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Program administrators randomly assigned single-parent Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) applicants and recipients whose youngest child was at least age 3 to one of three conditions: traditional case management, integrated case management, or a comparison condition. Random assignment took place from September 1992 to July 1994 at the income maintenance office before recipients had undergone program orientation. This study focuses on the contrast between integrated and traditional case management, treating the integrated case management group as the intervention group. Other studies examine this contrast but treat the traditional case management group as the intervention group, contrast the traditional case management and comparison conditions, and contrast integrated case management and the comparison conditions.
Random assignment took place from September 1992 to July 1994. Participants were followed for five years after random assignment, although the contrast of integrated and traditional case management only used data from three years following random assignment.
This study is part of the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies (NEWWS). The NEWWS evaluation was funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation) and by the U.S. Department of Education.
The study only examined single parents. In the full sample, which includes those randomized to integrated case management, traditional case management, and the comparison, more than 90 percent of participants were female (94) with an average age of about 32 and an average of two children. In all, 52 percent of participants were Black, and 47 percent were White. When the study began, fewer than half of sample members, 43 percent, had ever worked full time for an employer for six months or more, and a comparable proportion (42 percent) had earned no educational credential at or above a high school diploma or GED level. Roughly 45 percent of sample members had received AFDC for five or more years.
Ohio Department of Human Services and the Franklin County (Ohio) Department of Human Services
Program administrators developed both intervention arms—the traditional and integrated case management conditions—for this demonstration.
Integrated Case Management participants worked with a single case manager to improve their educational and vocational skills and determine their welfare eligibility and payment issuance. Participants who did not have a high school diploma or general education diploma were assigned to basic education classes; participants with basic education credentials were assigned to vocational training, postsecondary education, or work experience. Case managers provided job search assistance after they determined that participants were employable. Supportive services offered included child care, transportation, and other incidental work costs, and the program had an on-site child care center. Case managers closely monitored and enforced program participation and imposed sanctions on participants who did not meet the program participation requirements by reducing their monthly welfare payments. Services ended when clients exited AFDC.
The case management services were identical to the intervention condition. The difference between the conditions was the staffing of case management services. In Traditional Case Management, one case manager supported clients’ training and employment and another handled clients’ welfare eligibility determination and payment issuance. Compared with Integrated Case Management, traditional case managers provided less personalized attention and less closely monitored participation in program activities.
During the study period, all welfare recipients in Columbus, OH, were required to participate in the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training welfare-to-work program unless they met one of several exclusion criteria. Participants who did not meet participation requirements were sanctioned.
Not specified, but services ended when clients left AFDC.
State of Ohio; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The study took place in Columbus, OH.
None