Date of Award
Fall 2001
Document Type
Dissertation - Restricted
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Education
Abstract
Over the course of the last two years, I have managed a program that assesses barriers to employment in W-2 recipients, and provides referrals to community programs and resources to address those barriers, for clients who are within one year of having their W-2 benefits end. Throughout the course of ongoing development and implementation of the program, some troubling trends became obvious. Many of the clients the program assessed reported having extensive welfare history, numerous family members who also received benefits at one time in their lives, and a broad range of barriers that make self-sufficiency challenging at best. Most clients assessed were unable to identify how they were going to support themselves when benefits end. Using that knowledge, I developed a new program targeting the long-term barriers of "Second Generation" clients, youth from families of welfare recipients who are at risk for being unable to sustain self-sufficiency in the future. The idea for this dissertation was borne from experience with W-2 recipients and their children, most notably what appeared to be an overriding inability to set goals, to plan toward completion of those goals, or to implement that plan. The study addresses these deficits, investigating specific demographic factors and self-efficacy beliefs as contributing factors to planning behavior, in hopes of identifying a basis from which targeted programs can be developed.