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Expanding the Direct Service Workforce: Possibilities Through School-to-Work

by Teri Wallace

As a nation, we face significant challenges in recruiting, training, and retaining direct support workers in human services. A number of recruitment strategies have been identified in the literature as useful in supporting this workforce, including developing training and support activities, improving wages and benefits, developing a better understanding of the unique needs of this workforce, and targeting recruitment efforts. While each of these is important in creating a comprehensive system of workforce development, this article will focus on the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994, which creates new opportunities to expand the pool of qualified direct service staff to meet the present and future shortages.

Today’s workplaces, and those of the 21st century, require a new kind of worker: one who excels at solving problems, thinking critically, working in teams, and constantly learning on the job. Nowhere is this more evident than in human services where supports are often provided in community settings away from supervisors and co-workers, during hours uncommon to most employees, and in a field that is constantly changing. The school-to-work, or school-to-careers, movement provides a timely response to this situation, creating a new form of education for a new economy that links education and work. The goals of the school-to-work movement are to provide better education, better employment prospects, adult role models, and multiple post-
secondary options for all students. School-to-work experiences are designed to develop young people’s competence, confidence, and connections that can ensure successful careers and citizenship. They connect students to a range of postsecondary options, including four-year college, two-year college, technical training, and structured entry-level work along a career path. Developed with the input of business, education, labor, and community-based organizations that have a strong interest in how American students prepare for careers, the effort to create a national school- to-work system contains three fundamental elements:

• School-based learning. School-based learning opportunities link academic subjects to the world of work. Educators collaborate with employers to develop broad-based curricula that help students understand the skills needed in the workplace.
• Work-based learning. Work-based learning provides students with opportunities to study subject matter and workplace skills in a hands-on, real-life environment. Working in teams, solving problems, and meeting employers’ expectations are workplace skills that students learn best through doing and master under the guidance of adult mentors.
• Connecting activities. Connecting schools and workplaces requires a range of activities to integrate the worlds of school and work. Connecting activities provide program coordination and administration, facilitate school and business staff exchanges, and provide student support, such as career counseling and college placements.

There are many benefits experienced by those involved in school-to-work systems. Among them are that employers have an available pool of new workers who understand the needs and expectations of their business, can reduce employee training costs and turnover, and improve morale and management skills of adult workers.

There are several important strategies that can be used to ensure the inclusion of the direct service workforce in development of school-to-work systems. Some activities include:

• Participating on local and state school-to-work advisory groups.
• Providing work-based internship opportunities to students through local school-to-work initiatives.
• Developing articulation agreements between secondary and post-secondary environments to build career ladders for individuals interested in pursuing further education in the human service area.
• Recruiting high school students into human service preparation programs.
• Identifying connecting activities and strategies to facilitate partnerships between schools and community-based organizations.
• Providing credits for community-based experiences.

Creative strategies are needed to recruit individuals into the direct service workforce. The School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 provides structures for such strategies. Across the country agencies have available to them their state-level School-to-Work contact to assist them in taking the next steps toward partnerships that will better prepare today’s secondary students to fill the vital direct service positions that open the doors into the community for so many individuals with disabilities.

Teri Wallace is a Research Associate with Institute on Community Integration, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. She may be reached at 612/626-7220. To locate the School-to-Work office in your state, contact the School-to-Work National Learning and Information Center at 800/251-7236, or visit their Web site at www.stw.ed.gov.

Sidebar: A School-to-Work Example: Work-Based Learning and Skill Standards at Tyngsborough High School

In 1996, Tyngsborough High School in Tyngsborough, Massachusetts, applied to their local School-to-Work Partnership for a grant to design and pilot test a school-to-work model based on the Community Support Skill Standards (CSSS) for direct service workers. The CSSS were identified as the reference point for the model because of the richness of the community support worker career development resources in the local community, and the realization that many of the fundamental skills required by entry level human service workers would be useful and beneficial to all young people (e.g., supporting empowerment, resolving conflict, planning, documenting, and reporting).

Initially, a planning committee consisting of the principal, key teachers, administrators, and human service professionals from the local community outlined a process of career exploration that included school-based and work-based learning activities. An advisory committee was organized to oversee the project. It included representatives from Massachusetts Rehabilitation Center, Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation, Merrimack Valley Goodwill Industries, Tewksbury Hospital, Middlesex Community College, Education Development Center, and Human Services Research Institute.

During spring of 1996, 120 sophomores participated in project field test activities that introduced them to the human services industry. The CSSS were integrated into the 10th grade English classes that are mandatory for all students. Students participated in a research-based career project in which the communication competency area of the skills standards was practiced. Educators crosswalked the CSSS with the state curriculum framework for 10th grade English. A common lesson format was developed that involved identifying objectives, classroom activities and procedures, materials, minimum skills to be taught, and evaluation. They also developed projects in which students demonstrated both skills identified in the statewide English curriculum framework and communication skills embedded in the human service industry.

Lessons in the curriculum included:

• Career exploration research papers on what human services is and what community support workers do.
• Career interest assessments to investigate the education requirements, physical demands, temperaments, earnings, aptitudes, and so forth of a specific career group.
• Practice seeking positions in human services.
• Design of a path from school to a selected job.
• Discussions about career pathways and portfolio development.

Many challenges and benefits were realized by these activities. First, the skill standards were very helpful to the school in developing its first School-to-Career Initiative, and in redesigning its approach to education. Secondly, school staff felt that working with the skill standards made the conversation among educators, business partners, and students more realistic and meaningful for students. The emphasis on what workers need to know and be able to do allowed students to explore careers through learning what happens in work on a day-to-day basis. Talking to frontline workers helped them understand that expecting to leave high school making $25,000 to $30,000 a year was an unrealistic expectation. The English teachers implementing the field test activities felt that the standards and activities resulting from their integration with the English curriculum caused some disenfranchised students to become more involved with their English classes. A recent evaluation of the project (Taylor, et al., 1997) made the following observations about its effectiveness:

• The CSSS cover a common core of skills essential to the personal and career success of high school students and provide a useful base from which to explore other career specialities.
• The structure and organization of the standards help teachers to think about their curricula and establish links between the skills and curricula.
• The use of the standards facilitates the emergence of a school-to-work program that focuses on what workers need to know and be able to do rather than on what it takes to obtain entry level employment in specific occupations. Students learn about the relationship between what they learn in school and the skills they need in life.

Currently, Tyngsborough High School has plans to expand this project by developing career exploration experiences for seventh through ninth graders, and by expanding site visits and internships for eleventh and twelfth graders.

For more information contact Ann Romano, Greater Lowell School-to-Work Local Partnership, Middlesex Community College, Lowell, Massachusetts. She may be reached at 978/656-3155.

Note: Much of the information in this article was adapted with permission from Taylor, M., Warren, R., Leff, J., & Malyn-Smith, J. (1997). The Community Support Skill Standards Project: Technical report on implementation and demonstrations. Cambridge, MA: Human Services Research Institute.

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Resources: Web Sites Related to Direct Support Workforce Development

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Citation: Gaylord, V., Hewitt, A., & Larson, S. (1998). Impact: Feature Issue on Direct Support Workforce Development, 10(4) [online]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, Institute on Community Integration. Available from http://ici.umn.edu/products/impact/104/.

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