About the Brief

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Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration (DOL/ETA), the Young Parents Demonstration (YPD) was a federal grant initiative to enhance the Department’s existing programs to better serve at-risk and disadvantaged young parents and expectant parents, ages 16 to 24. Through two grant competitions, DOL/ETA issued three rounds of awards to 17 organizations, including both local public workforce agencies and non-profit community-based organizations. The purpose of these grants was to test the effectiveness of enhanced services on improving educational and employment outcomes for at-risk parenting and expectant youth. YPD grantees served young parents and expectant parents in high-risk categories, including victims of child abuse, children of incarcerated parents, court-involved youth, youth at risk of court involvement, homeless and runaway youth, and others. Between November 2009 and June 2014, more than 3,700 young parents (and expectant parents) were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups under the demonstration.

YPD grantees were required to implement a differential experimental research design, whereby the treatment group received an enhanced service intervention above and beyond the base level of services provided to both the treatment and control groups. Most grantees provided education, training, and employment-focused services, along with a considerable array of supportive services and ongoing case management as part of their base services packages for treatment and control groups. The 13 Rounds I/II grantees implemented one of two types of enhancements to the base service package for the treatment group members only: (1) mentoring (featuring volunteer or professional staff mentoring); or (2) guided employment, education, training and related supports. The four Round III grantees focused their treatment group intervention solely on mentoring services.

The treatment intervention across the three rounds of funding was aimed primarily at improving employment, earnings, and educational outcomes for treatment group participants to foster long-term self-sufficiency. Additionally, to varying degrees, grantees had secondary goals of reducing welfare dependency, enhancing parenting skills, reducing at-risk behavior (e.g., substance abuse, and criminal activity), and other associated outcomes.

In 2010, DOL/ETA contracted with Capital Research Corporation and the Urban Institute – along with subcontractors, Abt Associates/Abt SRBI, Westat, Inc., and The George Washington University – to conduct a process/implementation and an impact evaluation of YPD. The aim of the process/implementation evaluation component was to provide DOL with a detailed description of the treatment and control group interventions as they were implemented in each site, including information about participant recruitment and intake procedures, participant flow through services, types and intensity of base and enhanced services made available to participants, grantee partnering with other organizations, key implementation challenges and how they were addressed, and program costs. The impact evaluation study component was aimed at estimating net impacts of the treatment intervention on educational, employment and earnings, welfare receipt, and other outcomes.

Separate evaluation reports were produced on: (1) the 13 Rounds I/II; and (2) the four Round III grantees. The brief synthesizes impact results across these two evaluation reports.

Key Takeaways

• Overall, the findings from the YPD evaluation show that the provision of enhanced services to young parents, on top of a substantial set of base services, had no measurable effect or a short-run effect that faded over time on participants’ earnings.
• In the case where mentoring was the enhanced service, YPD also did not have a measurable effect on other key outcomes such as educational attainment, public assistance receipt, family income, economic stability and family composition.
• While the findings may lead one to believe that the treatment – the enhanced services – did not work for helping young parents, the implementation and evaluation challenges may underlie the YPD results.

Citation

Trutko, J., Eyster, L., Vericker, T., O’Brien, C., Trutko, A., Dodkowitz, A., Sick, N., Mendonca, S. (n.d.). Capital Research Corporation. Brief on the Impact Findings from the Young Parents Demonstration Evaluation. Chief Evaluation Office, U.S. Department of Labor.

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This study was sponsored by the Employment and Training Administration, Office of Policy Development and Research, Division of Research and Evaluation, and was produced outside of CEO’s standard research development process.