Evaluation of the Ticket to Work Program, Implementation ...

ased on a beneficiary’s needs. Another EN official said, “I don’t know of any agency thatcould afford to work with someone for a year without getting paid for it.” ENs alsoreported that educating callers about TTW is time consuming and particularly burdensomefor organizations whose TTW clients are not generating any payments. One ENrepresentative highlighted a disjuncture between what his organization wants to do and whatit is equipped to do. While his staff want to “help steer people in the right direction,” it hasbeen difficult for the organization to cover all of the staff time required to deal with theheavy volume of calls.c. Challenges Related to Placing TTW Clients and Receiving PaymentPlacing Ticket holders in jobs (or helping them to find employment on their own) is thefirst critical step on the path to receiving payments for services. Our interviews made itclear, however, that placing TTW clients can be a substantial challenge for a number ofreasons, including client characteristics and external circumstances.Client Characteristics. EN officials who said that client characteristics were achallenge to placement had, in many cases, not used a very careful or extensive screeningprocess in deciding to accept beneficiaries’ Tickets. Others tried to screen out potentiallydifficult-to-place individuals, with the idea that placement would be easier. Overall,however, ENs cited a variety of characteristics that made it difficult to place clientsappropriately.Just under half of the EN officials we interviewed felt that some clients did not showenough interest in moving completely off of cash benefits. Many were interested only inpart-time work, which would enable them to keep some cash and medical benefits. This isparticularly true for two groups of individuals: those with only a few work skills who feltthey could not earn enough to offset the loss in benefits and those with extensive workexperience, which qualified them for very high DI payments.The second characteristic most often mentioned by ENs is related to human capital—specifically, a lack of education, skills, or work experience. EN officials said that it wasdifficult to work with beneficiaries who have been out of the labor market for a number ofyears, who have limited skills and need to enroll in school or a training course, or who havebeen working in a sheltered workshop program.About one-third of the EN representatives cited psychiatric or other disabilities as achallenge to placing TTW beneficiaries. Other characteristics mentioned included lack of asupport network, no reliable transportation, fear of the system, and unreasonably high jobexpectations.External Circumstances. About one-third of the EN officials cited a poor localeconomy as a challenge to placing clients. The tight job market has apparently caused morebeneficiaries to turn to the ENs for help, but job openings are few and far between, and thecompetition for each available position is tough. A good example of the state of the localeconomy comes from one EN official, who said that her staff cannot even find volunteerpositions, let alone ones that would pay at the level of SGA.79V: EN Participation in Ticket to Work