Faith, Hope, and Jobs: Welfare-to-work in Los Angeles

by Monsma, Stephen V.; Soper, J. Christopher

• ISBN13: 9781589011106
• ISBN10: 1589011104
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-09-30
• Publisher: Georgetown Univ Pr

Summary

A front-burner issue on the public policy agenda today is the increased use of partnerships between government and nongovernmental entities, including faith-based social service organizations. In the wake of President Bush's faith-based initiative, many are still wondering about the effectiveness of these faith-based organizations in providing services to those in need, and whether they provide better outcomes than more traditional government, secular nonprofit, and for-profit organizations. In Faith, Hope, and Jobs, Stephen V. Monsma and J. Christopher Soper study the effectiveness of 17 different welfare-to-work programs in Los Angeles County?a county in which the U.S. government spends 14% of its entire welfare budget?and offer groundbreaking insight into understanding what works and what doesn't. Monsma and Soper examine client assessment of the programs, their progress in developing attitudes and resources important for finding self-supporting employment, and their experience in finding actual employment. The study reveals that the clients of the more explicitly faith-based programs did best in gaining in social capital and were highly positive in evaluating the religious components of their programs. For-profit programs tended to do the best in terms of their clients finding employment. Overall, the religiously active respondents tended to experience better outcomes than those who were not religiously active but surprisingly, the religiously active and non-active tended to do equally well in faith-based programs.Faith, Hope, and Jobs concludes with three sets of concrete recommendations for public policymakers, social service program managers, and researchers.

Author Biography

Stephen V. Monsma is a research fellow at the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics, Calvin College, and a professor of political science emeritus at Pepperdine University J. Christopher Soper is the Frank R. Seaver Professor of Political Science and the executive director for the Center for Faith and Learning at Pepperdine University

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(6)
The Effectiveness Muddle	7	(31)
Defining Effectiveness	13	(5)
Clashing Effectiveness Arguments	18	(3)
The Findings of Previous Research	21	(17)
The Study	38	(29)
The Five Stages of the Research	39	(9)
The Seventeen Programs	48	(7)
The Study Respondents	55	(12)
Client Evaluations of Their Programs	67	(26)
Staff Empathy	69	(7)
Instrumental Evaluations	76	(4)
Evaluations of Religious Elements in Faith-Based Programs	80	(6)
Observations	86	(7)
Enabling Outcomes	93	(34)
Increased Hope and Optimism	94	(8)
Program Completion	102	(5)
Social Capital	107	(18)
Observations	125	(2)
Intermediate and Ultimate Outcomes	127	(37)
Full- and Part-Time Employment	128	(14)
Wage Levels	142	(7)
Economic Self-Sufficiency	149	(7)
Summary and Observations	156	(8)
Observations and Recommendations	164	(25)
Summary Conclusions	165	(6)
Public Policy Recommendations	171	(11)
Recommendations for Program Managers	182	(3)
Recommendations for Researchers	185	(4)
Appendix A: The Questionnaire Survey	189	(4)
Appendix B: The Survey Instruments	193	(16)
Appendix C: The Faith-Based/Segmented versus Faith-Based/Integrated Distinction	209	(2)
Notes	211	(10)
Index	221