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Reach Up Annual Report 2020 10 • Child Development – Children who have serious developmental delays, serious behavioral problems, no child care available, disabled child, child has IEP, other • Legal – Legal or court proceedings, divorce, history of criminal activity, other • Family Interactions – Efforts being sabotaged, multiple agency involvement, family make-up frequently changing, frequent family conflicts, domestic violence, needed in home, other • Work Habits – Lacks hard skills, lacks soft skills, other • Food and Clothing – Inadequate clothing, inadequate nutrition, other

To help mitigate these obstacles, Reach Up provides incentives and support services designed to help families reach their employment goals. Support services improve participants’ prospects for employment and job retention. The need for support services is determined during assessment, reassessment, and during the creation and modification of the Family Development Plan. Reach Up provides a wide range of support services including payment for childcare and transportation. Case managers also use the “Your Money, Your Goals” toolkit to integrate financial capability into the program and to address financial barriers. While transportation remains a significant barrier to employment for Vermont Reach Up participants, the transportation barrier has steadily decreased over the last 9 years from a high of 42% to the current 29%.

It is important to remember that these obstacles can have profound effects on the children in these families. Some obstacles, such as housing insecurity, can literally affect the developing brains of young children. There is strong research to suggest that factors such as increased income, stable housing, enough food to eat, and high-quality childcare in the early years improves outcomes for children for decades. Devoting resources to families to address these barriers not only affects parental ability to enter the workforce today, but also results in greater school success for their children and an increased likelihood that children will enter the workforce in the future.

Reach Up Participants with Deferments from the Work Requirement A deferment is a temporary postponement of the program’s full work requirement. A deferred participant must have a Family Development Plan that includes an employment goal. They also participate in activities that address the reason for the deferment, ultimately leading to the achievement of the employment goal. Consistent with the Department’s strength-based approach to case management, staff modify rather than defer the number of work requirement hours for participants who can work at least 10 hours per week. Figures in the chart below represent the deferment status of adults with a work requirement: