Olga Vazquez spent 24 years in an abusive marriage before she packed up and left her home with her youngest daughter, heading to a shelter with little more than the hope of starting over. Today she runs her own cleaning company in Fort Worth, a milestone she credits to a local anti-poverty program that paired her with a personal coaching team for years, not weeks.
Vazquez’s story was first told by WFAA, which reported that after leaving her marriage, she joined Catholic Charities Fort Worth’s Padua program, a poverty-exit initiative that began in Fort Worth about 12 years ago. According to the outlet, Catholic Charities Fort Worth covered one month of her rent as she got back on her feet, and she went on to graduate from Padua with honors. Vazquez has since started New Beginnings Cleaning Solutions, a company serving homes, businesses, churches, restaurants, and offices, and she has said she hopes it will eventually create jobs and help other people, not just generate income for her own family.
A Program Built Around Years, Not Weeks
Padua works differently than most emergency assistance programs. Per the same WFAA report, it uses intensive coaching and navigation to help clients identify goals and overcome the barriers keeping them in poverty, primarily serving adults who are willing and able to work and aiming to help them find employment that can sustain their families. Vazquez has said the program gave her more than a paycheck plan: she learned to set both short-term and long-term financial goals and told WFAA that Padua gives “education, hope and guidance.”
That structure is by design. Each Padua client is assigned a two-person team, a master’s-level case manager and a bachelor’s-level caseworker, who keep caseloads small, according to Results for America. The program runs at an average cost of $11,000 per participant and carries no fixed completion timeline, with participants allowed to stay enrolled for two to five years until they reach full self-sufficiency. To qualify in Tarrant County, applicants must live in the county, earn household income under 200% of the federal poverty line, and have at least one able and willing adult worker in the home, criteria that often bring in clients who first arrived seeking emergency assistance from Catholic Charities Fort Worth.
Notre Dame Research Backs Up the Model
The claims behind Padua’s reputation are not just anecdotal. A randomized controlled trial from the University of Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities evaluated 427 participants enrolled between 2015 and 2016 and found that those who were unemployed at enrollment saw a 67% increase in the probability of working full-time and a 46% increase in monthly earnings compared with a control group. The same study found that participants who lacked stable housing when they enrolled were 64% more likely to achieve stable housing, and that participants overall were 53% more likely to report improvements in their personal health…