Below is a profile of youth offender employment resources and tools for your use. M. H. West & Co., Inc. (WEST) identified these in its research work as the TA provider for School District Generation I and the Youth Offender State/Local Implementation, Planning and Intermediary Grantees funded through the Employment and Training Administration. Anticipated in the near future will be a telephone training opportunity to learn more about the resources. Please look soon for additional information. Feel free to contact Marilyn, Erica or Joe at consulting@mhwest.com if you have any questions regarding this email or have suggestions of other resources that your colleagues and peers may use.

This website offers assistance to teens for the job searching process. Tips include how to apply for jobs, resume writing tips, and possible job search sites. This site also gives advice about accepting a job offering, being prepared to work, and what to do when the job doesn’t work out.

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Career Readiness provides on-site case management, work readiness instruction, academic instruction, paid work experience, on-the-job training, job placement assistance and follow-up services to out-of-school youth. Assistance given to accessing other support services relating to housing, domestic issues, transportation, legal issues, physical/mental health, and substance abuse.

Step Up offers an intensive academic program with a focused career readiness component to youth in alternative and high schools in the Arlington and Lakewood School Districts. It also incorporates lower class sizes, integrated curriculum, social and study skills, prevention/intervention services and an extended school day.

The SAIL Program provides an intensive year-round dropout prevention program to youth attending Mountlake Terrace High School in the Edmonds School District. SAIL provides on-site case management and wrap-around support services include tutoring, mentoring, leadership development, and credit retrieval. Career development and employment connections are made through a paid work experience.

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YMCAs involve multiple stakeholders, integrate youth employment and entrepreneurship efforts into all areas of youth development programming, and pursue four linked sub-strategies to strengthen youth employment and entrepreneurship. Skills development, job placement, job creation and support to young entrepreneurs are all critical elements of the comprehensive YMCA approach.

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Youth job training programs should emphasize long-term goals such as keeping a young person employed and advancing in the workforce. Although youth in job training programs are giving up the immediacy of a paycheck, the long term benefits of excellent programs can secure better jobs with higher salaries, benefits, and opportunities for advancement.

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Community Intervention programs need to combine service coordination, partnership between police and the community, suppression of gang activity through coordinated enforcement and prosecution, neighborhood mobilization, and job training for youth. The integrated strategies' chief goal is to reduce gang-related violent crime and youth involvement in gangs. Street outreach through community organizations and parents supplements partnerships among agencies to make well-integrated services available to the youth. Prevention efforts include job training and placement, recreation at safe locations, and mobilization of neighborhood residents and police in identifying community resources that serve youth.

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Youth: Work is a "pre-competed" Leader with Associates (LWA) award that enables U.S Agency for International Development (USAID) bureaus and missions, as well as other U.S. government agencies, to easily access IYF's proven youth employability programs, services and expertise. Under this flexible mechanism, USAID and other entities can choose to expand or replicate successful IYF programs-such as entra21 in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Education and Employment Alliance in Asia and the Near East, or the Passport to Success life skills program-as well as to design new programs tailored to local realities. Youth: Work enables IYF to collaboratively design and implement employment, livelihood, and entrepreneurship programs for youth based on USAID and country priorities.

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The Youth Employment Strategy (YES) is the Government of Canada's commitment to help young people, particularly those facing barriers to employment, get the information and gain the skills, work experience and abilities they need to make a successful transition to the workplace. This initiative provides financial assistance for projects designed to respond to specific labor market requirements and adjustments over time. The main goal of Youth Awareness is that recipients, employers, communities and youth develop a heightened perception of youth as the workforce of the future.

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This PowerPoint presentation from UN-HABITAT focuses on the challenges, as well as opportunities, of youth employment and employment strategies that can help curb this problem. While youth have the highest rate of unemployment, they are the most vulnerable to social depredations that will carry on into their adult lives.

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The St. Louis Children's Agenda's Strategy #22 is a new initiative involving operation of youth employment programs in three targeted neighborhoods. The initiative is directed to serving high-risk, high-need communities with the particular goal of reducing youth violence. Financial support is provided through special United Way funding. The long-standing Strategy #30, however, involves operation of the Regional Youth Employment Clearinghouse. The Clearinghouse was created to address the reduction in federal dollars supporting summer youth employment. It provides a regional vehicle for channeling youth into employment skills training programs, placing young people in entry-level unsubsidized private/public sector jobs when they are not served by other youth employment programs, and linking them to job support services.

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Working in partnership with agencies to complete the objectives within the new Youth Justice Bill, Guiding Lights offers outreach support from qualified and experienced outreach workers to minimize repeat offending an minimize risk. The goal is to engage youth into education or employment as part of a long term strategy and rehabilitation program and work partnership with youth offending teams and probation services to fulfill their support program.

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With the support of the Nevada Department of Public Safety Office of Criminal Justice Assistance, NYA received a Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) to fund the Outreach Worker Program. Since its inception, NYA's Outreach Worker Program has experienced a significant increase in referrals, primarily from the Clark County Juvenile Court System and Clark County Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Services (DJJS). The NYA Outreach Worker Program focuses on youth ages 12 to 18 years. A NYA Outreach Worker is assigned directly to the youth offenders and their families getting them connected with needed community services and programs.

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Directory of Alumni of the New Leaders Academy and WIA Leaders Academy (with areas of knowledge as available)

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The Incarcerated Youth Project connects Fresno County's youth offender population, ages 14-21, to academic assistance, career exploration, training, and employment opportunities. Prior to and after being released, low-income and basic skills deficient individuals are provided with comprehensive education, training and employment related services that increase their employability, strengthen their work ethic, and lead them toward the path of self-sufficiency.

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The Summer Youth Employment Program, funded in Pennsylvania through $43.5 million in federal American Reinvestment and Recovery Act money, helped 9,200 disadvantaged youths get first jobs last summer. Program directors hope to help just as many next summer.

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The Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) in New York City attempts to overcome these barriers by providing transitional services when ex-offenders are at the most vulnerable stage of their rehabilitation-immediately after release. Most participants are newly released "boot camp" inmates, although approximately one-third are on work release, probation, or nonviolent parole status. CEO seeks to foster the discipline they have acquired while incarcerated.

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• Strategies and solutions for obtaining transitional jobs
• Tools for assessing skills and training
• Models and methods for job preparation
• Approaches for increasing awareness of employment opportunities and benefits
• How to work with employers and partners to obtain jobs

See also Gabrielle de la Gueronniere, J.D. presentation at http://www.mhwest.com/downloads/Employment_Part%20II_Gabrielle_de_la_Gueronniere_JD.ppt from the ETA-DYS November 4 and 5,2009 Kick-off Meeting for Youth Offenders held in Arlington, Virginia.

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The National Transitional Jobs Network is a coalition of over 4,000 employment providers, advocates, and government representatives focused on program, policy and systems change to help the hardest to employ succeed in the workforce. See also Amy Rynell Presentation at http://www.mhwest.com/downloads/Employment%20Part_I_Amy_Rynell.ppt from ETA-DYS November 4 and 5,2009 Kick-off Meeting for Youth Offenders held in Arlington, Virginia.

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This interactive module helps students from the very beginning stages of job searching to the final product of landing a job that best suits them. This tutorial walks students through the process of finding interests, developing actions plans, gaining necessary skills, and being marketable with competitive resumes and cover letters.

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The effectiveness of the Transitional Jobs Reentry Demonstration (TJRD) is investigated. TJRD offers "transitional jobs (TJ) - temporary, subsidized jobs that provide participants with a source of legitimate income, support services and work experience as they return to the community" (p. 4). Topics discussed in this report include: why successful prisoner reentry is a national imperative; what TJRD is and its significance; the need to provide prisoners with transitional jobs; how the TJRD project is designed; the programs participating in TJRD; who the TJRD participants are; what early implementation experiences are; and when the results from this study will be available and how they will be used.

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"Our goal should be to cut the national recidivism rate in half by 2012 by ensuring that formerly incarcerated people have access to the resources they need to successfully reintegrate into society. Urban policymakers need to make reentry a long-term priority: Cities should learn from one another's experiences, partner with the right groups, work for change at the state and federal level, and invest in research to ensure reentry programs' effectiveness."

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Initial results from an evaluation of the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO), a program which finds ex-offenders jobs, are provided. Sections following an introduction include: research design and data sources; study participants' characteristics; participation in CEO activities; impacts on employment and recidivism; results by time since release; and next steps. While "CEO generated a large, but short-lived increase in UI-covered [state unemployment insurance] employment . . . the program and control groups were equally likely to be employed" after one year (p. iii).

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The New York City-based Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) targets a group facing particularly long odds – former prisoners who are returning to the community. High unemployment and recidivism rates for returning prisoners suggest that the first step in beating the odds is helping these men and women find gainful and steady employment. CEO uses an innovative transitional employment model: Participants are quickly placed in jobs with CEO work crews and are paid each day for the hours they work. Meanwhile, CEO staff provides job coaching, link participants with regular jobs, and follow up after placement to promote long-term job retention.

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This article highlights the importance of successfully re-integrating young offenders into the community and the failures of the zero tolerance policy that focuses more on detention, rather than rehabilitation. The Center for Law & Social Policy (CLASP) argues that these such practices leave at-risk youth father away from the economic and labor market mainstream, and back into a less secure environment.

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This article describes the Safer Foundation's program for those youth that have been involved with the criminal justice system. This program allows young adults between the age of 16 and 21 to obtain a GED in a "workforce-like" setting. Upon completion of the GED, each student is given access to a case manager for up to two years after their classes for assistance with employment and post education.

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An ex-offender looking for work is most likely to get hired by the employers in these sectors:

• Transportation
• Construction
• Manufacturing

These types of employers typically hire workers for positions that don't require a lot of personal contact with customers. They also are likely to hire large numbers of employees each year. Ex-offenders who lack experience or job skills can often get work with one of these types of employers, since they may be willing to train new workers. Service industries are the least likely to be interested in hiring a person with a criminal record, possibly due to concerns about the ex-offender's ability to interact in a positive way with customers.

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LaborReady often have a number of ex-offender friendly options. They have day labor, short-term and long-term employment situations at various skill levels. Each year, Labor Ready dispatches approximately 450,000 temporary employees to jobs in construction, manufacturing, warehousing, retail, events and hospitality, waste and recycling, transportation, agriculture and more. http://laborready.com

Goodwill Industries is known for operating thrift stores but in many areas Goodwill offers resources that help ex-offenders and felons re-enter society. One resource is a job placement program that has contact with employers who hire ex-offenders. Often job seekers are placed in jobs in the thrift stores themselves. http://www.goodwillpromo.org/page/guest/jobseekers

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"From Jail to Job" is a step-by-step guide to help ex-offenders gain employment by providing strategies and techniques to make the process as simple as possible." 'From Jail to a Job' will give ex-offenders the tools they need for a successful transition to the free world."

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