Countywide Evaluation of the Long-Term Family Self-Sufficiency Plan. Countywide Evaluation Report

摘要

The California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids Act of 1997 (CalWORKs) provided Los Angeles County (hereafter, the County) with a large stream of funds. The County Board of Supervisors (hereafter, the Board) instructed the County's New Directions Task Force (NDTF) to develop a Long-Term Family Self-Sufficiency (LTFSS) Plan for CalWORKs recipients and the broader low-income population, with the purpose of selecting projects that would improve the capacity of families to become self-sufficient. Each of the projects was to: (1) have an adequate evaluation design to track achievement of measurable outcomes; (2) not duplicate existing services; (3) be culturally and linguistically sensitive; (4) not supplant existing funding; and (5) address a clearly documented need. To identify those projects and more broadly to guide the LTFSS effort, the NDTF adopted Mark Friedman's Results-Based Decision Making (RBDM) Framework (hereafter, the RBDM Framework). The NDTF effort resulted in the 46 projects known collectively as the LTFSS Plan that was approved by the Board on November 16,1999. The Chief Administrative Office (CAO) is the lead agency responsible for implementing the evaluation of the LTFSS Plan. The evaluation is taking place on two levels: the Countywide level and the individual projects level. The contract to evaluate outcomes at the county level was awarded to RAND by the Board after an open and competitive bidding process. In brief, this evaluation is not on the individual progress of 46 projects, but on the progress the County has made in achieving its goal of long-term family self-sufficiency. The contract stipulated that one deliverable would be an annual Countywide Evaluation Report. This document, which is the first of three such reports draws from three previous RAND reports produced under the contract.