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UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

A two-generational child-focused program enhanced with employment services: Eighteen-month impacts from the Kansas and Missouri sites of the enhanced services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation project (Hsueh et al. 2011)

Review Guidelines

Causal Evidence Guidelines

Citation

Hsueh, J., Jacobs, E., & Farrell, M. (2011). A two-generational child-focused program enhanced with employment services: Eighteen-month impacts from the Kansas and Missouri sites of the enhanced services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation project. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Highlights

  • The study’s objective was to examine the impact of Enhanced Early Head Start (EHS) participation on employment, earnings, public assistance receipt, and education for low-income families with young children.
  • The study used a randomized controlled trial design, assigning eligible families to either the Enhanced EHS program or existing services. To estimate the program’s impacts, the authors used administrative employment and earnings data, as well as an 18-month follow-up survey emphasizing respondents’ employment, income, and other outcomes. Outcomes were adjusted for characteristics before random assignment.
  • The study did not find any statistically significant effects on employment, earnings, public assistance receipt, or education.
  • The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is high because it was based on a well-implemented randomized controlled trial. This means we would be confident that any estimated effects would be attributable to Enhanced EHS services and not to other factors. However, the study did not find statistically significant effects.

Intervention Examined

Enhanced Early Head Start (EHS)

Features of the Intervention

The study was conducted in two EHS programs in Girard, Kansas, and St. Charles, Missouri. The program in Kansas was administered by a community-based agency that served 12 rural counties in southeastern Kansas. The program in Missouri was administered by a multiservice agency that served 3 suburban counties and one rural county. To be eligible for the program, families had to have a family income at or below the federal poverty threshold, have a child younger than 3 years old or be expecting a child, and live in one of the areas served by the program. The program gave priority to pregnant women, families with infants or toddlers, and families with certain needs (such as barriers to employment).

Enhanced EHS consisted of the intensive early childhood development services and family supports typical of the EHS program plus program enhancement designed to address parents’ employment and self-sufficiency needs. The enhancements included on-site self-sufficiency specialists who worked directly with families on achieving their self-sufficiency goals, parent training in employment and self-sufficiency issues, establishing partnerships with local agencies that provided employment and training services, and training EHS staff so they could help parents attain their employment and self-sufficiency goals. EHS also offered health and mental health services to families.

Features of the Study

From July 2004 to December 2006, evaluators randomly assigned half of the 610 families who met program eligibility criteria to the Enhanced EHS treatment group; the remaining 305 families were assigned to the control group. The authors collected employment, earnings, education, and public assistance receipt data from a survey fielded 18 months after random assignment and administrative data on employment and earnings were collected quarterly from the National Directory of New Hires database. The authors compared the outcomes of Enhanced EHS and control group members, controlling for characteristics before random assignment.

Findings

  • The study did not find any statistically significant effects on employment, earnings, public assistance receipt, or education.

Considerations for Interpreting the Findings

None.

Causal Evidence Rating

The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is high because it was based on a well-implemented randomized controlled trial. This means we would be confident that any estimated effects would be attributable to Enhanced EHS services and not to other factors. However, the study did not find statistically significant effects

Reviewed by CLEAR

August 2016

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