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Historical Background The St. Louis Children's Agenda is a broad-based collaborative initiative pursuing strategic, coordinated community action to promote the well-being of all St. Louis area children. Currently, more than 700 representatives of some 300 area businesses, agencies, and community organizations are active participants. Within the agenda there are two youth employment strategies. 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 specific goal of reducing youth violence. Financial support is provided through special United Way funding. Strategy #30 in the Children's Agenda is long-standing. It involves operation of the Regional Youth Employment Clearinghouse. The Clearinghouse was established in 1996 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. With limited funds available through a school-to-work grant, annually between 80 and 140 young people have been equipped with basic employment skills and placed in entry-level, private sector jobs. Current View Recent changes in the youth employment landscape -- new program requirements, reduced funding, and increased need during the economic downturn -- require that we take a fresh look from a broad perspective at regional youth employment efforts in the St. Louis metropolitan area. In collaboration with the Children's Agenda, the Regional Center for Education and Work (RCEW) in the College of Education at University of Missouri-St. Louis will be the Lead Collaborating Agency in the refinement of Youth Employment Strategy. With the goal of increasing economic opportunity for young people in the St. Louis metropolitan area, the Youth Employment Strategy Work Group of the St. Louis Children's Agenda is working on a regional basis to develop a comprehensive, integrated system of education, career development, and youth employment. The goal is to build a workforce development system that effectively serves both youth and employers. To be successful, such a system must be: (1) responsive to the realities of the market place; (2) based in sound youth development principles; and (3) coordinated with related programs and services addressing other fundamental needs of St. Louis area children and youth. The need is to address issues of youth and workforce development on a regional basis, consistent with the workings of the area's regional economy. The size and complexity of the systems involved, as well as the extensive jurisdictional fragmentation in metropolitan St. Louis, suggests that the Youth Employment Work Group focus its efforts in two areas. First is systematic assessment of problems, needs, and services at the regional level with the goal of identifying service gaps. Second is working collaboratively to coordinate, integrate, and supplement existing systems, programs, and services to improve the quality of services and expand their availability into areas of unmet need. Specific functions to be performed by the Youth Employment Strategy Work Group might include: · Developing guiding principles related to youth and workforce development · Identifying and assessing problems, needs, and opportunities on a regional basis · Recommending specific policy and program strategies · Increasing public awareness of problems, needs, opportunities and emphasizing the importance of community action to address those issues · Marketing programs and services related to youth and workforce development · Coordinating youth employment and workforce development efforts with other community initiatives addressing critical aspects of the development of children and youth in the St. Louis metropolitan area. · Monitoring the effectiveness and outcomes of career and workforce development efforts for youth and reporting results to the community. The first task to be pursued by the Work Group will be development with key stakeholders of a Comprehensive Youth Employment Strategy for the St. Louis metropolitan region. Putting such a strategy in place will provide a framework to facilitate needs assessment, policy and program development, service coordination, resource development and allocation, and outcome assessment. There are two elements critical to the success of a comprehensive Youth Employment Strategy. First, it must be regional in scope. Secondly, it must be directed to coordinating public and private sector programs, service, and initiatives A framework to assist in development of a Comprehensive Youth Employment Strategy for the St. Louis region is Linked to this page. It is intended as a tool that can assist in identifying and coordinating key elements of an integrated youth employment strategy for the region that is jointly developed by key stakeholders. The framework plan provides a broad, coordinated approach for identifying critical issues and developing policy and program strategies related to youth employment. The planning framework has been further refined and enriched by infusing elements of the Chicago Workforce Development Plan and the needs inventory developed at the first meeting of the St. Louis Regional Youth Employment Strategy Work Group. The document is a draft planning tool that can assist in identification of key issues and provide a framework in which plan elements can be coordinated. The hope is that key youth employment stakeholders in the St. Louis region can use the framework to make decisions about what elements are included in a Comprehensive Youth Employment Strategy for the St. Louis metropolitan area, as well as how those plan elements are structured. The planning framework also provides a structure in which to identify: (1) key stakeholders related to individual plan elements; and (2) best practice approaches that can be used as models in developing specific strategies and action steps. |