The Work Advancement and Support Center Demonstration

MDRC has a new report out on the Work Advancement and Support Center (WASC) demonstration. The demonstration, housed mostly in One-Stop Career Centers and operating in four cities:

... is designed to provide intensive career coaching to low-wage workers so that they can navigate successfully the often complicated interaction between advancement and work supports, ensuring all along that each step they take will increase their total income and improve the circumstances of their employment. Sites in the demonstration are building integrated teams of workforce and welfare agency professionals who are charged with offering intensive career and advancement coaching for low-wage workers, increasing the access to and take-up of financial work supports, and building new linkages with employers in order to develop and deliver career advancement services — and work supports — directly at the work site.

WASC is still in the early implementation stage, so MDRC can't say yet whether it's increasing overall income, earnings and advancement. My guess is that it will end up having some positive effect on income, mostly by getting low-wage workers enrolled in work support programs that they're eligible for but don't know about. But I also think WASC will have a tougher time producing significant earnings or advancement gains as these findings from the report suggest:

Career coaches report that customers are taking up work supports and taking advantage of advancement opportunities, but customers' short-term advancement options are often limited. Career coaches in the Dayton and San Diego learning sites report that customers are often pleasantly surprised to discover the range of work supports available, particularly health care coverage and tax credits. Importantly, instances of customers using work supports to substitute for advancement have been rare, and coaches explain that customers approach advancement decisions with a pragmatic openness toward steps that might help them, but also with a sense of realism about opportunity constraints. Many customers are working in situations where there are few if any opportunities to advance. To move up, many customers must first complete education or training, which is a longer-term process.

Coaches’ time for intensive career planning is limited. Coaches have by and large enthusiastically embraced the goals of the demonstration — and they have made substantial progress in breaking out of old institutional roles and serving their customers in new ways — but in general they have not engaged customers as intensively as expected, nor have they engaged their full caseloads. The reasons are similar to those for the inconsistent use of the calculator, including staff turnover, vacancies that have not been filled, the need to spend more time than expected on recruitment, and administrative duties.