Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:50:46.174Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Learning, Earning and Parenting (LEAP) Program of Ontario Works Two Decades On: A Descriptive Cohort Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2020

Tracy Smith-Carrier ,
Don Kerr  and
Juyan Wang
Tracy Smith-Carrier
Affiliation:
School of Social Work, King’s University College at Western University, London, Ontario, Canada, E-mail: tsmithca@uwo.ca
Don Kerr
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, King’s University College at Western University, London, Ontario, Canada, E-mail: dkerr@uwo.ca
Juyan Wang
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Social Science Centre, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada, E-mail: jwang247@uwo.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although scholarship on social assistance (or welfare) has proliferated over the years, there remains a dearth of literature on the Learning, Earning and Parenting (LEAP) program for teenage parents. We followed two LEAP cohorts (Cohort One: 2003-8; Cohort Two: 2009-14) over five years to explore how many had stayed, shifted programs (e.g. to the disability program) or left social assistance entirely. Exit rates, while higher for Cohort One (51.3 per cent relative to 43 per cent for Cohort Two), were fairly low; roughly 10 per cent lower than those of the overall social assistance caseload. LEAP does not appear to vastly improve the employment prospects of a significant proportion of its participants over time. American researchers are proposing a shift in programming towards a two-generation approach, pairing early childhood education with parent human capital development, Ontario – who imported LEAP from its US counterparts from the beginning – should follow suit.

Keywords

Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs)LearningEarning and Parenting (LEAP) programsocial assistanceteen motherswelfareworkfare
Type
Articles
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , October 2020 , pp. 573 - 584
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arai, L. (2009) ‘What a difference a decade makes: rethinking teenage pregnancy as a problem’, Social Policy and Society, 8, 2, 171–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bielski, Z. (2013) ‘Why teen pregnancy is on the rise again in Canada (and spiking in these provinces’, The Globe and Mail, 29 January, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/why-teen-pregnancy-is-on-the-rise-again-in-canada-and-spiking-in-these-provinces/article7927983/ [accessed 22.12.2018].Google Scholar
Boyle, M. (2018) ‘Enacted stigma and felt stigma experienced by adults who stutter’, Journal of Communication Disorders, 73, 50–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bradbury, B. (2006) The Impact of Young Motherhood on Education, Employment and Marriage, Social Policy Research Centre Discussion Paper No. 148, https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/1419.html [accessed 20.12.2018].Google Scholar
Breitkreuz, R. S. and Williamson, D. L. (2012) ‘The self-sufficiency trap: a critical examination of welfare-to-work’, Social Service Review, 86, 4, 660–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, S. (2016) Teenage Pregnancy, Parenting and Intergenerational Relations, London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chase-Lansdale, P. and Brooks-Gunn, J. (2014) ‘Two-generation programs in the twenty-first century’, The Future of Children, 24, 1, 13–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cherlin, A. and Fomby, P. (2005) ‘Welfare, work, and changes in mothers’ living arrangements in low-income families’, Population Research and Policy Review, 23, 5, 543–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, J. (2015) ‘It’s not all doom and gloom for teenage mothers: exploring the factors that contribute to positive outcomes’, International Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 20, 4, 470–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Driscoll, A. (2014) ‘Adult outcomes of teen mothers across birth cohorts’, Demographic Research, 30, 44, 1277–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Duffy, J. and Levin-Epstein, J. (2002) Add It Up: Teen Parents and Welfare…Undercounted, Oversanctioned, Undeserved, Washington, DC: Center for Law and Social Policy, https://www.policyarchive.org/handle/10207/13824 [accessed 11.02.2020].Google Scholar
Ellis-Sloan, K. (2014) ‘Teenage mothers, stigma and their ‘presentations of self”, Sociological Research Online, 19, 1, 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, P. M. (2007) ‘(Not) taking account of precarious employment: workfare policies and lone mothers in Ontario and the UK’, Social Policy and Administration, 41, 1, 29–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Federal-Provincial-Territorial Directors of Income Support (2016) Social Assistance Statistical Report: 2009-13, https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/social-assistance/reports/statistical-2009-2013.html [accessed 01.04.2019].Google Scholar
Fulford, A. and Ford-Gilboe, M. (2004) ‘An exploration of the relationships between health promotion practices, health work, and felt stigma in families headed by adolescent mothers’, Canadian Journal of Nursing Research, 36, 4, 46–72.Google ScholarPubMed
Garrett, P. (2017) ‘“Castaway categories”: examining the re-emergence of the “underclass” in the UK’, Journal of Progressive Human Services, 30, 1, 25–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gazso, A. (2012) ‘Moral codes of mothering and the introduction of welfare-to-work in Ontario’, Canadian Review of Sociology, 49, 1, 26–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Government of Ontario (1997) Ontario Disability Support Program Act, SO 1997, c 25, du0tsrdospf80.cloudfront.net/docs/97o25b_e.doc [accessed 11.02.2020].Google Scholar
Government of Ontario (2015) Ontario Works Policy Directives. 8.2 Learning, Earning and Parenting (LEAP), Ministry of Community and Social Services, http://www.mcss.gov.on.ca/documents/en/mcss/social/directives/ow/0802.pdf [accessed 16.12.2018].Google Scholar
Government of Ontario (2009) Initial Report on Public Health: Teen Pregnancy. Ministry of Health and Long-term Care, https://collections.ola.org/mon/23008/295012.pdf [accessed 11.02.2020].Google Scholar
Hamilton, L. (2016) ‘Incentives in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program: a review of the literature’, Poverty and Public Policy, 8, 2, 141–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, P., Lawson, E., Gaudet, C., Chisholm, J., Kaur, J. and Abercromby, S. (2018) ‘At the intersection of idealized youth and marginalized almost-adulthood: how girls negotiate young motherhood in London, Ontario’, Journal of Youth Studies, 21, 9, 1182–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartley, D. and Taylor-Gooby, P. (1992) Dependency Culture: The Explosion of a Myth, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Herd, D., Mitchell, A. and Lightman, E. (2005) ‘Rituals of degradation: administration as policy in the Ontario Works programme’, Social Policy and Administration, 39, 1, 65–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochschild, A. with Machung, A. (2012) The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home, New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Hotz, V., Imbens, G. and Klerman, J. (2006) ‘Evaluating the differential effects of alternative welfare-to-work training components: a reanalysis of the California GAIN program’, Journal of Labor Economics, 24, 3, 521–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kamp, A. (2007) ‘Policy hysteria in practice: teenage parents at secondary school in Australia’, in McLeod, J. and Allard, A. (eds.), Learning from the Margins: Young Women, Social Exclusion and Education, London: Routledge, 95–107.Google Scholar
Kamp, A. and Kelly, P. (2014) ‘Once were young: reflexive hindsight and the problem of teen parents’, Journal of Youth Studies, 17, 7, 887–900.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, D. M. (1996) ‘Stigma stories: four discourses about teen mothers, welfare, and poverty’, Youth and Society, 27, 4, 421–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kelly, P. (2000) ‘The dangerousness of youth-at-risk: the possibilities of surveillance and intervention in uncertain times’, Journal of Adolescence, 23, 4, 463–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kerr, D., Smith-Carrier, T. and Wang, J. (2019) ‘From temporary financial assistance to longer term income support: probing the growth in Ontario’s Disability Support Program (ODSP)’, Canadian Review of Social Policy, 79, 11–31.Google Scholar
Lightman, E., Herd, D. and Mitchell, A. (2008) ‘Precarious lives: work, health and hunger among current and former welfare recipients in Toronto’, Journal of Policy Practice, 7, 4, 242–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lightman, E., Mitchell, A. and Herd, D. (2005) ‘Welfare to what? After workfare in Toronto’, International Social Security Review, 58, 4, 95–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayson, M. (1999) ‘Ontario Works and single mothers: redefining “deservedness and the social contract”’, Journal of Canadian Studies, 34, 2, 89–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Office of Family Assistance (2017) About TANF. US Department of Health and Human Services, https://www.acf.hhs.gov/ofa/programs/tanf/about [accessed 10.12.2018].Google Scholar
Smith, C., Strohschein, L. and Crosnoe, R. (2018) ‘Family histories and teen pregnancy in the United States and Canada’, Journal of Marriage and Family, 80, 5, 1244–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
SmithBattle, L. (2007) ‘Legacies of advantage and disadvantage: the case of teen mothers’, Public Health Nursing, 24, 5, 409–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
SmithBattle, L. I. (2013) ‘Reducing the stigmatization of teen mothers’, MCN: The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing, 38, 4, 235–41.Google ScholarPubMed
SmithBattle, L., Loman, D., Chantamit-o-pas, C. and Schneider, J. (2017) ‘An umbrella review of meta-analyses of interventions to improve maternal outcomes for teen mothers’, Journal of Adolescence, 59, 97–111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith-Carrier, T. (2010) ‘A LEAP forward or a LEAP back? Revelations about the Learning, Earning and Parenting (LEAP) program of Ontario Works’, Social Policy and Society, 9, 2, 155–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith-Carrier, T. (2011) ‘Challenging the dominant discourse of ‘welfare dependency’: a multi- episode survival analysis of Ontario Works spells’, PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.Google Scholar
Smith-Carrier, T. (2017) ‘Reproducing social conditions of poverty: a critical feminist analysis of social assistance participation in Ontario, Canada’, Journal of Women, Politics and Policy, 38, 4, 498–521.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sommer, T., Sabol, T., Chor, E., Schneider, W., Chase-Lansdale, P., Brooks-Gunn, J., Small, M., King, C. and Yoshikawa, H. (2018) ‘A two-generation human capital approach to anti-poverty policy’, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 4, 3, 118–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Statistics Canada (2019) The Ontario Social Assistance Database (OSAD), https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/rdc/data/surveys [accessed 11.02.2020].Google Scholar
Theodore, N. and Peck, J. (2001) ‘Searching for best practice in welfare-to-work: the means, the method and the message’, Policy and Politics, 29, 1, 81–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
UNICEF (2001) A League Table of Teenage Births in Rich Nations, https://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/repcard3e.pdf [accessed 12.12.2018].Google Scholar
Wallace, G. (2009) ‘The effects of family caps on the subsequent fertility decisions of never-married mothers’, Journal of Population Research, 26, 1, 73–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar