From a report by Mathematica Policy Research, a Social Security contractor (emphasis added):
The Youth Transition Demonstration (YTD) is a large-scale demonstration and evaluation sponsored by the Social Security Administration (SSA) to improve understanding of how to help youth with disabilities reach their full economic potential. In particular, SSA is interested in testing promising approaches for helping young people with disabilities become more self-sufficient and less reliant on disability benefits. The YTD conceptual framework, which was based on best practices in facilitating youth transition, specified that the six projects that participated in the evaluation provide employment services (emphasizing paid competitive employment), benefits counseling, links to services available in the community, and other assistance to youth with disabilities and their families. Additionally, the youth who received those services were eligible for SSA waivers of certain benefit program rules, which allowed them to retain more of their disability benefits and health insurance while they worked for pay. ...
In this report, we present first-year evaluation findings for the Career Transition Program (CTP), which served high school juniors and seniors, and youth who had recently exited school, in Montgomery County, Maryland. ...
CTP was well implemented, conformed to the YTD conceptual framework, and provided youth with services to help them graduate from high school, obtain employment, and matriculate into postsecondary education programs. The process analysis showed that CTP enrolled 89 percent of eligible youth in the program and provided services to virtually all of the enrollees. On average, enrollees received 28 hours of services, 36 percent of which were directly related to employment, such as job development. Another 42 percent of service hours were for case management to resolve barriers to employment and education. The impact analysis showed that youth who had been given the opportunity to participate in CTP were more likely to have used employment-promoting services than youth in a randomly selected control group. Nevertheless, we found no impacts of the program on employment during the year following the entry of youth into the evaluation. Neither did we find impacts on income, expectations, or a composite measure of school enrollment or high school completion. We conclude that CTP was no more or less effective than the programs and services available to control group members at improving these outcomes during the follow-up year.
Is anyone really surprised? You give a god free money his whole life. He's told he's disabled from a you g age by his parents and SSA. Then, all of a sudden, at age 18, SSA develops his condition under adult guidelines and magically he's not disabled any longer (and maybe never was). Here you go, no more free money, go work for it and fogey the last 10 years you were told you were disabled. Does is shock anyone that these "disabled" youth have problems transitioning into economic independence through work? CASH BENEFITS for disabled children is not the answer. There programs to integrate them into the workforce will not be successful because no one wants to work for something they feel "entitled" to receive.
ReplyDeleteAnd what about the other 5 projects associated with that effort that you aren't sharing anything about? Looks like they all increased employment services. Also, 3 increased employment in the first year. That's isn't all that bad for programs serving kids as young as age 14.
ReplyDeleteAlso, reading the FULL executive summary of report on the program you shared, only 22 percent of the youth in that program were actually receiving SSA benefits. So I'm not sure exactly what this particular report says about the SSI child program.
^ this
ReplyDeleteIt's a shock to the system for most 18 y/o's who go through CDR. Getting cut off from the monthly checks is not easy and most don't understand why.
Post # 3 is right...all of a sudden at age 18, they're told they aren't disabled. Not only a shock to the youth, but to the parent who has become dependent on the income.
ReplyDeleteFrom the conclusion: "CTP significantly increased the receipt of employment-promoting services by treatment group members relative to what they would have experienced in the absence of the program. However, those services were no more or less effective than the non-CTP services available to control group members at improving employment and most other evaluation outcomes during the year following random assignment. We speculate that two factors may have contributed to this result. First, the youth recruited into the evaluation may not have had consistently large barriers to employment. Second, the services available to control group youth in Montgomery County during the period of the evaluation were relatively strong, such that they may have rivaled CTP services in effectiveness, at least for the evaluation enrollees."
ReplyDeleteSo extra resources are not effective when they are targeted at populations who have relatively low needs and who already have access to substantial services.
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