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The Forum for Youth Investment
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Welcome to the June 2008 edition of Ready by 21® Quality Counts Connections. This monthly newsletter keeps site teams aware of important developments related to the initiative. Contact Nalini if you would like team members added or deleted from this mailing list.
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| Updates
Great work continues to unfold at RB21 Quality Counts sites across the country. Here is a sampling of developments over the past month. Remember to contact your liaison for input on any aspect of your work!
- Kentucky had a busy month, hosting YPQA trainings, a retreat of the KY Youth Development Coordinatng Council on population level youth indicators, and the 4th annual Youth Policy Institute (see National Partner Spotlight for details).
- Iowa is preparing to disseminate the program landscape mapping survey and several other sites including Oklahoma and the Georgetown Divide plan to do so this summer.
- The Forum's program landscape mapping survey is now available online and we are ready to work with site administrators to adapt for local landscape mapping needs (Naini Ravindranath and Merita Irby are the contact people for this work going forward).
- Elaine Johnson is working with Grand Rapids, Austin and Oklahoma to bring the Advancing Youth Development training into these communities.
- Charles Smith and Deborah Craig presented to groups of policy makers, funders and providers in St. Louis on the importance of quality and the overall Ready by 21 Quality Counts initiative.
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Site Spotlight: Grand Rapids
Grand Rapids kicked off their RB 21 Quality Counts initiative on April 18, 2008 to a standing room only audience of providers and funders. This month we celebrate their work across the four focus areas:
Strong Policy/Leadership Horsepower. A June legislative breakfast engaged decision makers around a shared vision for youth in Grand Rapids. Members of the QC team visited MI lawmakers on Capitol Hill to advocate for youth-centered policies at the local, regional and national levels. The Expanded Learning Opportunities Leadership Council met and recognized Mayor George Heartwell. Last but not least, the first meeting of the youth master planning steering committee took place!
Strong Stable Program Base. A long term goal was reached when the MI Department of Education granted $25.5 million over the next 5 years to ensure that every GRPS elementary and middle school has a year-round 21st CCLC program! The LOOP provides year round supports and opportunities to thousands of youth in Grand Rapids. The next area of focus is expanding opportunities for high school students.
Capacity to Assess and Improve Programs. Twenty-four organizations have formally committed to participate in the quality improvement work. Online trainings to build YPQA capacity begin this summer and live trainings begin in September. Self and external assessments will happen at all sites by January 2009.
Capacity to Recruit, Train and Retain Workforce. Plans are underway to hold an inaugral Advancing Youth Development training for youth workers later this year and to send local trainers to a facilitator training so that AYD becomes part of the of the local professional development landscape, along with youth work methods, YPQA-related trainings and more. Plans are also underway to survey frontline youth workers next spring!
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National Partner Spotlight
The National Conference of State Legislatures, the Forum for Youth Investment and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges co-hosted the fourth annual Youth Policy Institute in Louisville, KY earlier this month. Six diverse state teams with representation from the legislative, executive and judicial branches participated from Minnesota, Florida, Massachusetts, Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky (the last 3 are all Quality Counts states!).
The teams came together to learn about the Ready by 21 Challenge and develop statewide action plans in response. For the first time at this annual event the issue of quality was center stage and policy makers were challenged to consider improving and monitoring the quality of youth-serving systems a top priority. Tom Akiva from the Center for Youth Program Quality and Amy Croll, who heads up the Iowa Quality Counts work, presented about the YPQA, and Bob Granger from the William T. Grant Foundation discussed how research in general and specifically research-based tools like the YPQA can be used to inform and advance youth policy.
Click here for more information and to review the introductory powerpoint presentation.
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| Tools and Resources
A Well-Prepared Workforce. School's Out Washington and the Washington Afterschool Network released a report that gives voice to youth workers from across the state and proposes a framework for building a professional development system for Washington's Afterschool and Youth Development workforce.
Big Picture Messages & Frameworks. This webinar explored how youth programs and policies can be improved with a coordinated framework. Debbi Herr, QC site lead for Georgetown Divide, CA, was one of the speakers to offer her experiences using a youth-centered framework to guide strategy to improve the odds for children and youth.
Unpacking Youth Work Practice. The Forum's OST Policy Commentary series is back! In this issue we discuss the implications of recent research led by Bart Hirsch, Reed Larson and Charles Smith. Each study helps deepen our understanding of youth work practice and can inform policy strategies aimed at developing a strong, stable, committed and prepared OST workforce. To view previous policy commentaries in the series, go to http://forumfyi.org/pubs/series/OSTPC.
Quality Matters Presentation. Charles Smith and Deborah Craig presented to several groups of funders and policy makers in St. Louis in May about the importance of program quality.
Precision Engineering. Karen's May Youth Today Column addresses the need for community-level dashboards that are connected to quality improvement systems so that communities have more than gross annual numbers on youth outcomes and can look for patterns across populations, sort by neighborhood, create profiles and test hypotheses.
Selecting Population Level Youth Indicators. In early June Karen Finn of the Forum facilitated a retreat of the Kentucky Youth Development Coordinating Council focused on selecting population-level youth indicators that the state will collectively track and work on improving. Review Karen's powerpoint from the retreat by clicking the above link.
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Upcoming Events and Opportunities
Introductory Ready by 21 Webinar. This webinar will be held on July 10th 3pm - 4pm EST and will introduce and guide participants through the essential components of the Ready by 21 Challenge and offer specific action steps and materials. A great way to bring new partners up to speed on the challenge. For more informaion, please contact Ian Faigley at Ian@forumfyi.org.
Youth Worker Methods Training of Trainers. The next Youth Work Methods TOT will be held October 28-30 at the High/Scope Retreat & Meeting Center in Clinton, Michigan. The online component will begin on September 29. For information contact Kynisha at kjohnson@highscope.org.
Iowa Ready by 21 Training. Iowa will be hosting a two-day Ready by 21 training this coming fall. Stay tuned for more details and registration information.
AYD Training of Facilitators. Stay tuned...in the coming weeks we will be locking in dates for an Advancing Youth Development Training of Facilitators workshop, to be held in Indianapolis in early 2009.
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