Service Voucher Research Articles

Which TANF Applicants Are Diverted, and What Are Their Outcomes?

Thirty‐four states have diversion programs in place that offer lump‐sum payments or service vouchers to applicants for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) who have short‐term needs, enabling them to avoid beginning a spell of aid. Using data from the National Survey of America’s Families, I find that diversion programs appear to target applicants at the high and low ends of the educational spectrum, as well as Hispanic and married families. Diverters are substantially less likely to be employed than TANF leavers and more likely to receive food stamps. These findings suggest that the need for short‐term assistance may recur.

Pierre Bellon, founder and President-Director General of Sodexho Alliance, on working hard and having fun

Executive Summary Sodexho Alliance is a global diversified service business founded by Pierre Bellon, its current President-Director General, in 1966 in Marseilles, France. M. Bellon's family had over 60 years' experience in maritime catering for cruise ships, and he wanted to go further. He began by providing food service for company cafeterias, hospitals, and schools and by 1968 had expanded to Paris. In 1971 he obtained a cafeteria contract in Belgium, and from that continued into Germany and Africa. In 1983, the company offered its stock for the first time on the Paris Bourse. By 1984 it had expanded to the Americas, Japan, South Africa, and Russia. In 1995 it formed an alliance with Gardner Merchant in the UK and changed its name in recognition of this alliance. Most recently, Sodexho Alliance bought Marriott's Management Services and is now the largest contract food service operator in the world. Today, Sodexho is also the world's largest operator of remote work sites (e.g., mining and drilling locations located at a distance from populations centers), the second largest service voucher issuer, and the largest operator of river and harbor cruises. Sodexho is a part of the CAC 40, the primary industrial index on the Paris Stock Exchange. M. Bellon was instrumental in establishing the Sodexho Institute on the Quality of Daily Life and the Center for Young Company Managers. He has served as the president of the National Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Chains and the Management Improvement Council. He served as a member of the Economic and Social Council of France and the Executive Council of the National Council of French Employers.

Vouchers As an Alternative Public Sector Funding System

This paper analyses the voucher concept. It considers different types of vouchers in the public and private sectors, distinguishes between explicit and implicit vouchers, and develops both a general model and a local government model of vouchers. It also reviews arguments for and against vouchers, considers the characteristics and dimensions of vouchers and identifies the rights and responsibilities attached to their use. Based on this comprehensive analysis, it develops a new definition of public service vouchers incorporating exit and voice. The analysis also provides a schema that can be used to design, modify and evaluate individual voucher systems.

Social Service Vouchers: Issues for Social Work Practice

Social Service Vouchers: Issues for Social Work Practice

Why Not Social Service Vouchers?

Why Not Social Service Vouchers?

Recreation Vouchers: A Case Study in Administrative Innovation and Citizen Participation

The basic idea of vouchers is to give resources to citizens so they can purchase the services of their choice from authorized suppliers. In their classic form, which was described by Milton Friedman over a quarter of a century ago, vouchers are given to citizens by a government agency.' Citizens exchange the vouchers for services delivered by their preferred supplier. The provider of the services then returns them to the agency and receives cash for the vouchers acquired. The fundamental principle is that vouchers can be used to subsidize potential users directly, rather than allocating that same amount of subsidy to a service or facility, or to an agency which operates that service or facility. Efforts are continually being made to increase the responsiveness of local government to citizens' needs and demands. There has been a continuing interest in how local governments can best incorporate citizen participation, citizen attitudes, and citizen preferences into delivery decisions to ensure responsive prioritizing of resources. Traditional approaches often have proved disappointing to participation advocates. Accordingly, more recent approaches have offered more sophisticated techniques to determine what local government services the citizens of a particular community want to increase, retain, decrease, or terminate. Prominent among these techniques has been survey research.2 Vouchers may lead to more comprehensive and more accurate citizen input than surveys, because they enable citizens to for preferences with the equivalent of dollars. Each citizen has a direct, executive, and continuing voice in shaping public policy by his or her vote of vouchers.3 Vouchers can be viewed as the ultimate in citizen participation:

The Community Service Voucher Program

This paper describes and evaluates the initial use of the community service voucher pro gram, a program which used federal funds to empower four organizations in disadvan taged Chicago neighborhoods to contract for university resources. The analysis presents the concept behind the program and describes the circumstances of its implementation and various program outcomes. The analysis ends with an evaluation of program impact, recommendations for how to expand and replicate the program, and a discussion of its potential in different university-disadvantaged community settings.