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Residents of East Cleveland are fighting to improve the quality of public education and access to vocational opportunities. "White flight" (Frey, 1979, p. 425), economic disinvestment, and ineffective political leadership have led to the disadvantages faced by East Cleveland (Kathi & Cooper, 2005). Nearly 1,200 vacant structures blight their 3.1 square mile landscape. Case Western Reserve University recognizes the potential roles that they can serve in aiding neighboring East Cleveland into becoming a desirable place to call home. MSSA students joined residents and firefighters to survey every vacant property in the City. Students utilized their experiences with conducting the survey, and through additional fieldwork, recommended strategies for the impact of vacant housing on topics like workforce development, education, safe streets and neighborhoods, and the senior population. This research, aided in part by the Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University will serve as the basis for a partnership for the revitalization of East Cleveland with contributions from students, the university, residents, community organizations, and the City of East Cleveland. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

Since mid-1999, a bold initiative has been underway in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, to improve the well-being of the youngest members of the greater Cleveland community. A community-wide initiative targeting children from birth through age five and their families was launched in July 1999, and in the following 5 years demonstrated substantial success in developing a universal and comprehensive approach for supporting families with young children. The Cuyahoga County Early Childhood Initiative (ECI), renamed Invest in Children in late 2004, provides a powerful case example of how one urban community recognized the needs of its young children and their families and sought to address them in an ongoing, comprehensive, and multifaceted way. This executive summary highlights the core elements of the Initiative and describes the experiences of the collaborators in meeting the needs of young children and their families and improving the outcomes for children. The main findings of the report include: (1) A community-wide network of services for young children and their families has been established, and the apparatus of county government has been altered to directly support and coordinate early childhood services; (2) More children under age six in Cuyahoga County are receiving needed services at earlier ages than ever before; (3) Children and their parents are beginning to show benefits from the services provided through the Initiative; (4) Efforts to deepen and extend the services, tailor them to individual needs, and assure continuing quality should continue; and (5) The public and private partners who established this Initiative have maintained their commitment for half a decade and recently recommitted to it, with a new strategic plan that outlines a continued focus on program improvement based on evaluation. The evaluation identified areas of ongoing challenge and recommendations to address these include: (1) Develop supplemental approaches to home-based strategies, involving individualized services tailored to caregiver characteristics, to engage (1) more at-risk families, and (2) family child care providers; (2) Develop a system to identify and intervene with families with a young child who lacks a consistent source of medical care (i.e., a medical home); (3) Promote quality improvement strategies for family child care and home visiting that include attracting qualified and motivated individuals to deliver services; (5) Continue supports and services for children with special needs; (4) Continue efforts to expand newborn home visiting beyond first time and teen parents; and (5) Advocate for high quality preschool programs and universal pre-kindergarten programs. (Contains 16 footnotes.) [This paper was submitted by the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences of the Case Western Reserve University with the Chapin Hall Center for Children of the University of Chicago and with consultants from Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For the full report, "Cuyahoga County Early Childhood Initiative Evaluation: Phase II Final Report," see ED533517.]

This report provides interim findings from a study of families leaving welfare in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The study is designed to monitor the status of families leaving cash assistance at multiple times and to compare the experiences of exit cohorts drawn at quarterly intervals throughout the process of welfare reform implementation. The report also describes differences in exiting families' experiences before and after time limits go into effect. This report covers exit cohorts from quarter 4, 1998 and quarter 1, 1999. A total of 8,265 assistance groups left cash assistance during this time period (8,768 adults and 16,213 children). Interviews were conducted with members of 198 assistance groups in these quarters. More than half of respondents said they left cash assistance on their own, and the main reason was usually connected to income, earnings, or family changes. It is estimated that 55% of families leaving cash assistance had incomes below the poverty level by the sixth month, and 14% of these lived below 50% of poverty. The level of work among survey respondents was high, with about 87% having held at least one job during the 6-month period. Most of the employed were not offered health benefits through their jobs, and most had experienced at least one hardship by the sixth month. Findings indicate the high levels of low-income employment among those who have left welfare cash assistance. Contains 23 figures.(SLD)

As of the 1997 Ohio welfare reform laws, families not receiving cash assistance and earning 135 percent or less of the poverty income were eligible for subsidized child care (non-assistance subsidized child care). This study sought to estimate the number of working families in Cuyahoga County, Ohio that could take advantage of non-assistance subsidized child care in 1997. A profile of working poor families that would qualify for non-assistance subsidized child care at a point in time was developed, using a cross-sectional design based on 1990 census data. Findings from this profile indicated that about 9,300 Cuyahoga County families with children under the age of 13 had two working parents or a single parent who worked and earned at or below 135 percent of the poverty rate. Among these families, 23 percent of the parents had less than a high school education; 15 percent had three or more children under age 13; 71 percent were headed by a single parent; and 19 percent depended on public assistance during the previous year. Based on the 1990 profile of Cuyahoga County, it was estimated that the number of children that qualified for non-assistance child care subsidies, at best, could be as low as 12,080, which is more than twice the number (5,400) of non-assistance subsidized child care slots provided by Cuyahoga County in June, 1997. (JS)

Several studies indicate that child care needs will dramatically increase as current and former welfare recipients enter the work force. This study examined the number and characteristics of families and children in Cuyahoga County, Ohio that would qualify for non-assistance child care subsidies. Data were obtained from the Public Use Microdata Sample drawn from the 1990 census. Families were included in the study if they had at least 1 child under 13 years, were headed by a single working parent or by 2 working parents, and had a 1989 income at or below 185 percent of poverty level. The findings indicated that there were over 8,000 children whose families would qualify for non-assistance child under the current voucher system. Of working families, 6,347 (7 percent) had incomes up to 100 percent of poverty level and would qualify for child care subsidies under the present system. Seventy-seven percent of these families were single-parent families, and 15 percent had received public assistance income during the previous year. Standard child care home and center operating hours would meet the needs of 63 percent of families with working parents. (Four appendices include data tables.) (KB)

This document includes the proposal and implementation of a study focusing on the family's expectations, orientations, and cultural practices with regard to the educational system and the system's expectations, orientations and practices concerning the child and his family. The basic problem in this exploratory study is to describe analytically the socialization system of families and schools in a community with substantial numbers of blacks and whites including Puerto Rican Americans point to congruity, ambiguity and difference in family and school socialization patterns and expectations; offer explanations of "why" these differences, indicating factors that influence their form and intensity; explore the impact of school-family experiences upon the socialization patterns of the family and describe techniques used by teachers and especially parents to handle and resolve such school-family discordancies and conflicts. The study population was obtained by including all potential black and Puerto Rican students in nine elementary schools in Lorain, Ohio, and randomly selected white students when needed. The final sample represented combinations of the following variables: cultural/racial group (black, Puerto Rican, white); class (working, middle), and family structure (intact--single or dual career, single parent). (Author/JM)

There are no direct measures of adult literacy in Cuyahoga County. Instead, this report uses estimates based on a statistical model derived from the National Survey of Adult Literacy. Adult literacy levels range from Level 1 (the most basic) to Level 5 (the most complex). People with Level 1 literacy are at a severe disadvantage in the sense that they are likely to be excluded from all but minimum-wage work, although most can read to a minimal extent. Individuals with Level 2 literacy have somewhat higher skills, but are also at a disadvantage in terms of being able to meet the demands of 21st century life. Level 3 literacy is the minimum standard necessary according to the National Educational Goals Panel. The skills associated with Level 3 are required for most post-secondary education and training programs. Levels 4 and 5 are necessary for more advanced work. In Cleveland, 29 % of the population is estimated to be at Level 1 and 37% at Level 2. For Cuyahoga County as a whole, the percentages are 14% and 30% at Levels 1 and 2 respectively. There were no statistically significant differences in these estimates compared to 2000.