Leading Edge States Project

About this grant

This grant will support the Center for Law and Social Policy’s Leading Edge States project, created to promote the most promising strategies for improving the economic well-being of low-income families and their children. The goal of the project is to increase the number of states that integrate job quality, access to skills training and access to government-subsidized work supports into the framework of state and local poverty reduction, workforce development and economic development strategies.Multiyear funding will enable the project to pursue objectives that include identifying promising strategies; documenting the experiences and lessons learned from states and localities implementing such strategies; synthesizing evaluation efforts and outcome data for programs; and disseminating the information through various formats.Recent activities included working to raise awareness of the ways in which reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act could have an impact on efforts to connect workers with better jobs and reduce the poverty of working families; and educating state and local program administrators about promising welfare reform/workforce development approaches.