Enough Is Known for Action: Firing up Youth Standing Committees
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Transcript of Webinar
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Transcript by Noble Transcription Services Murrieta, CA BRIAN KEATING: And I'm going to go ahead and move us over so we can introduce our moderator today. Our moderator is LaSharn Youngblood from the Division of Youth Services. And thanks to everyone who voted in a poll that we're going to bring back just to find out who is joining us today, and while I bring that up I'll turn things over to LaSharn. LaSharn?
LASHARN YOUNGBLOOD: Good afternoon, everyone. Again my name is LaSharn Youngblood, and I'll be your moderator for today's webinar on firing up youth standing committees. We see that we have a very good representation of individuals on the webinar with us today. We have a large number of workforce system staff.
In addition we have youth providers who are working with our local systems, and also we have community-based organizations. So we have a varied group of individuals represented here today, and we hope you're here to learn and listen for effective processes on youth councils that you will be able to transfer as you transition from WIA to WIOA.
What one word comes to mind when you think of your youth standing committee?
MR. KEATING: All right. And we've brought up a separate chat to go ahead and type that in. So you'll notice that is right where the welcome chat was a moment ago. So we want to encourage you to go ahead and type into that chat. This will be coming up a couple of times. "What one word comes to mind when you think of your youth standing committee?"
Some of you are doing this already, but if you haven't done it already, go ahead and type in a word or words and let us know what that is. And I'll turn it back to LaSharn to comment on what you're seeing.
MS. YOUNGBLOOD: I see vibrant. I say youth council. I see engagement, leadership, outreach, youth focused, focused outreach, ineffective – we hope to change that – opportunity, mentor, guidance, engaged, expertise, assisting youth with needs, teamwork, more than WIOA compliant, committed.
Those are just a few that we've seen that have come through, which are very, very representative of how most people think when they think of youth councils, and we hope that you will continue to think in that vein as you move toward the youth standing committee. And I particularly like the term "vibrant." We think that represents all of the work going on in the youth councils around the country.
Again I'd like to welcome you to our session today. We have a very full agenda for this afternoon. We will be sharing youth standing committee language from the law and operating guidance, understand how you were thinking about youth standing committees going forward.
We hope to lift up youth councils and standing committee leaders, illustrate the great work that is already well underway. We plan to share tools and resources that are currently available and identify other tools and resources that will be helpful for all youth committees.
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 2 of 27 We have with us today lifting up youth councils from proven practices representatives from Montgomery County WIB in Maryland; Three Rivers WIB in Pennsylvania; New Haven WIB, Connecticut. Then we'll have a segment to ask coaches.
These people have been out in the field for many years, and they can provide information and share updates on what they're hearing from workforce system employees and participants in the field. Lastly we will be enhancing connectivity of youth serving organizations and what do you need to support your work.
I've already gone over today's objectives for the webinar. So we don't have to repeat this particular slide.
Next you will hear from Ms. Jennifer Kemp. She is the team manager for the Youth Policy and Performance Unit in the Division of Youth Services. Jennifer.
JENNIFER KEMP: Great, LaSharn. Thank you very much. As LaSharn said, we're really excited about the possibilities that the WIOA youth standing committees present for us.
I really like a lot of the responses that we saw in the chat, and I also want you all to know that there is an open chat going on during this conversation.
So if you have questions that come into your mind as we're talking, please feel free to type them in. We will see them, and others on the webinar will be able to see them as well. We'll use these comments and questions to field the discussion that we will have at the end of today's webinar. So please enter your thoughts there. Keep them flowing.
One of the comments that I saw was more than WIOA compliance, and that's something that was exciting for people about the new youth standing committees. And as a manager of the WIOA program, I totally agree.
We are looking forward to seeing youth standing committees that reflect the needs of the local community. We're looking forward to seeing standing committees that bring together partners that work to help youth receive their best outcomes, partners that could include competitive grants from the Department of Labor like YouthBuild or reintegration of ex-offender program, or our Job Corps programs.
We're also looking forward to programs that take advantage of what's available in the community through education funds and other. So that's a lot, as LaSharn mentioned. We can go to the next slide.
There is some official words around WIOA and the youth operating guidance. This is a TEGL that came out at the end of March. I imagine many of you have looked at already, but we are looking for the standing committee to provide information – (inaudible) – planning organizational and other issues related to the provision of services to youth.
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 3 of 27 We are looking forward to the local youth committees or youth standing committees having the opportunity to work in a way that brings together the local partners in advances with individual youth. I sort of think of it as the youth intermediary as another way to sort of think about it, and that's what we're looking forward to.
Existing youth councils can – do play sort of a critical role in helping local youth programs, and existing youth councils can become the standing youth committee. Some maybe they won't, and that's up to you at the local level to decide. Next slide, please.
So as I mentioned, WIOA went to local boards to designate an existing youth council as the youth standing committee as the – this is one option. A local board may choose not to establish a youth standing committee at all.
If this occurs, the local board is responsible for conducting the oversight of youth workforce investment activities and essentially Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act activities. Our goal is to provide through this webinar and other opportunities additional technical assistance to the field so that we can encourage local areas to choose to add youth standing committees.
We think that they're vital to the success of youth, and we – as you'll hear from today's presentation, we think that youth should be an active participant in these youth standing committees. We feel like youth have a lot to tell us about what they need, and we are really looking forward to hearing more from other presenters about how it's been successfully done in other locations.
So I hope you're as wowed with today's presentation as we were when we were setting it up.
On the next slide you will see that there is an opportunity for you to find out who the local youth councils are currently. If you go to the service locator address in this slide and type in your zip code, you will most likely pull up the folks who are the current leadership in the youth council and your local workforce investment boards. As you all know, we'll soon be changing the workforce development boards.
And so with that I'm going to turn this over to LaSharn who is going to introduce our next presenter.
MS. YOUNGBLOOD: Our next presenter is Kate O'Sullivan. She's the interim policy director, the National Youth Employment Coalition. Kate?
KATE O'SULLIVAN: Hi, everybody. Thank you so much, LaSharn and Jen. I am absolutely delighted to be with everyone here today. Really looking forward to learning a lot from all of the folks participating all around the country. Very exciting.
As LaSharn said, I serve as the interim policy director for the National Youth Employment Coalition, and just very briefly a little bit about NYEC. NYEC is a 35-year-old member-driven organization that's a national leader in promoting both effective practice and policy around youth employment, alternative education, and youth development.
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 4 of 27 And NYEC does this work through building strong connections between practitioners, researchers, policy makers, and others who are interested in youth employment in order to improve outcomes for low income young people who face barriers to success.
NYEC's members include youth program providers, public agencies and workforce boards, technical assistance providers, intermediaries, research and policy organizations, foundations, others. It's a really broad cross-section.
And one of our main areas of focus this year is of course WIOA implementation, and we provide information to the field about implementation. And we also engage our members and others in exchanging information, providing perspectives on implementation from the field so that we can get to promising practices, approaches that are developing, perspective challenges, how to address those challenges.
One of the things that we did a couple months ago in March is NYEC partnered with the National Association of Workforce Boards or NAWB. And what we did was we wanted to sort of get a preliminary pulse of the field, so to speak, in terms of where they were on the transition under WIOA.
So we developed a survey, and it went to all of NAWB's members as well as all the registrants of the NAWB forum, which comes up, as many of you may be familiar with it, at the end of March. And it's a large, large event. So went to a lot of folks, and we were very pleased. We got nearly 100 responses to the survey.
We shared the results with NYEC's members and many of our partners, including the DOL Division of Youth Services. And as they were developing this webinar, they thought that it might be interesting for you all to get a sense of how you may compare to some of these results now two months later.
So we had a few poll questions. We pulled out a few of the survey questions, and what we'll do is we'll ask you to respond to some of these questions and then we'll also share where the 100 folks who responded back in March were. So our first question is very basic in terms of where the field's heading. Is your local workforce board going to appoint a youth standing committee? So if you could just really quickly answer that right now.
MR. KEATING: All right. And you should see that up on your screen. It's a multiple choice question. So just go ahead and click the radio button next to your choice. I see many of you have already done that. So go ahead and do it now, if you haven't already done so. Your choices are yes, no, you have not decided, or you do not know. So go ahead and vote now in that window on your screen.
All right. We see those responses coming in. Kate, I'll throw it back to you.
MS. O'SULLIVAN: Yeah. So it looks like over half are planning to appoint a standing committee. Only three percent aren't and some haven't decided but a fair number don't know,
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 5 of 27 which I think is interesting. And actually, if we can pull up the next slide, Brian, I'm not able to – here we go. Thank you. Sorry.
The next slide here gives you a sense of what the respondents were when we did the survey back in March, and, Brian, I don't know if there's a way to also show the poll that just came through so folks can sort of see the comparison between where they were today and where this was two months ago.
But it's interesting. It's somewhat similar. You can see that it was actually 60 percent of folks who responded said they were going to, and about 24 percent hadn't decided yet. It was a smaller proportion of the do not know, I would say, but yeah.
So let's see. So the folks on the phone today it's a higher percentage that they're not sure than who responded to the survey, which I think is interesting and that may be something that we can discuss later on. Or if you all wanted to put any thoughts about it in the chat, that would be great.
Let's move on to the next poll, which is the next question that we pulled out of our survey which is, "What are the two or three most challenging issues that you anticipate in meeting the new requirements?"
And you'll see that we suggest the number, and then you can also pick other, if you want to, and then just type those into the chat. So let's just see what you think are the two or three most challenging issues you anticipate in meeting the new requirements. I see that many of you are responding.
MR. KEATING: Absolutely. And for this one you can choose more than one.
MS. O'SULLIVAN: Yeah.
MR. KEATING: So select all that apply. And as you can see, as Kate said, we've given you several options, but obviously if there are others, go ahead and select that. It looks like four of you have done that so far, and then go ahead and type what those others are into the chat window that we've brought up. So Lynn (sp) says funding. I see a bunch of you are typing now. So thanks for that.
MS. O'SULLIVAN: Great. Interesting. We'll just give you another couple seconds, and then I'm going to pull up the next slide, which is again how the respondents in March came out.
And it's actually quite similar to what you're seeing right now, and I don't know if you can maybe move the – yeah. Just shrink it a little bit for us, Brian. Thank you. Very similar. The highest by far was recruiting out-of-school youth, and then there were also quite a few who mentioned meeting the new performance requirements. And that's what I'm seeing here, and the others came through also.
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 6 of 27 So it's interesting. It's almost exactly the same. So it looks like the challenges that folks identified in our survey before are very similar to what you all are finding today. And these additional areas that you're typing into the chat are really helpful for us to know about as well. So thank you.
Let's just move on to the last question that we're pulling out of the survey which is around technical assistance. So on what topics would technical assistance be helpful to you as you move forward under WIOA implementation? And again you can select all that apply and include additional items by selecting other.
MR. KEATING: All right.
MS. O'SULLIVAN: And, Brian, I think I'm correct to say that all of this information is going to be collected and the Department of Labor will be using it. So again all of what you're typing in is extremely helpful.
MR. KEATING: Absolutely. OK. Great. And we are, yup, absolutely recording so that you can come back and watch us again and all this information is being documented. So definitely thanks for that, and again just –
MS. O'SULLIVAN: One thing I – sorry. I was going to say what I meant to say is a couple of the things that came up in the other when we were talking about the most challenging issues before, just as you do your poll, were around the work experience requirement moving from in- school to out-of-school youth and retention and engagement, which I think are coming up as well.
So let's see where we are on the technical assistance. So I'm seeing that, yeah. A lot of you are looking at needing some technical assistance around recruitment and performance measures and also some around some of the other areas as well. And let's see. There we go.
MR. KEATING: OK. We're just going to ask you to – if you voted, go ahead and vote again. Just we want to make sure you can select all that apply. So go ahead and do that now.
MS. O'SULLIVAN: Thanks, everybody.
MR. KEATING: And just like last time, if you have something else like some of you have already done, go ahead and type that into the chat window that's right below the poll.
MS. O'SULLIVAN: Great. And I'll pull up the slide from the results that we had in March. And I think it's again remarkably similar. I think that we saw in March that people really would appreciate technical assistance across all of the different areas, and I think that we're seeing this here as well, the top ones where the areas – where they identified some of their top challenges in terms of particularly recruitment and performance measures.
But it looks like it's actually quite similar, and also I think that these others that you all are adding in there are very interesting. Some of the others that came out of our survey from before
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 7 of 27 were again around work experience, alternative funding, and also sort of everything and anything, any type of assistance across the board. So I think that getting these examples is very helpful.
So it's interesting sort of taking the polls, looking in March, looking today. Looks like it's quite similar, and I think that's very helpful to know and to keep in mind as all of us who work at the national level think about how we can provide more and better information to folks out in the field and to really inform this implementation as it goes forward.
That's the end of sort of my formal part of this presentation. I'm short and sweet. I'm going to bring LaSharn back in here and move on to this next slide, which is we've been talking about sort of the what's happening right now and some of the challenges that you're looking at right now. And as the Division of Youth Services is thinking about this webinar, they also wanted to give an opportunity to really sort of pick the brain of this huge, wonderful collective people, the brain power we have out there, and think a little bit outside the box in terms of what might it look like in an ideal world.
And so I'm sure many of you are familiar with a fantasy sports team. Well, what is your fantasy youth standing committee? What does it look like? Who's on your roster? What's your game day strategy? Who do you need to draft? And I see that you're already putting some into the chat here.
Let's see what we see here, and I'll also have – LaSharn will comment on some of these as well, but I'm seeing all sectors of the community, members who understand employers, members who understand the program, a lot around employers. Let's see here. A diverse set of members, also the importance of education buying in. Yeah. I see also different sort of systems, corrections, voc rehab, youth, folks who are doing the work. Go ahead, LaSharn, please.
MS. KEMP: Yeah. Actually, this is –
MS. O'SULLIVAN: And Jen.
MS. KEMP: This is Jennifer Kemp, and thank you very much, Kate, for showing us the comparisons. That's really helpful. And as we think about our ideal youth standing committee, it's also really helpful to see some new people up here.
Some of the names are relatively new. Maybe we haven't thought about before, apprenticeship representatives, juvenile court professionals, local schools, government, social services. So this is great, and I think it will give us all an opportunity to think about what's best for our community and what can help us connect with the youth in our area. We see foster care.
So we've also – the questions that you're putting into the chat, we'll talk about some of those in the end. One of the questions that did come through is what's the optimal size for a youth standing committee or youth committee? So these are things that we'll be talking about and thinking about as we go along. Definitely seeing a lot of apprenticeship. I'm not seeing a lot of youth yet, but maybe as we go through our conversation we'll get back to the youth voice too.
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 8 of 27 So the next slide. OK. So we've got challenges ahead. We're well under our way in terms of implementing WIOA, but we're still have a lot left to do. And so we want to get your opinion on the next question too, which is, "What's the toughest challenge your youth standing committee is going to tackle?" And so we'll give you a moment. Where are those youth? That's a tough question.
So we're seeing a lot of good things. Relationships in schools is going to be tough to tackle. Connecting youth to jobs, attendance at youth committee membership meetings, that's always something that's been challenging. You guys are flying fast and furious.
There's a lot about vendors and accountability; working with schools; out-of-school youth recruitment. Employer engagement is a big, big thing that we've seen a lot of today and that's good because that is a big part of one of the changes around WIOA I believe is the value and importance of employers.
A lot around recruiting youth. One of the big questions that you're going to have to try to figure out is what the youth standing committee is even going to look like.
So I hope as these comments go up in the chat you all see things that you're thinking about, though you might have some few things that you haven't considered before and you're now thinking about because a lot of what we're trying to accomplish in our Enough is Known for Action series is also some peer-to-peer exchange.
So I think more that peers talk to each other, they see different things. Connecting with youth with disabilities is up there. Making sure we're all working together, that's a big focus of the standing youth committees as we go forward.
So, LaSharn, I'm going to turn this back over to you.
MS. YOUNGBLOOD: Thanks, Jennifer. As you can see, we put our youth council database in action. First, we have the Montgomery County WIB and youth council database, which has been pulled from our service locator national base. So it's very easy to use. We hope that you access it in your communities to reach out to your youth councils.
And next we have and would like to welcome Ms. Barbara Kaufmann, director of the Montgomery County, Maryland Workforce Investment Board and Division of Workforce Services. Barbara, would you share some information about your work in Montgomery County?
BARBARA KAUFMANN: Thank you, and good afternoon. Montgomery County, Maryland borders the District of Columbia on two sides. Its population is a million people. It's home to about 18 different federal installations, including the National Institutes of Health and the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
More than 30 percent of our population is 24 years old or younger with more than 120,000 residents between the ages of 15 and 24. The county is a majority minority county, and by that I
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 9 of 27 mean the greatest portion of the Montgomery County residents, 46 percent are white, but more than half are identified as an ethnic minority.
The median household income in Montgomery County is much higher than the state of Maryland and the United States. So in Montgomery County 4.3 percent of the families and 6.4 percent of all residents are living below the poverty level. Among youth ages 15 to 24, 10.1 percent are living below the poverty rate.
According to the 2013 American Community Survey, there were more than 65,000 youth between the ages of 16 and 24 participating in the labor force in 2013. That's an unemployment rate of 14 percent. This is again lower than the United States and the state of Maryland. And though we have a lower unemployment rate, we have fewer members of that population who are participating in the labor force compared to other areas.
Workforce services and the management of the Workforce Investment Act are part of county government, although the county executive who is the chief local elected official is considering recommendations that would place these services in its own not-for-profit corporation. The workforce investment board currently has 30 members appointed by the county executive and approved by county counsel.
The youth council is one of six committees and has approximately 15 to 20 members. Members include youth providers, WIB members, and representatives from the public schools and other educational institutions. We're still discussing the committees under the new local workforce development board, and no decisions have been made.
Like many youth councils, we've had our ups and downs. Following the development of the WIB's first in-depth strategic plan in 2010, 2011, the youth council was in a WIA building mode.
As members considered the future, they decided it would change from an information sharing council into a strategic action council with action based on data. Staff started talking to the council members about youth resource mapping with the assistance of our consultant, Lori Strumpf showing them examples where we could find them. Resource mapping has reenergized the youth council.
We first looked within the county to find assistance in developing of the youth resource map but were unsuccessful. We later chose Thomas P. Miller & Associates from Indiana to help us, but the youth council drove the process.
Every decision was brought to them, and they discussed the final products, adding some enhancements neither staff nor consultants had suggested. The chair of the youth council, who's a WIB member representing business along with staff, participated in regular calls with our consultants.
As a result of the work of the youth council, consultants, and staff, we now have the following, what we call the survey of youth serving organizations or the maps. You are seeing the map which shows where job placement and follow-up services occur in the county.
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 10 of 27 We have also mapped for other services such as career counseling and development, mentoring, and tutoring. These maps are based on the organizations that were contacted and responded. Out of a list of 102 organizations, 45 responded to the survey. This represents 80 different programs and locations of services for youth. We believe once the other organizations that didn't respond see the results posted on our website and discussed within the county, they will submit information.
We intend to keep the map and the information it represents as a living, breathing document. We're still working out ways to do that. We have also created a state of youth and youth services, which is a summary of the demographics of what we found in the survey of the organizations and the recommendations developed by the youth council.
As always, this all took longer than we wanted. In reflection I think this can be completed in a shorter time if there's clarity up front about the outcomes. We had some differing expectations among youth council staff and consultants. One of the things that Thomas P. Miller did at the suggestion of the youth council was hold focus groups.
We held focus groups with selected high schools from a high dropout rate high school with incarcerated youth from the Montgomery County Correctional Facility and with frontline youth service providers from various organizations and locations. Once that information gathering was completed, along with the demographics and the survey, the youth council held a session to make recommendations as to what to do with this information.
The youth council's two overarching recommendations were, one, to establish a set of quality standards to assist programs and organizations in the development of quality organizational practices that support the delivery of quality evidence-based programs.
And the second recommendation is to work together to explore ways to coordinate and bridge services to serve all youth in the county.
We also had recommendations specific to themes and issues that came out of the survey and sort of the recommendations are on the slides. And let me talk a little bit about where they came from and what some of the conversation was that led to these.
First of all, these recommendations have been tied to the WIB's latest strategic plan which was adopted last year and runs through 2017. As I said, some of the recommendations are what we know about the county. It's a very large county physically that's almost 500 square miles. We saw that program and services were clustered mainly in the area known as Down County, the area closer to Washington, D.C. The youth council wants to encourage and support program and services throughout the county.
There also was during this process much discussion about the need for additional GED classes in general and specifically in underserved areas. In the high school input session we also we heard a lot that students described their search for career information as haphazard and unconnected, either doing it through online searches or special events such as career days and informal
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 11 of 27 information from peers and parents. They don't have up-to-date career plans that tie academic progress to career goals and connect high school preparation to postsecondary education.
In Montgomery County there's a great deal of emphasis on the public school system and in the county in general that the school system should and is preparing students for four-year colleges. The realization that there are jobs in careers that do not require a college degree but do require postsecondary education and training is increasing, and the youth council wants to help publicize that and increase efforts such as apprenticeship.
What are the next steps? We are in the process of getting the resource map and inventory onto our website, which is also undergoing an overhaul. We're working with our communications folks on a rollout of the report, and the youth council and the WIB are working with staff to develop solutions for the recommendations. With that I'll turn it back over to LaSharn. Thank you.
MS. YOUNGBLOOD: Thank you, Barbara, very much. It's very good information that you've shared with us on the operations there in Montgomery County.
Next you will see we have also looked at our service locator, and we've identified a Three Rivers WIB and youth council. The presenter and we'd like to welcome Ms. Stefani Pashman, who is CEO of the 3 Rivers Workforce Investment Board. Stefani, tell us a little about your work there at Three Rivers.
STEFANI PASHMAN: Sure. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for inviting us to participate in this webinar today. We in the 3 Rivers Workforce Investment Board, we represent two workforce areas and have two separate WIAs in our area with one board overseeing two pots of funding.
So we have a City of Pittsburgh WIA and an Allegheny County WIA, and within our area our population is about two and a half million people. And I think what's most compelling about our issues here are that we have 43 school districts to engage in this rather small area of one county. And in our unemployed population about half of them are under the age of 24. So we have a lot of individuals to work with who are disengaged and who need to be reengaged in the workforce.
We've been working over the last several years under the guise of a redesigned youth policy council to design the right strategy and the right plans to make this happen. So can I move my own slides, or you're doing this? Can someone forward my slide?
MR. KEATING: Yeah. You sure can.
MS. PASHMAN: Thanks. OK. Sorry about that. So we have redesigned our youth policy council, as I mentioned, to ensure that we are incorporating the key populations like many of us suggested in terms of those working with youth.
But in addition we've made a very strategic effort to get employers at the table, funders, and other key organizations serving youth who may be outside of WIA funding. And our goal is to
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 12 of 27 design a pretty broad-based strategy that can go beyond the WIA funding and leverage other funding sources in the future.
And so you're looking now at our program logic model that we developed, and what you see is that we are taking the inputs of a pretty high dropout population and eligible low income youth that we have quite a few of them and right now only have funding to serve about 750 in the past but that's going to almost double in the future with some changes we've made.
We are taking those series of activities we're required under the Workforce Investment Act and leading to outputs and the ultimate goal of having influence over this dropout rate, over the numbers broadly in our area receiving postsecondary degrees and broader career pathways.
What we have found in our area is that WIA and WIOA elements are a terrific baseline for us to guide our program model, and for us it's really using that and then evaluating and monitoring using data way beyond the common measures. And we collect data on all the input activities listed here and are able to do some analytics on the correlation between what activity may have led to more success.
And so we're looking at both the youth side of the equation, where the jobs are, the common measures, and all the inputs going into it to be able to come up with a – (inaudible) – analytic model to drive our programming and ultimately lead to improved outcomes.
In terms of – next slide. In terms of thinking about how we are trying to define a system – next slide please – we are looking at a base of activities and trying to create summer experiences with year round experiences. And so our big mantra with our youth policy council has been that youth learn to work by working, and what we know in our area is that labor force participation rates have been dropping off for youth in the past several years. And of the jobs we've had available in the summer for youth, about half of them have been in retail, hospitality, food service, and we're not giving youth the diversity of career experiences that exist within a local economy.
Pittsburgh has a pretty diverse economy. We have a lot of eds and meds, but we also have a very burgeoning energy sector, a lot of advanced manufacturing, and so it's been critical for us to make sure that we are getting youth into broad-based experiences. And so our system is leveraging new models, still in profit dollars, existing resources to increase opportunities of work experience for youth gain.
But beyond our summer experiences which are serving about 2,000 youth, we know that we have to link this to our year round and create pathways for youth that go throughout the year. And one of those tools that we've used was a new – a rethink of our RFP and our funding for our in- school and out-of-school work programs this year.
And looking ahead now that we have some pretty strong frameworks both in the summer and year round, we're looking to strengthen the connection between workforce and education and make pathways, as we know we're called to do under WIOA.
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 13 of 27 So want to talk a little bit, made a couple comments on what our youth policy council was thinking about in our RFP process. We are looking to take – we took into account – and this just happened over the last year. We issued an RFP and funded new programs. One of our main goals was to infuse best practices and take all the data that we were taking to improve the structure of our RFP.
In the past we've been very open and we've provided kind of a framework of what we wanted to see, and this time we've learned from experience that in order to get new organizations into the mix, in order to get the strength of proposals, in order to be able to provide the opportunity we wanted for you, that we had to be a bit more prescriptive in terms of funding specific models.
And so we framed two specific models for in-school. One is more of an industry pipeline model. The other is an academic pathways model. And on the out-of-school side we framed three models, an academic pathways model, an industry pipeline model, and a youth placement model.
And our goal with the providers was to work with them to guide them into new experiences that provide some structure for these youth. And so we fund about 19 different programs, and we create a partnership with these organizations to be able to share best practices and come together in conversations throughout the year and, where needed, provide technical assistance to ensure that we're getting strong outcomes, strong results, and a learning model across these programs.
And so we are hoping to see a better return on investment for our youth, and we're also hoping to see more experiences and broader through-puts for our participant goes down.
So we know that WIOA obviously with the shift to an optional youth standing committee rather than the YPC has been a welcome opportunity for us because it gives us the chance to be a bit more flexibility to customize the youth council to our local area.
And for that – for us that means engaging more and different business and also engaging – keeping philanthropy engaged and, as I mentioned, other youth serving programs outside the WIA world.
And our local area is having some thoughts about, from the mayor and county executive level, our local elected officials, of taking this youth council and making it more of an advisory function for even broader programs. And so those conversations are underway to think about what other role this could play as we have some new flexibility with this model and with our governance.
So in addition we are looking to build better voices of youth in our programming and in our committees and creating a youth ambassador corps. And I know a couple of my colleagues will be speaking more about youth engagement later, but we're very interested in getting better voices at the table.
We've used youth in the past to help shape our summer programs, help shape some employer engagement experiences, and have them at the table as one of our partners. But we want to make that a little bit more systemic and more regular.
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 14 of 27 And in addition we are looking to redefine our partnerships with our providers to have them truly as a partner and, as I said earlier, to be engaged and working together with other providers in the area to make sure that we are defining the right linkages.
And finally, we are building stronger connections with our OneStop system and making sure that we have the right blend between adult and youth work experiences in our world and, when we think about career pathway models, that we are forging the connections between the youth and the adult system because in our mind this kind of happens together in a systemic way and that's our main goal is to make sure our programs are systemic and connected to the right way.
So with that I will turn it back over to my colleagues in D.C., and I very much appreciate the opportunity to present. And I look forward to your questions later in this session.
MS. YOUNGBLOOD: Thank you so much, Stefani. We've heard a lot about your organization and the work that's been doing around working with businesses and employer engagement.
And next we will be hearing from individuals from New Haven WIB and the youth council. In addition to that, we have two speakers from the New Haven WIB and youth council. That is Mr. Jim Ieronimo, who is the executive director of United Way of Meriden and Wallingford, Connecticut, and Ms. Jennifer Quaye, who is manager post high school planning and recruitment, Common Ground High School in New Haven, Connecticut.
JIM IERONIMO: Thank you, LaSharn. Thanks, everyone, for this opportunity. Before I let Jennifer talk, I want you, while you look at that slide of the photographs, you'll understand what I'm about to say.
Our WIB was a result of a consolidation of two in Connecticut, and after a dozen years I think we pretty much are one WIB. But what happened early on was that I took on the vice- chairmanship of the WIB and the chairmanship of the youth council, and at our first meeting I realized what we were doing wrong.
Mostly everybody looked like me on the left there, and we had nobody representing youth. And I felt it was really important, if we were going to spend the kind of money on the programming we felt that youth would benefit from, we at least needed to have the courtesy of hearing from some of the youth.
So while I believe we were well-intentioned and I think our programs were well-performing, I think that we had a number of challenges, and one of them was the demographics of our committee.
So we invited two – actually, the first year two and the second year three youth to become members of the council as full members, and that meant that we had some training to do for them as well as some expectations that we wanted them to take on increasingly larger roles.
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 15 of 27 At first they shadowed other committee members and read RFPs. Eventually we looked at the opportunity to engage new providers to do some of the work we felt that the youth were telling us needed to be done, and we had what we called our workforce information sessions where we just invited people to come. And those sessions were run by the youth. They planned them. They ran them, and other than me introducing them in the morning, I pretty much stepped aside.
So for us our research was simple. It was walking into the – my first youth council meeting and realizing there were no youth, and it seemed a little silly. And secondly, it was looking at our programs and recognizing that for a 30-town area, we didn't necessarily have the diversity and the robust programming that we really could have, and it was because we just weren't thinking beyond what was originally proposed to us.
So what eventually happened was we met someone, Jennifer, whom you'll talk to and who will take over, essentially came to us as a very young high school student. I remember we were serving 14 to 21, and now we can go up to age 24.
So we can hang onto Jennifer for a bit, but what we did was look at our high school in-school students initially and then eventually added an out-of-school student so that we would be able to look at the opportunities that will be available to us that we weren't seeing. I have to stress this is not a putdown of youth councils that don't have youth. Everybody arrives where they get with a different methodology. But for our purposes we felt that that was the missing ingredient all along.
Eventually our challenge – initially it was will they like us? It was like the first day of middle school. What are these kids going to think of us? And we realized in some of our sessions we were boring, that we were controlling, that we sometimes had a distinction where we tended to sort of preach or talk over the youth, and it was very, very quickly in the first year that we realized that there was a different modality for our meetings and different modality for us to work on the youth issues in our 30-town area.
So I think we became a better council with the addition of the youth, and I think our product – and that is the programs and the youth that we serve, both the in-school and out-of-school, the younger and older in the old definitions, were better served by that result.
Going forward we're going to be a standing youth committee. We will continue to have strong youth participation. We will be adding and engaging more out-of-school youth because the bias changes under the new legislation. And we look to our former youth members to give us the models for how that's going to happen. Our challenge is really going to be to stay relevant.
I noticed in the first opening comments, the first one I saw really upset me, said "stagnant when you think of youth." Anything but. If you put some youth on your committee, as they age and grow and diversify, you will be anything but stagnant.
The second thing I saw was "ineffective." I think right from the very beginning in the first run- through, our youth showed us that ineffective were perhaps proposals that weren't viewed by youth in terms of how they would see them.
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 16 of 27 And finally, "voice," that was the one that – and that's the voice I'm going to give to right now, that Jennifer and her colleagues have brought to our committee. So, Jennifer?
JENNIFER QUAYE: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for having me. There's an awful echo here. OK.
MR. KEATING: Sorry to hear that, Jennifer. We hear you OK though.
MS. QUAYE: Oh, yeah. I still have a pretty strong echo, but I'll try to plow through it.
So I joined the youth council when I was about 14 or 15, and I was invited by a mentor of mine. And my participation, like Jim illustrated, at first was very violent. Sat in youth council meetings wondering what our purpose was, but then the council was very deliberate about creating spaces for youth to voice their opinions about where the funding was being allocated.
So we helped to – I'm sorry. The echo is really bothering me. Brian, is there anything we can do about it?
MR. KEATING: I do not know what we can do about that. I'm sorry, Jennifer. I don't know other then maybe hanging up and dialing back in. So we can hold the line if you want to do that real quick or – I'm not sure what –
MS. QUAYE: That might take a few minutes. So I'll just keep going.
So we began to be engaged in different ways on the youth council. Some of my youth peers who were on the council participated in the development of the RFPs but also participated in the grading of the proposals.
And then as we got older we started to try to think of ways we could get more youth engaged as we were transitioning out of youth council. So I started a mentoring program. I don't know if that's on the slide here. We developed a mentoring program to bring new youth members onto the council.
So we started to draw youth members from other WIA programs to get them acquainted with what it would look like to be on a youth council. What ended up happening was that we didn't actually engage the youth on the youth council itself, but we started a program with these WIA youth to talk about further engage them in the college and career process and partnering with local universities – Quinnipiac, University of New Haven, and Southern Connecticut State University to get them some additional mentoring around college and career to expand what their views of education and employment could look like. But those activities stemmed out of our involvement on the youth council.
I think one of the challenges of bringing the youth on the council after we were engaged the first time around, we did acknowledge that we needed to actually create a space for the students to have a voice.
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 17 of 27 And so when we tried to engage the students in the youth council meetings, the challenges that we had when we were 16 or 17 originally being on the council was needing adults to make spaces for us to be able to share. We didn't create those same opportunities from youth moving forward.
So I think the advice that I would have for youth councils or any youth standing committees that are seeking to engage youth in their process moving forward is just to be very aware and creating those spaces for youth to actually have a voice.
You can sit on a youth council meeting and you can have 15 or 20 youth in the room, but if you don't create an opportunity for them to engage, it will be very hard for a young person to sit in a youth committee and participate.
So I'm going to turn it back over to LaSharn.
MS. YOUNGBLOOD: Thank you so very much, Jennifer, for sharing the information and your experience with your local youth council there in New Haven.
Next we are going to have our coaches corner, which is Lori Strumpf and Steve Trippe. You both work with people in the field. So we'd like to know what you are hearing.
LORI STRUMPF: Who would you like to have start?
MS. YOUNGBLOOD: Lori. I'm sorry.
MS. STRUMPF: Hi. This is Lori Strumpf. I'm happy to be on the call as well as a kind of a coach and answering some of the questions that you all put together. Just as a quick overview, just like Steve, we travel a lot; work with a lot of different places. I see in the chat box, though, people are sharing what they're doing.
Most of what I'm seeing in the field goes to Kate's poll. Many of the workforce boards that currently exist are still considering – at least the ones I'm interacting with, considering whether to have a standing youth committee, to keep the youth council that they've had as it exists and call it a youth council but still have it function more like a committee as opposed to a free- standing council.
And others are understanding that they have to do youth program oversight but they may be putting those functions into another committee, like a program planning committee or some other committee that is going to deal with youth, adult, and dislocated worker kind of oversight issues all in one committee. But most of the people or at least half, as Kate's poll showed, haven't made all those decisions yet.
Most of – a lot of other people have just turned their youth council into the youth standing committee. I don't know any place yet – maybe Steve does – that has really just disbanded its youth council and created a whole new youth standing committee. They've had a youth council,
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 18 of 27 and if they found that it was effective, I too was interested in the words people used about some of the counsels were ineffective, not very robust.
I think self-aware workforce boards, if they recognize that that's true about their youth council, they are using this as an opportunity to reconfigure it. But if they had a good robust youth council, they're going to just kind of move it into the youth standing committee and maybe add other people.
So that's some of what I'm seeing. Steve?
STEVE TRIPPE: Yeah. I agree with what Lori is talking about with the caveat that some places are actually considering – a number of the places that have been where youth councils have positioned themselves to be part of efforts beyond the Workforce Investment Act and now the Opportunity Act, they're really using this as an opportunity to strengthen that position, whether they're connecting with local efforts around career pathways, whether some communities are connecting with broader public investments in prevention and saying we're going to take on a piece of a local collective action activity and strengthening that piece.
And some of those places are considering appointing a separate youth standing committee to deal with the business of the workforce act, to provide advice on expenditures and to review RFPs and that kind of stuff.
But I think in the main, those places that have had good experiences with their youth councils and in particular places where the youth council has been a convener and a – of broader conversations around youth issues in the community, continue to have their youth council in place. They're frankly a little relieved that there's not the worry about having mandatory participation and are looking to expand and do more of a collaborative kind of approach to the work and then consider how they're going to get information about the workforce investments that happen through the board, whether that happens through advice from that body or whether there's a separate standing committee.
So whether they appointed a standing committee or they just take it on their charge to convene a conversation around youth issues in their community is what they're doing.
MS. YOUNGBLOOD: Thanks for your – thanks, guys, for your comments. We're going to have to move on here, but we do have some questions that we'd like for you to answer. One of the questions that has come in is, "What's the difference between the youth councils and youth standing committees?"
MS. STRUMPF: Well, I don't know the people who are workforce boards on the phone, but this is Lori again. I don't – there is a difference between a youth council as it was defined under WIA. So a youth council, YC, had to be a free-standing body. It was appointed by the chair of the workforce board, and it had – it could have non-WIB members on it but the non-WIB members were considered non-voting members of the WIB by the law.
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 19 of 27 And it had a role defined much like Steve has just talked about. It was supposed to be a convener. It was supposed to be broader than WIA. Some places achieved that. Many places, to Steve's point, had mayors and cities that had youth councils and they combined those kind of bigger issues between the WIB youth council and the mayor's youth council.
Now, I think what the standing committee is, it's a committee of the board. You can call it a youth council, but it's a committee of the board. It doesn't have the requirements necessarily that the youth council had under WIA, i.e., if you have non-voting members – if you have non-WIB members on your youth council, they don't automatically become non-voting members of the WIB, which was an issue under WIA.
You don't have to have certain kinds of people on it, although, to the point with Connecticut, you certainly need to have youth and parents and others who are participating. So I think that's – it's a codification in law, youth council, that was different under WIA and WIOA, but you can still call it a youth council. It just functions as a committee.
MR. TRIPPE: And the authority on the committee, rather than being the federal regulation and law, is whatever the bylaws are of the local board. So whatever bylaws the board has around its standing committees, that's the rules under which a standard committee would be set.
So it's going to be different depending on what the bylaws say in different communities.
MS. YOUNGBLOOD: Thanks, guys. Well, we'd also like to know what do you consider to be an optimum number of youth council committee members?
MS. STRUMPF: Well, I don't think there is an optimal just say a number. From an organizational perspective, and I'm an organizational change management consultant, I don't think that committees function very well when you start getting into the 30s and 40s.
So I think as a rule of thumb 12 to 20 sounds like a pretty good kind of spectrum of numbers, but it also depends on the role. So if the role of your – to Steve's point and again the codification under WIA, the youth council had to do certain things.
Under WIOA, whether you call it a standing committee or a youth council, you will be able to determine each board what it does. So if its functions are to be narrow and really – I'm just making this up but review RFPs only and do some of that kind of work, maybe it's smaller.
If you want its function to be beyond WIOA, you want it to be a convener of all of those who play in the youth and young adult workforce space and you want it to align those opportunities, whether funded by WIOA or other funding streams, then it may need to be larger because it needs to include the voice of multiple stakeholders that may not be necessary if you're really just limiting it to WIOA kinds of activities like procurement and those kinds of things.
So I think you have to consider – for me, form follows function. What is the function that you want your youth council/standing committee– I love the name in Three Rivers, the youth policy committee. Although I would also say – this is a sidebar – but since the age now goes up to 24,
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 20 of 27 you want young people to be on your youth council, I would suggest that we stop calling it "youth" and we start thinking of new words like "young adults." I also manage a project, a WIF grant for disconnected young adults 18 to 24 and we changed our language immediately from "youth" to "young adult." That's just a sidebar.
But form does follow function. So whatever you want your youth council, youth standing committee, young adult policy group to be doing, it kind of helps you dictate what the numbers should be. Don't you agree, Steve?
MR. TRIPPE: I would agree wholeheartedly. And I would add with the 21- to 24-year-olds now being a primary target population, it brings in actually a whole new set of partners in terms of the ability to provide additional services, supports to the young people. It brings in adult systems around health and mental health and those kinds of things, where in the past folks have only had to deal with the other public systems that deal with disadvantaged youth and children.
So again, form does follow function. I mean, if all you're doing is advising on the dollars then it could be three or four workforce board members that do that work. I don't know anybody that's going in that direction, but they could. But the broader policy stuff you need to put more people at the table and it gets a little bit more messy, but I don't think there's a magic number. I think your 12 to 25 is probably right.
MS. STRUMPF: I actually said 12 to 20, but 25 is good if you want other stakeholders on.
MR. TRIPPE: Oh. I'll go check the notes. (Chuckles.)
Somebody asked earlier about the role of community colleges. I think the role of community colleges as participants, the game has been upped significantly with the focus on career pathways. I think more and more the workforce system needs to figure out what side doors to those career pathways are, because in the career pathway conversations they're being looked at as sort of embellishments of the old "two plus two" kinds of formats where community colleges are partnering with K-12 districts.
But the question for, I think, the workforce community is how do you create opportunities for disconnected, out-of-work, out-of-school young people to be able to access those pathways post- high school, whether they've dropped out or whether they've got a GED or whether they've completed and they're not doing anything, that you find ways to get in. You're only going to make that happen by having community college representatives who understand that system at the table.
MS. STRUMPF: And I agree. The other role that community colleges have – in some places, not all places – they are actually the adult literacy provider. So depending on how your school system or not or the state distributes adult literacy funds, they may also have a very formal Title II role under WIOA.
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 21 of 27 But even without that formal role as the adult literacy provider, you cannot do career pathways without a lot of the educational institutions, but certainly without community colleges, that offer the most credit and non-credit industry-based certificates.
I also saw a question here I just wanted to address quickly that somebody I think asked, "Are standing committees mandatory or voluntary?" And I think the DOL folks addressed this in the beginning. What's mandatory is that the workforce development board – now under WIOA – has the same functions that it had under WIA in terms of governance of the youth money, youth programs, paying for youth programs, etcetera.
How you structure that is your decision. You can keep your youth council, as we've discussed, and bring it in underneath your board. You can have a youth standing committee or you can put those functions into another committee, like a program planning committee or a quality assurance committee. So what's mandatory is you have to manage, monitor and govern the youth dollars.
How you do that, the structure, is not mandatory. It's highly suggested that you have a youth standing committee but it was not a mandatory item in the law.
MS. YOUNGBLOOD: Thanks so much for your comments. You shared a lot of valuable information that our audience.
Next we have a portion for Stefani. Stefani, does the 3 Rivers have a plan model for increased employer engagement?
MS. PASHMAN: Yes, we do actually. Last year we created a new business solution team, located at the workforce board, that complements the business outreach that's going on in our One-Stop center.
Our business solution strategy is very broad-based. It focuses on both transactional work that occurs in the One-Stop and that really focuses on recruiting and placing individuals and talent, and then moves us up to what we call more of a transformational level where we're thinking about broad-based sector strategies and more customized, targeted relationships and long-term sticky relationships with specific employers.
And within that, we are building relationships to serve our youth in the summer and year-round, and so we're thinking at a very strategic level about how we engage our businesses in all aspects of the work we're doing. Our goal, the way we talk about it is there's pretty much some way that we can serve any employer across this broad continuum and broad tool set of services that we've developed both at the transactional level and at the broad systemic transformational level.
MS. YOUNGBLOOD: Thank you very much, Stefani. Now we have a question for Jim and Barbara. One of the participants says, "Running a meeting with youth is great but we always have scheduling problems. Did you schedule your meetings outside the normal Monday through Friday, 9:00 to 5:00 time slots?" Barbara?
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 22 of 27 MS. KAUFMANN: Well, our youth council does meet in the evening. We start at 6:30 and go to 8:00, which helps, but it's not the only answer for youth involvement.
We've depended on our youth vendor to recruit youth and bring them and we probably could do a better job of keeping them in the loop. But it helps to change the hours, but it's not the only way to have good youth involvement.
MR. IERONIMO: This is Jim. I'd like to jump in and add to what Barbara says. We had to make a modification. We needed to. We felt, especially for our in-school youth, that it was important for them to be in school. So we always scheduled our meeting outside of the school hours.
What we also did very early on was we decided that at least two of our meetings a year – as many as three – would be held at sites where we had funded partner programs. This way, youth could actually be at their program. That helps a bit.
But it is a challenge, but I don't think it's insurmountable. Even adults have scheduling problems. So once you get around the idea that you're going to accommodate the greatest mix of people at your meeting, it all just falls into place.
We found the sweet spot to be about 3:30, 4:00 and being done by 5:00; and also to make sure that when we traveled, especially if we were going – we have a 30-town area – that youth were able to be brought where there were drivers.
MS. QUAYE: I'd like to just jump in on that. This is Jennifer speaking.
It was helpful to have a mentor on the youth council that was advocating just picking us up and dropping us off each youth council meeting. I remember when they made the change from maybe a 2:30 time during a school hour, and then changed it to 3:30, right when we were walking out of the school building, then we knew that we could be picked up by our mentor on the youth council that would get us back to where the youth council meeting was. So that happened to be a big plus.
MS. YOUNGBLOOD: Thank you. So Jennifer and Jim, "How often do you recruit new youth to be involved in the council?"
MR. IERONIMO: I hope Jennifer's doing it all the time. It's an ongoing process.
We look both to our school-based as well as our community-based programs to always refer, but sometimes some youth will kind of self-select. But Jennifer, I'll let you jump in.
MS. QUAYE: Yeah. That pretty much covers it. Actually the answer to that question's pretty (good ?).
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 23 of 27 MS. YOUNGBLOOD: We have a couple of questions that have come in from – (inaudible) – colleagues. One, "When will we be getting specifics on eligibility, use of free and reduced lunch for income?"
MS. KEMP: Hi. This is Jennifer Kemp. In terms of free and reduced lunch and income, in the legislation it was pretty straightforward around the use of free and reduced lunch. So if you haven't looked at WIOA, you can look there.
Also, the notice of proposed rulemaking has a specific question about income that we would like folks to look at, and you can comment on that. The notice of proposed rulemaking closes on June 15th, so if you have any questions related to – or comments, rather, related to the notice of proposed rulemaking, please submit your comments to regulations.gov by June 15th.
One final resource is we issued an operating TEGL that again came out March 25th, I believe. The number is 24-13. You can take a look at that. We do talk a little bit about the eligibility in that TEGL. And we will also be issuing a second use operating guidance later in the summer. We'll further clarify some things around eligibility at that point. LaSharn?
MS. YOUNGBLOOD: We also had a question that has come in around Affordable Care Act and that it doesn't expressly exclude participants in subsidized employment. Can you speak to that, Jennifer?
MS. KEMP: Sure. So we do occasionally get questions around the Affordable Care Act, and they have been coming in through our regional partners. So if you do have specific questions about the Affordable Care Act we would encourage you to connect with your state's federal project officer.
It is something that we have issued a question and answer about; last year we issued that. At the moment we don't have any new guidance from the department but it is something that we are working on and we have received a number of questions regarding it. At this time we don't have an answer yet, but we are working on it. I want you all to know that.
MS. YOUNGBLOOD: OK. Barbara, we have a question for you. "Can you think about the role of proprietary schools on youth committee?"
MS. KAUFMANN: We don't, per se, at the moment have any proprietary schools on committees, but I think it's important, whether you're talking about proprietary schools or the public schools system or anyone, that you have the same kinds of conflict of interest and ethics policies for youth council or youth standing committee – whatever – that you use at the WIB; and that you clearly state it and that the members know it and lead when you're talking about things that might affect them, such as RFPs or the like.
So it's equally important at your committee level as it is your WIB level or workforce development board.
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 24 of 27 MS. STRUMPF: And LaSharn, this is Lori. There are proprietary on youth councils around the country. Different youth councils approach it differently. But they're not excluded, if that's the question.
MS. YOUNGBLOOD: Thank you very much, Lori.
We also have another question around board members, and would they be designated as youth lead and pulled together in ad hoc groups as needed, as opposed to a standing committee. Do you have any thoughts on that?
MS. STRUMPF: Yes. I mean, I think that again, it goes back to the kind of function and form.
As long as the board – the workforce development board – is able to carry its oversight and governance functions out responsibly, which includes the procurement of vendors for the youth and young adult dollars and programs; oversight monitoring, managing, making sure that those dollars are being spent effectively; and doing that in a due diligence and deliberate way, I think you can create whatever structure you want, with all the flexibility.
But I would say as an organizational person, since there is so much work around governance, around the youth stuff just under WIOA, much less if you're trying to expand your reach and become more robust and be the convener to try and figure out career pathways and stuff under the law, I just don't think ad hoc committees, and I don't think they do it very well in that ad hoc space.
But again, there's nothing that would prohibit that if you think that it could work for you that way. But my thoughts are that ad hoc is probably not a good way to approach the work that needs to be done, both specifically to WIOA and then more broadly in terms of community convening and developing career pathways, which is fundamental throughout the legislation.
MR. TRIPPE: And I would say – this is Steve again – I would echo that.
But I would also say that again, in those communities where the youth councils have been in the center of conversations around sort of all things to young people trying to make the transition from being a youth and young adult into fully connected as an adult in society, if those conversations are happening somewhere else, then the workforce system could, quote, "get away with" a smaller, more focused effort and be at that table.
Unfortunately I don't see that happening in other communities, and that the Workforce Investment Act youth councils have been a place for that conversation to happen in cities and in counties and in larger workforce areas.
And what would be lost by an ad hoc approach is sort of a focus on the population and a focus on issues that the population faces; and a focus on what those young people mean to the local economy, what they mean to having healthy communities. So I think it would be a mistake to go in that direction.
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 25 of 27 In communities where the youth council hasn't been strong here's an opportunity to remake it, rethink it, be unrestricted and unfettered by rules. But to be able to say what it is that we as a community want to have a conversation about; how can we use this limited resource to attack a piece of the problem; and what other resources do we need to pull together in order to make that happen?
There were some questions about leveraging resources from philanthropic and nonprofit communities and other public resources. Good youth councils do that. They bring together the programs that serve foster youth, juvenile justice; engage youth that serve young people coming back into communities after incarceration and put them all at the same table because these young people are facing the same issues around stable employment.
So there's a role for the workforce system in the conversation and a role for a focused conversation on youth and young adults as a separate population from the adult community. Because they get lost in that conversation. They simply get lost.
MS. YOUNGBLOOD: Thank you so much for that information sharing.
We're moving on to our resources. We have provided a list of available toolkits which are currently available here at DOL. Please utilize those because they could be very instrumental and helpful as you move toward establishing your youth standing committee.
So please take a look at this list and utilize the resources that we have. I'm sure we'll have additional resources becoming available as WIOA moves forward, and you should look for technical assistance tools. But this is what we currently have available for your use.
Next we have the Grads of Life partner directory, and Jennifer Kemp is going to share information regarding this.
MS. KEMP: So throughout the webinar many of you said the real opportunity for the standing youth committees was the employer engagement piece, and the Grads for Life tool is one way that we can engage with employers and help them understand the value of youth in work situations.
So on this slide you'll see – if you haven't already looked at the Grads for Life video, it's a PSA campaign. The video is very empowering and moving; brings a lot of momentum from employers.
And the Grads for Like is entering their second phase of their campaign, and that is "success choice." This is a great opportunity for you to promote what's working well in your local area with employers. It highlights employment opportunities that youth you're working with have received, particularly from small- and medium-sized employers.
So I encourage you to look at this information and to fill out the information so that you can be part of the employer directory. We're really excited about it and we hope you are, too.
Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 26 of 27 And finally that brings us to our next webinar, which is going to be focused on making the shift from in-school youth to out-of-school youth. We have a fabulous lineup for that webinar. We have many nongovernmental organizations participating with us.
So we're looking forward to having your join us for that. That will be on Wednesday, June 24th at the same time, 2:00 in the afternoon.
So I want to turn it back to LaSharn and thank all of our presenters as well for joining us today.
MS. YOUNGBLOOD: Again, I'd like to thank the presenters for their participation. We do appreciate your time and effort. And thank you all for all that you. This wraps up our webinar today and thank you so very much for participating.
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Enough is Known for Action: Firing Up Youth Standing Committees Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Page 27 of 27