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FOIA Number: 2013-0661-F (2) FOIA MARKER This is not a textual record. This is used as an administrative marker by the William J. Clinton Presidential Library Staff. Collection/Record Group: Clinton Presidential Records Subgroup/Office of Origin: National Service Series/Staff Member: Rick Allen Subseries: OA/ID Number: 2149 FolderID: Folder Title: Public Private Ventures [1] Stack: Row: Section: Shelf: Position: S 66 2 2 2 Clinton Presidential Records Digital Records Marker This is not a presidential record. This is used as an administrative marker by the William J. Clinton Presidential Library Staff. This marker identifies the place of a publication. Publications have not been scanned in their entirety for the purpose of digitization. To see the full publication please search online or visit the Clinton Presidential Library's Research Room. Youth Corps PPV Exchange Project Public/Private Ventures 399 Market Street Philadelphia, PA 19106 (215) 592.9099 1986-1987 Workshops Recruitment: Maintaining Corpsmember Strength MM March 1987 Public/Private Ventures 399 Market Street Philadelphia, PA 19106 (215) 592-9099 Youth Corps Exchange Project 1986-1987 Workshops The Delivery of Human Services by Linda Jucovy April 1987 FOREWORD "The Delivery of Human Services" was the second of the 1986-87 series of workshops sponsored by the Youth Corps Exchange Project, organized by Public/Private Ventures and funded by The Ford Foundation. The six workshops in the series bring together planners and operators of youth conservation and service corps -- and experts from related fields -- to exchange information on subjects crucial to the development of corps programs. Since they are often geographically isolated from one another, youth corps practitioners can use the workshops to explore a variety of ways to strengthen their programs and learn what others are doing in areas of mutual concern. We are particularly grateful to the resource people who brought their expertise to bear on youth corps challenges, and to the staff of the New York City Volunteer Corps for sharing their facilities and their experiences. Jim Klasen Coordinator Youth Corps Exchange Project CONTENTS Page I. THE CONFERENCE 1 II. THE NEED FOR HUMAN SERVICES 5 III. CORPSMEMBERS ISSUES 11 IV. PROJECT ISSUES 15 V. OTHER ISSUES 17 VI. DEVELOPING PROJECTS 19 VII. PLAYING TO WIN 25 VIII. CONCLUSION 27 LIST OF WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS 29 I. THE CONFERENCE Human service projects have been called "a profound development" for this country's youth corps, but only a few corps have begun to investigate the possibilities of this new direction. Thus, the Youth Corps Exchange Project's workshop, "The Delivery of Human Services," held in New York City from November 23 to 25, 1986, focused on both the broader possibilities and challenges of human services and specific steps involved in establishing such programs. The 29 participants, representing 15 youth corps, listened to and participated in discussions ranging from philosophical issues of corps involvement in human services to examinations of existing programs and practical suggestions for broadening the design of existing conservation corps to include human services projects. Highlights of the workshop included: O A keynote address by Alec Dickson, founder of Overseas Voluntary Services and Community Service Volunteers (CSV) in Great Britain, forerunners of scores of other service programs, including the Peace Corps. Dickson compared the current interest in youth volunteer services to the Civilian Conservation Corps of the New Deal era. "It was the marriage of two needs, a symbiosis, that gave substance and meaning to the CCC," he said, adding that a parallel situation exists in the 1980s. "What is it that young people can give today? What are the great unsolved problems? What are the great unmet needs?" he asked. Dickson suggested that there are literally millions of places where young volunteers could perform essential services that would fill currently unmet needs: in education, libraries, museums, health care, child care, victim assistance and crisis counseling. In many cases, he said, youth are the best people to fill this gap in human services. O An address by Jerry Kolker, vice president and director of field operations for Public/Private Ventures, on the opportunities and risks inherent in human services. Kolker said that "nothing encompasses the concept of service as well as human service work." Human services are under- funded, and we don't make the connection between a vital resource -- youth -- and the unmet needs. However, he added, there are factors that make a youth service corps a greater risk than a conser- 1 vation corps. Administration is difficult and supervision is more complex: the crew concept "is much tougher to design" and crewleaders have a much less well-defined function. Corpsmembers must have a certain level of maturity to acquire the knowledge and skills to perform their jobs and to deal with problems that don't occur in conservation projects. "When it [human services] works, it's spectacular," Kolker said. "The potential is enormous; so are the problems." A discussion of national resources available to corps interested in setting up human services projects. Peg Rosenberry of the Human Environment Center, Kaye Stone of Youth Service America formerly Service America) and Helen Kerschner, a consultant to Youth Service America, discussed the kinds of support their organizations can offer. A presentation by Andrea Kelmanson of Community Service Volunteers (CSV) describing the British program. The CSV mission combines two aspects of social change: helping youth move toward a sense of their own worth and promoting changing patterns of care in the community. The two goals, she explained, are parallel. According to Kelmanson, the key to the program's success is a "belief system: a belief on your part that naive, inexpe- rienced and even damaged young people have something to offer, that they are capable and they stand to gain a great deal.' Kelmanson called human services " the most important work. The impact of helping another human being is the most powerful of anything. You can't have the same commitment to a flower bed as you do to another human.' Overviews of state and local human services programs. These included presentations by repre- sentatives of the Washington Service Corps, begun in 1983; the proposed Minnesota Youth Service, which will combine environmental and human services projects, and the Bay Area youth corps. With the help of funds from The Luke B. Hancock Foundation, the Marin, East Bay, and San Francisco corps are adding human services projects to their conser- vation-based programs. O A panel presentation by City Volunteer Corps (CVC) work sponsors describing their relationship with CVC, their roles in projects and the value of volunteers. Sponsors said that providing training programs and supervising the volunteers 2 could be difficult but that it was worthwhile. Leslie Foster, director of volunteers at the Isabella Geriatric Center, said that "volunteers help change the nature of the institution" in a positive way. They bring life into the building and provide individual attention to the elderly. Tanoula Hadjis, program director at the Bayside Facility of the Shield Institute for the Mentally Retarded and Developmentally Disabled, explained that the volunteers were good for the staff, giving them an opportunity to teach and to be role models. And, she added, "Our clients love the volunteers." Dr. Clara Burgess, principal of Community Elementary School 236 in the Bronx, praised the volunteers' contribution to the school's success. "They give us commitment," she said. "We give them accountability." A roundtable discussion on "nuts and bolts" issues facing human service planners, supervisors, sponsors and team leaders. CVC administrators described the criteria they use when deciding whether or not to commit themselves to a project and the process by which a project moves from an idea to a reality. Rise Landsman, director of volunteers at the Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged, described this process from the sponsor's point of view. Visits to CVC project sites. Workshop participants met in small groups at CVC headquarters and, led by their "CV for the day," were taken to a CVC project where they spent the morning experiencing a program in operation. Sites visited included the Playing to Win Computer Center in East Harlem; the Hebrew Home for Aged at Riverdale; Public School 397 in Brooklyn; and the Shield Institute's facility in the Bronx. The following report is based on the information and ideas generated at the workshop and, like the workshop, moves from the general to the particular. To give a sense of the variety of approaches and designs, the report begins with very brief sketches of five human services programs. It then suggests some preliminary issues that should be considered before any concrete planning takes place. Finally, it outlines the process of setting up projects and the criteria for successful projects. The report ends with a more in-depth look at a single human services project in New York City. 3 II. THE NEED FOR HUMAN SERVICES Few of us would disagree that there is a substantial gap between the need for human services and the resources to fulfill those needs. People are needed to assist the frail elderly in their homes and in institutions, to help younger children in school, to work with the mentally and physically disabled, to aid the homeless and in countless other areas. Participants at the conference agreed that a good way to fill this gap is with youth, who are not only a largely untapped resource but a population with needs of their own that volunteer service can help meet. Jim Kielsmeier, president of the National Youth Leadership Council and a force behind the proposed Minnesota Youth Service, finds a parallel between the situation of present- day youth and the problems of the Depression era. The 1930s were a time of economic despair; the 1980s are a time of social despair, he said, citing increasing dropout and suicide rates. "We've created an age-based underclass. If you measure poverty in terms of despair and hopelessness, we have an underclass of young adults. Young people have needs; the state has needs. We are bringing the two together to create a synergy." There was little argument, too, about the potential gain for youth who participate in a human services program. Conservation corps' environmental programs offer youth employability skills, specific job skills and educational opportunities. Many partici- pants felt that while human services work offers these same benefits (although the job skills are obviously different) it also provides youth with the opportunity to form intergenerational, cross-cultural relationships, to expand their boundaries, acquire insights and alter attitudes. Youth who work with school-age children develop insights that might make them better parents. Youth who work with the elderly or disabled clearly become more sensitive to the needs of others. Alec Dickson, founder of Great Britain's CSV, noted a higher social good inherent in human services programs. "Caring for persons, the more able and the less able serving each other, is what makes a good society," he said. "Community service can play an important role in combating our innate tendency to self-centeredness." Despite the potential benefits to both corpsmembers and the community, a corps must consider a number of key issues before it decides to plan and implement a human services program -- human services work differs in significant ways from conservation work. Before going on to examine these issues as they were discussed at the workshop, five active and proposed service programs are briefly sketched to give a sense of the variety of approaches developed to meet the particular needs of a nation, states and localities. 5 FIVE PROGRAMS Community Service Volunteers (CSV) Background: Founded in England in 1962 by Dr. Alec Dickson, CSV is a national network with offices in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Its mission combines training for its volun- teers with a commitment to creating social change by influencing patterns of care in the community. CSV has a policy of non- rejection: everyone who applies is accepted. In addition, there are programs aimed at drawing volunteers who are "in special circumstances': youth serving the final month of a prison term; youth with physical disabilities and homeless young people in the Greater London area. Design: Volunteers, ages 16 to 35, serve from four months to a year. All work in face-to-face contact with people in what are termed "personal service projects," dealing with the physically and mentally disabled, the elderly, the ill or the homeless. Each year more than 2,000 volunteers are individually placed in projects that are most often away from home, although CSV recently began a program in which participants can work in their home communities. Volunteers have some control over the kind of project and the location in which they are placed. Funding: Project sponsors support the volunteers by providing room, board, a small weekly stipend and fare to and from the project at the beginning and end of their placement. Funds for administering the program come from a variety of government grants and private donations. Washington Service Corps (WSC) Background: Established through the Washington Youth Employment and Conservation Act in 1983, the WSC's mission is to provide young adults with meaningful work experience and skills training while also filling unmet needs in the community. Design: About 300 to 400 youths, ages 18 to 25, are individually placed each year in public and non-profit agencies. Enrollees must be unemployed and out of school. Projects last six months and create a spectrum that includes, for example, working with the elderly, teaching independent living skills to the mentally disabled, computerizing police records and assisting small museums. Project sponsors are responsible for training and supervision. Funding: Sponsors pay the WSC a fee of $750 for each enrollee. The state pays the corpsmember $450 a month and provides medical and life insurance. 6 Minnesota Youth Service (MYS) Background: The proposed MYS, combining conservation and human services projects, would fill unmet needs for services in the state while providing training and development for youth. Design: If the program is approved by the Minnesota Legislature, it will begin with 144 corpsmembers, ages 17 to 20, in June 1987 and expand to 648 the second year. The first six months of this year-long program will be residential, with corpsmembers working in crews and earning $70 a week. Their time will be equally divided between conservation and human services projects which will focus on three areas: environmental work, service to the elderly, and emergency service during natural disasters such as floods and forest fires. During the six-month crew experience, each corpsmember will also complete an individualized education plan that will focus on strengthening basic competencies in reading, writing and math. At the end of this period, there is a "gate." Corpsmembers who leave will receive either $500 in cash or a $1,000 scholarship; those who remain will be placed in a service internship with a public or private agency. During the crew phase of the program, corpsmembers will be moved around the state. They will have more control over their internship and be able to choose its location. After completing their service internship, the youth will receive either $750 in cash or a $1,500 tuition scholarship. Funding: For the initial two years of the program, MYS projects a budget of five-and-a-half million dollars, with $580,000 of that money coming from private foundations and corporations and the rest from the state. Sponsors of service internships will contribute about $100 a month; interns will earn $135 a week. New York City Volunteer Corps (CVC) Background: Founded in 1984, CVC emphasizes both youth development and service to the city. All projects must provide needed services that would otherwise go unmet. Design: The CVC has approximately 650 volunteers, ages 17 to 20, working in crews from 10 to 16 members on physical improvement and human services projects throughout the city of New York. Volunteers receive a weekly stipend of $81 to cover lunches, transportation and uniforms. They can also continue their education with free college credit courses. If they are not high school graduates, CVC enrolls them in GED preparation, literacy training or English 7 as a Second Language classes. After a year of service, volunteers receive a $5,000 scholarship or a $2,500 cash allowance. Project sponsors are responsible for training the volunteers and for providing task supervision along with the CVC team leader. Projects generally last four months or less and include rehabili- tating housing, improving parks, assisting the elderly and handi- capped, caring for hospice residents and tutoring. Funding: Funding comes from the City of New York. East Bay Conservation Corps (EBCC) Background: The three-year-old East Bay program serves inner-city youth, ages 17 to 24, in the Oakland area. Primarily a conservation corps, it is in the process of adding a program, beginning in early 1987, that will provide human services to the elderly. Design: The initial EBCC human services project will place a crew from seven to nine corpsmembers and one supervisor in an institution for the elderly. Later, individuals and pairs of corpsmembers will provide care for the homebound elderly. Service rotations will last four months, and a corpsmember will then be able to choose another human services project or switch to conservation work. Conservation corpsmembers receive $3.35 an hour, but EBCC is considering paying service crews $4.00 an hour because it believes the work requires greater maturity and responsibility. Funding: The conservation corps operates primarily on a fee-for- service basis. EBCC is trying to obtain funding from private foundations to support its first human services projects, but it hopes eventually to have agencies that sponsor these projects "buy in" by paying part of the costs. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS These corps, at least for now, have decided upon the program designs that seem best to meet the needs of both the youth and the areas they are serving. But most of these models are still new, and some are not yet tested. Planners have the challenge -- and the opportunity -- of building on these experiences while creating their own models. Thus, workshop participants were first concerned with preliminary issues they would have to examine before the actual program development could begin. They had questions about how corpsmembers could best perform human services work and about basic issues of 8 project design. It was clear that there are no "right answers" to these questions. Planners would have to arrive at solutions that seemed most appropriate for their particular needs. These preliminary issues are examined in the following section. 9 III. CORPSMEMBER ISSUES ASSESSING CORPSMEMBERS' CAPABILITIES When the East Bay Conservation Corps (EBCC) decided to plan a human services program, one issue it faced was the backgrounds of the youth who join the corps. According to East Bay's Jim Sternberg, corpsmembers possess "a variety of criminal records, a history of family and domestic problems and a history of drug abuse." In addition, said Sternberg, as many as 75 percent of the participants are functionally illiterate, cannot read or do basic math when they enter the program. Sternberg said the youth "have a lot to give, but they also face a lot of barriers." He raised questions on two problems in particular. HOW much will the elderly trust the youth, particularly in the home-care projects the EBCC is planning, and how will the limits of the corpsmembers' educational abilities determine what they can do in the human services area? Others at the conference, however, expressed their conviction that such limits are unnecessarily imposed on youth. CVC director Gail Kong suggested that one reason there aren't more human services programs is because "unconsciously we don't see kids as being able to provide that kind of caring." Andrea Kelmanson of Great Britain CSV argued that "the problem is a belief system, a doubt that young people can do it." Noting that their volunteers include several hundred youth with histories that include drug use and prison, she said, "We want volunteers to feel that they can change the world. We want to help youth develop a positive sense of themselves, to buy into society." Still, many participants felt that it is important to measure the demonstrated and potential maturity of corpsmembers as well as their educational background and potential. Speaking about the need for careful training, P/PV's Jerry Kolker said that "an 18- year-old can't go into a hospice and have the skills developed to deal with the patients. If you don't realize this, then you create unreasonable expectations of the kids and trivialize the actual work that has to be done by the professionals. According to Kolker, the educational challenges of human services work may be greater than the challenges of conservation projects. For example, it takes both judgment and particular skills to help a severely disabled person. Some clients, such as the elderly, have episodic needs: when volunteers complete one task, they may have what seems like empty time until their help is again required. Corpsmembers will need the maturity to deal with this down time. In addition, corpsmembers may have experiences which at first seem difficult and unpleasant: caring for a dying person or 11 helping someone who is disabled. Kolker emphasized that these potential problems can be solved with thoughtful training and "sensitizing." CREWS vs. INDIVIDUALS Probably no issue generated more discussion at the workshop than the question of what happens to crews in human services programs. Crews are basic to conservation corps, but participants wondered how the crew concept could be maintained in service projects -- or if crews should even exist at all. Some corps do not use crews. In Great Britain, the CSV relies almost entirely on individual placements. Project sponsors have primary responsibility for the volunteer and there is no daily CSV oversight of the corpsmembers. In the U.S., the Washington Service Corps similarly uses individual placements, not crew placements, because, said Doug Allen of the WSC, "It gives us the greatest flexibility." The WSC tries to keep its procedures simple, minimizing paperwork and administrative complexities. Individual placements are one way to do this. Despite the successes of these two programs, P/PV's Jerry Kolker noted the value of crews. "The crew provides accountability,' he said. Traditional corps crews allow closer supervision and monitoring of crewmembers. But Kolker acknowledged that the usual concept of the crew must be altered for human service programs because designing human services projects that involve a crew are more difficult. A single crewmember may be helping a homebound elderly person, or a crew of 12 might be scattered inside a large institution for the developmentally disabled. In either case, the conservation corps model -- crewmembers working side-by-side with the crewleader working alongside and supervising - - often is not feasible. As the East Bay Conservation Corps develops its human services program, it is grappling with precisely this issue of how to retain the crew concept which it feels has been so successful in conservation work. Its crews, consisting of 10 to 12 members, "have a lot of identity with EBCC," said Jim Sternberg. "The question is how to maintain that identity when corpsmembers are spread out -- one, two, three in a place away from the rest of the corps. How do we maintain the esprit de corps? HOW do we provide supervision?" The EBCC plans to get some experience with a modified crew structure by beginning with a crew of seven to nine members -- some hired from the current conservation corps -- that will work with the institutionalized elderly. Then it will move into the program's next stage: placing individual or pairs of corpsmembers to help the homebound elderly. In addition, EBCC plans to hold an Outward Bound course for each new team. Sternberg believes this experience 12 will immediately provide the group with an "opportunity to be in stressful situations together and learn how to take care of each other. It builds a sense of group responsibility," he said. "It's a team-building exercise." The Marin Conservation Corps, which uses crews of five to 15 in its conservation work, is taking a different approach in its one- day-a-week pilot human services project. MCC plans to use crews of three -- two corpsmembers and one "active elderly" person -- to assist the frail elderly. During the rest of the week, members will work with their regular crews on conservation projects. It is hoped that the altered structure will give corpsmembers the opportunity to form intergenerational relationships. Minnesota's proposed corps will combine crew and individual experiences. The first six months of the year-long program will be crew-based, and crews will spend half of that time in human services projects. Jim Kielsmeier believes the initial crew structure is essential because it will provide "peer-generated education.' In the U.S., the corps that performs the greatest amount of human services work is New York's CVC, and its structure revolves around teams of 12 to 16 members (the CVC refers to groups of CVs as "teams", rather than crews). Carol Pieper, a senior planner at CVC, acknowledged that smaller teams might be better in some situations, but with smaller teams, program costs rise. And this places limitations on the kinds of projects CVC can run. "You have to be realistic," Pieper said. "If you have a team of 15, the work site has to be able to use a team of 15." In exceptional cases where an agency has outstanding needs, CVC may consider dividing the team between two service sites in close proximity. The nature of the work also alters the crew experience. CVC team members generally meet on the site, before the work day actually begins, for a half-hour of physical exercise. Team leaders also regularly hold team meetings that bring the group together and enable them to discuss problems and provide support for one another. But in many of CVC's projects, particularly when teams are assigned to work in large institutions, CVs have little other contact with one another. The balance between the benefits of a crew experience and the structural reality of human services work is, clearly, difficult to maintain. CREWLEADERS As the nature of the crew changes, so, naturally, will the role of the crewleader. In the conservation corps crew structure, crewleaders usually have a direct, hands-on role, supervising and working with their crew. But in human services, corpsmembers are 13 often absorbed into the environment where they are working, and they are supervised by the institution's own staff. Where, then, do crewleaders fit in? Their roles are difficult to define. During a workshop panel discussion, several sponsors of CVC projects noted that there had been some initial conflict between crewleaders and sponsor-employed supervisors before the crewleader's role was resolved. Tanoula Hadjis, program director at the Shield Institute for the Mentally Retarded and Developmentally Disabled, a CVC project sponsor, said bluntly, "You need great team leaders." Jim Kielsmeier said that the proposed Minnesota Youth Service is considering hiring team leaders with specialized backgrounds in social services. Robbie Diamond, a senior team leader at CVC, said his role includes preparing CVs before they begin a project, helping with on-site training, leading team meetings and overseeing ongoing training, including the journal writing that is required of all CVs. Among their other responsibilities, team leaders have to mediate between the project's staff and administration and the CVC volun- teers working at the site. Communication skills become a key attribute. When teams are assigned to large institutions, team leaders may be in an office, isolated from the CVs. They may act, in part, as supervisors responsible for helping the CVs develop good work habits but not responsible for the actual work, which is supervised by the project staff. They may act, in part, as counselors helping the CVs with problems. But the institution's staff has ultimate supervisory authority, and the team leader walks through a much more narrow passage than in conservation work. 14 IV. PROJECT ISSUES ROTATIONAL vs. ONE-TIME PROJECTS Workshop participants were especially concerned with the ways in which human services projects differ structurally from conservation work. CVC director Gail Kong defined one key issue as the decision whether to have rotational or one-time projects. In rotational projects, a corps might continue sending crews to an institution over a long period of time. When one crew has completed its "tour" there, another crew will be assigned. Rotational projects tend to involve a kind of maintenance of effort, Kong said. Volunteers perform jobs that would otherwise not be done. In nursing homes, schools and institutions for the disabled, for example, they can provide the personal, one-to-one contact with clients that staff with other responsibilities cannot provide. In such cases, project sponsors may become dependent upon the corps to provide these services. In one-time projects, a crew or individual will have a discrete job to perform with a beginning, middle and end. When that work is completed, there might not be a further need for volunteers. One-time projects tend to differ in nature from rotational projects. A CVC team, for example, performed a "land use survey" for the Bronx office of New York's Department of City Planning. Volunteers surveyed a district in the South Bronx and classified buildings as "residential occupied," "vacant," "commercial" and so on to enable the Bronx office to develop a map as part of the city's planning and budgeting process. When the survey was completed, their work was over. For programs that use individual placements, like the Washington Service Corps, this issue may be less of a problem. A project sponsor may have a one-time need for a volunteer or may continue to apply for volunteers to fill a continuing need in, for instance, a small museum. But according to Kong, the team-based CVC has not yet found the balance they want to achieve between the two kinds of projects. Rotational projects in institutions allow the CVC to keep sending in teams and lessen the administrative difficulty of developing new projects. They also allow the CVC to build better relationships with those institutions and enable sponsors to develop stronger training programs. However, Kong also emphasized the importance of building a political constituency. A possible drawback to rotational projects, she noted, is that they build only a few relationships and, thus, limit CVC's exposure. "If you don't continue to grow larger and increase the number of projects you perform, you'll be limiting the public importance of your program," she said. 15 One-time projects give the CVC more variety and, Kong said, at least wider surface visibility. However, in addition to creating administrative problems, one-time projects do not build the kind of continuing relationships that CVC feels are most desirable. PROJECT LENGTH Workshop participants also quickly learned that the question of project length has no simple answer. Service corps that rely on individual placements theoretically should find it easier to vary the length of projects. Volunteers in Great Britain's CSV remain in a placement anywhere from four months to a year. The proposed Minnesota Youth Service plans to move corpsmembers around the state to a number of short -- perhaps just a few weeks-long -- projects during their crew experience; during the second half of the year-long program the youth will be placed individually in a six-month internship. Individual projects of WSC corpsmembers also typically last six months. CVC team projects usually last from one day to four months; crews are assigned to an average of seven different projects during their year in the corps and, thus, have a variety of experiences. According to Lois Whipple, deputy director of project development, the New York corps has found that a team's interest, as measured by factors like absenteeism, seems to ebb after four months. Dee Baecher, a CVC field coordinator, said that the four-month stint gives the team time to have training, get used to the job and put in productive work. But Whipple admitted that project length is "one of the trickiest issues.' Project sponsors, who organize and do the training, can find a four-month rotation taxing. When she is negotiating with a prospective sponsor, Whipple said, that person might ask, "Is it resource-effective for us to have a team only for four months?" Tanoula Hadjis, of the Shield Institute, said that "the required amount of training is difficult for us." The CVC model requires sponsors of rotational projects to give training three times a year. In addition, it can take CVs weeks more before they become comfortable and self-sufficient on a job. This problem is compounded by "backfilling," adding more members to a team after a project is already under way. Hadjis noted that sometimes the entire team doesn't come in at once. Her institute will spend five days training the team; the next week, two new CVs, also requiring training, may appear. Dr. Clara Burgess, principal of Community Elementary School 236 in the Bronx, said she would like her CV team to stay for the entire school year. In addition to easing the problems of training, she feels it would provide stability for the young children they are serving in the school. 16 V. OTHER ISSUES FEE FOR SERVICE? Human services programs face similar funding problems and decisions as do conservation corps. Who pays for the services? New York's CVC obtains its funding from the city; project sponsors contribute training, but they pay nothing for the services they receive. Andrea Kelmanson of Great Britain's CSV asked a panel of CVC project sponsors if they would be willing to provide a fee for the services they received: "Does your commitment to CVs run that deep?" The panel members said that the money would not be available to them; they simply could not pay for the services. CVC's Lois Whipple said that her group is endeavoring to fill precisely that gap: providing one-on-one help and services where funds aren't available. However, other corps do receive some fees from project sponsors. In Great Britain's CSV, project sponsors generally provide the volunteers with room and board, a small weekly stipend and travel expenses to and from the project, which is generally in another part of the country. The Washington Service Corps expects each sponsor to pay $750 toward the cost of the program. AVOIDING COMPETITION WITH EXISTING AGENCIES AND JOBS Many workshop participants noted that their conservation corps have to be careful that corpsmembers' projects do not displace incumbent jobs and workers -- and they suspected this might also be a problem in human services work. Minnesota's Jim Kielsmeier said that this issue can be more complex than it at first appears. He asked CVC's Carol Pieper about her group's relations with local unions. Pieper felt the relations were good: when CVC plans projects, it is careful to avoid any potential conflicts with unions. In addition, she said, no institution has enough staff to provide the one-to-one attention that is the volunteers' special strength. CVC also performs physical (conservation) work in the New York City park system, and Pieper noted that the system is so understaffed, with only 5,000 workers for 7,000 jobs, that the problem of taking someone else's job does not exist. Kielsmeier, however, did see a problem in volunteers taking jobs that union employees once had. As long as there are volunteers to perform the job, laid- off employees will not be hired back. Kathy Royer of the San Francisco Conservation Corps said her program gets around this problem by performing what they call "special services" that don't overlap with job descriptions of 17 union workers. The Washington Service Corps deals with this problem by requiring that projects fill an "unmet community need." Doug Allen described this as a "fluid" requirement that allows communities and agencies great latitude. 18 VI. DEVELOPING PROJECTS Workshop speakers agreed that project development is the key to a successful human services program. But here, again, there are only a few models to follow, and planners will have to measure the applicability of those models to their own corps' and communi- ties' needs. Still, participants were able to leave the workshop with both general guidelines for developing projects and some specific examples from existing programs. NATIONAL AND LOCAL RESOURCES Youth corps planners can turn to several organizations represented at the workshop for philosophical and practical guidance. Peg Rosenberry, representing both the National Association of Service and Conservation Corps and the Human Environment Center (HEC), a national clearinghouse for information about youth corps programs, explained that her organization has an extensive archives of promotional and program materials that are useful in developing human services programs. Kaye Stone spoke about Youth Service America, whose consultants have developed two planning papers advocating national initiatives for youth service, one focusing on care of the elderly and the other on helping young children in need. Both would be housed at Youth Service America and would advocate the development of innovative programs, disseminate information, offer technical assistance, stimulate funding and provide public relations services. HEC and Service America are both in Washington, D.C. Public/Private Ventures (P/PV) in Philadelphia provides technical assistance and exchange programs for youth corps planners. In addition, Jim Kielsmeier, of Minnesota, spoke about the kinds of local resources that should be available to corps during the early stages of planning for human services. He suggested working with clearinghouses, such as advocacy organizations for the elderly, which are aware of needs that aren't being met. The groups also know which care-giving organizations are doing the best work, and those are the groups that corps want to work with in setting up service projects, he said. According to Kielsmeier, it is probably a good idea, during this initial planning, to hire someone with experience working in social services, someone with "access to people who can deliver the projects." That person can establish contacts with existing institutions and agencies that may become sponsors for projects. Kielsmeier also advised "getting people who might see [the corps] as a threat involved in designing the program. Be aware of the tough issues with other care givers." 19 ADDING HUMAN SERVICES To AN EXISTING CONSERVATION CORPS Many of the workshop participants represented youth conservation corps, and, thus, they were interested in the experiences of similar corps that had added (or were in the process of adding) a human services component. Representatives from the Bay Area, where several conservation corps are using grants from The Luke B. Hancock Foundation to plan human services projects, spoke about the processes through which they are approaching this new development in their corps. Debra Foster of the Marin Conservation Corps (MCC) said her organization "more or less slipped into" performing human services. The MCC, a fee-for-service corps, traditionally provides community service for part of one day each week. These projects have included renovation work at a food bank and building a patio and trail at an art center for the developmentally disabled. According to Foster, the community service "got lots of recognition so we're developing human services projects out of that." As a result, the MCC is designing a pilot project that will serve the frail elderly, helping them to stay in their homes rather than be institutionalized. In organizing the project, the MCC is working with agencies that serve the elderly and a Sonoma County community college that trains older people to return to the work force. In addition, it is contracting with the gerontology counseling program at San Francisco State University to get interns who will be on-site with MCC as an additional training resource. Foster said that the Marin corps is proceeding cautiously; corps- members will initially work in human services only one day a week. As the project gets under way, MCC will assess the feasi- bility of integrating it more fully into the corps. Eventually, Marin hopes to perform human services work on a fee-for-service basis, as it does with conservation work. The East Bay Conservation Corps (EBCC) is also moving cautiously as it begins to integrate human services into its work program. Like Marin, EBCC became interested in human services through its community service work. Using its grant from the Hancock Founda- tion, EBCC assigned one person to develop a human services plan. Jim Sternberg said that since the East Bay has an enormous need for providing the elderly with greater human services, the corps decided to focus on that. According to Sternberg, EBCC spent five months composing a "concept paper.' Corps representatives met with 50 different service providers for the elderly in the East Bay area to assess the greatest needs and to discuss how EBCC could best meet those needs. Based on this research, the corps decided on three types 20 of projects: providing in-home support for the elderly, supple- menting existing services in adult-care facilities and providing transportation for the elderly in both settings. Sternberg spoke about several issues that the corps had to consider, if not resolve, as it was developing its human services program. EBCC has two primary missions: to serve the East Bay community and to involve youth in making a greater difference in their own lives and the lives of others. Thus, he said, in the human services program, EBCC had to work out a way to maintain the balance between serving the elderly and developing corpsmembers. Since EBCC considers crews a key element in youth development, planners had to find a way to apply the crew concept to these new projects. In addition, EBCC was concerned with establishing a relationship between the conservation crews and the elderly service crews. Should they rotate corpsmembers between crews or hire service crews as a separate component? They decided to start with three elderly-service crews; the first crew is scheduled to be in place at the beginning of 1987 and will focus on the institutionalized elderly. Sternberg says EBCC decided to "save in-home support until we've had some experience." The other two crews will provide this in-home service. The EBCC plans to hire some of the service crew members from within the current conservation crews and some from outside. To create crew unity, the training program will begin with an Outward Bound course. (See the section on "crews vs. individuals.") Service team members will then have "aging-awareness" training, lasting from two to five days, given by the sponsoring agency. That will be followed by two or three days of intensive on-the-job skills training. EBCC also plans to have sponsors commit to about four hours a week of ongoing training. ELEMENTS OF A SUCCESSFUL PROJECT CVC director Gail Kong urged participants to select projects that fill a service need, provide a solid educational experience for the volunteers and heighten the visibility of the service corps. Lois Whipple, a CVC deputy director, discussed some more specific criteria that the New York corps believes lead to a successful project. Some of these elements apply primarily to crew-based programs like CVC. These include adequate space for the volunteers and a place for the team's morning physical training. Other criteria essential for nearly all human services projects include need, training, site supervision and detailed job descriptions. NEED According to Whipple, the CVC has identified four primary areas where New York has critical needs that CVs can fill. These are services to the elderly homebound, the institutionalized elderly, 21 children in school, and the mentally and physically disabled. She added that CVC is continuing to identify gaps where services are needed. In many instances the corps decides upon needs, such as those of the homeless, that it wants to address and then identifies sponsors. In some instances, potential sponsors approach them. The Washington Service Corps defines "need" somewhat more freely, according to Doug Allen. Potential sponsors identify the needs and submit requests for volunteers. When sponsors complete the "Agency Agreement/Training Plan," they have to explain what client/target group will be served by this project and how the volunteer's work will benefit the community and the local economy. Their individual placements have included such work as counseling victims of domestic violence, working in a Small Business Resource Center, assisting in the production of personal safety curricula for use in schools, monitoring youth on pre-trial release and assisting with a food distribution program. TRAINING CVC volunteers have a week of residential orientation and training when they first enter the corps. But training for particular projects is the responsibility of the project sponsors. This includes both intensive training before work begins and ongoing training once the rotation is under way. Negotiating the training is a key step in the development of a project. CVC's agreement with the Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged, for example, notes that the training objectives include sensitizing CVs to the needs and problems of the aging, orienting them to the institution and teaching them to work with and communicate with older people. There are two days of intensive training at the beginning of each rotation, ongoing training for individual team members at their specific work sites and regularly scheduled "debriefings" during which volunteers can discuss their anxieties and problems. (For a more detailed description of a training program, see the later section on "Playing to Win.") The Washington Service Corps requires a training plan designed jointly by the enrollee and the project supervisor. On the WSC agreement forms, enrollees note their short-term and long-range career goals and identify any barriers to employment, such as a lack of education, poor previous job performance, police record or even lacking defined career goals. The training not only teaches enrollees the specific skills needed to do particular jobs but establishes steps for achieving goals and overcoming barriers as well. 22 SUPERVISION In crew-based programs like the CVC, corpsmembers have two levels of supervision: project sponsor staff and their own team leaders. (See the section on "crewleaders" for more on their role.) Everyone agreed that staff supervisors are a key: they must be committed to making the project work. Rise Landsman, director of volunteers at the Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged, a CVC sponsor, said she initially got staff support by approaching various departments in the institution and saying, "We have bodies. How can you best use them?" Both sponsors and corps planners said that institutional staff enjoy the opportunity to teach and supervise the volunteers, who bring new energy into a building. But supervisory roles should be clearly delineated. CVC's agreement with the Jewish Hospital and Home states that "each CV will be directly supervised by the head of the department he or she is assigned to." Similarly, the WSC agreement asks the sponsor to describe how and when the supervisor will provide guidance to the enrollee. The WSC requires enrollee evaluations after the first and fifth months of the project. It also asks how the supervising agency will assist the enrollee in finding future employment once the six-month project is completed. DETAILED JOB DESCRIPTIONS Workshop participants felt that detailed job descriptions were an important part of a successful project since they enable both volunteers and supervisors to know exactly what is expected. Potential sponsors for the WSC submit a description of the prospec- tive enrollee's activities. CVC agreements with sponsors include fairly detailed outlines of a "typical day" for a CV. The Jewish Home and Hospital agreement includes eight such outlines because the crew assigned will be doing eight different kinds of work. One such outline follows: 8:00AM Report to Guild for the Blind Day Care Center. CV will accompany van driver to pick up clients. CV will go to client's door and escort client to van (particularly important during winter months). CV will also help escort clients from van to center. 9:30AM Assist with crafts program, assist with activities, set up and clear away program materials, help serve snacks and lunch, may escort clients to bathroom door and wait to escort client back to program, 23 may escort client to oT (occupational therapy) or PT (physical therapy) and assist in those areas. 3:00-4:00PM Accompany van driver. Escort clients to van and from van to their doors. Note: The CV has one hour for lunch during the 9:30 to 4:00 period. NEGOTIATING A PROJECT Doug Allen of the WSC emphasized that his corps tries to keep administrative processes as simple as it can. Non-profit and government agencies wishing to become sponsors submit project requests. The WSC staff evaluates those requests on the basis of their benefit to the community and the skill training provided to the corpsmember. If the projects are approved, the agencies interview eligible applicants to select a corpsmember. Finally, a three-sided work agreement is developed by the sponsor, the corpsmember and the WSC. This pact details the training the corpsmember will receive, the work he or she will accomplish and the support the WSC will provide. The CVC process is more complex. According to senior planner Carol Pieper, CVC planners make at least two site visits to negotiate a project. The initial negotiations are with top administrators at the institution; the next meetings are with the staff who will actually be working with the CVs. Pieper said that during these negotiations, the corps makes sure that CVs are really wanted by the sponsor, that the project is safe, that the sponsors can provide training and a valuable work experience, and that the sponsor and supervisors fully understand their roles. At the same time, she said, CVC is "marketing" its volunteers to the sponsor. According to Pieper, CVs have all passed the background investigation that New York requires of anyone working in day care. This, along with the initial one-week training that CVC gives its volunteers, assures sponsors that the CVs can be trusted to work with "frail" clients: the elderly, the disabled and children. The CVC planner develops a Team Leader Briefing Document (TLBD), containing all the essential information about a project. The TLBD includes basic information (including dates the project begins and ends, whether it is rotational or one-time, and travel directions for the CVs); a description of the project and how it will benefit the sponsor; a description of training; an explanation of supervisory responsibility; educational opportunities inherent in the project; and outlines of a typical work day. This document assures that a project is well defined, and team leaders use this detailed information to prepare their teams for new assignments. 24 VII. PLAYING TO WIN On the second morning of the workshop, participants met in small groups to visit CVC project sites. The experience allowed them to observe a project in operation, speak to CVs and sponsors, and understand concretely what all this talk about human services actually meant. What follows is a description of one of these projects. The Playing to Win Computer Center, a non-profit organization, is located in a large basement room of a housing project at 97th Street and Third Avenue, in Manhattan's East Harlem. The center, in operation since 1983, aims to give area residents, over half of whom are unemployed and/or on welfare, access to computers and computer instruction as a way to learn and to acquire job skills. There are about 20 computers, mostly donated Ataris, on the desks that fill the room, and there are bars on the windows and an elaborate burglar alarm to insure that the equipment remains there. School groups, including children as young as those in Head Start programs, hospitalized adolescents and adults, and families from the neighborhood all use the center. Some of the adults come simply to acquire the typing skills that might help them get a job. The center's staff consists of only five people, not enough to give the kind of individual attention necessary for computer instruction, and so Playing to Win applied to CVC for volunteers to serve as instructional aides. The relationship has been a success. The CVC team now working there is the fifth that has served at the center. The CVC team leader calls this "a very desirable project for the kids." They receive two weeks of training and acquire marketable skills as well as skills that help them if they are working toward their GED or are enrolled in college courses. In addition, the CVs get exposure to dedicated adults (the center staff) and the opportunity to form interpersonal relationships with a broad range of people (the center staff and computer students). On a typical morning at the center, the CVs -- there are about 12 on the team -- arrive early to get the computers set up and the programs running before the first class arrives. Class periods last 45 minutes, and a group -- like the one from a nearby elemen- tary school that is coming this morning -- usually has about 30 sessions over the course of a year. The first group that arrives this morning consists of children from kindergarten through second grade. They are learning to do word processing, and today they are writing a story about Thanks- giving. The CVs attach themselves to one or two of the children, 25 help them with the mysteries of function keys and encourage their literary endeavors. Along the way, they even give a little basic English instruction, including some talk about capitalizing proper names and ending sentences with periods. One boy refuses to do anything at all until a CV smiles and chides him into participating. When it is time for the kids to leave, the CVs save their stories on disks SO the group can continue with them the next week. Then they get the computers ready for the next class. The second group that morning is from an adolescent psychiatric unit at Metropolitan Hospital. Computer instruction is part of their therapy, and a member of the Playing to Win staff continues a lesson on using Logo that was begun in an earlier session. The CVs are less involved with this group than they were with the younger children. They help with technical problems, but there is little personal interaction. As the class winds down, some of the CVs leave for their lunch break. According to the team leader, a key element in this project's success is the well-structured training program given by the sponsors. CVs initially receive about two weeks of intensive instruction followed by three to six hours a week of ongoing training. The training has four stated goals: to prepare CVs to serve as instructional computing aides, to help them acquire standard office skills, to help them achieve solid working habits and to encourage the development of interpersonal skills such as communication and cooperation. CVs receive instruction in using computers and software, ranging from an introduction to computer terminology to word processing, spreadsheets and Logo. They also learn how to become classroom aides; this includes both technical instruction in setting up the computers for students' use and guidance on working with the participants. Finally, CVs are taught center procedures, including answering the telephone, taking inventory, filing and keeping records. This section of the training also includes discussions of promptness, lunch hours, personal phone calls and other aspects of developing good work habits. The computer center and the volunteers are, in a sense, a perfect match. The CVs fill an important need while they gain a variety of skills. And, says Antonia Stone, the center's founder, the volunteers "represent exactly the population that Playing to Win wants to reach.' 26 VIII. CONCLUSION Near the end of the workshop, HEC's Peg Rosenberry encouraged participants to ask themselves, "Why are we going into human services? We're essentially a conservation corps." P/PV's Jim Klasen similarly advised that the step toward human services be taken cautiously. Human services projects have "obvious value" for both corpsmembers and the community, he said, but he urged planners "to think about the implications, the big questions." Indeed, participants left the workshop with a deep awareness that human services programs are not a simple extension of the conser- vation work that their youth corps are already performing. Human services projects place unique demands on both corpsmembers and staff. Adding such projects may mean rethinking the structure and even the mission of a youth corps. And as workshop speakers repeatedly made clear, adding human services will certainly increase administrative work. But participants also left the workshop with a sense of excitement about the potential of human services. They had talked with planners, sponsors and corpsmembers and visited projects in action. There are, after all, essential differences between sending a crew into a forest to build a trail and into an institu- tion to care for the elderly. Those differences create significant challenges, but they promise equally significant rewards. 27 YOUTH CORPS EXCHANGE PROJECT Participant List - Human Services Workshop November 23-25, 1986 New York City Doug Allen Virginia Jordan Washington Service Corps San Francisco Conservation Corps Washington Youth Employment Exchange Fort Mason Employment Security Department Building 111 212 Maple Park MS KG-11 San Francisco, CA. 94123 Olympia, WA. 98504-5311 415 928-7322 206 438-4072 Linda Jucovy Ken Butko Public/Private Ventures Administrator 399 Market Street New Jersey Youth Corps Philadelphia, PA. 19106 Room 4A - New Jersey Department 215 695-9099 of Community Affairs CN-800 363 West State Street Andrea Kelmanson Trenton, NJ. 08625 Community Service Volunteers 609 984-6666 237 Pentonville Road London, England NI 9NJ Connie Currie Office of Community Affairs James C. Kielsmeier City of Atlanta National Youth Leadership Council City Hall - Room 100 Center for Youth Development 68 Mitchell St. S.W. & Research Atlanta, GA. 30335 University of Minnesota 404 658-6147 386 McNeal Hall St. Paul, MN. 55108 Alec Dickson 612 624-3700 Founder Community Service Volunteers Paul Kirschner 237 Pentonville Road National Foundation London, England NI 9NJ for Long Term Health Care American Health Care Association Debra K. Foster 1200 15th St., N.W. Marin Conservation Corps Washington, DC. 20005 Box 89 San Rafael, CA. 94915 Jim Klasen 415 454-4554 Public/Private Ventures 399 Market Street Thomas L. Hark Philadelphia, PA. 19106 Director 215 592-9099 Vermont Youth Conservation Corps State Office Complex Jerry Kolker 103 Main Street Public/Private Ventures Waterbury, VT. 05656 399 Market Street 802 244-5654 Philadelphia, PA. 19106 215 592-9099 29 Participant List - Human Services Workshop Continued Gail Kong Joan Sanzen Executive Director Wisconsin Conservation Corps City Volunteer Corps 30 W. Mifflin - #406 National Service Corporation P. O. Box 7864 842 Broadway Madison, WI. 53707-7864 New York, NY. 10003 608 266-7730 212 475-6444 Bruce Saito Sally Leiderman Los Angeles Conservation Corps Public/Private Ventures P. O. Box 15868 399 Market Street Los Angeles, CA. 90015 Philadelphia, PA 19106 213 749-3601 215 592-9099 Judy Stanger Kit Lilly Dutchess County Youth Community Program Developer Service Corps City Volunteer Corps Youth Resource Development Corp. National Service Corporation 50 Delafield Street 842 Broadway Poughkeepsie, NY. 12601 New York, NY. 10003 914 473-5005 212 475-6444 Ann Stein Don Perkins Trident Community Foundation East Bay Conservation Corps 3 Broad Street 1021 3rd Street Charleston, SC. 29401-3001 Oakland, CA. 94607 415 272-0222 Jim Sternberg Education Coordinator Carol Pieper East Bay Conservation Corps Senior Planner 1021 3rd Street City Volunteer Corps Oakland, CA. 94607 National Service Corporation 415 272-0222 842 Broadway New York, NY. 10003 Kay Stone 212 475-6444 Service America 810 18th Street, N.W. Peg Rosenberry Suite 705 Executive Director Washington, DC 20006 Human Environment Center 202 783/8855 810 18th Street, N.W. Washington, DC. 20006 Donna Walker 202 393-5550 Coordinator of West Philadelphia Improvement Corps Kathy Royer West Philadelphia Partnerships San Francisco Conservation Corps 3901 Market Street Fort Mason - Building 111 Philadelphia, PA. 19104 San Francisco, CA. 94123 415 928-7322 30 Participant List - Human Services Workshop Continued Jack White Greater Atlanta Conservation Corps 250 Georgia Avenue, S.E. Suite 206 Atlanta, GA. 30312 404 688-5600 Lois Whipple Deputy Director of Project Development City Volunteer Corps National Service Corporation 842 Broadway New York, NY. 10003 212 475-6444 31