Black Hills Special Services Cooperative
Report date
November 2021
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
Practitioners, Support Staff and Partner Training: Training was provided locally, regionally, and statewide. These workshops provided the tools to help traumatized students engage at a higher level resulting in student retention and completion. Some of the offerings included Trauma Informed Practices for Adult Educators; Adverse Childhood Experiences; Integrated Historical Trauma in Behavioral Practices & Cultural Humility; Levels of Disclosure; Thriving Not Surviving; How to Rise to the Pandemic Challenge; Dynamics of Poverty in our Community; Cultural Competency in the Classroom; The Good & the Bad of Chaos & Cultural Responsiveness/Special Populations; Research in Areas of Burnout & Stress Relief; Supporting Learners in the Classroom & Beyond; Crisis to Clarity; Troublesome Behaviors—Understanding, Identifying, & Managing Personality Disorders; Addressing the Challenges of Poverty; Bridges Out of Poverty 101; Tactical Communication-Building Effective Bridges Between First Responders & Citizens; Intercultural Development Inventory Qualifying Seminar; Cultural Responsiveness; Trauma Informed Teaching; & Innovative Mentorship Experience.
Employer Training: Training was provided locally and regionally. This provided workplace tools to create a supportive culture for employees impacted by trauma, which enhances hiring and retaining employees and leads to increased productivity. Partners represented the healthcare field, area foundations, the Chamber, the Society for Human Resource Management, Western Dakota Technical College, tourism, and non-profit service organizations. The title of this presentation was Effective Practices for High Crisis Employees. Topics included A Trauma Informed Environment; Core Values of Trauma Informed Systems; Supporting High Crisis Employees; Maximizing Predictability & Flexibility; Employee & Manager Collaboration in Scheduling; Supporting Family Care Givers; Transportation Support; Medical/Behavioral Health Services; Education/Classroom; Cultural Responsiveness/Special Populations & Communication, Problem Solving Strategies for Management. Additional training in 2021 for employers included Designing Interventions Around the Science of Behavior & Resource Navigation; Other Tips for Employee Retention; and Revitalize Your Workforce—Effective Practices for High-Crisis Employees.
Mentoring, Career Counseling and Support Services: Lori Larson, Program Coordinator/Mentor, provided adult learners impacted by trauma with intensive mentoring to provide wrap-around services, career counseling, financial literacy, and support in their pursuit to earn their GED®, industry recognized credentials, and/or other skills leading to gainful employment in high demand, high wage careers. The importance of this is to give adult learners the education and training necessary to lead them out of poverty while gaining tools and resources to aid in the recovery of traumatic experiences. As a result of these efforts, we have been successful in securing funds from donors and local foundations to create a Student Support Fund for necessities such as rent, utilities, gas, childcare, and education/employment related expenses. COVID 19 funds, from United Way were secured to provide Chromebooks to adult learners in need of technology to continue their learning. Additional funds from United Way were secured for the Student Support Fund. TIP Workshops, along with financial literacy, for adult learners, their families, and support networks were held throughout 2021.
Key lessons learned
Key Lesson from Practitioners, Support Staff and Partner Training: Implementing trauma informed practices increased the trust and rapport among the students, practitioners and support staff leading to increased retention, especially for some of our most high-need adult education students. The adult education staff are more confident working with students impacted by trauma because of the TIPs training.
Key Lesson from Employer Training: There was a much greater interest than anticipated for providing employers with training on working with high-crisis employees. Evaluation results from the employer training strongly stated additional training was needed and desired by local employers and additional training was provided in Year 2. The current unemployment rate in our area heightened the interest of employers to consider hiring and retaining high-risk employees more so than in the past.
Key Lesson from Mentoring, Career Counseling and Support Services: Working with individuals who are in the throes of trauma and crisis takes significantly more time than what was projected or anticipated. These clients often miss appointments because they are frequently in constant chaos. Year 2 plans included strategies to better serve these individuals. Some approaches included deeper relationship building methods; encouraged communication using text messaging and cell phone calls; and mentorship tailored to the specific needs of the participant.
Reflections on the community innovation process
The element of “Collaboration” has been the most important. We have a joint effort with partners including government agencies, faith-based agencies, non-profit service organizations, and business and industry. This work has strengthened shared ownership and decision-making helping our adult learners overcome barriers in building successful career pathways and connecting them with community services and employer partners. Through TIPs trainings, we have built the capacity of educational staff and employers to support our adult learners who are impacted by trauma to successfully enter the workplace. Through this collaboration, we identified an expert trainer in the field of trauma informed practices and crisis intervention who understands that working with people means dealing with complex problems and complex emotions. She is a licensed professional counselor, human services professional, and an Adverse Childhood Experiences Master Trainer and Fellow. She has delivered numerous successful TIPs trainings over the past two years that have been positively received by all partners, including providers and the business community.
Progress toward an innovation
Our work with the TIPs grant has identified a greater need among our adult education students, with a particular focus on our low-income Native American students, than we ever anticipated. We have discovered dire situations beyond anything we planned when writing the grant. The intense mentorship of our TIPs Program Coordinator provided the development of trust and rapport between her and the individual learner. This relationship revealed the seriousness of various situations. Examples include human trafficking by family members; domestic violence; child abuse by family members/friends; extreme generational poverty; and overwhelming trauma including historical trauma. The innovation in this work created an interest among employers to learn more about trauma and best practices to hire and retain high-risk employees. This coupled with the current shortage of workforce has escalated this interest and changed approaches and practices among employers to meet the needs of their employees. Examples include flexible schedules to allow for transportation of children; work at-home opportunities; support of basic needs such as transportation, housing, food, and childcare.
What it will take to reach an innovation?
NA
What's next?
We have secured a grant from a local Foundation, the John T. Vucurevich Foundation entitled Workforce Connections. This grant supports adult education students who are nearing completion of their GED test and those who have a high school diploma or GED whose pursuits are to enroll in postsecondary education and/or training. Supports through this grant also provides for intense mentorship, career counseling, resource navigation, financial assistance, and career pathway planning. However, this leaves a gap in services for those individuals who were served under the Bush Community Innovation grant who are not ready to pursue postsecondary training and who have experienced extreme trauma. These are individuals who required significantly more time and resources. We will continue to seek funding for this group of individuals as they are the ones who need to be supported to enter entry level positions for work experience and soft skill development before moving on to higher levels of education and training.
If you could do it all over again...
One piece of advice we would give ourselves is to include funding for formal data collection and analysis to incorporate findings on a regular basis. Although we are tracking data using an adapted version of the Crisis to Thrive matrix, we did not have enough money in the budget to contract with a data collection company and an outside evaluator. In the future, if the opportunity for more funding exists from the Bush Foundation to continue this good work, we would request additional dollars to be a part of this larger data collection group. The importance of doing so would allow us to make data driven decisions in collaboration with the larger nonprofit community who often serves the same clientele with other supportive services.
One last thought
There were 65 individuals fully enrolled in the program. 57% of individuals served were Native American; 42% of individuals served were White; 1% of individuals served were Black. 37% of individuals served were male and 63 % of individuals served were female. As noted in question 8 above, we discovered more dire situations than we ever anticipated with this population of students. We now find these are exacerbated due to the impact of COVID. This population of students are more traumatized than ever before because of increased mental health illness, increased substance disorders, lack of technology for their education and their children's education, lack of housing, transportation, and childcare, increased cost of living, domestic violence and more. Funding to serve this population with intensive supports is critical to support them in their pursuit of education, training and employment. Research proves they must have long-term support (intensive mentorship and financial resources) to escape the throes of poverty.