The Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) system provides "programs to prepare youth and
adults facing serious barriers to employment for participation in the labor force by providing
job training and other services that will result in increased employment and earnings,
increased educational and occupational skills, and decreased welfare
dependency, thereby improving the quality of the work force and enhancing the productivity and
competitiveness of the Nation."
- NEW Act amends the JTPA to encourage a broader
range of job training and placement opportunities for JTPA-eligible women. Thus, the goal of
NEW is to create systemic change in JTPA to make its service delivery system more responsive
to women in nontraditional training and placement.
- NEW Act encourages efforts
by the Federal, State, and local levels of government aimed at providing a wider range of
opportunities for women under the JTPA system:
- To provide incentives to establish programs that will train, place, and retain women
in nontraditional fields
- To facilitate coordination between the Job Training Partnership Act and the Carl D. Perkins
Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act to maximize the effectiveness of resources
available for training and placing women in nontraditional employment.
- NEW Act Demonstration Program promotes new and existing exemplary JTPA programs or
other JTPA capacity-building activities that have been successful in training and placing
women in JTPA sponsored nontraditional occupations (NTOs).
- Support those State JTPA systems that have a background in providing leadership
to other SDAs, including program and staff capacity-building to supplement successful
activities or build new activities or program service delivery, including substantial goals
for women in JTPA/NTO.
- NEW Act demonstration projects provide guidance to the JTPA system.
- As exemplary programs, demonstration grants cannot be used as a source of funding for
ongoing programs because the Department of Labor might also run into the prohibition of
supplanting other program funds and lessen the goal to institutionalize successful programs.
Demonstration grants may supplement but not supplant funding.
- Implementing The NEW Act Demonstration Program
- An Interagency Agreement between the Employment and Training Administration and the Women's
Bureau in the Department of Labor to administer the NEW Act defined responsibilities. The Bureau
has the responsibility for implementing and administering the NEW Act'sDemonstration Program
Grants to States.
- The NEW ACT authorizes the Demonstration Program at $1.5
million annually in fiscal years 1992, 1993, 1994, and 1995 to allow the Secretary to make
grants to up to six States each year.
- The NEW Act further requires that the grants
be awarded to States that have exemplary programs to train and place women into nontraditional
occupations that are the growth occupations with good potential for increased earning potential.
These and other programs initiatives supported by NEW will provide models to be replicated and
disseminated to the State's other Service Delivery Areas (SDAs) and other State JTPA systems.
- The Act's requirements for replication and dissemination encourages and promote the
institutionalization of women in nontraditional training and employment.
- NEW Demonstration Program Grants usually run for 18 months.
- The NEW Act requires the Department to report and make recommendations to Congress as
follows. Within five (5) years of enactment, the NEW Act requires the Department of Labor to
report on:
- The extent that States and service delivery areas have succeed in training, placing, and
retaining women in nontraditional employment, together with a description of the efforts made
and the results of such efforts
- Effectiveness of the demonstration programs
established by JTPA in developing and replicating approaches to train and place women in
nontraditional employment, including a summary of activities performed by grant recipients
under the demonstration programs authorized under Section 457 of JTPA.
- With individual State NEW Projects operating as long as two years, the Department of Labor
expects to complete its report to Congress in 1998.
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