perspective on implications of the findings. Lauren Deutsch Stanton, ACF, moderated this session and Ruthie Liberman, EMPath, served as the panel’s discussant. Speakers also included Sheena McConnell and Quinn Moore, both from Mathematica.