welcome to icf international. inc.’s mutuallybeneficial partnership lessons from two research/practice partnerships projects conference call. today'sconference is being recorded. at this time i would like to turn the conference over toms. ellen simon. please go ahead. thank you so much and hello everyone. welcometo the mutually beneficial partnerships: lessons from two research/practice partnership projectswebinar, co-hosted by the office of planning, research & evaluation (opre), self-sufficiencyresearch clearinghouse and health profession opportunity grants university partnershipinitiative. i would like to thank you for joining us today and go over some housekeepingremarks. first, the audio for today's webinar will be broadcasted through your computerspeakers. please make sure that the volume
on your computer speakers is turned up sothat you can hear the presentation. background materials for today's webinar are availablefor you to download from the pod in the top right corner of your screen, designated bythe word "files." please click the name of the file you wish to view and then the downloadbutton to open or save a copy of the material to your computer. we will be taking questions at the end ofthe presentation but we encourage you to submit any questions that you have throughout thewebinar. to do this, find the question and answer poddesignated by the letters q and a in the bottom right portion of your screen. type your questioninto the open field at the bottom and then
click the "send question" button or "enter."in the coming weeks, a recording of this presentation, the slides, a transcript, and a question andanswer document will be posted to the ssrc, and an email notification will be sent outto you when these materials are posted. this webinar will feature dr. janet boguslawand dr. philip hong. before we give them the floor, i will provide a brief overview ofthe self-sufficiency research clearinghouse and then hilary forster will provide an overviewof opre's health profession opportunity grants research and evaluation portfolio. the self-sufficiency research clearinghouse,or ssrc for short, is a virtual library of research and resources on programs and policiesdesigned to improve the self-sufficiency of
low-income individuals and families. the goalsof the ssrc include facilitating communication between researchers and practitioners, increasingawareness in the use of self-sufficiency research, and improving practice and program implementationfor low-income families. today's webinar is right on target with the goals of the ssrc.partnerships between researchers and practitioners are critical for generating high-quality self-sufficiencyresearch and using research to inform practice. another ssrc goal is to foster professionalconnections, so we are delighted to offer this opportunity for all of you to hear fromdr. boguslaw and dr. hong and to share your thoughts, questions, and experiences duringthe discussion period. the ssrc has over 2,000 items in the library and it is growing steadily.the library records are currently being updated
and you may notice that some resources youtry to access are temporarily unavailable. please email us if you need research thatyou are not able to access at the email address on this slide [ssrc@opressrc.org]. the ssrcis designed for researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers and includes interactivefeatures such as events and conferences listed on the homepage and the ability to submitevents and learn more about events in the field. the "make a linkage" feature allowsusers to connect with organizations and stakeholders in the self-sufficiency field, and the datasets and data sources section provides information on various databases with links to sourcesto obtain the data. the substantive focus of the ssrc addresses 12 topics shown hereas each relates to self-sufficiency. hopefully,
these resources will be of use to you in yourdaily work so please visit the ssrc and let us know what you think. now i will turn thefloor over to hilary forster. great. thank you, ellen. i am hilary forsterwith the office of planning, research and evaluation within the administration for childrenand families. i serve as the federal project officer for several of the research and evaluationprojects that we have under way on the health profession opportunity grants program, oras we call it, the hpog program. i would like to thank the ssrc for hosting this webinartoday and highlighting some of our hpog research. i encourage everyone to check out the ssrcweb site and all of the great resources and research they have available.
i am just going to provide a very brief overviewof the hpog program and of opre's research and evaluation portfolio for hpog before turningit over to our two main presenters. the hpog program was established by the affordablecare act of 2010 to fund demonstration projects to provide training, education, and supportiveservices to prepare tanf recipients and other low-income individuals to enter and advancein the healthcare sector. in 2010 the administration for children and families (acf) awarded 5-yeargrants to 32 grantees across 23 states, including 5 tribal grantees. there is great diversityacross the hpog grantees. they vary across a number of characteristics, including typeof lead organization, location, program size, and the range of occupational fields for whichtraining is provided. however, they all carry
out their projects in coordination with anumber of partners such as the state tanf agency, relevant local and state workforceinvestment boards, and state apprenticeship agencies. all use a career pathways approachwhich means that training is organized as a series of manageable steps leading to successivelyhigher credentials and employment opportunities. acf has made a significant investment in researchand evaluation around the hpog program in order to understand program implementation,systems change, outcomes, and impacts. opre has a multi-pronged research and evaluationstrategy to begin answering some of these questions; the slide on your screen showsthe different components that are included in this strategy.
today two of the hpog university partnershipresearch grantees will be discussing how they are facilitating research and program partnerships.the university partnership research grants for hpog are intended to complement opre'soverall research and evaluation portfolio for hpog by providing an opportunity to examineand answer specific questions of interest in particular hpog programs. each universitypartnership research grantee partners with an hpog program or programs as an integralpart of the research plan development and execution. the aim is to conduct researchthat will inform and improve hpog program performance. today the two presenters joiningus are dr. janet boguslaw and dr. philip hong. dr. janet boguslaw is associate director ofthe institute on assets and social policy
(iasp) at the heller school for social policyand management at brandeis university. she is also associate director of the heller school'smasters in public policy program and directs the concentration in poverty alleviation.her work focuses on building the assets and well-being of vulnerable populations throughmulti-stakeholder initiatives. we also have dr. phillip hong with us. he is an associateprofessor in the school of social work at loyola university chicago and a faculty associateof the center for social development at washington university in st. louis. his main academicinterest is in poverty and workforce development. with that, i will turn it over to janet. great. thanks, hilary, and good afternooneveryone. our study is focusing on the employment,
retention, and advancement opportunities forracial, ethnic, and linguistic minorities in new hampshire. for today's discussion,i would like to focus on three key areas. first, i want to introduce our research partnershipand why this is a new approach to the workforce development initiative. then i want to discusssome of the key elements of the partnership, how we work together, and move some of thework forward together. finally, i want to provide some examples of how the researchhas been shared and developed with the program, and look at some of its shorter and longer-termimpacts to the self-sufficiency of the healthcare workforce. so let us start with the partnership. thisis a partnership developed between researchers
at iasp and the program staff at the new hampshireoffice of minority health and refugee affairs (omhra). iasp is a research institute thatconducts research and engages constituencies to shape a fresh understanding of strategiesfor poverty alleviation and work to develop policies and practices that build the security,stability, and well-being of those who have been left out of the economic mainstream.the health profession opportunity project, hpop , is located within the new hampshireomhra. we work closely with the director of omhra as well as with the hpop project directorand her staff. so what is the context for our research? first is changing demographics.hpop has set a goal to train one thousand individuals, with at least 25 percent to beminorities. new hampshire has traditionally
had a very homogenous population, but thatis changing. a few facts here to get us started. the state's minority population accountedfor almost 30 percent of the state's population growth since 2000 to 2008. diversity in newhampshire is especially concentrated in metro areas in the southern part of the state. eighteenpercent in manchester, 21 percent in nashua, for example. diversity is growing among theyoungest residents. new hampshire's latino youth population grew almost 53 percent from2000 to 2008, and nearly 25 percent of new hampshire's african-american population livesbelow the federal poverty line, as does 16 percent of the latino population, and 18 percentof the american indian population. almost 20 percent of all other minority populationsin the state are poor, compared with only
seven percent of new hampshire's white residents.over the past 20 years, new hampshire has been a refugee resettlement state, and thishas contributed to new hampshire's change in demographics. among the refugees are awide range of professional and educational backgrounds. the second context for this work is that thenew hampshire healthcare workforce does not reflect the patient population or the workforcepipeline in training. a 2008 report of new hampshire hospitals indicates that only fourpercent are minority workers. the majority of the diverse workforce is concentrated inlow-level positions, indicating few opportunities for advancement. there is concern that notonly does the current workforce not reflect
the patient population in the most diverseareas of the state, but that with the growing demographic changes health disparities thatcurrently exist will grow if attention is not given to building a pipeline of experiencedworkers. finally, and this is across the board, all low-income participants are eager to getto work. they want to start work and pursue additional training after they are workingbut the challenges of healthcare shiftwork often make continuing training and educationa challenge. so we have developed a few baseline researchassumptions with our partners and this helped underlie the research and provided our theoryof change. we decided the focus of the project would not be on the workers themselves asa primary focus, but on the employer organizations
to understand the barriers and opportunitiesfor increasing the hiring, retention, and advancement of minority workers who have notbeen part of the professional staff in new hampshire's healthcare organizations. theprimary assumption is that a diverse workforce is beneficial to the healthcare organizationand will provide opportunities for greater self-sufficiency within the community by providinggood jobs with benefits and career advancement opportunities to those who have previouslybeen left out of the employment and healthcare sector. it will also improve overall communityhealth by reducing health disparities, which will enable people to be more productive andbe able to sustain employment over time. so that is the sort of self-sufficiency model.
the research initiative is shaped by threequestions. how can new hampshire healthcare employers create a more diverse workforceand foster greater recruitment, retention, and advancement of racial, ethnic, and linguisticminorities? how can the workforce development fields learning from employers better prepareand support both workers and employers in the healthcare sector? and finally, what arethe opportunity structures or bridges that need to be developed or leveraged to buildand sustain a more diverse and upwardly mobile workforce in new hampshire? this is primarilya qualitative research initiative designed to have short-term in-process impacts throughhpop, and to set in motion long-term learning and processes that will be sustainable andgrow in impact well beyond this project's
funding. the key objectives were and are toidentify barriers, understand the strategies that make some healthcare employers successfulin this area, create new knowledge that has impact for the workforce development system,and create new knowledge and resources to engage employers in this work. over the pasttwo years, we have conducted interviews with new hampshire healthcare employers, healthcareworkers, healthcare association and foundation leadership, community leaders, providers ofhealthcare training both public and private, and job and career developers or counselorsconnected to these education and training programs. we included hospitals, long-termcare facilities, home healthcare agencies, community health centers and others in thedesignated geographic area.
two quick findings today in general. one isthat current practices and strategies within the workplace do not fully support minorityhiring, retention, and advancement and we have surfaced a lot of the barriers that arepresenting. the workforce development system does not sufficiently integrate the communication,teamwork, and cultural competency skills employers seek within the technical skill training andeducation programs. so, this is a unique partnership. that was the context for it. this is a uniquepartnership because it is between a statewide agency and a university that is based outsideof the state. what are the advantages? at least four. first,research needs to be locally developed and created and that requires access. healthcareemployers are most responsive initially to
what they learn from and about their peersin the context of their state. ohmra drew on its many networks to get iasp connectedto enable interviews and other data gathering, and ohmra knows other research based in newhampshire around workforce development and health care so it is able to help limit overlapand to avoid employer fatigue when seeking access to data. second, making research productiverequires an actively engaged local partner who has reach and access to key local, regionalstakeholders. geography plays a critical role in developing this work. in new hampshire,it is primarily a rural state with a key few cities. stakeholders largely know each otherand attempted interventions happen in a fairly transparent way. ohmra can advance its workthrough its multiple channels. third, research
findings need to be prioritized and ownershipand responsibility for moving different components forward must be owned in the state to be sustainableand have impact. iasp reviews findings with ohmra to identify and strategize about theirvalue and then facilitates meetings with employers and workforce development players to vet theinformation and help develop broadly owned agendas. finally, we have heard repeatedly that researchconducted by the university brings a sense of neutrality, validation and reliabilityabout the findings. being out of state means iasp is not perceived as one of the state'sstakeholders, and there seems to be fewer concerns about confidentiality, prioritizationof findings, or self-interest. a variety of
strategies have helped us develop and maintainthe partnership over time. as you can see on this slide, we built in opportunities toconnect at regular meetings, in person, by phone, and to share the delivery of presentationsabout our work together. and just to be transparent, we worked together on developing this presentationfor you today. one of the other things that was really valuable is that we have some semi-sharedstaff. our lead graduate research assistant on the project previously was a full-timeemployee at ohmra and remains on their staff for a few hours a week. she serves as a liaisonbetween the partners, helping to provide historical context, improved communication, and helpsstrategize about how the research can best be made productive because she knows the communitywell.
now i want to talk about the partnership environmentand the research impact today. i will focus on four areas. one is process, the secondis capacity building, the third about content and data, and fourth, sustainability. thefirst, process: this research is secondary to hpop's primary mission, which is focusedon enrollment, training, and placement of participants. the research is intended tohelp advance this work but the question is, how? from our research we have been able to breakout some of the short- and long-term strategies. what does this look like? for the shorterterm, for example, we have been able to raise awareness among job developers about how toframe minorities’ differences as a benefit
to employers, broadening the discussions ofhow an individual might bring value to an organization beyond just the technical skillsthey hold. with a number of findings that could be put into action, hpop has dedicateda portion of the time of a new staff hire to advancing this work, building its own capacityto move the research forward. finally, the research has implications for training providersbroadly, so hpop has been able to bring information forward to some of its key partners in educationand training. so how do they move findings forward, move the response of building theownership to others whose work will benefit hpop participants? good examples of this arebuilding more cultural competency training and work readiness into the core skills trainingprograms offered through community colleges.
the research is designed to impact the workof our hpop partners, but the findings suggest that the work that needs to occur is institutionalchange within the healthcare provider organizations and the workforce training and education providerprograms. hpop has to find a way to leverage the findings to influence the work and capacityof others. this takes time, education, and resources, all of which we as researchersbring to the table. some examples here. iasp has contributed totwo surveys, one conducted among employers by the community college system, and one bythe southern new hampshire area health and education consortium of minority nursing students.we have helped to add questions that will surface information that can improve minorityhiring retention and be part of another institution's
on-going work. we presented our findings andengaged discussion around it with the hpop employment team, the workforce diversity committeeof the new hampshire health and equity partnership, with the new hampshire research and evaluationgroup at state workforce conferences, and to a steering committee made up of healthcareemployer association leadership. we have also encouraged hpop to examine its own data onminority participants to share with employers about the strengths and skills of those theyare training for the pipeline and to use the data to increase community engagement to bringmembers of all minority communities into the training. finally, we have been starting toco-brand work with others in the state to increase the reach of the data we are producing.
so, here is an example of some of the concreteoutcomes. this was developed from the project literature review and turned into a documentfor employers. it was co-produced with ohmra, iasp and the new hampshire health and equitypartnership. it has been widely distributed and it is actually there in the corner ofthe box on your screen if you want to download it. other ways that the research has startedto contribute -- we brought findings to inform the development of the web site which hasa section for business and employers with a subsection on diversity. we surfaced concernsamong minority workers about job search strategies, making job developers aware of the challengesworkers are facing. through regular attendance, we bring information to the business advisorycommittees in each region, raising issues
such as how employers can broaden their jobdescriptions to make them more reflective of the values and needs for diversity, shiftingtheir lens about what is valuable to the organization. bringing diversity mission statements in forreview and discussion, talking about how they are being used as tools to build leadershipand change organizational cultures. the research, as noted earlier, has helped change up thecontent of some of the training initiatives funded through hpop and where change has notyet happened, it has opened up discussion. one area under development is improving whatparticipants know and understand about their rights and responsibilities in the workplace,empowering them to understand how to advocate for themselves and use hr [human resources]offices. ideally, this will improve retention
of minority workers and help them navigatecareer advancement. we have surfaced new research needs that go beyond this project with manyof hpop's other partners in new hampshire now thinking about how research might helpthem move their own work in this area forward, consulting with us about how to advance theirwork. and this is an example of the nice hpop web site that has been developed. you cansee in the corner there that there is a section for businesses and employers and within thatthere is a section on diversity. finally, sometime soon the hpog program willend, as will our research partnership. an important goal is to make sure the researchleads to action that is embedded in the on-going work of state actors. new hampshire has manygroups working on developing the pipeline
and our research initiative has been connectingwith all of them. so to sum up, the partnership has helped hpop and ohmra incorporate newanalyses of the problems and identify what kinds of new data will help them achieve theirgoal. three final points here. first, creating ahealthcare workforce is neither the sole responsibility of workforce development professionals northe workforce itself. it requires a focus on the education and training, not just onthe supply side, the workforce, but on the demand side, employers, as well. data needsto be continuously gathered that identifies and addresses workplace barriers to employmentfor low-income minority workers. the hpop staff know more now about what to ask workersand employers about the employment environment,
and they are building such questions and engagementinto their work. second, employer education is critical to workforce success. employersdo not understand the difference between developing a culturally-competent staff and developinga culturally effective organization. surfacing these kinds of analyses will help ohmra andhpop take the lead in working with employers to build the opportunity structures and bridgethe gaps that make minority hiring a win for the organization, employees, and the community.hpop and ohmra have set a goal to build closer connections and partnerships with employerassociations and employers to advance this work through business advisory councils andother venues. they have the data they need to move this work forward.
finally, we have to identify and lift up thepromising practices. we helped and they want to continue to seek out and highlight modelsthat can be shared with other employers from common sectors and community leaders, demonstratingthat new hampshire employers can and do embrace diversity as a strategy that helps with theirbottom line. hpop and ohmra staff now have several good models, examples to point to,and they are more likely to seek these out to highlight in the future. so, this is myrough-cut map of what we have been putting together. when you look at the partnershipmodel, it is generating short-term information that is valuable to the hpop participant byhelping raise employer awareness, make changes in the education training system, and by buildingbridges and communication systems that will
endure beyond the project. ideally, this willimprove the environment and opportunities for low-income minority workers to gain employmentin the healthcare sector, improving their incomes and career opportunities over thelong term, while simultaneously helping reduce healthcare disparities within minority communities.the mockup of the system is not yet complete, but it begins to create a picture of how theresearch can help drive new partnerships, improve communication, and help drive changesin organizational practices. as you can see, this is a very applied project. we seek toengage multiple sectors in new ways, all to help advance self-sufficiency, strengtheningindividuals, families, the healthcare employment sector, and the community. we have a new reportthat will be coming out at the end of the
month and if you would like to receive it,just send us your name and we will put you on our list. any of us would be happy to talkto you more about the partnership or about the work and research that we have been developing.so, thank you very much for your time and attention. thank you, janet. as a reminder, please submitany questions you have through the q and a. and now i will turn it over to dr. philiphong. thank you, janet, for a wonderful presentation.my name is philip hong and i will be presenting our project in which we are partnering withtwo hpog programs. i will provide you with a diagram here when we look at the processof welfare reform, when it was first argued
and when it was first implemented [slide 32].we have poverty as our problem issue and the main source of the issue was welfare dependency.we have located psychological barriers as the main source of the dependency problemthat has been causing poverty for long-term welfare users. and we have seen that as welfarereform has been progressing, economic security and financial stability are positive terms[that have come to] replace poverty, and economic self-sufficiency replaced welfare dependency.and we have seen the logical [assumptions made] where work preparation and participationthrough human capital development and labor force attachment are practices that would…addressthe issue of psychological barriers as the key sources of the problem of welfare dependency…[andin turn] long-term causes the cycle of poverty.
so with that logic, the problem definitionthat we as researchers…[explore has to do with] the gap in the logic: participatingin job preparation and work participation leads one to become psychologically self-sufficientor develop confidence in moving through the job as they develop as employees. we deliberately wanted to look at what happenswhen someone transitions from welfare to work. how do [individuals overcome] psychologicalbarriers…as they move into the path of economic self-sufficiency in the long-term, reachingeconomic security and financial stability? we wanted to target psychological self-sufficiencyas the direct [representation of] psychological barriers and not assume that work preparationand participation would directly link to someone's
self-confidence building, self-esteem buildingor the soft skills/non-cognitive skills that people who work in the workforce developmentfield understand as core to learning, training and being work ready. so that is the motivationfor our [the university partner] research that i want to present to you, and this partthat you see in the circle is where we want to focus on—how psychological self-sufficiencycontributes to economic self-sufficiency in the long-term [slide 32]. we will also wantto see placement and retention outcomes as they move through the career pathways. the purpose of our research…is two-fold.first, we wanted to validate the measure of psychological self-sufficiency that comprisesemployment hope and perceived employment barriers.
one would wonder how we came about definingpsychological self-sufficiency in this manner. it was through a series of qualitative focusgroup analyses that we were able to generate data to define self-sufficiency from bottom-upas defined by participants in workforce development programs, and also staff that managed theseprograms. this helped bring the components together to define self-sufficiency as a processthat would lead to an outcome of economic self-sufficiency. so that is where everythingbegan and now we have measures that we intend to validate with the study. second, we wantedto validate the extent to which psychological self-sufficiency affects economic self-sufficiencyas one goes through the hpog program. i would like to highlight the theory of change ofthe overall hpog program--we see the end goal
as the job outcome and retention in healthcareers [slide 34]. and the program component in the beginning, if you see the first block,education and training in health career pathways, coupled with that you would see supportedservices that support program completion of students participating in the hpog program.and comparable to these blocks, when we had a series of meetings with our hpog partnersin the beginning, they saw economic self-sufficiency as their own end goal through these correspondingblocks represented by career goals, resource skills, and motivation that relate to educationand training. so…what would be the expected change…asa result of participating in these educational and training programs? they would developcareer goals, utilize resources and skills,
and develop motivation. also, you would seein the second block, the barriers they would overcome as they become job-ready [slide 34].it is sort of the process component as they go through the hpog training program and eventuallyreach economic self-sufficiency. and just to give you a quick glance at the two hpogsites that we are referring to, the first site is gateway technical college locatedin kenosha, wisconsin, with four campuses at elkhorn, burlington, racine, and kenosha.the four campuses work together to train approximately 62 students annually to enter and advancein healthcare sector positions and they target skills and competencies demanded by the healthcareindustry and support career pathways. they also strive to support acquiring certificatesand degrees in employer industry-recognized
areas and they have combined supportive serviceswith education and training. and these are the areas that we were very much interestedin when we first had our discussion with the partner. to what extent are these supportservices provided and what is the nature of these support services that empower individualsas they go through a career pathway? and also they provide training services at times andlocations that are widespread in southern wisconsin in kenosha, racine, burlington,or kenosha, which are the four campuses of the school. southland healthcare forum is the second hpogsite and their main programmatic goal is to increase the number of qualified medical assistants,licensed practical nurses, to meet high demand
healthcare occupational needs in the region.it is located in chicago heights, illinois—a little bit south of chicago—and they enrollapproximately 75 students annually in the program and offer various support services.they also provide direct training in-house and outsource their training to the localcommunity college, prairie state college, caan academy of nursing, and so forth. theypartner with other community resources to provide services, and have a heightened visionto provide support services in ways that would help individuals become strong students, notjust to complete the program, but…[ be strong] so that they would do well out in the jobmarket. for both programs, we have met together, shared the vision and we are focusing on thehuman development nature of our education
and training through the career pathways inhealthcare. if you see the bottom [part of the slide],it represents the university theory of change corresponding to the hpog program theory ofchange [slide 37]. if you were to look at the bottom half of the first block—goal-orientedpathway— it corresponds with the career goals, resource, skills, and motivation. psychologicalempowerment—the second block—corresponds with overcoming barriers and work readiness.where you see the arrow going from goal-oriented pathway to psychological empowerment–thetwo components that make up the concept of employment hope—[represent the dynamicsof] change in employment hope. we hypothesize that changes in employment hope that theyeither sustain or improve [or help] overcome
some of the perceived barriers that they encounteras they move through the career pathways [as they move toward] economic self-sufficiency.the common denominator for both …the university partner and the hpog partner [coming together]is that we share that economic self-sufficiency is the outcome that we both want to look at. we are also sharing the [importance of focusingon the] process that it takes for one to become economically self-sufficient as they launchtheir journey toward a healthcare career. so, what is being evaluated [slide 38]? asmentioned, we are looking at the process of [change in] psychological self-sufficiency…thatcomprises employment hope and perceived barriers, and [how it] ultimately leads to economicself-sufficiency as students move through
various training programs and overcome employmentbarriers. and so far, we have uncovered that employment hope and perceived barriers actuallycontribute to economic self-sufficiency. that is the current, up-to-date analysis that wehave completed. we are also finding that earlier stage employment hope change contributes positivelyto increasing employment hope, and positively contributes to increased economic self-sufficiencyin later stages. those are the two main findings that we have uncovered so far. let me give you the overview of how the studyis designed in terms of how we have put the data together. we have partnered with twohpog organizations, gateway technical college and southland healthcare forum. we have threecomparison sites in year one of our studies
and we have ended our data collection withthem. first was the chicago urban league; second, the chicago housing authority, and,third, the cara program. the first one, the chicago urban league, is a hybrid programthat emphasizes soft skills development workshops in the beginning when participants come intothe program and this is a placement-based program …[with some] focus on the soft skillsdevelopment. the third one, the cara program, emphasizes heavily the soft skills developmentand uses soft skills development, overcoming barriers, life strategies and so forth asstrong components for motivation that create the environment for peer support to get peoplethrough job search and then placement and retention. third, chicago housing authorityis a work-first, placement-first approach
and was a summer program for housing residents.it started with about 100 residents in the program for the summer food program. we followedthem over the course of four time points to look at their progress. so these comparisonsites become very useful in making comparisons with our career pathway model with hpog organizationsand the data collection. we have our project coordinator, who is at the southland healthcareforum once a week, engaged in meetings and monitoring data collection activities at thatsite on a weekly basis. we have a data coordinator who goes out to all four campuses of gatewaytechnical college, with the help of contracted consultants. we now have someone who is agraduate student who will be replacing that consultant. she goes on a weekly basis tomonitor the collection of data at those sites.
it is difficult when you are following individualsthat are in various classrooms, going through different curriculums across four campusesof the gateway and the state community college at southland. it is very difficult to coordinatethat with these two individuals that have been instrumental in putting together a plan,following these individuals, partnering very closely with program site specialists andthe other sites that we are doing comparisons with. the [comparison sites however have]a cohort model [and participants] move together through the programs so it is much easier[to follow individuals to administer surveys], especially with the help of the staff whohave been very instrumental in collecting the data. our resources were rather shortin terms of going out to all the sites [and
our team] focused primarily on monitoringthe hpog sites; other comparison sites we worked very closely with the staff to collectdata. just to give you a quick snapshot of the performancereporting system (prs) data—the system into which all 32 hpog grantees have to reportdata and which the urban institute manages. we have recently been given authorizationto use the prs data to combine with our survey data to look at individual student supportiveservices and other kinds of demographic data that we wanted to combine with, just to makesure that our survey data is consistent with the administrative data. also the additionaldata that we acquire from prs helps us to understand the nature of students’ programparticipation. so the breakdown of the data
that we have are: 240 from gateway, 76 fromsouthland, and will county is one that has just recently joined our research so thatis another hpog program that only has about 10 students that we are looking at [slide40]. the total is 326 individuals. just to give you some demographics: more than halfof our participants are african american; a great majority never married [and have]dependent children, and a great majority earning less than $15,000 in annual income, and interms of the distribution of services—for public benefits received, 66 percent receivesnap, 55 [percent receive] medicaid [slides 41 and 42]. just to walk you through some of the challengesand lessons learned, it has been a challenge
to find individuals at different programsand campuses and that has been overcome through the work of our data coordinator and projectcoordinator in very close connection with program specialists at each site. also, insome of the programs we find students going from a short-term program and then stayingto go on to the next level program; so they are not exactly exiting the program at thetime when we think that they might be done. there is difference in the lengths of programsfor some students if they stay on. we are following individuals four times to do oursurvey--in the beginning of the program, middle of the program, at the end of the program,and six months after, staying consistent with the way in which prs data is collected sowe can merge the data and analyze it as part
of the multi-pronged approach to evaluation.also, we have run into the program sites when they are first starting up, they were stillfiguring out how to manage their students, and that is when we had some issues in thebeginning but we were able to overcome that now with a very strong data collection schedulethat we put together with our staff at each site. there is also a lag time in the data entryby each hpog site. we wanted to try combining the data that we wanted for the people thatwe have in our system but some were not entered yet into the prs system, so that creates alag in our analysis. just a quick glance at what we look at three time points. we haveyet to [obtain data at time 4] for people
who graduated six months after post-graduation.we would find fluctuation in employment hope as you see in the first column, and then thesecond one you would compare the employment barriers in the bottom, the orange line, dipping,and then going up again for gateway and self-sufficiency going up and then dropping and then increasing[slide 44]. you see self-esteem gradually [increase comparable] to the total [averageas] you see in the right-hand column. so you can compare how gateway performs in comparisonto total average fluctuation [slide 44]. this is only a trend analysis; we are just learning[at this point] as we are developing a stronger database. basically, as mentioned earlier, we are learningthat [the change in] employment hope between
the first two time points contributes to theself-sufficiency change from time 2 to time 3. and we are talking to our hpog partnersto learn to what extent[—as we learned anecdotally—]the program manager and specialists engage inintensive coaching towards the end of the program where you have seen a little bit ofincrease in employment hope for gateway. we have yet to find out through the prs datato what extent our data empirically supports the anecdotal evidence that is being sharedby our program specialists, that their contribution of the intensive coaching really helps individualstudents improve their psychological self-sufficiency and may have an impact on long-term economicself-sufficiency. we want to use the prs data to examine the extent to which they…receivedsupport services, especially in the counseling
area or coaching, and how they have any bearingon the long-term outcome of economic self-sufficiency? what we conclude as our added value of thispartnership is that we are looking at something that is intangible, that is, psychologicalself-sufficiency that is not easily measured and that is oftentimes considered touchy-feelyand that is not seen as something to be deliberate about in terms of providing services. whilewe do provide these services, if there is not a process measure to look at what is inthe black box when you have the input and the output and the outcome, [there is no knowing]what happens in that time when these things are all put in place? so, that is what weare looking at, together with these partners. we want to see to what extent some of theinputs (such as coaching) that lead one to
develop hope and resilience—inputs thatsome programs have been deliberate about and have not been able to measure—are manifestedin the ways that we are looking at (psychological self-sufficiency)…affect economic self-sufficiency. we propose using pss, psychological self-sufficiency,as an intermediate benchmark of workforce development success, based on the theory ofchange. also, what is the added value as we look at the multi-pronged approach to evaluation?we are working closely with hpog partners to look at how data from each site comparewith the national hpog evaluation and also compare them with other hpog sites withinour study. we have multiple sites that we can compare--southland with gateway--and alsowithin each site we have students going through
different tracks (career tracks) within healthcare(one supposedly leading to higher income versus one that is leading to relatively lower income).would that have an impact on how one is motivated and develop their employment hope to overcometheir barriers, and how would they engage and seek supportive services to reach theireconomic outcomes? also, in making comparisons with the non-hpog sites, we are now very closeto finalizing or cleaning up the data to do these comparison analyses. i would like toend there. thank you very much for your attention. thank you, dr. hong. at this time, we wouldlike to transition to our q and a period. we have had quite a few great questions submittedand i will begin by posing the first one to hilary. hilary, how big is the hpog programin terms of total dollars spent on program
services each calendar year and in terms ofnumber of participants? sure. so, acf provides about 67 million dollarsin total each year across the [32 hpog] grantees and hpog is expected to serve around 30,000to 35,000 individuals over the five-year period of the grants. and as i had mentioned in myearlier remarks, the grantees really do vary in terms of their enrollment goals acrossthe five years, which in turn means that they vary in terms of the amount of funding thatthey receive per year. great. thank you, hilary. sure. as we move on through other questions, everyoneon the line in the webinar please continue
to submit your questions through the questionand answer box. this is a question for both janet and philip. what are some things thathave facilitated an effective mutually beneficial partnership with your program partner? this is janet. i think that one of thingsthat has been really important is having regular communications both by phone and in directmeetings. we have a regularly scheduled monthly phone call but we also participate in a lotof the meetings to keep their program going and then set up times to meet before and afterthose. so there is a lot of communication that takes place and i think that that hasbeen really important to keep us up on the program and not waste their time in fillingus in and for us as we are uncovering material
from the interviews that we have been conductingto sort of test out what we have been finding with them. so, that communication has beena really important piece of it. and then i think the second big thing has been beingat meetings with their partners and with their program operator so that people have cometo know us and it has been a more effective way for sharing a lot of the information. thank you, janet. those are some great tips.philip, do you have any thoughts you would like to share? yes. i would like to echo the part about consistentcommunications. we have benefitted by having a strong presence at each site with our projectcoordinator and data coordinator stationed
there once a week and having sort of an on-goingrelationship with our program specialists at each hpog site. and also we have an ongoingmeeting where we would put together a presentation on the findings that are up-to-date from ourresearch. we go to each site to do the presentation every six months-- one in the spring, andone in the fall. we are scheduled to go out at the end of this month. so that has beenreally helpful and that is where we really get into a very deep discussion about howthe common understanding of the theory of change is really unfolding in our collaborativeresearch and also the second part of it is really, i think, as i mentioned in our presentation,that there is a common understanding of the core mission where the buy-in of the ideais based on the theory of change, and that
is really key as we understand that the researchis informing practice and practice is also informing research and that there is a mutuallearning process here. we continue to see each other as partners and not just findingour own benefits, but mutual benefits as we have presented to you. also, third is eachagency as we have been in multiple discussions with, mention that their presentation of theirsuccess outcomes, when they report to their funders, has, in most part, been very descriptiveand also to some extent they highlight some success narratives of some students who overcamea huge amount of debt and also multiple barriers to reach some success and there are thosekind of stories that really made an impact. now with the need by the agency or these organizations,you put the numbers to these stories in terms
of the strength, inner strength, psychologicalempowerment, in such that we have been calling it soft skills or non-cognitive skills orwhatnot, these things were really key in terms of us being a partner to each of our partners.those three i could think of as the key pieces that contribute to an effective mutually beneficialpartnership. great. thank you, philip. hilary, we havea question for you. is there life after the five-year sunset of hpog? what sustainabilityefforts are being considered? sure. there are currently some discussionsand talks about reauthorization for the hpog program. at this point, we do not know wherethat will lead or what will happen. but we do obviously see the research portfolio thatwe are supporting as feeding into those discussions
and hopefully we all know more soon. hilary, can i just ask -- can i just add adifferent angle on that as well? there are these five research initiativesand today we are just highlighting two of them, but it seems to me that all of our projectsare really designed to embed a new way of thinking and practice in the communities wherewe are doing the research. so, you know, another angle on the sustainability is that ideally,some of what we are learning through research is really going to be carried on in thesedifferent communities where it is being located. thank you, janet. we have another questionfor philip. could you give an example of one or more specific strategies or approachesthat program staff use to help improve psychological
outcomes among program participants? absolutely. i will give you an example ofour gateway partner, hpog partner, and the staff, who are program specialists. they arerequired to meet with their students once a month to make sure that they are doing well,and to check in. there is a lot of ongoing communication that takes place with the programspecialists. they are not hired to do the direct counseling, but they are to engagethe students to get information from them, especially for how they are progressing ineach class and their planning for the next semester and so forth. and we have been consistentlyhearing that these program specialists engage in sort of a really intensive coaching, thatis not systematic in any way as part of the
hpog program. it is something that they do,they feel that they have to do because they are passionate about student success, butit is not a measure alongside with the key input that is part of the hpog program. so,this coaching, such as one where they would look at various barriers that one would seeas barriers and typically students, would say that why are these barriers to you andjust cognitively helping them understand the extent to which they are barriers and alsolooking at these goals that they have set for themselves. they look at what is negative and transform that into apositive, and with that positive overcoming or being larger than the negative, they wouldthen develop that as their power to move to the next level, continue on this sort of pathtoward their goals within this career pathway.
so, we have heard those narratives in many,many instances and how they would do that while doing other work, they would run intoa student who just happened to be in the hallway, they would sit with them for an hour doingthis type of planning and helping them out with strategizing, overcoming their barriers,and giving them what we are calling employment hope here. but it may term different thingsby different people but we are just using that as a way to connect with different agencies,especially our hpog partners. those are things that we are learning, but there are differentcomponents of this measure but we do not have data in terms of the extent to which thosedifferent components are activated when they engage these students with the coaching, whatwe are calling coaching but is a broad term,
but do not know exactly what takes place yetbut there is something happening with that, so that is what we are understanding so far. thank you very much, philip. we have a questionfor you, dr. boguslaw. assuming that the program and stakeholders do not always have the sameopinion and research priorities, how do you balance and prioritize their request? great question. i think this happens moreoften than not that people do not have the same research priorities or they do not knowhow to make them actionable with the same level of priorities. i think there are a fewthings that we have done. one is try to break out some of our findings into short-term andlong-term strategies so that we can make visible
some of the data and some of the approachesthat people might feel as sort of the low-hanging fruit that helps them move things forwardand putting on a back burner some of the larger ones, or bigger ones, that might take moreorganizational change and effect. so, i will give you an example of some of the shorter-termkinds of discussion [that] would be looking at this issue of job descriptions and havingconversations with employers through the hpog business advisory council about how job descriptionsare written and how they can be broadened to value the diversity within the communitya little bit more broadly and open up the hr [human resources] manager's views of whatmight actually be of value and putting examples of these differences of job descriptions infront of them, might be able to change things
up in a way that makes it easier for themto go back to their organizations and start putting something into practice. other kindsof changes are bigger so we can put mission statements and show it to them and bring peoplein who are using them and have them talk about how these statements are helping shape theirworkforce and helping them shift some of the organizational practices. so those are thecurrent things that they will have to go back and talk within their organizations abouttaking something like that on, and it will sort of take a longer time to bring about. another thing we do is share our data withdifferent kinds of employer advisory groups regularly and take their feedback, so in oneinstance we shared a lot of data and someone
gave us the feedback that they wanted thingsmuch more specific about organizational practices that were not just new hampshire-based. theywanted to see different kinds of data about how diversity would affect their bottom line.so, it sent us back to do more detailed work to bring back and now what we are workingon are some sector reports so that we can report in a more focused way on how diversitywould help the hospital sectors, how it might help home healthcare, how it might help long-termcare community health centers, and so we are trying to respond to their engagement aroundthe need for more information. so, some of it is formal and some of it is informal. great. thank you, dr. boguslaw. that was veryinformative. we have another question for
dr. hong. when conducting your research, whatbaseline was used to determine the population of low-income individuals? was there a groupof individuals who may not qualify due to their income being too high but still livingnear the poverty level? great question. for the purpose of our study,the first two years of data collection has primarily been anyone who comes into the hpogprogram who, by definition, as we understand, are low-income and we did not look at theactual income level because that would require us to merge the data with our prs system toactually look at if someone were rather comparatively higher-income while being low-income but relativelyhigher-income compared to others. so that would be a good way to divide up the groupsinto the ones that are really in the lower
range versus those that are in the higherrange to see if there might be a different impact. we have not done that yet, and mostorganizations that we have used to collaborate with also serve very low-income that havebeen formerly homeless or formerly convicted or who are coming back into society. so thatis, most of them do not have jobs, currently do not have any income so it would be ratherthose that are in extreme poverty compared to just being below the poverty line. so,currently we did not divide up the groups, but that would be a good way, particularlyif someone is…who has a longer work history or who is currently unemployed to improvesome of these programs to get back into the workforce versus those people who have beenchronically unemployed. then we would need
to solve the differences and that is a greatsuggestion. thank you. and this is hilary. i will just chime in tosay that the hpog program, overall, targets tanf recipients and other low-income individualsand each grantee is allowed to define low-income as appropriate for their communities in collaborationwith the acf program office. so, most of the grantees define low-income based on the hhsfederal poverty line but again, they do, really look at their communities that they are servingand the local labor markets there to determine that in conjunction with the program office. thank you, hilary and dr. hong. one more questionfor both you, dr. hong, and you, dr. boguslaw. you talked a little about how you share interimresearch findings with your program partners.
do you have any advice regarding how to effectivelyand accurately frame the interim research findings to help your program partners understandthat they are not yet final research findings? well, i think that what is really importantin the kind of project that we are engaged in is to make all the different stakeholdersfeel that they are partners with you in the research, not just our primary hpog partners.so, what we have tried to do is frame the findings in ways that would be most meaningfulto different audiences as the initial introduction of data so when we work with the workforcetraining providers, the community colleges, we put our findings about the workforce developmentup front and then we sort of make some of our findings about the employer organizationalchanges secondary with the employers, we put
the employer pieces up front with other stakeholdersin the community even with community leaders who we want to engage in this work. we talka lot more from the data that we have gathered talking to community leaders about how theyare involved in moving healthcare jobs and reducing healthcare disparity forward. so,i think that one piece of it is really knowing your audience and bringing them into the datathat has been developed and helping them help make sense of it with you and therefore weare not gathering data and imposing it or our analysis on them, we are working withthem to build an analysis and then taking all of the different pieces together to buildsort of an overarching analysis of where things are going. the other thing i would say isthat in developing research when we were initially
thinking about this, i think we were not alwaysclear about how broad a range of stakeholders we might encounter who would be interestedin this work and who would have different lenses that we would want to include and whothe lenses would help provide information. so, you know, we did not start this out focusingso much on the workforce, but we did do interviews with some of the healthcare trainees and peoplewho are working in the healthcare field, both minority and non-minority, and they told usa lot about what they thought was going on and what they thought would be valuable inhelping make change and so they have also become an important constituency in vettingsome of the ideas about organizational change in the workplace. so i would say that broadly,bringing each of those different pieces and
groups together individually as groups atfirst and now we have a report that is coming out soon and a series of other reports thatwill look at some of these different strategies pretty much by these different interest groupsand hopefully, will be bringing all of them together to talk about it as a broader strategywith ohmra taking the lead on that. let me add that our approach has been thatwe share with our community partners that all research is tentative to begin with. thereis nothing that we research that is going to [undecipherable] definitively, that weare a community of co-learners with our partners, that we are in there working with them togenerate data, to understand the phenomenon together and the perspective that we may bringmay be lacking that would be complemented
or helped out by our partners to understandbetter with their set of eyes so we come in to the community providing our presentationsand analyses saying that this is tentative, this is an on-going analysis, and anythingthat they would ask us to look at, not as if we would have any agenda, but it wouldbe their agenda that we would be very interested in learning from that would, inform our research,like practice-informing research. that feedback is very important for us and they understandthat, and one of the things that is emerging from that, those discussions, is a seriesof focus group interviews that we will conduct this year with our current students and graduatesand staff, and one site asked us to talk to their employers and see how they value thetraining and credentials that come out of
the training of the students that graduatefrom their different programs and also how much they value if they were to look at thesesoft skills or psychological empowerment component, to what extent that they see that as comparable,complementary, or a key to hiring these individuals and having them stay in those jobs. so weare talking to our partners in ways that could help us improve our research program to lookat the same phenomenon that we are looking at, that economic self-sufficiency, at thelong-term outcome, but the process of change that one undergoes that they take on thischallenge of being part of the long-term program to be in healthcare sector as job-seekersand hopefully in the future as workers. so, it has been a great partnership in that wayto learn from our community partners.
thank you, dr. hong. and thank you again toall of our presenters. at this time, we will conclude the webinar. a recording of the presentationslides, a transcript, and the questions and answers from the webinar will be posted tothe self-sufficiency research clearinghouse in the coming weeks and a notification willbe sent out to you alerting you that these materials were posted. in addition, when weend the meeting, a webinar assessment will appear in your web browser. please take afew moments to respond to help us improve future webinars. as a reminder, all of yourresponses are anonymous and it really helps us plan for our future webinars. thank youagain, everyone, for joining. have a wonderful afternoon.
