assessing the transportation needs of welfare-to-work participants in ...

family life. Specifically, work-related trips are one part of a complex nexus of travel necessary
for family self-suficiency: looking for work, going to work, going to school, going to welfare
offices and CalWORKs services, taking kids to child care, school, and after school activities,
shopping for food, going to doctors and clinics, etc. Understanding the interconnection of trips,
participants made it very clear to us that the family, not work divorced from the family, was their
unit of analysis.
Following this reasoning revealed in focus group discussions, we stress that the family is really
our unit of analysis, rather than a single parent attempting the journey from welfare to selfsufficiency.
An exclusive focus on trips directly related to work neglects the transportation needs
of children and trips central to family self-sufficiency. Consequently, in this section we take
family related trips into account because our focus group members continually took them into
account when they told us about their lives.
Conduct of Focus Groups
Focus groups were taped and lasted from 1 ½ to 2 hours. After discussing the purpose of the
groups and the confidentiality of remarks made in them, we asked participants to fill out a
consent form indicating their understanding of the focus groups requirements and use of data.
Participants answered a brief questionnaire about their status in CalWORKs, and their primary
transportation destinations and means of transportation. The rest of the time we facilitated an
informal and open discussion of their transportation needs.
Included below are the Facilitator's Introduction to the Focus Group, the participants' consent
form, questionnaire, and questions guiding discussion.
Facilitators' Introduction
1. Welcome. Our purpose in conducting this focus group is to learn about how you are meeting
transportation challenges and solving problems created by your journey from welfare to
economic independence. For some participants, welfare reform means more trips – to GAIN
offices and programs, offices providing special services, job searches, traveling to new jobs,
arranging to take your kids to child care, to school and picking them up again.
First, we want to know how you are you making those travel arrangements? Secondly, we want
you to identify travel problems that are serious enough to pose barriers to finding and keeping
good jobs and problems that interfere with the well being of your family. Thirdly, we want to
know how helpful GAIN has been in helping you pay for and deal with travel arrangements.
Finally, we want you to recommend ways of improving transportation for participants in GAIN.
This is an information and a brainstorming session.
Why are we doing this research? DPSS knows that in Los Angeles distance and travel time can
be major barriers for people who are looking for work and taking care the needs of their families.
The federal government is offering the county money if it comes up with some concrete
proposals to improve transportation. One requirement of a good proposal is that it is based on the
40