Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request

Title: DHHS/ACF/ASPE/DOL Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation: Rhode Island 15-Month Survey Amendment.

OMB No. 0970-0276.

Description: The Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation Project (HtE) seeks to learn what works in this area to date and is explicitly designed to build on past research by rigorously testing a wide variety of approaches to promote employment and improve family functioning and child well-being. The HtE project is designed to help Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients, former TANF recipients, or low-income parents who are hard-to-employ. The project is sponsored by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).

The evaluation involves an experimental, random assignment design in four sites, testing a diverse set of strategies to promote employment for low-income parents who face serious obstacles to employment. The four include: (1) Intensive care management to facilitate the use of evidence-based treatment for major depression among parents receiving Medicaid in Rhode Island; (2) job readiness training, worksite placements, job coaching, job development and other training opportunities for recent parolees in New York City; (3) pre-employment services and transitional employment for long-term TANF participants in Philadelphia; and (4) home- and center-based care, enhanced with self-sufficiency services, for low-income families who have young children or are expecting in Kansas and Missouri.

Materials for follow-up surveys for each of these sites were previously submitted to OMB and were approved. The purpose of this submission is to add physiological measures to the follow-up effort to the Rhode Island study.

Respondents: The respondents to this component of the Rhode Island follow-up survey will be low-income parents and their children from the Rhode Island site currently participating in the HtE Project. As described in the prior OMB submission, these parents are Medicaid recipients between the ages of 18 and 45 receiving Medicaid through the managed care provider United Behavioral Health (UBH) in Rhode Island who meet study criteria with regard to their risk for depression. Children are the biological, adopted, and step-children of these parents, between the ages of 1 and 18 years of age.

Estimates Total Annual Burden Hours: 534.65

Additional Information: Copies of the proposed collection may be obtained by writing to the Administration for Children and Families, Office of Information Services, 370 L'Enfant Promenade, SW., Washington, DC 20447, Attn: ACF Reports Clearance Officer. All requests should be identified by the title of the information collection. E mail address: infocollection@acf.hhs.gov.

OMB Comment: OMB is required to make a decision concerning the collection of information between 30 and 60 days after publication of this document in the Federal Register. Therefore, a comment is best assured of having its full effect if OMB receives it within 30 days of publication. Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information collection should be sent directly to the following: Office of Management and Budget, Paperwork Reduction Project, Fax: 202-395-6974, Attn: Desk Officer for the Administration for, Children and Families.