.....Thus, as we approach Labor Day 2024 it is worth saying a word about a strategy that is building individual agency and job placement/retention skills among welfare recipients, ex-offenders, out-of-school youth, and more recently adults on the autism spectrum—workers struggling to find a role in the job world. The strategy focuses on “executive functioning”— the mental skills used to execute tasks, including emotional control, stress tolerance, time management, organization, mental flexibility, and persistence. It draws on insights from the neurosciences on goal setting and implementation.

At the center of this strategy is the New-Hampshire based neuropsychologist Dick Guare and his son Colin. Over the past decade, the Guares have overseen executive functioning coaching for a range of low income unemployed workers, with promising results. For their latest project, “MyGoals”, the Guares are partnering with the workforce specialists at MDRC, coaching more than 900 low income adults in Baltimore and Houston.....

.....With philanthropic funding from Arnold Ventures and others, MDRC and Guare partnered to adapt Guare’s executive functioning coaching approach that built on the Ramsey County experiences, as well as on the Mobility Mentoring model developed by the Boston-based nonprofit Employment Pathways (EMPath). Their project, which came to be called “MyGoals,” enlisted the Housing Authority of Baltimore and Houston Housing Authority as project sites. The federal Department of Health and Human Services joined with funding for Mathematica and Abt Associates to work with MDRC to track and evaluate results.

The project focused on adults receiving federal housing assistance who were not working or minimally employed (working fewer than 20 hours per month). Each participant was partnered with a job coach who met with them at least monthly for up to three years. The job coach followed a structured set of protocols designed by the Guares and MDRC, emphasizing 12 executive skills related to “planning, organizing, controlling one’s emotions, staying focused and following through on tasks”—skills they described as “particularly important in a knowledge-based labor market that is already complicated to navigate.”.....

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