Overview of Federal Workforce Development Policies

http://www.greenforall.org/resources/workforce-alliance.pdf

• Great overview of 16 different federal programs that allocate funding to training activities, spread over a number of departments./
• 11 When Congress authorized WIA, it stipulated that these different types of service should be provided to clients in a particular sequence, with the expectation that program participants could be deemed eligible for the next, higher-cost form of service only if they had failed to secure employment after receiving the lower-cost services. This approach has dramatically decreased the amount of training provided under WIA relative to previous federal programs.
• 14 How training works under WIA: WIA requires that training services be provided primarily
• through vouchers, known as Individual Training Accounts (ITAs), rather than through the contract method used under JTPA to purchase services from training providers. WIA participants needing training are supposed to receive an ITA, which they can use to purchase services from any organization on their local WIB’s “Eligible Training Provider” (ETP) list.
• 18 In 2004, 48.5 percent of adult WIA exiters received training, compared to 76.3 percent of adults who participated in training during the last year of JTPA (PY99).
• Did not read whole document, but may be useful in talking about poor transitional assistance