The National Welfare to Work Study funded by Social Development Partnerships/Partenariats en développement social Human Resources Development Canada / Développement des ressources humaines has 3 main objectives:

• to produce an inventory of the different types of welfare to work programs emerging across the country.
• to analyze the dynamic relationship between program design, community resources and individual/family capacities.
• to assess the impact of the linkage between program design, community resources and individual/family capacities on program success.

The first objective has been completed with the collection of comprehensive information on all provinces/territories' welfare to work programs. Both the National Inventory on Welfare to Work in Canada and an accompanying discussion paper entitled National Welfare to Work Programs: from new mandates to exiting bureaucracies to individual and program accountability was published and disseminated by the Canadian Council on Social Development / Le Conseil canadien de développement social in the fall of 1998.

The other objectives were addressed in Phase 2 of the study which included data collection in six Canadian communities. All the communities had experiences with welfare to work program implementation. Phase 2 also involved updating the original National Inventory on Welfare to Work in Canada. The final report will be disseminated in the winter of 2002.

Carolyne A. Gorlick, Ph.D/Associate Professor, King's College, The University of Western Ontario is the principal investigator of this research project and Guy Brethour is the research associate/coordinator.