J-22 Regional Career Development Services System

J-22 Regional CDSS Plan Updated August 10, 2007

REGIONAL CDSS PLAN

SAN FRANCISCO REGION

1.

Regional CDSS Plan

A.

Structure and Organization

Each of the San Francisco Region’s 22 Job Corps Centers is responsible for a geographic area of the Region. The areas vary in size, include the center’s location and collectively cover the entire Region. Some Job Corps centers are responsible for a portion of the admissions activity as well although that will be changing over the next several years. The centers located in all areas except Washington, Alaska, Idaho and Oregon are responsible for their own students’ career transition services. Innovations is a small business providing admission services in Arizona and DESI provides admission services in conjunction with the centers in California.

All elements of the CDSS occur on each center, even in those cases where additional admissions contractors are used. (With the exception of Alaska and Hawaii, Innovations and DESI are required to have a presence on each center for which they provide admission services.) Most recruitment for each center takes place in the geographic area for which the center is responsible, thereby, ensuring that the majority of trainees are local. This is helping to create strong linkages with local employers. It also ensures that a large percentage of graduates will remain local so that the relationships built between center staff and trainees during the admission phase, the career preparation phase and career development phase can carry over and support the career transition activity. Even where remote offices are in place to provide admissions and career transition services in areas distant from the center, these services, in many cases, are provided by the same person. This person remains closely associated with the development activities occurring at the center.

There is a close relationship between each Job Corps center and the One-Stop centers located in the geographical area the center serves. All trainees are given opportunities to become familiar with the services available through One-Stops. They are also provided the skills necessary to access resources and information available at One-Stops. Former enrollees with less than 60 days on center will be given appropriate referrals to other agencies. Including One-Stop centers.

Additional support previously provided by WICS and McNeil Technologies is currently being analyzed at the Regional Office as to the best use of these resources.

B.

Regional CDSS Guidelines:

Each center’s CDSS plan will have to conform to the PRH and all appropriate National Policies. How that takes shape within the Regional structure that has been created, is being left to each operator at each Job Corps center in the Region. This will allow the greatest flexibility so that staff constraints, facility constraints, local labor markets, cultural parameters and trainee characteristics can all be taken into account while allowing maximum opportunities for creativity.

II

Regional CDSS Implementation Action Plan

A.

Challenges/Barriers:

The most significant challenge the Region faced was to get staff to understand that CDSS is a system which redefines the Job Corps program and, therefore, would alter every facet of operations. The tendency of most staff, when first presented with this concept, was to believe that since the Region’s centers were already providing placement services to trainees in the center’s geographic area, all that would need to change is the provision of services over a longer period of time. Those with that view believed that implementation of CDSS, therefore, required only the provision of sufficient funding to substantially increase center placement units.

When it became obvious that the amount of funding available for this was nowhere near the amount needed to “add on” the services required in a quality CDSS, everyone was forced to begin thinking about this in different, more creative ways. It has been a slow process but each center now has grasped the concept, determined an approach to make the concept a reality in each center’s specific environment and taken steps to re-organize so that it can be accomplished.

B.

CDSS Background:

Going over all aspects of the CDSS as it was taking shape nationally was covered comprehensively on past Regional Conference calls.

There are typically two Regional Management meetings held each year. During these conferences, various topics concerning policies relevant to the Job Corps program including CDSS are presented and discussed. In the past we covered:

· WIA, requirements necessitating programmatic changes,

· Ways to become more involved in support needs of trainees,

· Approaches to use for better assessment and career guidance,

· Ideas to help all staff involved in the program determine the role each can play in assisting trainees in their career development process,

· New approaches for organizing existing staff,

· New approaches in operations to implement these ideas, and

· Overviews on the management information systems being developed which will support this activity.

C.

Ongoing Regional Action Plan:

· Centers should annually re-visit their CDSS plan and provide the Regional Office new plans for approval as changes occur.

· Centers should have a current and up-to-date CDSS plan prior to the Regional Office Assessment Team visit.

· Regional Conference calls will continue to focus on elements of CDSS implementation as they roll out nationally, regionally and on a center-wide level as needed.

· There will be two Regional Management meetings each year where reports may be required and progress towards accomplishing elements of individual center CDSS plans will be discussed.

· All Regional Office Center Assessments (RAs) and monitoring visits will be in part focused on evaluating the level to which each center has implemented their CDSS plan. Special efforts will be made to determine which departments and operations have been affected by implementing the center’s CDSS plan. Should it be determined that very few operations have changed as a result of implementation, the plan itself will be thoroughly analyzed to measure its adequacy to accomplish the task required. Technical assistance will be provided to determine if the approach used is resulting in the desired outcomes and, if not, what might need to be modified.

· Specific Regional Conferences and training activities around CDSS are occasionally planned.