School's Out: How Summer Youth Employment Programs Impact Academic Outcomes

Recently there has been an emphasis on how time spent outside of the classroom can affect student outcomes, including high school graduation, with the hope of closing academic achievement gaps along socioeconomic and racial lines. This paper provides experimental evidence regarding a particular type of out-of-school activity—early work experience—on high school academic outcomes for low-income inner-city youth. Using randomized admissions lotteries for students who applied to the Boston Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP), we estimate the effect of being selected to participate on academic outcomes as measured by administrative school records. We find that SYEP lottery winners are 4.4 percentage points more likely to graduate from high school on time and 2.5 percentage points less likely to drop out of high school during the four years after participating in the program relative to the control group. These improvements appear to be driven by better attendance and course performance in the year after being selected for the program, with the program's impact on attendance persisting into the second year. Survey data suggest that the Boston SYEP may affect academic outcomes by increasing aspirations to attend college, gaining basic work habits, and improving social skills during the summer.

The Challenges of Vocational Training for Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Employment is considered to have a great impact on people's quality of life. However, it is thought to be one of the major problems adolescents and young adults have to face during their transition to the adulthood. Given their impairments, individuals with ASD face several barriers to their vocational rehabilitation. Yet many of them are capable of being independent and working effectively when they are well supported. Since they deal with several challenges due to their condition, high rates of unemployment or underemployment are very common among them. This chapter provides a view of the barriers that can affect the employment outcomes of this population and strategies (e.g., supported employment programs and technology-based interventions) for overcoming those barriers. In particular, the social deficits that characterize ASD may result in difficulty in developing and maintaining high-quality social skills and competence in communication, which are important for finding employment and staying in a work position.

An Analysis of the Effects of Public Investment on Labor Demand through the Channel of Economic Growth with a Focus on Socio-Professional Categories and Gender

The paper aims to analyze the impact of public investments generated by implementing the Emerging Senegal Plan (ESP) on economic growth and gender inequalities observed in the labor market in Senegal. A dynamic computable general equilibrium modeling was carried out for this purpose using a social accounting matrix (SAM) based on an extensive segmentation of the labor market according to gender and socio-professional category. The results prove that the investments made in priority market sectors led, overall, to a good trajectory of economic growth. Moreover, job creation followed the expansion of sectors of the economy, which increased their demand for labor because of the capital increase. In conclusion, there is a strong demand for qualified women (senior executives and middle executives). We recommend considering positive discrimination in favor of women by implementing public employment programs and the importance of recovery sectors affected by the pandemic.

Australia’s Disability Employment Services Program: Participant Perspectives on Factors Influencing Access to Work

Disability employment programs play a key role in supporting people with disability to overcome barriers to finding and maintaining work. Despite significant investment, ongoing reforms to Australia’s Disability Employment Services (DES) are yet to lead to improved outcomes. This paper presents findings from the Improving Disability Employment Study (IDES): a two-wave survey of 197 DES participants that aims to understand their perspectives on factors that influence access to paid work. Analysis of employment status by type of barrier indicates many respondents experience multiple barriers across vocational (lack of qualifications), non-vocational (inaccessible transport) and structural (limited availability of jobs, insufficient resourcing) domains. The odds of gaining work decreased as the number of barriers across all domains increased with each unit of barrier reported (OR 1.22, 95% CI 1.07, 1.38). Unemployed respondents wanted more support from employment programs to navigate the welfare system and suggest suitable work, whereas employed respondents wanted support to maintain work, indicating the need to better tailor service provision according to the needs of job-seekers. Combined with our findings from the participant perspective, improving understanding of these relationships through in-depth analysis and reporting of DES program data would provide better evidence to support current DES reform and improve models of service delivery.

Implementation of Public Employment Services in a Philippine Local Government Unit

The Public Employment Service Office is responsible for implementing labor market programs to promote full employment and equality of employment services. This study assessed the level of implementation of the services of the public employment service office of a component city in the areas of local employment in terms of labor market information, referral and placement, career and employment coaching, provision of livelihood and employment programs, and special employment in terms of reintegration assistance, employability enhancement, pre-employment counseling, and other services as assessed by local and overseas jobseekers and local business and overseas employment agencies. It also investigated the challenges encountered by the respondents in availing these services. This descriptive-comparative study used a researcher-made survey instrument administered to randomly selected local and overseas job seekers and local and overseas business and employment agencies. Using descriptive and inferential analyses, the study yielded a very high level of implementation which implies that the services by the PESO promoted job generation and addressed unemployment although, a significant difference was revealed in the implementation of labor market information and self-employment programs and services. The study recommended the enactment of local laws to enhance employment facilitation.

Dilemmas of Sheltered Employment in Poland and Greece and the Concept of Supported Employment

People with severe disabilities, such as severe mental disabilities and autism spectrum disorders, do not participate in the open, competitive labor market to the same extent as people without disabilities or other forms of disability. Sheltered employment is an internationally accepted approach for the vocational integration of people with severe disabilities, which introduces integration in sheltered workplaces mainly with other people with disabilities and ongoing support from the Government or self-government. Therefore, sheltered employment can be defined as the employment of a person with a disability under particular conditions. This paper presents the legislative framework regarding sheltered employment in Poland and Greece and the ways sheltered employment takes place in each of the two countries with the corresponding comparisons and conclusions. The results show a need for a more precise and more comprehensive legislative framework on sheltered employment in Poland and Greece. Alternative options for the vocational integration of people with severe forms of disabilities, such as supported employment programs, need to come to the fore. Supported employment seems to be the only effective and efficient way for people who have particular difficulties in finding and keeping a paid job in the open labor market to take up paid employment on an equal basis with other people. Does the concept of supported employment have a chance to prove itself on Poland and Greece’s open labor markets and become a complementary tool in the vocational activation of people with disabilities? Legislative regulations, system projects, and stable sources of financing are necessary for both countries.

Learning From Youth: Using Positive Outcomes to Evaluate Summer Youth Employment Programs

Summer Youth Employment Programs (SYEPs) help connect youth to opportunities for career exploration, skill development, and mentorship. Despite heightened investment in SYEPs, research regarding positive impacts is limited. Most of the common SYEP evaluation strategies are rooted in deficit thinking and focus on outcomes such as reducing violent crime, risk behaviors, gaps in unemployment, and increasing educational attainment. Despite recent shifts toward approaches that acknowledge structural oppression in adolescent research more broadly, evaluations of SYEPs often perpetuate a discourse of deficiency about marginalized communities by emphasizing disparities without acknowledging the systemic forces that create them. In this article, we utilize the Five Cs of Positive Youth Development to present an alternative set of outcomes identified from focus groups and surveys with youth ages 16 to 24 who participated in SummerWorks, a 10-week SYEP located in Washtenaw County, Michigan. Specifically, we find that SYEPs may help youth make the transition to adulthood, build community and increase their social capital, and access knowledge, resources, and opportunities. Through this approach, we hope to expand the literature on the impacts of SYEPs and encourage antiracist evaluation strategies that build on these findings and challenge deficit thinking.

Predictive Association of Low- and High-Fidelity Supported Employment Programs with Multiple Outcomes in a Real-World Setting: A Prospective Longitudinal Multi-site Study

Purpose The individual placement and support (IPS) model of supported employment is a leading evidence-based practice in community mental health services. In Japan, individualized supported employment that is highly informed by the philosophy of the IPS model has been implemented. While there is a body of evidence demonstrating the association between program fidelity and the proportion of participants gaining competitive employment, the association between fidelity and a wider set of vocational and individual outcomes has received limited investigation. This study aimed to assess whether high-fidelity individualized supported employment programs were superior to low-fidelity programs in terms of vocational outcomes, preferred job acquisition, and patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs). Methods A prospective longitudinal study with 24-month follow-up analyzed 16 individualized supported employment programs. The Japanese version of the individualized Supported Employment Fidelity scale (JiSEF) was used to assess the structural quality of supported employment programs (scores: low-fidelity program, ≤ 90; high-fidelity program, ≥ 91). Job acquisition, work tenure, work earnings, job preference matching (e.g., occupation type, salary, and illness disclosure), and PROMs such as the INSPIRE and WHO-Five Well-being index were compared between groups. Results There were 75 and 127 participants in the low-fidelity group (k = 6) and high-fidelity group (k = 10), respectively. The high-fidelity group demonstrated better vocational outcomes than the low-fidelity group, i.e., higher competitive job acquisition (71.7% versus 38.7%, respectively, adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 3.6, p = 0.002), longer work tenure (adjusted mean difference = 140.8, p < 0.001), and better match for illness disclosure preference (92.6% versus 68.0%, respectively, aOR = 5.9, p = 0.003). However, we found no differences between groups in other preference matches or PROM outcomes. Conclusion High-fidelity individualized supported employment programs resulted in good vocational outcomes in a real-world setting. However, enhancing service quality to increase desired job acquisition and improve PROMs will be important in the future. Clinical Trial Registration UMIN000025648