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Home | Human Services | San Diego TANF Upfront Diversion Program Design
Case Study: San Diego TANF Upfront Diversion Program Design
The Client:
County of San Diego, California Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA)
The Project:
“Ready, Set, Work!” (RSW!) TANF Upfront Diversion Pilot Project
The Challenge:
HHSA sought a better way for the county to help its citizens find or maintain employment and avoid on-going, long-term dependence on TANF assistance, known as CalWORKs. The goals were to improve the county’s Work Participation Rate (WPR) and to reduce the CalWORKs caseload by offering eligible clients short-term assistance in order to deal with a specific crisis situation or an episode of need. The CalWORKs Diversion program that was in existence provided emergency cash assistance for things like car repairs or rental security deposit, but proved inadequate as evidenced by an extremely low take-up rate.
The PCG Human Services™ Approach:
PCG Human Services™ worked side-by-side with HHSA to design a new and innovative “up-front diversion” program based on several identified national best practices from other TANF agencies’ diversion programs. Along with offering intense job search and employment services to CalWORKs-eligible clients who are deemed the most “work-ready” based on discrete criteria, this new pilot program, called Ready, Set, Work! (RSW!) provides child care, transportation, and other work supports to participants. The program design requires higher effort and participation, but in return, participants receive higher cash payments than CalWORKs upon the completion of performance benchmarks.
The Result:
PCG Human Services™ helped San Diego County to maneuver through both federal and state regulatory processes to receive acceptance by the federal Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and to gain state TANF approval for program waivers. The PCG Human Services™/HHSA team was successful in arguing to ACF the case for providing child care and other work supports as “non-assistance” for unemployed participants searching for work. The six month pilot is expected to begin in October 2009. A rigorous program evaluation of RSW! has been designed to measure performance and results.
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Child Welfare and Youth Services
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Elders and Persons with Disabilities
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SSI/SSDI
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