This report highlights findings from a process evaluation of the Urban Alliance’s High School Internship Program in Washington, DC, Baltimore, Northern Virginia, and Chicago. The Urban Alliance program model aims to empower economically disadvantaged high school seniors to aspire, work, and succeed. The program provides youth participants with workplace skills training, opportunities for internships to gain work experience, mentorship at the internship site, and coaching support from case managers during youths’ participation in the program as well as for program alumni. The findings of this first of three reports are drawn from interviews, focus groups, and surveys of participating students, case managers, and employers as well as a review of program and secondary data.

The National Association of Workforce Development Professionals will host a webinar on February 23, 2021 at 2:00 p.m. ET to address the changed employer engagement landscape in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The webinar is targeted to workforce development professionals who engage in business services. The webinar’s three key learning objectives include understanding two new ways to engage employers, examining one tool to reach businesses with new messaging, and learning the language that can “hook” a business into partnering. There is a webinar registration fee.

The U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (ETA) hosted a webinar on January 28, 2021 to demonstrate how CareerOneStop can provide virtual services to help job seekers find immediate employment and file for unemployment benefits. This webinar was a deeper dive into two CareerOneStop user pathways that were initially presented in the September 24, 2020 “Using CareerOneStop to Provide Virtual Career and Job Services” webinar. Presenters included representatives of the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration and the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.

This toolkit is a synthesis of a blogpost, reports, and links to previous webinars to offer health and human services leaders guidance as they design and evaluate programs targeting young families. The resources offered in this compendium are divided into several topics, including economic well-being, education, foster youth, mental health, pandemic response, policy, program design, and youth voice.

Developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy, the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework impacts how child- and family-serving programs operate and support healthy development and well-being. This brief highlights survey findings from organizational partners and members of the Strengthening Families National Network that may use the framework in their own community-based approaches. The survey results capture their viewpoints on community conditions that support child and family outcomes, including equal access to essential/basic needs, social support and connection, racial and social justice, and a change in the “social contract” toward involving community in bettering child and family well-being.

Previous research from the National Skills Coalition described the extent of a digital skills gap among U.S workers, noting that one in three workers had few or no digital skills. Building upon the Coalition’s earlier work, this brief outlines the work’s emerging lessons, drawing on interviews with business leaders, workforce and education practitioners, and public officials. In addition, the brief identifies opportunities to foster the development of effective approaches to address the skills gap and to expand the adoption of innovative strategies to increase digital literacy.

This research-to-practice brief discusses implementation of the Individual Placement and Support (IPS) employment model by the Family Service League in New York and Asian Human Services in Chicago during the COVID-19 pandemic. The IPS model was initially developed to provide employment services to individuals with serious mental illness, but is now used for a broader range of populations who have significant barriers to employment. Four core components of the IPS model are rapid job search, coordination between employment services staff and mental health providers, identification of client preferences in the types of jobs, and smaller caseloads for case workers. According to interviews with organization leaders, IPS implementation included embracing remote communications and video conferencing, offering initial help to the most vulnerable to support their health and safety, developing new employment plans, and actively matching employees and employers.

This blogpost presents a Q&A with Yolo Akili Robinson, Executive Director and founder of Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective (BEAM). The interactive discussion covers how health inequities in communities of color have become exacerbated due to the COVID-19 pandemic, causing increased stress and negative mental health impacts. Also discussed is how BEAM has adapted its approach to addressing mental health challenges in these communities by providing families with resources to support themselves, as well as advice for community health workers who might be overwhelmed by the crisis.

This webinar recording available for purchase from the American Psychological Association offers evidence-based techniques developed to promote preparedness, resilience, and effective coping when exposed to trauma-related materials.

Key learning objectives include:
• How to distinguish between secondary traumatic stress, vicarious trauma, and compassion fatigue and those factors that convey risk or resilience.
• Ways to recognize coping strategies in real time after exposure to trauma-related material or traumatized individuals.
• How to identify effective self-regulation strategies after encountering trauma-related material.

This compassion resilience toolkit webpage features the importance of incorporating compassion resilience (the ability to maintain one’s well-being while interacting compassionately with individuals who are suffering) in the health care field and highlights its many positive impacts on clients, providers, and organizations. The toolkit describes fatigue in each of the four sectors of the Wellness Compass model (Mind, Spirit, Strength and Heart), offers guidance on strategies to help build compassion resilience, and provides worksheets to rank levels of self-care in each of these sectors. It provides specific resources for leadership and includes combined activities for leadership and staff.