Community social service workers, career counsellors and educators, by working together, inform and help clients become involved in an employment or education focused project available in their community. All the projects use a combination of education and work experience, counselling, life skills and other social services to enable working age adults who are at risk of long term dependency upon social assistance to contribute to their maximum potential as productive members of society. The initiative will test the effectiveness of social assistance clients to achieve self-sufficiency through education, work experience and support services. Evaluation approach The issues for the evaluation of Investing In People are a mix of formative and summative issues. Formative issues focus on process concerns related to the administration, management and operations of the project, e.g. relevance and implementation, design and delivery, clarity of roles and responsibilities, selection criteria, lines of communication and contingency plans.
Summative issues address the outcome and longer term impacts and effects of the project.
Logistic constraints necessitated the creation of two categories of communities for the evaluation. The primary differences between the categories were the survey sample sizes, the number of key informants interviewed and that the principal researchers visited the Category I communities to carry out meetings and in-person interviews with participants and key informants. In the Category II project communities, the work was conducted by research assistants. The average age of participants was 29 years. Most frequently those who left the program early cited, as reasons, family responsibilities, not getting along with the instructor and personal issues.