Family, Life Course, and Society Commons^™

How Youth Are Put At Risk By Parents’ Low-Wage Jobs, Lisa Dodson, Randy Albelda, Diana Salas Coronado, Marya Mtshali

Center for Social Policy Publications

In this report, we present a first-ever overview of what is known about the relationship between the status of youth and their parents’ low-wage jobs. Of the 20 million adolescents with working parents, 3.6 million (one out of every six) are in low-income families where parents have low-wage jobs. We identify several ways that young people are harmed by their parents’ low-wage, low-quality jobs that point to the urgency of this issue.

Poverty In Massachusetts For Families With Children, Randy Albelda, Ferry Cadet, Dinghong Mei

Center for Social Policy Publications

Massachusetts has lower poverty rates compared to the US average for all families with children. The poverty rates for female-headed families with children (single mother families) are 5.5 times higher than those of married couples with children in Massachusetts and the US.

Poverty rates for families with children differ considerably across Massachusetts’ ten largest cities, and are typically considerably higher than the Massachusetts average for all family types. Springfield has the highest poverty rates for each family type with children while Quincy has the lowest.

Fits & Starts: The Difficult Path For Working Single Parents, Rebecca Loya, Ruth J. Liberman, Randy Albelda, Elisabeth Babcock

Center for Social Policy Publications

With dramatic shifts in the economy in recent years, it has become increasingly difficult for families to move into or stay in the middle class without access to higher education and skills training. Government-sponsored work supports help by providing direct assistance to working families to meet basic needs, such as child care, food, and housing. Yet, many supports do not reach low-wage working families in Massachusetts because of low eligibility thresholds, inadequate funding, limited availability, limited awareness, and numerous barriers to accessing such supports. Even for low-wage workers who do receive key work supports, such as subsidized child care and …

Impact – Information Management, Public Access, Community Transformation: Final Evaluation Report, Oscar Gutierrez, John Mcgah

Center for Social Policy Publications

In 2000 the Department of Commerce awarded the Lake County (IL) Department of Planning, Building and Development a Technology Opportunity Program (TOPS) Grant to implement Project IMPACT. The project’s goals were “to improve access to and delivery of human services for low-income residents, strengthen community planning and resource allocation, and enhance understanding of data on homelessness that can be gathered and aggregated on local and national levels to accurately capture the scope of the problem and the effectiveness of efforts to ameliorate it.”

The Center for Social Policy (CSP) at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies, University of Massachusetts …

Technology Goes Home Evaluation – Executive Summary, Donna H. Friedman, Michelle Kahan, Tatjana Meschede, Consuela Greene

Center for Social Policy Publications

Technology Goes Home (TGH) is an innovative program designed to bridge the digital divide by bringing technology into low-income families’ homes. This Boston Digital Bridge Foundation (BDBF) program strives to prepare adults for employment opportunities and to help children improve academic performance by offering computer training and equipment to families in Boston neighborhoods and schools. Classes are offered in groups, with parents and children learning together in order to strengthen families and build community as well as skills. Neighborhood programs are operated in six communities through Neighborhood Technology Collaboratives, coalitions of community-based organizations. These coalitions select participating families, and provide …

Surviving Against The Odds: Families’ Journeys Off Welfare And Out Of Homelessness, Donna H. Friedman, Tatjana Meschede, Michelle Hayes

Center for Social Policy Publications

Homeless families face complex challenges when making the transition from welfare to the workforce. By focusing on the experiences of homeless families participating in a Boston-based welfare-to-work program, the multimethod, longitudinal study described in this article explored factors contributing to more successful transitions as well as barriers faced by families having a harder time making the transition.

Nearly 90 percent of the families that were studied left a shelter with a housing subsidy and retained it 6 to 12 months later. Successful employment outcomes after exiting a shelter were more evident for families whose head of household was older, two-parent …

Characteristics Of Homeless Individuals Accessing Massachusetts Emergency Shelters, 1999-2001, Tatjana Meschede, Michelle Kahan, Michelle Hayes, Donna Friedman

Center for Social Policy Publications

The Center for Social Policy (CSP) at the McCormack Institute, University of Massachusetts Boston oversees the Connection, Service, and Partnership through Technology (CSPTech) project. CSPTech operates a homeless management information system being implemented throughout the Commonwealth. Founded in 1995, this project is a networked computerized record-keeping system that allows homeless service providers across Massachusetts to collect uniform client information over time. This information is aggregated in a database used by service providers, advocates, government officials, researchers, and people experiencing homelessness. Analysis of this information is critical to efforts to understand the extent of this problem in Massachusetts in an attempt …

Impact – Information Management, Public Access, Community Transformation: Year Two Evaluation Report, September 1, 2001 Through August 31, 2002, Oscar Gutierrez, John Mcgah

Center for Social Policy Publications

The goals of the IMPACT project are “to improve access to and delivery of human services for low-income residents, strengthen community planning and resource allocation, and enhance understanding of data on homelessness can be gathered and aggregated on local and national levels to accurately capture the scope of the problem and the effectiveness of efforts to ameliorate it.”

The Center for Social Policy (CSP), McCormack Institute at the University of UMass Boston was commissioned to produce a series of evaluation reports of the IMPACT project; this is the second of three reports covering year two activity of the IMPACT. The …

Food Stamps: Available But Not Easily Accessible: A Study Conducted For Project Bread, Michelle Kahan, Elaine Werby, Jennifer Raymond

Center for Social Policy Publications

Concerned with growing hunger among Massachusetts families eligible for Food Stamps, and the paradoxical decline in the number of program enrollees, Project Bread asked the Center for Social Policy at the John W. McCormack Institute of Public Affairs, University of Massachusetts Boston (CSP) to study the process of securing and sustaining Food Stamp Benefits. Concurrent with the planning process for the study, the Massachusetts legislature, in an override of the Governor's veto in early December 2001, included language in the FY 2002 budget designed to expand access to the program. Among other requirements, the language requires the Department of Transitional …

Impact – Information Management, Public Access, Community Transformation: Year One Evaluation Report, September 1, 2000 Through August 31, 2001, Oscar Gutierrez, John Mcgah, Donna H. Friedman

Center for Social Policy Publications

The goals of the IMPACT project are “to improve access to and delivery of human services for low-income residents, strengthen community planning and resource allocation, and enhance understanding of how data on homelessness can be gathered and aggregated on local and national levels to accurately capture the scope of the problem and the effectiveness of efforts to ameliorate it.”

The first year of the IMPACT project was one of infrastructure development in a broad sense. It involved primarily the development and modification of innovative information technology tools as well as the identification, selection and deployment of other information systems designed …

A Policy Brief: Massachusetts (T)Afdc Case Closings, October 1993-August 1997, Donna Friedman, Emily Douglas, Michelle Hayes, Mary Ann Allard

Center for Social Policy Publications

When a DTA (Department of Transitional Assistance) worker assesses whether a family's (T)AFDC (Temporary Aid to Families with Dependent Children) case will be closed, s/he decides which one of 67 different codes best describes the reason cash benefits for the household will be stopped. To carry out the analyses, we sorted all of the 67 codes into clusters of codes that logically grouped together: Cluster I, Increased Income; Cluster H, Sanctions; Cluster III, Eligible Persons Moved; Cluster IV, Fraud; Cluster V, Client Request; Cluster VI, No Longer Eligible; Cluster VII, Other or Multiple Meanings. The Appendix displays a description of …

A Snapshot Of Individuals And Families Accessing Boston's Emergency Homeless Shelters, 1997, Donna Friedman, Michelle Hayes, John Mcgah, Anthony Roman

Center for Social Policy Publications

This document summarizes key findings from a survey conducted on March 19, 1997 with 338 homeless individuals and 94 families sheltered or served by 33 of 40 shelter programs in the City of Boston. The data presented in this report were collected at one point in time. Point in time data results in an overrepresentation of the "longer term" homeless, and offers limited insight regarding the structural dynamics underlying movement from homelessness to residential stability (Culhane, Lee, Wachter, 1996; White, 1996). However, it does provide a snapshot of the men, women, and children who were spending the night in a …