Tuesday, August 1, 1995

(Henderson Room, Michigan League)

9:15 - 9:45 a.m. Introductions and Goals of the Workshop

Speaker: Sandra Danziger, Director, Michigan PSWP Program

Welcome Remarks: Dean Paula Allen-Meares, School of Social Work

Gerald Miller, Director, Michigan Department of Social Services

Goals of the Workshop

We are undertaking the design and pilot implementation of a model welfare-to work program in Michigan. We have funding (from NIMH and the Presidential Initiatives Fund, University of Michigan) to conduct organizational readiness and client needs assessments and to come up with a program design conducive to a randomized clinical trial. The next and later phase would be implementation and evaluation. We are here today to begin our journey of discovery of what works, what are the most important barriers to tackle, and what lessons should we draw from the vast set of initiatives that have been undertaken to date.

We have invited each of you to help us narrow the field of what we should be trying. We need input on key component services that should be delivered, who should be the target population out of the very diverse mix of welfare recipients, how the services should be delivered, and what are the critical issues in program design and implementation. We would like you to draw from your successes, your failures, and from your ideas for designs that have yet to be tried.

9:45 - 11:15 a.m. Session One. Lessons from Welfare-to-Work Demonstrations

Speakers: David Butler, Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC), New York

Robert Halpern, Project Match, Chicago

Discussion Moderator: Dean Jeffrey Lehman, Law School

Given the community and policy context in which we currently operate, and given your programmatic experience in implementing and evaluating results of model programs, what choices would you make in the following areas: What are the greatest barriers to welfare families' well-being? What are the most important sets of problems to tackle within the welfare system, what set of services (and structured in what way) offer the most promise?

11:30 - 12:30 p.m. Session Two. Lessons from Interventions for Adolescents Mothers and Their Families

Speaker: David Olds, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver

Discussion Moderator: Sandra Danziger

What are the key barriers to leaving welfare for adolescent mothers, what services might work? What are the critical issues for child well-being in this population and what aspects of home-based services make a difference? How do we reduce subsequent pregnancy rates within a welfare-based program? What are the needed qualities of case management and types of support services?

1:30 - 2:30 p.m. Session Three. Lessons from Successful Job Placements for Welfare Recipients

Speaker: David Roth, Cleveland Works, Inc.

Discussion Moderator: Lawrence Root, Director, Institute of Labor

and Industrial Relations

What are the barriers to employment that recipients need to overcome? What services increase success on the job and what program components are less critical? How does a program get employers to hire and retrain disadvantaged workers? What are keys to replicating the Cleveland model in other communities?

2:30 - 3:30 p.m. Session Four. Lessons from Successful Interventions with Unemployed Workers

Speakers: Richard Price, Michigan Prevention Research Center

Amiram Vinokur, Michigan Prevention Research Center

Discussion Moderator: Dean Edward Gramlich, Public Policy

Model programs for helping people cope with unemployment transitions have been developed and studied for over a decade at the Michigan Prevention Research Center. What lessons can be adapted from this population with a possibly very different set of employment barriers?

3:45 - 5:15 p.m. Session Five. Responses and Wrap-Up Discussion

Speakers: Stephanie Comai-Page, Michigan Department of Social Services

Karin Martinson, US Department of Health and Human Services

Sheldon Danziger, University of Michigan, School of Social Work and School of Public Policy

Discussion Moderator: Richard Price, Michigan Prevention Research Center

This session will provide a forum for synthesizing the preceding presentations and discussions. From the state, federal, and research perspectives, we can begin to sort out what may be the most fruitful direction for designing and implementing a model welfare-to-work pilot program. The specific directions welfare reforms are taking at the federal and state level may well affect the set of services or target populations we select. Broader empirical indicators may suggest which set of employment barriers are most or least likely to be amenable to welfare-based intervention and thus affect our program design.

Thursday, February 22, 1996

(Room 6080, Institute for Social Research)

9:00 - 9:15 a.m. Introduction

Speakers: Rick Price, University of Michigan

Hendricks Brown, University of South Florida

9:15 - 10:30 a.m. Multiple Junctures for Subject Loss in Preventive Trials: A Common Nomenclature and Future Research Agenda.

Speaker: Sanford Braver, Arizona State University

10:45 - 12:00 p.m. Discussants: Hendricks Brown, University of South Florida

Dave MacKinnon, Arizona State University

Amiram Vinokur, University of Michigan

Open Discussion

1:00 - 2:15 p.m. Research on Non-Response to Household Surveys: The Social Psychology of the Recruitment Encounter.

Speakers: Robert Cialdini, Arizona State University

Mick Couper, University of Maryland/Michigan

Bob Groves, University of Maryland/Michigan

2:30 - 5:00 p.m. Discussants: Mike Stoolmiller,OSLC

Yiliang Zhu, University of South Florida

Open Discussion

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