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.

This U.S. Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime webpage discusses vicarious trauma and contains suggestions for coworkers and supervisors who may be experiencing vicarious trauma, as well as family members of victim service providers and first responders, who are also often affected by work-related trauma exposure. The webpage also highlights the Vicarious Trauma Toolkit (VTT), which introduces a new model for examining and conceptualizing the impact of vicarious trauma and the reactions and experiences of victim service providers and first responders. Included on the webpage is a sample of the 500 tools and resources from the VTT Compendium of Resources, which covers Education and Awareness, Prevalence and Risk Factors, and Impact. These resources are intended to support those working in victim services, emergency medical services, fire services, law enforcement, and other allied professions.

(See also Resources on "domestic violence" in the Resource Library)

This July 2016 webinar, hosted by the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, focused on methods of compassion fatigue management, encouraged self-care, and aimed to renew participants’ passion for their work. The webinar also provided valuable tools that caregivers can use to identify the warning signs of compassion fatigue as well as to help in developing techniques for self-care. One of the tools is a compassion fatigue symptoms checklist which covers physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, and professional symptoms that caregivers might encounter.

This report covers lessons learned from the first phase (January 2020 to September 2020) of the Southeastern Cohort on Young Parents and Families. The Cohort is an initiative aimed at enhancing and aligning programs, policies, and systems to better support young parents (ages 18-24) and their families in Georgia, Kentucky, and South Carolina. The report presents findings on four key areas: understanding and engaging young parents, continuous improvement through data and feedback, service collaboration and alignment, and service delivery adaptations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This toolkit offers steps on how the juvenile justice and workforce development systems can collaborate to serve youth with justice involvement. The toolkit includes a review of evidence-based practices in youth workforce development, an examination of how the public workforce system is funded under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), examples of how to utilize WIOA-funded services for better outcomes for youth with justice involvement, and steps that could be taken to form interagency partnerships between the juvenile justice and workforce development systems.

This brief reviews youthCONNECT, an initiative implemented in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The initiative integrates college and career preparation skills, life skills training, and connection with a caring adult to improve healthy behaviors, school engagement, and the social and emotional skills of participating students. The youthCONNECT initiative seeks to leverage these improvements into increased high school achievement and postsecondary educational enrollment and employment. The brief describes a survey of 721 students enrolled in the youthCONNECT program based on self-reporting as well as data from these students’ academic records (grades, attendance, and disciplinary actions taken).

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report describes the STRIVE program in Westchester County, New York, which is a full-time, eight-week course that teaches job readiness and job search skills. The report discusses a study of the STRIVE program, which aimed to answer these research questions: what was the context in which the STRIVE program operated; how was the STRIVE program designed; how was the STRIVE program implemented, what were its most prominent features, and what challenges faced managers and staff; and what are the lessons for program administrators wanting to implement this approach.