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Follow up from our initial lunch in Boston Created 5/3/08 by Ed Morrison In forum The low income and the hard to serve populations: Some new thinking Not yet tagged |
A group of regions met with Acting Assistant Secretary Brent Orrell to explore new approaches to with low-wage and hard to serve populations. What are your take-aways? What are our next steps? |
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Ed Morrison 5 posts 5/3/2008 at 09:21 AM
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James of West Michigan started us off in this driection with an e-mail which I share below:
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Ken Dupre 1 post 5/6/2008 at 05:54 PM
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I enjoyed the luncheon meeting, although at times it was a bit difficult to hear. Unfortunately, I was already committed to another session and missed the afternoon breakout session on Connecting Low Income and Hard-to-Serve Talent Pools, so forgive me if my comments were already covered in that session.
In my experience, the problems faced by the low-wage/TANF population are quite different from those faced by the ex-offender population. In the West Alabama/East Mississippi (WAEM) Region, the low-wage population typically does not have a high school diploma, faces challenges with childcare, and does not have reliable transportation. While our WIA partners do have on-site GED classes for this population, they do not have funding for supportive services such as transportation and childcare. Although on-line GED classes are available, the majority of the low-wage population does not have a home computer or internet necessary to access this service.
The ex-offender population faces problems with employers wishing to avoid the potential liability issues, especially among violent offenders. Even non-violent offenders often have problems finding employment in certain industries due to mandatory background checks, bonding issues, and travel restrictions while on parole. On the bright side, the prisons here have a strong GED program. Perhaps exposure to entrepreneurship classes would help this population to create their own jobs.
Ken Dupre WAEM WIRED Initiative The Montgomery Institute |
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James Vander Hulst 1 post 5/12/2008 at 02:50 PM
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I agree Ken with your differentiation between TANF recipients and exoffenders is ture in our region as well. So when assisting these two distrinct population of workers, we may need different strategies; however, in our experience, the private sector, or at least the small to midsized employer, wants a single pipeline to draw from and relies heavily on us as an intermediary to broker the difference. Forgive me for an IT analogy, but we've become the equivalent of "middleware" where we translate the public sector programs into a language and engagement process the employer can understand. I have to admit, our work is exclussively with incumbent workers and aligning the expectations of the private sector with the public sector. If we can ensure the reliability and quality of work with these two populations within the workforce, ten we can expand on this trusted employer relationship to recruit from them as well. We find that having a human service case manager and private case worker embedded within the employment site greatly enhances retention, barrier resolution and shows a possitive ROI for both public and private partners. The key is being able to act in a prevention mode because of enhanced communication and data. Sort of like the change in war time reporting; in WWI & II correspondents wrote on the war from a distance, now they are embedded with the combat units. Our sense of what war is really like has changed dramatically if you have never served in the armed forces. Similarly, having human services embedded with the employer causes information to be shared in a daily and sometimes shift reporting so that interventions can be made prior to termination. Our sense of what it takes to truly be successful has shifted from the One Stop model. In our estimation it takes both, a central One Stop with clusters that allow wfd to be disagreggated to where the worker spends 1/3 to 1/2 of their day.
How have others used TANF funds within the workplace toward supporting incumbent workers throughout their employment whilst receiving assistance?
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