Evaluation of the Health and Well-being Outcomes from SCSEP Participation

June 1, 2021 – May 31, 2022

The Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP) is the sole federal workforce-training program for adults aged 55 and older. Part of the Older Americans Act, SCSEP provides on-the-job training to people with incomes at or below 125% of the federal poverty level. Despite its long history, few program evaluations have been completed. This study builds on a qualitative study by Dr. Cal Halvorsen, one of the Center's Project Leads, during the summer of 2020 that revealed how program participation led to increased knowledge and use of food and housing security programs, decreased social isolation and financial stress, and increased confidence, among other findings. This proposed feasibility, acceptability, and pilot study builds upon these findings and creates a new, interdisciplinary team that has never before collaborated. We will utilize our multidisciplinary expertise from the fields of psychology, nursing, social work, and sociology to assess SCSEP’s influence on participant health across multiple domains, including physical (e.g., daily exercise), psychological (e.g., mood), social (e.g., social engagement), financial (e.g., medical costs), and interpersonal (e.g., caregiving needs) health and well-being. To the best of our knowledge, this will be the first evaluation of the health and well-being outcomes from SCSEP participation.

Funding for this research is provided by the Schiller Institute Grants for Exploratory Collaborative Scholarship (SIGECS) program.