Bartl, Mary Jo and Christine George and Dana Rivers. 2001. A Report on the Collaborative Evaluation of the STRIVE Career Path Project. Chicago, IL: Loyola University Center for Urban Research and Learning. This is a report on the evaluation of the Chicago STRIVE Career Path Project which concludes that employment case management services that include regular follow up and tracking of participants are an effective strategy for providing career development services.

Berlin, Gordon. 2000. Encouraging Work, Reducing Poverty: The Impact of Work Incentive Programs. New York. Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation. This report summarizes the findings of various programs that provided wage supplements to entry-level workers, in order to increase employment and income.

Bloom, Dan, Jacquelyn Anderson, Melissa Wavelet, Karen N. Gardiner, and Michael E. Fishman. 2002. New Strategies to Promote Stable Employment and Career Progression: An Introduction to the Employment Retention and Advancement Project. The Employment Retention and Advancement Project began in 2001 with fifteen placement, retention and/or advancement programs in nine states, all serving TANF recipients. Participants were randomly assigned to these demonstrations or to other programs. This report is an analysis of the project and a synthesis of earlier research on job training.

Brown, Amy. 2001. Beyond work first: How to help hard-to-employ individuals get jobs and succeed in the workforce. This guide for practitioners operating employment programs for hard-to-employ participants describes strategies for addressing numerous barriers to employment. It includes models of successful programs and distills lessons for practitioners.

Clark, Peggy and Steven Dawson with Amy Kays, Frieda Molina and Rick Surpin.1995. Jobs and the Urban Poor: Privately Initiated Sectoral Strategies. Washington, D.C.: Aspen Institute. This report explores the potential of sectoral workforce development programs.

Elliott, Mark, Anne Roder, Elisabeth King and Joseph Stillman. 2001. Gearing up: An interim report on the sectoral employment initiative. Public/Private Ventures. The authors interview nine hundred participants from ten sectoral job training programs.

Fishman, Michael E., Burt S. Barnow, Karen N. Gardiner, Barbara J. Murphy, and Stephanie A. Laud, the Lewin Group. 1999. Job Retention and Advancement Among Welfare Recipients: Challenges and Opportunities. Johns Hopkins University. This report provides a summary of the available research on the effectiveness of various types of employment retention and advancement strategies for welfare recipients.

Freeman, Jennifer and Judith Combes Taylor. 2002. Beyond welfare-to-work: Helping low-income workers maintain their jobs and advance in the workplace. A Jobs for the Future study of job training programs in ten cities selected by the Department of Labor. The programs prepared former TANF recipients for work, and the authors drew conclusions about the best strategies based on subsequent employment records.

Giloth, Bob, and Susan Gewirtz. 1999. Retaining low-income residents in the workforce: Lessons from the Annie E. Casey Jobs Initiative. The authors provide initial results from the initiative, which trained low-income residents for jobs in six neighborhoods over eight years, and describe both characteristics of workers who stayed employed and the strategies used to retain them.

Gittell, Marilyn, Charles Price, and Tracy Steffy, with Tracy McFarlane. 2003. Continuing a Commitment to the Higher Education Option: Model State Legislation, College Programs, and Advocacy Organizations that Support Access to Post-Secondary Education for Public Assistance Recipients. New York: Howard Samuels State Management & Policy Center. The report presents strategies for linking low-income adults to post-secondary education and includes a summary of the research on the impact of post-secondary education on income.

Hamilton, Gayle. 2002. Moving people from welfare to work: Lessons from the national evaluation of welfare-to-work programs. Also see the complete report.

Hamilton, Gayle, Stephen Freedman, Lisa Gennetian, Charles Michalopoulos, Johanna Walter, Diana Adams-Ciardullo, and Anna Gassman-Pines of MDRC; and Sharon McGroder, Martha Zaslow, Saurjeet Ahluwalia, and Jennifer Brooks of Child Trends; 2001. National Evaluation of Welfare-to Work Strategies: How Effective Are Different Welfare-to-Work Approaches? Five-Year Adult and Child Impacts for Eleven Programs. US Department of Health and Human Services, US Department of Education, New York: Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation. This study documents the long-term impacts of eleven mandatory job training programs for TANF recipients at seven sites. The authors studied the progress of forty thousand families headed by single mothers, randomly assigned to programs, over a five-year period in the 1990s.

Harrison, Bennett and Marcus Weiss. 1998. Workforce Development Networks: Community-Based Organizations and Regional Alliances. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. This book explores the role of community-based organizations in helping low-income adults to obtain workforce development services and employment opportunities.

Herr, Toby and Robert Halpern with A. Conrad. 1991. Changing What Counts: Re-Thinking the Journey Out of Welfare. Project Match. This report describes Project Match's Incremental Ladder to Economic Independence, a model that illustrates the various paths that participants follow when transitioning off of welfare.

Herr, Toby, Suzanne L. Wagner, and Robert Halpern. 1996. Making the shoe fit: Creating a work-prep system for a large and diverse welfare population. A case study of Project Match, an employment program that helps unemployed, low-income adults, many of whom have received TANF, become employed. Project Match provides individualized case management services so that clients can obtain new skills, take on additional responsibilities, and advance in the workplace at their own pace. The article compares outcomes from the program to those of more structured programs and finds that flexible approaches to client advancement result in higher job placement and retention rates.

Herr, Toby, Robert Halpern and Suzanne L. Wagner. 1995. Something Old, Something New: A Case Study of the Post-Employment Services Demonstration in Oregon. Project Match. This report examines the experience of the Oregon site of the Post-Employment Services Demonstration including the lessons learned about providing retention and advancement services.

Hicks, Lisa, Alexandra Olins, and Heath Prince. 2000. Aligning economic and workforce development activities in Baltimore. A study of twelve job training programs in Baltimore that coordinated with city economic development strategies.

Hoeltke, Gary. 1994. Demonstration Partnership Project Final Report, Lincoln Action Program. Lincoln, NE: SRI Institute. This is a report on the Lincoln Action Program’s family case management program where case management services helped remove barriers to employment.

Holzer, Harry J. and Douglas Wissoker. 2001. How Can We Encourage Job Retention and Advancement for Welfare Recipients? Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute. This policy brief uses findings from a survey of employers who hired welfare recipients in four large cities to identify the policy implications for programs that seek to improve retention and advancement for former welfare recipients.

Johnson, Earl S. and Fred Doolittle. 1996. Low-Income Parents and the Parent’s Fair Share Demonstration: An Early Qualitative Look at Low-Income Noncustodial Parents (NCPs) and How One Policy Initiative Has Attempted to Improve their Ability to Pay Child Support. Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation. This report examines the barriers that keep some noncustodial parents from paying child support and the strategies used to overcome those barriers in the Parent’s Fair Share demonstration.

Loprest, Pamela. 2002. Who Returns to Welfare? Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute. This policy brief examines how often welfare recipients who transition off of welfare return to the welfare rolls and how transitional support services can help prevent the return to welfare.    

Orr, Larry L., Howard S. Bloom, Stephen H. Bell, Fred Doolittle, Winston Lin, and George Cave. 1996. Does Training for the Disadvantaged Work?: Evidence From the JTPA Study. Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute Press. This report on Job Training Partnership Act program reviews the limited outcomes obtained from short-term, low-cost employment programs.

Patel, Nisha, Mark Greenberg, Steve Savner, and Vicki Turetsky. 2002. Making Ends Meet: Six Programs That Help Working Families and Employers. Washington, D.C.: Center for Law and Social Policy. This report includes descriptions of six different kinds of work support programs including the Earned Income Tax Credit, child care, Food Stamps, health care, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and child support. It includes a discussion of the barriers that keep eligible participants from participating in these programs and strategies for maximizing program utilization.

Quint, Janet C. Denise F. Polit, Hans Bos and George Cave, MDRC. 1994. New Chance: Interim Findings on a Comprehensive Program for Disadvantaged Young Mothers and Their Children. New York: Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation. The report describes some of the early findings from a program that provided relatively rich and intensive employment services to young mothers on welfare.

Rademacher, Ida S. 2001. Measure for Measure: Assessing traditional and sectoral strategies for workforce development. Washington, D.C.: Aspen Institute. This report examines the employment and earnings outcomes of the Sectoral Employment Development Learning Project and compares those outcomes to other job training and welfare-to-work program.

Rangarajan, Anu. 1996. Mathematica Policy Research. Taking the First Steps: Helping Welfare Recipients Who Get Jobs Keep Them. Findings from the Postemployment Services Demonstration Project, which studied former welfare recipients at four sites, and showed that increasing transitional assistance and access to child care helps clients retain jobs.

Ranghilli, Lisa. 2003. Replicating Success: The Alameda Corridor job training & employment program: A replication manual for winning and implementing community-based jobs programs on public construction projects. In 1998 the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority agreed to train one thousand unemployed workers for jobs. This study tracks those workers and compares them to other unemployed workers in the community.

Riccio, James, Daniel Friedlander and Stephen Freedman. 1993. GAIN: Benefits, Costs, and Three-Year Impacts of a Welfare-to-Work Program. Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation. This report includes findings on California's Greater Avenues for Independence (GAIN) Program, which provided employment services to welfare recipients.

Rocha, Cynthia J. 1997. Factors that Contribute to Economic Well-Being in Female Headed Households. Journal of Social Service Research, 23, (1), 1-17. This study uses data from the National Survey of Families and Households to determine factors associated with female-headed households escaping poverty.

Scanlon, Edward and Deborah Page-Adams. 2001. Effects of Holding Assets on Neighborhoods, Families, and Children: A Review of Research. In Building Assets: A Report on the Asset-Development and IDA Field, edited by Ray Boshara. Washington: Corporation for Enterprise Development. The report summarizes the research on and practice in the asset development and Individual Development Account field.

Seavey, Dorie. 1998. New avenues into jobs: Early lessons from nonprofit temporary agencies and employment brokers. Washington, D.C.: Center for Community Change. A case study of six programs that used employment brokers to find temporary work. Seavey finds that these programs can work, but only if the brokers are committed to helping disadvantaged workers.

Strawn, Julie and Karin Martinson. 2001. Steady work and better jobs: How to help low-income parents sustain employment and advance in the workforce. An analysis and summary of research on job training programs for low-income clients. This report’s highlights include the importance of providing individualized employment services and supports collaborating with employers, and helping clients develop soft skills.

Wagner, Suzanne and Toby Herr. 1995. Understanding Case Management in a Welfare-to-Work Program: The Project Match Perspective. Project Match. This report describes some of the lessons that have been learned through the Project Match model of providing employment services.

Wagner, Suzanne and Toby Herr. 2003. “Something Old, Something New” Revisited: Project Match Experiments with Retention Incentives. Project Match. In this newsletter, Project Match reviews initial findings from a small random assignment experiment with retention incentives.