Current and Recent Projects

Career Development and Employment Support for Youth Served by Child Welfare Systems
    The project purpose is to help child welfare systems advance career development and employment support for youth in their care as a priority along with permanency and safety, and provide technical assistance to develop capacity among these systems to offer evidence based (EB) career services.  The goal is to develop an approach that can serve as a model that can be replicated nationally so that young adults transitioning out of foster care can become successful workforce participants and reap the economic, social, emotional and physical benefits that work provides. This five year project is funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Joseph Leroy and Ann C. Warner Fund.  Specifically, the project is: 1) Building partnerships with 3 public child welfare systems and providing technical assistance to help them with moving toward the inclusion of EB performance standards for the provision of career development and employment services (Administration for Children’s Services in New York City, Department of Social Services in Baltimore and the Department of Children, Youth and Families in Rhode Island); 2) Testing the effectiveness of strategies to promote utilization of career development and employment evidence based practices (EBP) to meet performance standards in a sample of foster care providers within each of these jurisdictions; and 3) Developing a national knowledge bank and support network among foster care providers within these jurisdictions to increase utilization widely.

Works Wonders: a public-private research partnership to build relational competencies in the workplace, self-efficacy and empowerment among youth transitioning out of foster care
    The Workplace Center and the Rhode Island Foster Parents Association (RIFPA) together are building a model of attachment to work and individuals in the workplace that can translate into attachments in other settings.  Based on the model, a peer support group for youth in foster care will be developed and implemented, through which relational competencies can be cultivated.  Specifically, the Center is 1) Developing the employment component of the Employment & Empowerment (E2) Group ; 2)  Providing technical assistance to the facilitators of the E2 Groups, RIFPA and Rhode Island child welfare system that includes training and on-going consultation to support the implementation of the groups with youth ages 14 years through 21 years in foster care; and 3) Evaluating the strategy’s impact on protective mechanisms and factors that promote relational competencies, transition to the adult world of work and the spillover effect to youths’ other life domains such as family and school using a mixed method approach.  Works Wonders is funded by ACF.

Peer Providers in Social Service Agencies: Creating Work Settings for Mutual Support
    Through a research partnership between the Workplace Center and the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, the New York State-wide consumer-run organization, the project developed an intervention that helps peer staff in traditional mental health agencies (MHAs) gain organizational competencies to overcome challenges to their ongoing employment.  Peer staff is individuals in recovery with lived experience as mental health service users who are employed by MHAs as part of treatment teams because of their ability to utilize that experience to assist others. Organizational competency is the skills and knowledge beyond how to perform a specific job that allows a person to be an effective participant at the workplace.  This project is a step in an on-going agenda to implement a larger test of effectiveness.  Ultimately, the study endeavors to preserve the important contribution of peer staff to the recovery of individuals with serious mental health conditions that MHAs serve, ensure a recovery-oriented service approach by MHAs and continue participation of peer staff on treatment teams as the mental health care system undergoes significant transformation in response to current policy and fiscal changes. The project has been funded by the Langeloth Foundation, the New York Community Trust and the NIMH supported Center to Study Recovery in Social Contexts.

Strategies to Promote the Transition from School to Work for Youth from Foster Care
    With funding from the Stuart Foundation, the Workplace Center is helping to build capacity among College Success Foundation staff in Washington to utilize evidence based career development and employment practices that reinforce the connection to education and the successful transition of youth in foster care from school into the adult world of work. 

Employment-Related Outcome Measures for Youth Aging out of Foster Care
    The Workplace Center is serving as a subject matter expert to the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative on developing employment related outcome measures for youth transitioning from foster care.

Evaluation of the Home Care Aide Training & Employment Pilot
    With support from the Weinberg Foundation and UJA-F, the Workplace Center is designing an evaluation of the Home Care Aide Training & Employment Pilot.  Its purpose is to assess the impact of enhanced entry-level training on the employment status of home care aides including job retention, quality of care and work well-being. The implementation of the Pilot and evaluation are planned for the Spring 2012.

Quality Assurance of a Union Assistance Program
In this safety sensitive work environment, the Workplace Center, by contract with the MTA, conducts quarterly audits of the Union Assistance Program (UAP) of the Transit Workers Union Local 100 and of the MTA’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP) Cases and outreach activity of the UAP and the EAP are documented quarterly and annual reports identifying trends through comparative analysis are prepared, and quality assurance of service decisions and procedures is provided.

Bronx Emergency Preparedness Coalition
The Workplace Center supported the development of a social work disaster response plan for the Bronx Emergency Preparedness Coalition through research, program development, organizational analysis/change and training efforts. The Bronx Emergency Preparedness Coalition’s (BEPC) Social Work Disaster Response Team (SWDRT) is a coalition of 13 facilities across Bronx County that has agreed, through Memoranda of Understanding, to provide mutual aid to each other in the event of a disaster. These include municipal, voluntary, state and federal facilities that offer both acute and long-term care. The Workplace Center has facilitated the development of:  1) Policies and procedures that define and support healthcare social workers’ and other providers’ roles in a disaster event, their activation and plans for their deployment; 2) A competency-based education and training program in disaster response for social work department staff; 3) Family Support Center Guidelines to plan and respond to the non-medical needs of individuals, families and community members affected by the presenting disaster.

Start-Up NY2 Entrepreneurship Demonstration Project
As a subcontractor to Burton Black Institute & Onondaga County Start-Up NY, the Workplace Center tested the feasibility of and conditions under which the Start–Up NY Entrepreneurship Demonstration Project could be replicated in the borough of Manhattan, New York City. The project identified a group of stakeholders potentially interested in self employment for persons with disabilities (e.g., financial institutions, provider organizations, entrepreneurial assistance programs, vocational rehabilitation services, small business development centers); solicited stakeholder participation in a group meeting; and based on stakeholder feedback, assessed the feasibility of replicating Start-Up NY in the Manhattan community and the implications for policy and practice. The goal of the Start-Up NY initiative is to foster entrepreneurial activity among people with disabilities. 

Workplace Supports for Parents Who are Caregivers to Children with Asthma
With funding from the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD), the Center explored the feasibility and impact of workplace support to help balance the conflicting demands that arise when working single parents simultaneously try to maintain employment and care for their children with asthma. The study developed an understanding the specific conflict involved with providing adequate care to a child with asthma while meeting work expectations and identifying the appropriate workplace supports that single parents perceive will help them to balance the demands of work and care giving roles; developed an intervention, a plan for its implementation and a system for measuring its impact on working parents’ abilities to balance conflicts posed by trying to meet work expectations and their children’s health needs; and assessed the intervention impact and feasibility through a pilot test with working single parents of children with asthma. The study targets an underserved population who disproportionately experience the negative challenges of caring for a child with asthma.