by

and Claire Black of the Upjohn Institute. iAbstract This report describes a new assessment and referral system that was designed to assist local welfare-to-work program staff in targeting employment services more effectively in order to help welfare recipients find jobs. The motivation for the development of this system was the potential effects of targeting services to meet the specific needs of customers. The system is based on statistical methods and uses administrative data typically collected by welfare-to-work agencies. The Kalamazoo-St. Joseph Workforce Development Board piloted the new system by integrating it within the existing Work First program that it administers for the local workforce development area. The pilot was conducted from January 1998 through March 2000, during which time more than 6,000 welfare recipients participated in the program and used the assessment and referral tools. At the time of enrollment in the Work First program, staff used the statistical tool to make an initial assessment, referred to as an employability score, of each participant’s ability to find and retain a job. The staff then used the individual employability scores to refer customers to service providers tha