>> Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our webinar on
integrated service delivery. We will get started with this webinar. Before we
get started, we are going to go through some housekeeping tips. My name is
Michael Rauch with the National Disability Institute. My colleague, Nakia
Matthews, is going to go over our housekeeping tips before we get started.
Nakia?
>> Thank you, Michael. The audio for today's webinar is being broadcast through
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>> Great. Thank you, Nakia. And thank you again to everyone for joining us today
on our webinar on Integrated Service Delivery. My name is Michael Rauch, and I'm
the manager of financial empowerment and innovation at the National Disability
Institute. Today, I am joined by Paula Kelly, client and business management
executive at US trust Bank of America Private wealth management. She's also the
chair of the Disability Advocacy Network at a Bank of America. And she's also a
board member of the National Disability Institute. We're also joined by Kate
Griffin, who is the senior program manager of savings and financial security at
CF ED. Caroline Seward who is the president and CEO of FWA center in St. Louis,
Missouri. And Christa Brown, the program specialist at United Way of the Bay
Area in San Francisco. Before we get started with the webinar, for those of you
who are new to the National Disability Institute, I would like to share with you
information on our organization. The National Disability Institute is a national
nonprofit organization dedicated to building a better economic future for
Americans with disabilities. We are the first national organization committed
exclusively to championing economic empowerment, asset development, and
financial stability for all persons across the full spectrum of disabilities.
National Disability Institute affect change through public education, training,
technical assistance and policy development to help the one in three Americans
with disabilities living in poverty take steps towards brighter financial future
is. To learn more about the National Disability Institute, go to
www.RealEconomicImpact.org. Today's webinar is part of a three-part series that
we are doing with support from Bank of America. Our first webinar was
introducing us to financial capability and key concepts and strategies
surrounding financial capability. Our second webinar introduced us to behavior
economics. What is it? And what is the impact of behavior economics? Today, our
guest will help us understand Integrated Service Delivery. How do we put various
tools in place in the programs that we have operating? Please note that today's
webinar is not disability specific, as we are exploring this topic together. And
then we will be pondering how we can integrate financial services and asset
development strategies into our programs that support persons with disabilities
to advance their economic self-sufficiency. Our objectives for the day are to
define Integrated Service Delivery, learn how to integrate financial services,
and asset development strategies to assist individuals with disabilities. Also
we're going to identify the spectrum of options to integrated services. And
we're also going to provide best practices from two organizations that have
effectively integrated financial services into their programs. I would like to
thank our sponsors of today's webinar, Bank of America, for their support of
expanding the financial capability of persons with disabilities. I'd also like
to thank Walmart for their support of this webinar, as well their support of the
my free taxes.com project. So at this time, I would like to turn it over to
Paula Kelly, who is with Bank of America. Paula, I'm going to turn it over to
you.
>> Thank you, Michael. I'm very pleased to be here again with you. And all of
our partners on the phone this afternoon. It's truly a pleasure to join all of
you. On behalf of Bank of America, I want to thank all of you for the great work
that you do in our communities. And the partnership you have with all of us.
Bank of America has been a longtime supporter of the national disability, over
nine years at this point. And through our support over the years, we've assisted
over 1.5 million taxpayers with disabilities, receive more than $1.5 billion in
tax refunds. And we've always advocated for building inclusive communities of
practice with our partnership with NDI and the IRS. And all of you, to help over
100 tax asset building coalitions across the country. And we've educated
together over 1600 people in 2012 alone on economic empowerment strategies for
people with disabilities. This year, we had Bank of America are especially proud
to partner with NDI and advertise on our Times Square billboard in Manhattan the
partnership that we've got with NDI. And if you go onto the NDI website, that
Michael just mentioned, you'll see a picture of the billboard highlighting that
partnership and all that NDI and all of you do for our communities. So it's
truly recognition that we all do better when we are all connected. Today, I'll
take a minute just to talk about a Bank of America's disability advocacy network.
We have over 11 employee resource groups at the bank, of which the Disability
Advocacy Network or DA and -- DAN is one of them. And DAN was created to bring
together our employees who are impacted by disabilities in some way, either
personally or through a family member, friend, colleague or even a customer or
client. Or someone, and employee who is interested in learning more about
disabilities. And what we do, we have over a dozen chapters nationwide. We
provide awareness, seminars, education, and we are a source of support for our
employees as well as partnering with the rest of Bank of America employees to
volunteer in the community to make a difference in our community. Again, we were
established to foster a work environment that accepts values, respect and
support employees affected by disabilities. Truly, that is the mission of all of
the employee networks, to build a diverse and inclusive work environment for
Bank of America. Going to the next slide, talking a bit about our collaboration
between the Disability Advocacy Network teams and NDI this year, we've got a
special relationship and program that we've developed. And Michael Rauch, and
Katie have been critical in helping us drive this out this year. And
particularly for all of you on the phone, this is another opportunity for us to
partner together to build financial empowerment. We have two particular programs
that the DAN members and NDI are working on this year. The first is financial
education training. And the second is disability awareness training for VITA
volunteers, tax and asset building coalitions, management partners, IDA and
financial education providers as well. Our chapters are located in major
metropolitan cities across the country. Atlanta, Phoenix, Boston, Charlotte,
Chicago, Dallas, and Delaware and Jacksonville, Florida. In Maine, New York City,
we've got a team in northern California and we've got a team in Southern
California. So if you are interested in joining us, with the work that we're
doing on these two programs this year, on the slide in front of you, you'll see
Michael's contact information. And you can indicate to him your preference to
work with us on financial education and/or disability awareness training. We
always welcome our partnerships with our community members and would look
forward and value a partnership with you to make a difference this year as well.
Michael, I'll turn it back over to you.
>> Great. Thank you, Paula. For sharing this information with us today. So now,
next stop will be our next presenter, Kate Griffith, who is the Senior program
manager of savings and financial stability at CFE. CS ED is a longtime partner
of Bank of America -- CFED. CFED is a national nonprofit that empowers low and
moderate income households to build and preserve assets by advancing policies
and programs that help them achieve the American dream. Kate will be sharing
information with us on what is Integrated Service Delivery. And will be
providing us with an overview. So now I'm going to turn it over to Kate. Kate,
thank you for joining us today.
>> Thank you, Michael, for that kind introduction. Thank you for inviting us to
be a part of this very important conversation. Here at CFED, -- sorry -- there
we go -- sorry -- here at CFED, undergirding all of our work is the fundamental
belief that assets matter. To every household that each of us is working with.
They matter from an economic standpoint of course, but also socially and
psychologically. No matter how much we can work on helping an individual to
build income -- it is a necessary component -- it is alone, insufficient for
building financial capability and financial mobility. Assets can affect us in a
number of ways. Certainly having assets means that you have a financial buffer
for emergencies when there's a health crisis when -- when the car breaks down or
any number of things that can happen that affect your ability to participate
economically. Assets also promote long-term thinking and planning. And research
also shows it enhances the well-being and life chances of children. Certainly,
they increase the likelihood of going to and succeeding in college. And even in
the home, having an asset base is linked to reduced marital dissolution and
domestic violence. I bring all this up really because what this shows is that
assets matter in a range of contact. -- context. Whether they are working on
helping kids succeed in their education and go on to college, whether they are
helping people to get and retain jobs, whether you're working on issues of
domestic violence, there are elements of what you're doing where the financial
management of that individual and that household and their ability to accumulate
assets will ultimately affect the work that you are trying to do. At CFED, the
way that we think about household financial security, we have this framework
that we use, about -- looks at what it really takes, all of the different inputs
it takes to build financials. -- security and opportunity over time. I apologize
to those of you for whom this is old information. If you will bear with me a
little bit, but first is an ability to really both learned financial skills and
other educational aspect that help to build your own human capital. There's an
element of financials -- security that is of course about earning either through
income or public benefits or some combination of the two. Savings for both
emergencies and for the future is a critical element to household financial
security. And then the ability to invest in assets that will help you to
generate wealth and income is sort of the last piece of that puzzle.
Undergirding all of that, is how you can protect those emerging income and asset
gains. Either through products such as insurance but also through how you could
avoid predatory practices, such as high-cost payday loans that would ultimately
eroded your income and asset base. That's nice as a theoretical framework. But
what does that actually mean in practice? What does that mean in terms of how do
we integrate these practices into the work that we're doing? I've taken that
learn, earn, save, invest and protect framework. And laid out for you here some
examples of different strategies within each of those categories. So certainly,
in that learn category, is where you would find everything from your more
traditional classroom-based financial education work to more in depth and
intensive financial counseling. Credit counseling and debt management can also
fall under this bucket. As well as things that you would do that are more
specific to the gaining of an asset. So from an educational standpoint. For
example, if you are working with a first-time homebuyer, what additional
education do you provide them to navigate that homebuying landscape? And choose
the right mortgage product for example? In the early bucket, in addition to
workforce development strategies, is where you would put things like free tax
preparation, access to tax credits as well as assisting eligible families to
access the benefits that they are eligible for. Under savings, we certainly look
broadly at the spectrum of financial services and ensuring that people have
access to appropriate financial services that are also affordable. And there, we
also look at products that come with savings incentives, matched savings
products such as individual development accounts for children savings accounts - and the removal of disincentives that would affect someone's willingness to
save. For example, asset limits that's a that once the family has saved $2000 in
their bank account, they are no longer eligible to receive a SAP or TANF benefit,
certainly is a disincentive for that family. And in the invest bucket, we can
use those -- the matched savings programs to invest in an asset or education.
Other ways that we can help families to own homes, invest in small businesses,
and get the education that they would need to further their jobs. And protect is
where we find certainly insurance products that also -- things that help around
foreclosure prevention and the consumer financial protection work that has been
growing over the last few years. So with that grounded in terms of what we're
really talking about when it comes to financial services and asset building
strategies, we believe that regardless of what kind of community service
provider you are, these strategies ultimately can help your client in some way
to alleviate a barrier that they are facing. If you're doing workforce
development work and someone's poor credit score is affecting their ability to
get a job, how would you integrate some aspect of credit counseling into your
work to alleviate that barrier as an example? So what we're going to talk about
today and what I've prepared is the models for how we think about integrating
these asset building strategies. And some examples of how people have applied
those. And I want to acknowledge that a lot of the examples and the framework
that we have built today have actually been the result of Bank of America funded
project that we just concluded that allowed us to work quite closely with five
really innovative social service organizations from across the country that
we're all working on some aspect of integrating one or more of these strategies
into their work. So we really enjoyed our partnership with Bank of America on
that piece. So what is this integration thing really looking like? Here are some
examples of what this could be to hopefully help bring this to life for you. So
as I mentioned before, how would a workforce development agency provide access
to credit counseling services to their clients? Certainly for domestic violence
programs, helping their survivors that they're working with to get banked and
ultimately gain financial independence is another example of one or two
strategies that are certainly very key to a specific population. Another more
robust example or that involves more of these asset building strategies could be
that a head start site that is located within a community action agency would
offer financial education to the children and parents involved with the head
start program. They may link those parents to a VITA site that's also being
offered -- hosted at the agency. And then also link the parents to NIDA program
as is appropriate. So it is employing a range of different strategies. Through
that initial lens of entering through the head start strategies -- through the
head start program. And then finally, and one with which we will spend a lot
more talking today, is looking at -- there are examples where a number of local
organizations, each of which are specializing in one or more of these asset
building strategies, have joined together to offer multiple services, offer
access to this entire range of services in a single location. Making it much
easier for the client to access a range of these pieces in one place. But all of
this is interesting examples but applying this to your own situation, you
actually have a number of different options in terms of ways that people have
done this for themselves. And we have defined this as three different
implementation models. And I want to stress that these are options for any
single asset building service you might want to provide. In fact, you could do
some combination of all three of these things, depending on what the service is
and what's appropriate for your clients. I'll be wrapping up today with some
questions, key considerations you could ask yourself as an organization to help
determine which one of these models would be appropriate for your work. So the
first model has to do with referring clients to other organizations. So here,
what we mean is once you have identified an asset building strategy, that is
important to your clients that you are not currently able to provide yourself,
it's mapping out where in your community, a client could access that service.
And then in your normal course of business with your clients, giving them a
referral to access that service in another site. Certainly it's not a very
resource intensive work -- intensive way to go and relies on the capacity of
other organizations. But some key considerations in thinking about referral
models is that what you're asking your client to do is to leave your sphere of
influence and actually go travel to another location and enter another service
provider's world. Which may in some respects limit the take-up of services. It's
why it's really critical and important in thinking about establishing a referral
network to think through what's really appropriate for your client. So in
mapping what service providers are available in your community, you may find
that for example, an organization that we worked with in central Texas,
particularly in Austin, Texas, they were located in the southern part of the
city. And they found a number of local service providers that were offering
services they wanted to offer to their clients, but they were all in the
northern part of the city. And there were not even adequate public
transportation routes for the clients to get to those places. So even though a
cursory community mapping would have led them to be a referral service, it
ultimately wasn't appropriate for their clients. They would not have had the
outcome they wanted to achieve. That's an example of how we have to think
through very practically, ways in which referral networks can be successful or
could also meet some roadblocks. One example of a really robust referral network
that I want to talk about is happening in the Seattle area. There's an
organization called the Seattle King County asset building collaborative.
Certainly, the entire city of Seattle has a deep focus on financial empowerment.
They are a city for financial empowerment. They were one of the first sites to
launch a banked on program. And really coming out of that, there was an
education committee as part of the work that piloted what would -- what would
eventually become known as the financial education partners network. At the same
time as this banked on movement was happening, the Seattle King County asset
building collaborative was organizing itself. And established itself with three
main goals. One was to increase access to financial empowerment services.
Including but not exclusively financial education. Second was to help agencies
increase the quality of services that they offer by connecting to one another.
And third was through participation in statewide and national coalition efforts.
They would focus on making broader systemic change. And so in 2008, they formed
the financial education partners network, which is over 20 different financial
education organizations in their community that have committed to providing free
and high-quality financial education to the community. The network makes the
delivery of financial education more efficient and effective by reducing the
duplication of efforts among those community partners. Sharing resources and
best practices among them and creating a quality of standard that allows both
community organizations and financial institutions to confidently make referrals
to members of that network. It works. Clients can search for financial education
providers on the Bank On website. And it allows them to match up with different
providers based on the topics they are looking to engage in looking at
geographic location, language, type of setting, and they also can be referred to
financial education providers through the 211 network. So that's one example.
The other interesting thing that the Seattle King County asset building
collaborative does is it actually produces -- there's a mockup of it on your
screen -- reference guide called your Money helpline. You can download it from
their website. You will see that it is a massive document. It is bigger than the
telephone book. Of the rural Ohio town I grew up in. [Laughter] and it provides
a wealth of referral information to organizations touching the full spectrum of
asset building services in their community. And so it really helps to create not
only a robust referral network, but through the work of the collaborative, it's
also working to improve everyone's capacity to deliver services and effectively
refer out. The second model that I want to talk about has to do with partnering
with other organizations. I feel like this is sort of moving the dial one step
further than referrals. So with partnering, I think the key difference here is
when you want to have a feedback loop, when you don't want to just send your
client out to receive a service but you want them to actually research -receive that service and come back to you for ongoing services or you want to
find out what happened to that, then you would engage in a more formal
partnership. So that can involve simply shared MOU's, and sharing of information
between service providers and different locations. Or it can involve this much
more involved method of co-locating where multiple organizations would be hosted
at one site. In a One-Stop setting. You can even go that one further. I believe
Crystal will be talking about this later today. Not only collate -- not only c
o-locate, but co-brand what you are doing. And have a very centralized intake
process and centralized outcomes that everyone is working towards. Certainly,
the evidence has shown that these types of in-depth One-Stop co-located services
have a really robust impact on the clients who walk through the door. And I'm
sure that both Caroline and Crystal will talk about their outcomes data. But as
he seems evident, these are also very time and resource intensive programs to
set up. And may involve some amount of compromise and giving up of some autonomy
between the partnerships and the organizations. Nevertheless, it's certainly a
very viable option for people to think about, depending on what your goals are
and providing the asset building services to your clients. Just to throw the
names out there, three of the more -- Mo -- Mo bust examples, Center for working
families that I'm sure Caroline will talk about, financial opportunity centers
that have been pioneered by list and others, and the spark point centers that
got started in the Bay Area and have grown from there. I won't spend much more
time talking about those specific examples. But -- I know that both Caroline and
Krista will be sharing their best practices and examples. The final model is
really when all else fails, do it yourself. Right? So deciding to really build
your own internal capacity to embed these services into what you're doing is
certainly a viable option for some people. It ensures that what you're doing
contributes directly to your organizational mission and that you are not losing
clients in the process. Seamlessly integrated into what other services you are
already providing. But it is an option that requires resources. And training of
your staff. We've seen people pick this up in ways that are about one single
service. Some of the organizations that we've worked with, solid ground in
Seattle, [Indiscernible] in -- the organization in Austin, have really embraced
building an internal capacity for financial coaching and bringing those
financial education classes in-house. Feeling that that was a much better way
for them to touch their clients initially. And you'll see a picture here of
coach Judy, who works as the financial fitness coach. Great name, I think, at
Solid Ground out in Seattle. And for those organizations that made a lot more
sense for them to integrate that financial coaching and financial education
component of it into their work. Rather than refer out for that piece of it.
They still do referrals out for other types of asset building services. We've
found that there are a number of steps to go through to really ensure that
whatever way you choose to integrate programs -- can be successful. I will touch
on these quickly because I know we want to hear from others today -- but first
is to really understand who you need to get the buy-in from, whether it is -this is how every project starts -- certainly whether it's the level of your
board, funders, but also not forgetting the level of your frontline staff. Who
are your champions for doing asset building services? And as the next step, how
do you really ensure that those services are aligned with your program g oals?
As an organization, you have a mission, you have a set of strategic goals that
you are trying to achieve. And embedding asset building strategies to not be
seen as something that is separate or outside of those but rather as something
that is contributing directly to those program goals. Being able to articulate
that clearly will certainly help in terms of how you are able to find and
incorporate your champion. These asset building services need to be tailored to
the populations that we're working with. Certainly, for example, offering
individual development accounts, IDA, certainly not an appropriate asset
building strategy for every family. And thinking about what are the steps around
getting banked, starting to set a budget and sticking to it and finding ways to
save a little bit of money every month, those are steps that you can take and
think through how to do that appropriately with your clients. Once you've
figured out what ways you need to tailor the services for your clients, then
it's the right opportunity to look within your community at what's the local
resources are and how you can leverage those effectively in building out your
choices for whether you're going to refer or partner with someone or do it all
yourself. Once you've made some decisions about that programmatic design model,
then the last step is building capacity of both your staff internally to act on
that program design model as well as any partners that you choose to work with.
Certainly as is often a capacity building peace in working with partners in
terms of helping them to understand how best to work with your clients. Finally,
you can spend some time with this if you are interested later. We've built out a
little bit of a decision tree that helps to look and understand what model might
be appropriate for you between this refer partner DIY piece. It considers
whether paper are -- people are already doing in this in the community, how
appropriate the services are for the population you're working with and
ultimately, how embedded you need that service to be in the course of your
interaction with your clients, whether you can easily refer them out or whether
you need them to be coming back in terms of feedback loop. This is a model you
can refer to later if it's helpful in terms of thinking through how to integrate
asset building services for yourself. So with that, I'll leave it there. And
turn it back to you, Michael.
>> Great. Thank you, Kate. Thank you for the great information. And at the end,
we will have time for questions. And several questions have come in for you. So
we'll hold this at the end. On this slide right now, it has Kate's contact
information. That you can reach out to her -- again, thank you so much, Kate,
for sharing information with us. So our next presenter is Caroline Seward, the
president and CEO of the family and workforce centers of America in the
Metropolitan education and training center inter in St. Louis, Missouri. I heard
Carolyn speak last year I believe at the CFED conference on her program and was
inspired by the information she shared. And we are thankful that she is joining
us today to share information with us on the work they are doing to integrate
various services into the programs that they offer. So with that, Carolyn, I'm
going to turn it over to you.
>> Thank you. Thank you very much, Michael. And thank you to Bank of America for
giving us the opportunity to share the work that we're doing here at the Met
center. I'd like to go back and talk a little of the history of why we are where
we are today. A number of people that was in leadership positions years ago said
that the family is the single most important entity that reflects the conditions
of our community. And if that is so, then we must build programs that inspire
and help to stabilize families. We believe that the best way that we could help
to stabilize families and touch a number of families with various supportive
services was with workforce. And so what we began to do at the Met center is to
determine what would be the overall mission of the center the center, who the
players would be, and what would they be -- the ultimate outcomes that we would
be able to share with funders, stakeholders, in our community? So the Met Center
is a strategic partnership created to stimulate economic self-sufficiency of
individuals living in low income communities in the St. Louis region. And the
center seeks to accomplish this by -- this mission by delivering focus,
comprehensive and accessible job training, placement and assessment services to
the individuals walking through our doors. We serve the underemployed, the
unemployed, and displaced workers leading to sustainable work in a competitive
regional economy. Now, the Met Center is centrally located near the Metrolink in
St. Louis. We offer comprehensive skill-based training, focused individual
employment planning, accessible career development and placement services, and
personal financial education and transportation services. One of the things that
we were looking at was what was the organizational chart -- we're looking to
move the slide one more -- okay -- one of the things that we were looking at is
what was this organizational -- what was the Met Center organizational chart
looking like? We are located in a county facility of -- a six-story facility. We
have the St. Louis community college as a partner, special school District, St.
Louis County government public works and so I thought it was important that I
share with you how we organized the center to ensure that there was governance
and that the day-to-day program from all of the partners would be managed and
supervised. So the Mets board consists of players -- all of the major p layers.
The Chancellor from the community college, the president of the special school
district, senior policy advisers, from St. Louis County, the two largest WIB
boards, executive Directors are all a part of the Met director -- the met Board
of Directors. We also have a director for the facility itself. And then we have
St. Louis community college that helps to oversee the skill-based programs. And
here's just a quick -- again, recap of the partners that we have. As we began to
look at our partnership and we began to look at this entire Integrated Service
Delivery approach, when you have the St. Louis County government, you have your
county WIB, you have the economic Council, it was very important that as we
build the skill-based programs, that there were jobs for individuals at the end
of the day. And that we would be able to integrate financial education and other
supportive services within those skill-based programs. And we asked the
permission of the funders from TANF to WIB to dislocated workers, would we be
able to integrate within the workforce program, financial education and asset
building services? And could we also add those skill sets to the employees that
we would be hiring, career specialists, case managers, as part of their job as
individuals coming back to the center, that they would have an opportunity to do
financial coaching? And the answer was yes. So what I wanted to show you was one
flow of service chart that captures what we do when customers walk into the Met
Center. Under services, we do a complete recruiting and orientation. And we
discovered that the community-based organizations was better at the recruitment
process. We had a centralized eligibility for financial assistance and client
services process for IPAs or Pell grants. We had a centralized program
enrollment. And this is where we began to determine who would be a part of our
centers for working families. And we determined that we wanted to look at how
many times, depending on the program, would be -- would we be able to touch the
customers walking through our doors? And so with that, we looked at our
workforce services for TANF and we looked at our workforce service for WIA adult
and dislocated workers. And within that, we began to look at where did we have
the opportunity to touch them monthly? And there, we saw in our job readiness
training, those three to four week training programs that we would be able to
build within the curriculum, financial education and asset development. So we
have two dedicated staff that go into job readiness training classes every month.
And deliver a 12-hour curriculum. We also have a financial institution colocated here at the Met Center, the St. Louis community credit union, they also
have a dedicated staff person to come in once a month to talk to the JR tee
classes about financial education and products and services. In addition to that
partnership, they have been able -- when there are job openings, we have an
opportunity to present job candidates to them to get training to become a teller,
and to become an employee of the credit union. From there, we began to look at,
how -- what educational programs do we offer? And how do we bundle and sequence
services? Through work readiness training, individuals can go to skill-based
programs or they can go to two-year and four-year college institutions with the
ultimate goal of placement and retention. So our candidates, our customers,
prior to getting that job, are receiving the financial education and asset
develop and services. So they are prepared to begin to develop those budgets and
know how to manage their money more effectively. Once they come out of the
programs, we then follow up on a monthly basis through the career specialist as
long as they are within our program, which is two years, retention that we
follow up with them. And so this has been very, very successful for us. And
every step of the process that you see here, we are able to measure what we're
doing every step of the way from the skill-based programs to the placement and
retention services and the supportive services that we offer. Lastly, this is
our center for working families process flow. And so what I wanted to show is
again, through the flow of services, which are the majority of the individuals
flowing through this process our CWF, TANF, and WIA adult customers. And again,
we capture the information or the data every step of the way. This is the
performance measure shows what we're able to capture here at the Met Center. I
also wanted to talk about the effectiveness of bundling and sequencing of
services. When we began to look at the whole Integrated Service Delivery model,
we determined, through our partnerships, that it wasn't necessary for every
partner to have someone recruiting individuals for their programs. And
individuals that were doing placement and retention services. We looked at the
partners that were best and more effective at doing those particular activities.
And so, what we did, we found that bundling leads to long-term engagement. We
are open from 7:00 in the morning until the evening. Bundling increased
participant's contact frequency with us because we are talking to the TANF
customers every month. It has helped us be better partners. And to utilize our
resources better, so that every program doesn't have a recruiter, like I said,
every program doesn't have a placement and retention specialist. We have also
been able to increase our customer retention and job placement. And we've been
able to increase participant's wages. Some of our accomplishments today, since
2006, we have served over 17,000 customers in employment and training services
at the Met C enter. Following is a breakdown of the numbers for assessments
completed, skill training, job search. In 2012, our estimated economic impact
for those that were employed was $31.9 million to the region. We partnered with
the St. Louis community credit union to implement behavioral economics and offer
financial products to participants. Again, we increased participant' wages. The
strategic partnership reduced the total cost of the staff that we had here at
the Met Center because it was not necessary again to have recruiters for all of
the partners in the program. And we utilized one centralized database where all
of the partners have access to the data that we are collecting. And we also
completed a publication about a definition of self-sufficiency with St. Louis
University here in St. Louis. We decided to ask the TANF customers, what does
self-sufficiency mean to them? And financial education, employment, were
critical items that they brought up in the survey and the focus groups that we
had. The challenges. Managing data integration from multiple data sources.
Anytime you have workforce contracts, you're going to have to do double data
entry. We want to expand financial education to all of the programs here at the
Met Center. Sometimes, when we get into the school-based programs, I just want
to mention that we want to make sure that their curriculum -- they will be able
to handle 10 or 12 hours of additional curriculum time. And that can be a
problem sometimes. We are also looking at building out the fifth floor. It is
scheduled for completion in the fall of 2013, because we are at capacity. We
have no more space, no more classrooms, which is a good thing. And the St. Louis
County economic Council has been a champion in getting additional dollars from
the Department of Commerce, EDA, in order to help us build out the center. And
we're also researching resources to enhance banking products and services
offered. And that concludes my presentation.
>> Great. Thank you, Carolyn, for sharing this information. And your best
practice with us today. We really appreciate it. And we will have time for
questions. I want to remind everyone that when you signed up for the webinar
today, if you noticed, today's webinar is going past 4:00. It will be going on
past 4:00. Registration -- it had that on there. And so we still will have time
for questions and answers. Our next best practice, we're going to hear from
Christa Brown, who is the program specialist at the United Way of the Bay Area
in San Francisco. And she's going to share information with us on the spark
point centers. The spark point centers are something that the National
Disability Institute has been following since the beginning. And we've worked
very closely with Christa's colleagues through the earn it keep it save it
campaign. And really looking at how to incorporate or increase outreach to the
disability community. So we're really excited to be able to have Christa present
today and share information on the spark point centers. Christa, we'll turn it
over to you.
>> Thanks, Michael. I wanted to start by thanking National Disability Institute
and Bank of America for hosting this conversation today. It's an important
conversation to have in a time of slowing demand and increasing [Indiscernible]
resources so we're hearing a lot more about iteration of -- as that goes on. To
provide a little bit of context, back in 2008, United Way of the Bay Area did a
study to look at poverty in our community. What we found was striking. We saw
that one in five Bay Area families couldn't make ends meet using the self
sufficiency standard which measures the cost of living prices to really meet
basic needs. And when you look at minority communities, there's even more
appalling -- two in five Latino and African-American families could not make
ends meet using the self-sufficiency standard. This was just steps away from
some of the richest communities in the country. We knew this was affecting other
issue areas as well like health and education.
>> Christa, I'm sorry, this is Michael. Do you mind speaking up a little bit
louder? Or turning the volume up? Yeah. We have some attendees that are unable
to hear you. So if you could speak up, that would be great.
>> Is this better?
>> A little bit louder.
>> Okay. Great.
>> Perfect. Thank you.
>> Sure. Absolutely. So looking at poverty rates among people with disabilities
in the Bay Area, we found that poverty rates among people with disabilities have
more than doubled than those without disabilities and we found in many cases,
these people were also employed. It was not always and unemployment issue.
Oftentimes required at least three full-time jobs to reach self-sufficiency at
the minimum wage level. So United Way had been investing in anti-poverty
programs for years. We were often seeing the same families cycle back through
the program, generation after generation, because a crisis had not them back
down over the poverty level. And it resulted in a cascade effect. So something
that Kate mentioned earlier like a $1000 hospital bill could result in a cascade,
bringing people back down or maybe paying bills late or max out a credit card,
which would result in people paying more late fees, being short on rent, or
dropping credit score so they couldn't access a loan to buy a new car. And we
saw that the shorter-term -- especially asset-based problems have really drastic
results on a family in coming back through our program. And so we knew we wanted
to create a program that had a conference of approach to all of these issues but
we didn't want to duplicate services that other nonprofits were already experts
in. We know that poverty is complex and it requires a comprehensive solution.
And we know that people have multiple challenges. There isn't a single bullet to
overcome poverty. And we know that finding and accessing all of these services
that you need can be a full-time job. To go from place to place, fill out intake
forms and take forms. So we introduced, in 2009, the concept of [Indiscernible]
spark point centers provide financial coaching and a range of other services for
low income families to reach self-sufficiency. So this is really the partnership
model that Kate was referring to earlier. Each center brings together a group of
partners with local content expertise and relationships to integrate their
services. And the partners jointly decide on the budget, the services that will
be provided, the staffing and the governance collaboratively. For the client,
this means only one intake form. Only entered in one database. And -[Indiscernible -- audio cutting out] depending on the partners that are at the
table. Some examples include integrating financial services with each other,
like credit and employment. Or microenterprise and budgeting workshops. But
along with more nontraditional services, like childcare, and nutrition classes,
more of family resource Center perspective. And what we've seen so far is that
it helps build a solid foundation, so the cascade effect we saw before does not
happen again. Rather than providing one service, graduating the client or the
customer from the program and hoping it works, we are able to provide layered
support to make sure that we're building the blocks of the foundation to make
sure that cascade doesn't happen again. So we work with clients for two to three
years and we make sure that all of the partners at the table are committed to
working in a client centered coaching approach. Part of that is because we know
that the client will need to come back long-term formal will services to be
successful. One of the tenants of the spark -- spark point model is encouraging
the client to bottle -- bundle, because we know that this builds the foundation
that we referenced earlier and increases the likelihood of us -- of success. And
because this is a model, not a program, it's possible enough to work with a wide
range of communities. So all of our Spark Point centers feel a little bit
different depending on where they're located, but some of -- it's flexible
depending on the community you're working with. In terms of working with people
with disabilities, we found that it's been really important that we are customer
centered for all of our staff, regardless of the partner organization they come
from. Trained using a strength-based coaching approach. And they have an
integrated case management system. Which is really effective, because this
allows all of the case managers or the coaches who are working with the
customers to know similar information -- so the client isn't repeating story
after story and having to update all of the different service providers about
the work they're doing with each other. And in terms of the relevant services,
we've really seen a range of services that people with disabilities have taken
up over time. Some particular ones to point out include then if it's advocacy
and legal services for those who have had the benefits terminated, reduced or
need help navigating the process. And credit and debt negotiation for both
clients and their family members as many people have had to take a significant
debt to pay off medical bills. Unemployment and microenterprise, using the
strength-based coaching approach, we have found ways to be creative with many of
our clients and different ways to earn income understanding that a nine to five
job is just one of the many options. So ultimately, every Spark Point center is
working with their clients to reach financial stability. Depending on the
community, the services provided to get there might look and feel different.
Every Spark Point center provides services to reach a livable income, a good
credit score, and savings to prevent the cascade we mentioned earlier. And a
manageable debt to income ratio. And all of the partners at the table help
measure progress along the way every 90 days and are committed to these same
principles and banding around this Spark Point model. Just to briefly talk about
the outcomes so far, right now we know that bundling or taking up multiple
services greatly increases the chances of success. In some cases, two to three
times. Overall, 65% of our measurable clients are making at least 5% positive
change and increasing their income, increasing their savings, increasing credit
score, or decreasing their debt. And we know that those who take up multiple
services are two to three times as likely to achieve an outcome, a clear
indicator that the integration of services is important to continue. So right
now, we have 10 centers around the Bay Area. With satellite sites popping up
around the nation. Each site hosts a different type of institution.
[Indiscernible] hosted at a community college, our locations -- elementary and
middle school -- one of the -- co-located with county services. Each site looks
and feels slightly different depending on the community needs and services that
are provided. For those of you that are interested in doing something similar,
I'd really encourage you to reference the chart that Kate presented earlier.
Looking at who in your community would be interested in doing something like
this, already doing something like this, I know in terms of challenges, it takes
a lot of time and you have to make sure there are champions at the table. But we
are definitely seeing the results. And with that, I will turn it back over to
Michael.
>> Excellent. Thank you, Krista, shall -- for sharing information with us on the
spark center models. This has been really wonderful information. Each of our
centers have shared. We've had several questions that have come in. We have some
time now to be able to spend on questions because we are going until 4:15 today.
So if you have any questions, please feel free to enter them in the Q&A box. And
we will field the questions to the various presenters. So I'm going to do now is
I'm going to go through some of the questions. And then each of our presenters
can address them. So the first question that comes in, who funds the One-Stop
locations, the co-located centers? Does each agency pay a fee? Kate, this came
in whatever you were talking about -- the different models. This particular
question, would you like to address that? Then we have the other partners answer
it as well. So whenever you have programs that are co-located, does each agency
have to pay a fee to be co-located?
>> I actually think it's best for Carolyn and Krista to answer that and -- a
real-life situation in terms of funding for their programs.
>> Okay. So Carolyn or Krista, would one of you like to offer thoughts on that
question?
>> Yes. This is Carolyn. Each partner funds of their own program. And with the
financial education or depending on the type of supportive service, we include
it in our funding request or the proposals that we submit and our budget each
year -- so each of the partners, the St. Louis community college, their programs
here, special school district, the community-based organizations, fund their
programs as well.
>> Great. Krista, would you like to share some insight on that question?
>> Sure. Our funding structure looks a little bit different. So United Way
provides some portion of the seed funding for the Spark Point center. Each
partner is expected to contribute something in kind. That might be some of the
services. It might be some of the space. It really depends on the center and the
partners at the table. And then all of the partners have a joint governance
committee at each center. And they are tasked with fundraising to support the
model. The one thing we want to make sure is that this integrated work does not
cannibalize the existing funding sources. But that working together and new ways
allows them to apply collaboratively for funding opportunities they wouldn't
have been able to before. And so these steering committees have really fund
raised as a team and as a collaborative.
>> Great. All right. And the next question -- I'll let anyone answer it -- Kate,
this question came in when you were presenting -- it was asked, where can we
find sample MOU's for the partnership model? So does CFED have a sample in their
toolkit? Or Carolyn or Krista, do you all have examples of MOU's that can be
shared with the audience?
>> This is Kate. What I'll say is no, not yet. We certainly, in doing this work
so far, have seen a great need for different types of tools and templates to be
available. As a national intermediary, we want to be responsive to that. So with
the number of different projects were working on, we are working towards trying
to create more of a resource center for folks with those types of things.
>> Okay.
>> Yes. We do. This is Carolyn. We have MOU's, depending on if they support of
service or employment -- yes, I will be happy to share what we have with others.
>> And we also have MOU's that I would be happy to share.
>> Okay. Wonderful. The next question that came in -- we kind of covered this on
our first webinar in our series -- it is asking, if someone can explain the
difference between financial coaching versus financial e ducation. So who would
like to explain the difference between the two?
>> I'd be happy to take a stab -- go for it, Krista.
>> So I would say financial education and most cases is largely knowledge
transfer. And so it's explaining maybe how you do a budget or what a credit
score is and making sure people understand the content of financial expertise.
Coaching is usually a little bit more goal oriented. And so someone who comes in
and they have a savings goal or something else -- it's really a process of
helping people identify goals, keeping them accountable to those goals, and
really coaching them to that process.
>> All right. Great. Thank you. The next question is, if a disability
organization would like to explore this more, looking at Integrated Service
Delivery, within their community, which community should they start to reach out
to? So any advice to disability organizations on who they could reach out to
within their community to start the conversation if there's not a Spark Point or
if they don't have a location like met center? Thoughts?
>> This is Kate. Looking at the range of different asset building services, and
trying to map out all the different community service providers that could be
providing those services within the community is a really healthy first step.
Also thinking through whether that's through conversation with those
organizations or some internal conversations, thinking through what would need
to change about how they deliver that service to make it more appropriate for
your community is really important to be very aware of, if you start to engage
in that initial conversation. So those would be 21st steps I would think through.
>> All right. Great. -- those would be two first steps I would think through.
>> Is there a national TA center for groups to reach out to to provide support?
>> Kate -- I guess we'll direct this to you. I know you all have some toolkits
or some reports -- but if you could just address that, that would be great.
>> Sure. On our website, CFED.org, we do have a number of guides around
Integrated Service Delivery. One that looks at integration into workforce
development, one that looks at homeless prevention services, others that look at
head start services. Then we have a couple of really interesting briefs that we
wrote as a part of the project with Bank of America and these five social
service organizations. So doing any sort of search for Integrated Service
Delivery on our website should pop those up. We are looking to do some more
technical assistance around this work. We also have a partnership or contract
with the Department of Health and Human Services where we will be creating a
number of resources around asset building integration that will be hound on the
ACF website, ACF. HHS.gov. That's coming down the pipe in the next few months.
Beyond that, particularly for the types of models that Carolyn and Krista
represent, there's certainly other places to find technical assistance around
centers for working families models and the Spark Point models, maybe you two
want to address that.
>> Yes. This is Carolyn. The centers for working families -- I have to say the
Casey foundation has been a major supporter of us in terms of the technical
assistance that they have given -- the research that has been provided, that
they received throughout the nation. And it has been just invaluable to us. And
we're happy to share -- we're happy to host sites. I've had a number of
organizations come to the Met center over the years. And we've really just sat
down and mapped out and kind of brainstormed how best in their community, they
would like a process, the integrated service model, to go. And so we've had the
support of the Casey foundation to help us walk through this process.
>> Great. All right. So we are coming up on the final three minutes of our
webinar. And we have several more questions. So we're going to do this rather
quickly if we can. I'm going to direct these to one person and then we'll get -tried to get as many in as we can. Carolyn, this question is for you: what would
you say is the biggest selling point to a workforce Center to collaborate with
asset development and financial education partners to offer more Integrated
Service Delivery?
>> The greatest impact is that you will be able to reach more customers over -over 7000 customers come through the Met Center. 10,000 come to the One-Stop
Career Centers. We just don't have at this point, the resources, to serve
everyone that walks through the door. Can you imagine if we were able to have
the necessary financial resources to fund we are 17,000 people are getting
resources every month, financial education resources, that would have a major
impact in our community.
>> Great. Kate, this one is for you: this came in during your presentation that
I missed -- you talked about the removal of disincentives. So the question is,
what way do you the removal of disincentives like SA&A be -- SNAP?
>> The removal of disincentives to savings, and sometimes asset limits that are
placed on some benefit programs like SNAP or tan if will create those
disincentives to savings -- SNAP or TANF. That's created at a state or local
level, whether those asset levels exist so it's about policy advocacy. Certainly
for those interested, in the resources around advocating around asset limits,
the assets and opportunity network, which you can find at assets and
opportunity.org, have lots of resources to help you with that.
>> We're going to take one more and we have to close it up. Krista, this
question is for you. Where your financial coaches trained by a specific
organization, or can you recommend a training program for financial coaches
based on your experience?
>> Absolutely. We train all of our financial coaches in-house. So we, here at
United Way, have developed a two-part financial coaching series, a two-day
training along with learning every other month that we engage our Spark Point
staff in. There are many organizations that provide financial coaching training.
Other ones include [Indiscernible] and neighbor works -- financial coaching
training as well.
>> Great. And we will put on our website a handout on effective strategy handout
-- that identifies various financial coaching programs. And the ones that we at
the National Disability Institute have looked at. And also, look at the programs
that have integrated disability awareness. Into those financial coaching
programs. And so give me a week, and we will be able to put that up on our
website. Please feel free to visit our website at RealEconomicImpact.org. Please
feel free to sign up for our listserv as well. The information is on your screen.
The recording and the PowerPoint for today's webinar will be available on our
website as well. I think it usually happens within 24 hours. Nakia -- let me
know if I have that information. Definitely by the first of next week, it will
be on our website. I would like to thank Bank of America again for sponsoring
our three-part webinar series. I'd also like to thank the Walmart foundation for
their support of our work as well. Particularly through the MyFreeTaxes.com
project. I would like to thank Paula Kelly with Bank of America. For
participating today. Thank you to Kate at CFED. Kate Griffin for sharing
information and helping us understand what Integrated Service Delivery means and
the spectrum of options. And I think -- I thank Carolyn Seward with the Met
Center in S t. Louis and Krista Brown with United Way of the Bay Area in San
Francisco for sharing your best practices us today. I'd also like to say thank
you to my colleagues at the National Disability Institute and to Nakia Matthews
for assisting with today's webinar. For their support as well as the development
of the tools highlighted. If you have any questions after this webinar, please
feel free to reach out to me at mroush@ndi-inc.org. Or my contact telephone
number is there as well. Please note that we will not have a webinar in July.
Our next webinar will be August 14. Thank you again for participating in today's
webinar. And thanks again to each of our presenters. We have ever -- we hope
everybody has a great day. Thank you.
>> [event concluded]