Black Hills Special Services Cooperative
Report date
August 2020
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
Practitioners, Support Staff and Partner Training: Moving Beyond Trauma to Building Career Pathways provided local, regional and statewide professional training in trauma to adult educators, support staff and adult education partners. The importance of the workshops was to give the practitioners, support staff and partners 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 (TIPs) for Adult Educators; Key Ingredients of TIPs; Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Train the Trainer session and general trainings; Integrated Historical Trauma in Behavioral Practices and 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 and the Bad of Chaos and Cultural Responsiveness/Special Populations; Research in Areas of Burnout and Stress Relief; Supporting Learners in the Classroom and Beyond; and Crisis to Clarity.
Employer Training: Moving Beyond Trauma to Building Career Pathways also provided local and regional trainings for employers. The importance of this was to give employers the 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, Rapid City Chamber, the Society for Human Resource Management, Western Dakota Technical College. Visitor’s Bureau, and non-profit service organizations. The title of the 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 and Flexibility; Employee and Manager Collaboration in Scheduling; Supporting Family Care Givers; Transportation Support; Medical/Behavioral Health Services; Education/Classroom; Cultural Responsiveness/Special Populations and Communication, Problem Solving Strategies for Management. One-on-one consultation was offered to all in attendance at the training. Planning is underway for additional employer training.
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, 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 a regional funder to create a Student Support Fund for basic necessities such as rent, utilities, gas, childcare, and education/employment related expenses. Additional funds were secured during COVID-19 to provide Chromebooks to adult learners in need of technology to continue their learning.
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 comfortable 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 held in February 2020 strongly stated additional training was needed and desired by local employers and plans are in place to provide additional training in Year 2.
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 include appropriate scheduling and communication strategies to better serve these clients.
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 held in February 2020 strongly stated additional training was needed and desired by local employers and plans are in place to provide additional training in Year 2.
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 include appropriate scheduling and communication strategies to better serve these clients.
We do not believe any of the results would be characterized as a failure, rather learning opportunities. We believe two years of funding allows for a strong foundation for impacting adult learners, employers, and instructors working with traumatized employees and students. However, we have come to realize there is much more work to be done beyond the two years of funding. This is further impacted because of COVID-19 and the additional trauma it has caused. As mentioned above, additional funding was secured to further support the adult learners in need.
Reflections on inclusive, collaborative or resourceful problem-solving
The element of “Inclusive” has been the most important in the first year of the community innovation process. We have engaged key stakeholders including government agencies, faith-based agencies, non-profit service organizations, and business and industry. The Moving Beyond Trauma work has further strengthened these relationships in helping our adult learners overcome barriers to building successful career pathways by connecting them with community services and employer partners. Through TIPs trainings, we are building the capacity of educational staff and employers to support our adult learners who are impacted by trauma so they can successfully enter the workplace. Through this relationship building, 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 successful TIPs trainings over the past year that have been positively received by all stakeholders including the business community.
Other key elements of Community Innovation
We have identified three additional elements.
Investment from outside resources: It was evident early on with the grant that there were high emergency funding needs of our adult education students to support with unexpected expenses including housing, transportation, employment related expenses (uniforms, background checks, etc.). We received a $5000 anonymous donation with a challenge for a $5000 match that was provided by a local foundation.
Development of the capacity building component: After COVID-19 hit, we realized a need to develop a culturally-responsive course within our organization. This course will be rolled out to staff working with this grant; to Black Hills Special Services employees; and to community partners and collaborators in the Black Hills Region and beyond in Year 2020-2021.
Data Collection: It was determined the grant project would use an adapted version of the Crisis to Thrive self-sufficiency matrix to collect data on participants. This tool assists us with improving TIPs programming through observing client outcomes as well as to communicate our findings to external audiences regarding internal programming and external barriers.
Investment from outside resources: It was evident early on with the grant that there were high emergency funding needs of our adult education students to support with unexpected expenses including housing, transportation, employment related expenses (uniforms, background checks, etc.). We received a $5000 anonymous donation with a challenge for a $5000 match that was provided by a local foundation.
Development of the capacity building component: After COVID-19 hit, we realized a need to develop a culturally-responsive course within our organization. This course will be rolled out to staff working with this grant; to Black Hills Special Services employees; and to community partners and collaborators in the Black Hills Region and beyond in Year 2020-2021.
Data Collection: It was determined the grant project would use an adapted version of the Crisis to Thrive self-sufficiency matrix to collect data on participants. This tool assists us with improving TIPs programming through observing client outcomes as well as to communicate our findings to external audiences regarding internal programming and external barriers.
Understanding the problem
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. This work requires systemic change which in turn requires an investment of more time and more resources.
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 an outside evaluator and join an established database used throughout the region. 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
With the onset of COVID-19, we found the digital divide among our adult education students, and especially our Native American learners, is real and crippling. In reaching out to 286 adult education students in late March, we found over 50% did not have a device or reliable internet connectivity to access online learning platforms for themselves or their children. In response to this, we wrote a grant to United Way of the Black Hills to fund the purchase of 44 Chromebooks to be given to the most in need adult learners. We found we must invest in digital literacy to ensure a competitive workforce. We have also found COVID-19 has exacerbated existing mental health issues such as depression and anxiety leading to increased trauma. We will be seeking additional grant funding to continue working with these individuals whose situation has worsened due to COVID-19.