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This brief by the Californa AfterSchool Network provides an overview of California's Expanded Learning workforce and the opportunity to strengthen it through multi-agency, multi-sector partnerships. It explores challenges in recruitment and retention due to inadequate wages, unprecedented demand, and data gaps. It shares the history of collaborative planning efforts over the past 4 years to come up with strategies to help with recruitment and retention. This resource supports equity.
This 2023 issue of the Afterschool Matters journal is focused on the OST workforce, specifically, findings from interviews that were part of the Power of Us Workforce Survey. This survey was part of a research study designed to gather data about the experiences of youth-serving workers in a wide range of fields, with the goal of helping communities better understand the youth-serving workforce and ways to help it thrive. The journal explores the insights of professionals in the youth fields on critical issues: community institutions, summer, entry points and recruitment, compensation, career pathways, and recommendations. This resource supports equity.
As states seek to invest in cost modeling tools, providers and funders must think strategically about how the tools can best be used. This issue brief explores how tools can answer some of the most pressing questions facing the early childhood field such as workforce compensation, increasing child care supply, and determining subsidy rates that meet the true cost of care. The brief includes examples from NM, DC, TX, NYC, and MA.
The nation's success in meeting the need for quality child care depends on our ability to recruit and retain a competent workforce and registered apprenticeships is one innovative model explored in this issue brief. There are sections on the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act; registered apprenticeships and growth and learning; and state and local examples including WV, AL, AR, CO, FL, KY, MD, OK, PA, RI, TX, and WI. A related webinar, Apprenticeships: A Growing Strategy for the Child Care Workforce, includes examples from YMCA of the East Bay and Rhode Island model for family child care.
This brief draw on interviews with administrators on what ten states have learned about sustaining policy gains after the pandemic (CT, IL, KS, KY, NC, ND, NM, OK, OR, SC). Listed are allowable strategies used to: (1) increase the number of families eligible for child care assistance; (2) reduce the burden of family copayments; (3) stabilize child care based on actual cost of care; and (4) support higher compensation for the workforce. This resource supports equity.
The Center for American Progress partnered with community leaders to learn directly from parents and providers about challenges of living in child care deserts in Nashua, NH; Grand Rapids, MI; and Albuquerque, NM. The Center recommends that sustained investments in child care can transform the system by building supply, expanding affordability, and supporting the workforce. An additional resource is a map of child care deserts based on earlier data collection that can be found here: https://childcaredeserts.org. This resource supports equity.
Out-of-School Time (OST) plays a critical role in supporting working families and in providing children and youth with meaningful relationships, enrichment activities, and social and emotional learning (SEL), which lead to positive developmental outcomes. Additionally, there is a greater-than-ever focus on the potential for OST to support pandemic recovery efforts. To achieve that potential, there needs to be a new investment in the OST workforce.
This brief from the National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment provides information, research, and examples of equitable strategies to support recruitment, retention, and rejuvenation of the Out-of-School Time (OST) workforce, a top concern for OST programs.
This issue brief by Temescal Associates and How Kids Learn Foundation explores how involving youth as OST workers provides opportunities to advance youth in their development, and to develop their leadership and career skills by serving as tutors, mentors, and activity assistants. The brief reviews the benefits of employing youth in afterschool programs and how youth perceive this work benefits them, as well as recommendations for policymakers. An associated webinar from October 2021 can be accessed here: Engaging Youth as Workers in Afterschool. Another webinar from June 2023 on this topic includes efforts in Philadelphia and through the California Afterschool Network on providing high school youth jobs in afterschool and summer park programs, and as lifeguards. It can be found here: Employing Youth and Workforce Development in Afterschool.
This issue brief provides strategies and state examples for increasing workforce compensation. It includes ideas on hiring and retention bonuses, wage increases, increasing access to benefits, and changing policies. This resource may help in planning for use of federal stimulus funds.