Greetings, LINCS Career Pathways and Program Management groups and welcome to HUD personnel! Today is the first day of our discussion of how HUD personnel and adult educators can collaborate at the national, state, and local levels to better serve the population of public housing residents in moving toward self-sufficiency. In the webinar this afternoon, we will learn about how HUD’s Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) and Resident Opportunity Self-Sufficiency (ROSS) programs can help residents access education, job training, and employment opportunities to promote self-sufficiency through the attainment of the skills needed to obtain and sustain employment. And HUD personnel will learn about the resources and contacts available through LINCS. The webinar will kick off an online discussion on the LINCS Career Pathways and Program Management Communities of Practice to dialog about the opportunities and potential advantages of coordinating referrals and leveraging resources across agencies. We’ve had a tremendous response to the webinar announcement, but not to worry if you didn’t get signed up for the webinar in time to be one of the webinar participants. The webinar will be recorded and we will let you know how to access the recording as soon as it is available, so you won’t be left out.
Here’s how the discussion will work. The webinar presenters have joined our communities of practice so that they will all be available for the discussion to dialog. Following the webinar, they will respond to this message using the same title as this message: Career Pathways for Public Housing Residents, telling us a little more about themselves and the programs they are involved in. Messages that are a part of this discussion will post simultaneously to both the Career Pathways and Program Management groups, so you will be able to access the discussion from either group. How the discussion will actually look online and how you can respond will be better explained and also demonstrated on the webinar. The most important organizing directive is to always go into the discussion through this message. Then you can respond in general to this message or scroll down to a specific point or question made by one of the other people in the discussion and respond to that person. The discussion will thread automatically by where you choose to make your comment. Don’t worry! All this will make more sense when you see it in action!
We are so excited that we have been able to arrange this special event! We feel it is a good first step toward awareness of the issues and efforts we have in common and the opportunities to collaborate, and we hope you are inspired to participate! Thanks to you all in advance!
Donna and Gail
Donna Brian, SME Career Pathways
Gail Cope, SME Program Management
Comments
Here are my notes from my presentation today.
Stephen Peacock, Family Self-Sufficiency Coordinator, King County Housing Authority: Seattle, WA.
Case manage approximately 50 clients on the FSS program. Previously worked in the Section 8 department as a Housing Assistant.
King County Housing Authority operates a Family Self-Sufficiency program with 250 Section 8/Housing Choice Voucher participants and 40 Public Housing residents.
In 2013:
33 participants completed their contracts
16 completed a Job training program
8 completed a post-secondary education program
Public Housing Programing
Program Coordinating Committee
FSS Coordinator’s Role
Success Stories
#1
#2
Hi Stephen, thank you for sharing on the webinar and for posting your talking points in this discussion thread!
A couple of follow-up questions for you:
If you can provide more information that would be great! Thanks again for sharing!
Currently the program recruits potential participants from the Section 8 program at large by inserting a program flyer with in the annual re-certification packets that voucher holders are required to complete. From there we do monthly information sessions and for those interested in signing up they are assigned a case manager to complete a contract and establish goals. At this point, we have not had a capacity issue yet were we needed to establish a waiting list.
Regarding assessments, we have a few self-assessment worksheets that we have developed that give us an idea of where participants are at when entering the program. We are in contact with our clients on a quarterly basis through the length of the program. We gather information about on-going needs and services accessed through interviews and surveys.
The co-mentoring/support group idea is something we have been considering for a while, but not something that we currently do. Because our jurisdiction/county is so large and our participants at various points along the pathway toward self-sufficiency, it has been a challenge to get enough in the same location at the same time to make the groups relevant.
We currently do workshops on a quarterly basis around the topics of: financial management, employment development, homeownership and education, which has been the opportunity for participants to interact with each other and learn from each other.
Thank you for the questions!
Good afternoon, this is Dina Lehmann-Kim, Program Manager for HUD's Resident Opportunity & Self-Sufficiency grant program. We were happy to introduce our grantees (ROSS and Family Self-Sufficiency grantees) to the Department of Education's Career Pathways/Adult Education resources and professionals during yesterday's Webinar. We hope that yesterday's Webinar will be the beginning of new relationships forged at the local level between ROSS/FSS coordinators and professionals working in adult education.
Hi Dina - Thank you and Brianna for sharing such wonderful information on yesterday's webinar! Would you be able to post the links to the FSS/ROSS grantees in the LINCS Community for adult education programs who are interested in building relationships with their local public housing authorities?
Good morning; this is Brianna Benner, part of the Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) Program team at HUD headquarters. Below are the links to the most recent FSS and ROSS grantees. You can find the contact information for every public housing agency (PHA) in the country here:http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/public_indian_housing/pha/contacts
FY 2013 Housing Choice Voucher FSS grantees: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_releases_media_advisories/2013/HUDNo.13-194
FY 2013 Public Housing FSS grantees: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_releases_media_advisories/2014/HUDNo.14-001
FY 2008 - FY 2012 FSS grantees: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/documents/huddoc?id=tribesaward2008-2012.pdf
FY 2013 ROSS grantees: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_releases_media_advisories/2013/HUDNo.13-150
FY 2012 ROSS grantees: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_releases_media_advisories/2012/HUDNo.12-131
FY 2011 ROSS grantees: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_releases_media_advisories/2011/HUDNo.11-210
Hello again HUD partners and LINCS community! We ran out of time in the webinar before I had time to share some of the information that I think is important for you to know. The webinar was recorded and the link to it will be posted soon. This message will be an introduction to additional features on the LINCS site for our HUD partners and a review for those of you who have been LINCS community members for a while.
In the webinar, I was demonstrating the LINCS site, and if you will follow along on that site, I can still present what I wanted to share. Start by pulling up the main LINCS page at http://lincs.ed.gov. You may want to bookmark it on a separate tab in your browser so you can easily go back and forth between this narrative and the page we are talking about. As I was explaining in the webinar, the three boxes across the top are the three main areas of LINCS that you will find helpful. The three boxes are “Learn”, “Participate”, and “Find”. The only one I had time to demonstrate was the “Participate” section, and the link in that box takes you to the LINCS communities where the discussions take place. The one thing about the Communities pages I had planned to share and didn’t get around to is the “Help” tab at the top of all the pages in the Community section. If you are encountering any difficulty with these pages, you may well find the help you need there. The “How to use this site” part is especially useful. You can always contact me or Gail through our links on our community pages as well. Now please return to http://lincs.ed.gov.
The second box I want you to be aware of is the “Find” section, and this is where you will find all the online resources that LINCS has reviewed and recommended. Notice that the 16 topic areas into which resources are organized correspond to the 16 groups that were in the LINCS Community pages that we explored during the webinar. I hope you will spend some time exploring these resources on your own, but for now you can follow these directions to find the resources I wanted to explore during the webinar. In the “keyword or phrase” box, enter the word “partnerships” and then for the “topic area” choose “Career Pathways”. Click on “Find Resources”, and the site will pull up 31 separate resources that have information related to this discussion. I’m choosing two of my favorites to share with you. Locate the title Courses to Employment: Partnering to Create Paths to Education and Careers (2012). Click on the title to go to the review of the resource. This review is a summary and also an evaluation of the resource. And there is a live link to take you directly to the online resource. I chose this resource to share because I feel the approach demonstrated in this project is one of the most significant and promising trends in career pathways today.
The second resource I want to share is Ensuring that the Transitional Job is a Developmental Experience (2011). “ Transitional jobs” is the approach of subsidizing employment opportunities with employers to give the very hardest to place persons (those who have been incarcerated or never employed, are homeless, from several generations of welfare recipients, or have a multitude of difficulties) entry level jobs plus lots of support to give them work experience and a reference for subsequent employment applications. Obviously this segment of our population needs a different approach to employment opportunities than the population described in the prior resource.
As you look through these resources, feel free to share any that you find especially helpful with the group as a new comment to this post.
Returning again to the http://lincs.ed.gov page, turn your attention now to the “Learn” box and the “LINCS Learning Portal”. This is where you will find the self-paced free online learning courses that Gail mentioned in her part of the Webinar. Clicking on “Enroll Now” takes you to a list of the available courses. There are currently 17 courses listed, and more are being added all the time. Of special interest to us are: “Building Strategic Partnerships”, “Developing Effective Bridge Programs”, “Designing Contextualized Instruction”, “Integrating Career Counseling and Planning”, and “Engaging Employers in Adult Career Pathways”.
One last LINCS resource that Gail mentioned and I want to be sure you can find is “America’s Literacy Directory.” Navigate back to http://lincs.ed.gov, and look in the left bar where it says “Information for Students.” The direct link is https://literacydirectory.org/. By entering a location (address or zip code) you can locate the adult ed programs in that vicinity. If you are an adult ed program and you notice that you are not listed in your area, there is a link at the bottom of the page to allow you to enter your program’s information so it will be included.
Now you know what LINCS has to offer you. Of course, the part I’m most hoping you find inviting is the discussion! If you haven’t joined one of the communities yet, please do so now, and share your experiences and your thoughts about how we can work together to aid our adult learners in their quest to become self-sufficient. Thank you all for your interest so far, and keep the conversation moving!
Donna Brian
SME LINCS Career Pathways
I'm trying to find the archived webinar for Career Pathways for Public Housing Residents that I missed on Tuesday. Thank you for your assistance.
Thank you for your question! The archive of the webinar will be available early next week! We will post the link in this thread as well as share it via the LINCS Announcements and with HUD staff so you can watch and distribute the link to your colleagues. Thanks!
Go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aoD3W6FrVY
Hi all,
There was a great turn-out for Tuesday’s webinar with nearly 100 participants! You can access the recording of the webinar here:
https://clee.adobeconnect.com/p1imp0wh962/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal
This webinar provided a wealth of information and participants learned about:
Heidi Silver-Pacuilla, with the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education, opened the webinar and emphasized the importance of forming collaborations and partnerships at federal, regional, state, and local levels. Presenters and topics included:
Over the next several days, we will hear from these individuals who will provide more detail about these topics and answer questions you might have about the programs, services, resources, and partnerships.
For those of you who are not familiar with LINCS or are new to the LINCS Community, the following will provide you with information and links to resources, professional development activities, and the LINCS Community, the online network where you have the opportunity to participate in ongoing, topic-specific discussions with colleagues. Through the LINCS Community, you are able to join groups of interest, access high-quality resources, and learn about upcoming events in the field.
LINCS Homepage: http://lincs.ed.gov/
I hope you will share your insights and pose questions for the presenters.
Gail Cope, SME, LINCS Program Management Group
The webinar is now available on the LINCS YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aoD3W6FrVY. I've watched it a couple of times now, and my understanding of the ROSS and FSS programs deepens and I keep getting new information every time I see it. When we have talked about partnering on the Career Pathways CoP in the past, we have talked about partnering with the same groups that the HUD grantees are reaching out to, so it sure seems like we ought to be partners at least in serving public housing residents! I hope the LINCS Career Pathways and Program Management CoPs see a place where they can work with the ROSS and FSS programs at the local level and use the links provided in Brianna's post to make the contacts to those programs. Make a short report to this discussion of the contacts you make so that we can see the results of this webinar.
Donna Brian, SME Career Pathways