YTD Evaluation Finds Positive Impacts on Employment in Florida and West Virginia (In Focus Brief)
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Associated Project
Youth Transition Demonstration: Helping Youth with Disabilities Become Employed
Prepared for:
Social Security Administration
Interim findings from a Mathematica evaluation of two Youth Transition Demonstration (YTD) programs reveal positive impacts for youth with disabilities in Miami, Florida, and in West Virginia. Among youth who agreed to participate in the evaluation, those who were randomly assigned to a program group, and thus had the opportunity to enroll in Broadened Horizons, Brighter Futures (BHBF) in Miami or in West Virginia Youth Works, were more likely than youth who were randomly assigned to a control group to take advantage of career-enhancing services like job placement assistance and benefits counseling, which led to higher employment rates and greater average earnings during the year after they entered the evaluation.
Interventions like YTD which provide services such as assistance in preparing resumes, mock interviewing, and job search assistance can put youth with disabilities on more independent paths as they transition from school to work. In order to evaluate the success of these interventions, analysts focus on outcomes such as participation in services, paid employment status, and earnings.
With funding from the Social Security Administration (SSA), Mathematica and its partners MDRC and TransCen, Inc. began a multi-year evaluation of YTD in 2005. The evaluation was designed to assess the effectiveness of YTD programs in six sites across the country.
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