Preparing recipients for work. (welfare)(Welfare Reform: Behind the Headlines)(Interview)

Welfare reform legislation pending before Congress would require states to increase the number of recipients entering employment. Rebecca A. Maynard, a trustee professor of education, social policy, and communication at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and a senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., Princeton, New Jersey, has extensively studied employment and training programs for welfare recipients. APWA Communications Director Susan Kellam conducted the following interview, in which Maynard addresses the issue of getting welfare recipients into the workforce.

PW: From the states you have looked at, can you discuss or expound on any particular JOBS program, or any other kind of job-training or preparation-for-the-workforce program, that you feel has been successful?

Maynard: Whether a program has been successful depends on your definition of success. If success is defined as curing the problem, there are few successes. But if we are more generous in our definition and focus on programs that have made meaningful differences, we have a number of pockets of success and should invest in exploring what's different about these "successful" enterprises.

One obvious success is the Center for Employment Training (CET) program in San Jose, California. This program stands out among the more generic work welfare types of programs, rather than JOBS per se, in a number of dimensions. It has had larger net impacts for participants than most other programs. In fact, I'm not sure there are other programs that have had larger measured impacts. It has also done the least amount of upfront screening of participants, and it has operated at fairly typical costs. The program has dealt successfully with the language-minority population, which is of increasing significance to policy. [CET, a nonprofit organization, has achieved strong results for school dropouts and welfare recipeints by operating relatively shortterm (three to six months) but highly intensive handson training in high-growth industries and by building close linkages with the local business community.]

If you look at California's Greater Avenues for Independence (GAIN) program, the story is mixed. Riverside County, for example, has run a very successful JOBS program. If you look at all …