An evaluation of employment outcomes achieved by transition to work service providers in Sydney, Australia.

Background: Very few studies have evaluated the performance of transition to work (TTW) service providers after the TTW program was implemented in New South Wales, Australia since 2005. This paper examines employment outcomes achieved by 35 TTW service providers in Sydney. Method: Descriptive statistics and chi-square were used to analyse the TTW outcome data. Results: We found that (a) there was a constant growth in the number of TTW program entrants and an overall increase in the employment rate of TTW clients; (b) many TTW service providers in Sydney served fewer than four clients annually on average; and (c) huge differences were evident in the employment outcome performance of individual TTW service providers. Conclusion: The TTW programme in Sydney allowed more school leavers to achieve employment. However, further research is needed to examine the associations between TTW program features and different employment outcomes to build an optimal TTW program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]