NYC Jobs-Plus provided participants with job search assistance, job placement support, work-readiness activities, and soft-skills training. Participants, who primarily lived in public housing developments, received financial counseling services and assistance applying for Earned Income Disallowance benefits, which help the participant avoid rent increases based on earnings.
To prepare people for employment, Chrysalis provided a core curriculum on job preparation and related skills, short-term mental health counseling, and mentorship. Employment specialists referred individuals they believed to have the highest employment barriers to the social enterprise program. These individuals participated in an orientation and assessment before entering Chrysalis’s labor pool to work in one of its social enterprises related to street cleaning or a temporary staffing position.
The Compass FSS program provided one-on-one financial coaching to help HCV recipients make progress toward their self-identified financial goals, which could include paying down debt, increasing savings, or improving credit scores. The program also created an incentive for participants to meet their goals. When families with HCVs received an increase in earnings, they were required to pay 30 percent of that increase toward rent. The FSS program credited these additional rent payments toward an escrow account that the participant could receive in full after meeting certain conditions.
GRCC’s Pathways to Prosperity program served adults with low incomes and low educational and basic skill levels in high-poverty areas in Kent County, MI. The program focused on providing services to individuals who were unemployed, had not completed high school, or had been formerly incarcerated. Pathways to Prosperity offered an eight-week course known as Career Prep, occupational training programs that resulted in a GRCC certificate, basic skills courses, and adult basic education and GED courses. Through the Career Prep course, participants earned the Michigan Employability Certificate.
Six months before justice-involved adults were scheduled for release from prison, individuals were transferred to one of two facilities in Racine, WI. In these facilities, social workers would provide case management workups, which included an assessment of needs; risks; child support; credit; and personal documentation issues, such as a lack of driver’s license or Social Security number.
