Evaluators: Susan Allen, Ph.D. and Jerry Miller, Ph.D.

University of South Florida, School of Social Work

The United Way of Tampa Bay (UWTB) Special Summer Initiative linked three designated focus areas that are part of its Family Well-Being Agenda Initiative: Adult Education, Workforce Participation, and Child Care.

The Summer Initiative required participating agencies to provide the following:

1. Financial literacy training to parents (the adult education focus)…

2. …who then received free summer care for their children (the child care focus).

3. The child care allowed the parent to maintain or obtain employment (the workforce participation

focus).

There is a relationship between the components of the Summer Initiative and a long-term goal of financial wellbeing for families. The child care directly impacted the economic status of a family by providing free child care, thus saving the family a significant expense. Indirectly, child care enabled the mostly single mothers who participated in the program to maintain employment or attend school. This, of course, also positively impacted the financial state of a family.

Finally, by increasing the knowledge of the parent about financial issues, it was anticipated that the family will learn how to better manage debt and perhaps be able to achieve improved financial status. Taken together, these three activities were designed to improve overall family finances.

This report is the result of a unified evaluation of the initiative by researchers at the University of South Florida. Researchers collected data from agency staff and parents through interviews, focus groups, and written surveys in order to assess the impact of the initiative on families, agencies, and the community.

Results Overall Program

The 2006 Initiative appears to have served its targeted population. Nearly all of the participating parents had low to moderate income and were employed. The program served families who were not eligible for many of the social support programs due to their household income, but had limited disposable income in order to purchase quality services.

Financial Literacy

There was much diversity in scheduling sessions a mong agencies. Sessions were held at some sites on weekday evenings and at other sites on Saturdays. Some sites held the training over multiple days, others held the training in a single all-day session.

Agencies reported that 96 percent of the parents whose children attended the summer child care completed the financial literacy training.

Most parents and agencies thought the training was useful and appreciated the wide range of topics covered. Nevertheless, a common concern was that some of the material was too basic to meet the parents’ needs.

Of parents surveyed, 76 percent reported improvements in their family financial situation since taking the course.

People learned from the financial literacy training

For the individual, there appears to have been changes in their understanding of financial issues in four categories: money management, consumer behaviors, planning behavior, and financial literacy knowledge. Specific knowledge gains were reported for many of the important areas of financial literacy.

Participants reported they ‘slightly’ to ‘strongly agreed’ with the following statements. They learned:

• 88% had household income below $30K
• 80% were single parent head of household
• 83% were employed
• 77% of parents were between 25-54 with a mean average age of 33
• 70% were Black; 28% were White; 16% were Hispanic/Latino
• There was an average of 2.5 children in the home.
• Most parents lived and/or worked within four miles of the center,so this program provided accessible child care for families.
• The summer child care clearly functioned as an incentive for the financial literacy classes. Most families and agencies were supportive of the linkage between the programs so that the parents “earned” the child care by completing the financial literacy course.

While gaining a new understanding of finances is important, changing behavior is one of the most important goals of such training and this was assessed in the survey. Most reported positive changes and the reported behavior changes seemed significant. As a caution, however, there was no way in this study to verify the pre and post training behavior changes and retrospective memories may be unreliable. However, it appears, at the very least, many if not most of the participating parents learned a number of the lessons.

They reported increased savings for a major purchase (49%), reduced credit card use (69%), better regularity on bill payment (63%), and more price-conscious shopping (82%). These reports, along with the positive feedback on the course, seem to indicate there was individual benefit to

the training.

The Summer Program Helped Family Income

A primary target goal of this program was that the summer child care would allow parents to maintain their jobs. All programs provided full-day care. Of the surveyed parents, 87 percent agreed that the child care hours fit well with their work schedule. Adults in 79 percent of the households who responded to the survey were able to work during the summer. In addition, 49 percent of the parents reported that they were able to add to the family income by working additional hours while their children were enrolled in the summer program. Focus group families identified that money saved by having free child care allowed them to have additional funds for important expenses such as savings, medicine, transportation costs, and child care needs for their younger children.

Summer Child Care

Many of the families enrolled in this Initiative had previous experience with the agency, especially for school-year or summer child care. However, the Initiative did allow agencies to serve more low and moderately low income families and helped to promote innovative programs for children. Agencies quickly filled their slots for the program.

More than half of the children enrolled in summer child care through this Initiative were entering first through the third grades, young elementary school children in need of care while their parents work.

The Summer Program Provided a Safe Environment for Children

Parents’ leading objective for enrolling their child in this summer program was a safe environment,  followed by promoting social and academic skills. These reasons were all rated more strongly than the fact that the child care was free. Most parents agreed that the program fulfilled their objectives.

Some parents from a few of the agencies reported concerns about supervision and a program’s ability to terminate children who displayed inappropriate conduct. Parents also voiced concerns about the need for methods and counselor training to accommodate children with special emotional and behavioral needs.

Forty percent had not had affordable child care last summer and 38 percent of surveyed parents do not have affordable options during the school year. Many said that without this program they would have had to turn to child care options that would have been less safe and less stimulating for their children.

Some Evidence of Community Impact

Child Care

There is also evidence that the program provided higher quality child care options for these low and moderately low income families. In response to focus group and survey questions, many said that without this program they would have had to turn to child care options that would have been less safe and less stimulating for their children. When surveyed about child care alternatives, 23 percent said they might have left younger children with an older sibling, 39 percent would have enrolled the child in a lower price program, and 41 percent mentioned leaving their school-age children with an adult family member or friend. Typical scenarios of arrangements made last summer as reported in the parent focus groups included the following:

• Enrolling the child in a program that had caused financial hardship for the family
• Arranging for the child to stay with a family member where she was bored
• Arranging for the child to stay with a friend in the morning, though the mother worried that was not a safe situation, and then sending the child to a subsidized program in the afternoon.

Job Market

A number of community impact indicators cannot be assessed with just one year of data. However, there is some evidence that the Special Summer Initiative increased the work force pool in the communities served. Thirty-two percent (32%) of the survey respondents said they would have been unable to work without the free summer child care provided by this program. In addition, the hours available for work were reportedly increased due to the Initiative. Forty-nine percent (49%) reported they were able to work extra hours during the summer.