Credentialing of U.S. Youth Workers Plods Onward

Certification training in youth development is about to expand, carrying America's youth workers several more small but significant steps along the slow, torturous route to professional status — and pay dirt.

While groundbreaking developments for a nation that lacks any semblance of an education and training system to produce qualified youth workers, the new academic efforts here and in Chicago and Milwaukee still place America far in the wake of England and Canada where there long have been recognized youth services and clear career paths for joining them. (For England's approach, see page 12.)

How far behind is the U.S.? "The Department of Labor does not even recognize the job of youth development worker," said Gordon Raley, Executive director of the National Collaboration for Youth in Washington. D.C. "Informally, the job is emerging. We're still trying to say what is it that makes youth development work different from, say, correctional work. Then you can start to talk about training — currently it's just blips here and there."

What's been holding back a professional structure for youth development?

Partly, says Raley. it's the familiar problem of the political system treating youth as problem," but it's also a resource issue. The challenge is getting the time and resources to go beyond the self-perpetuation of the organization," says Raley. There are good things happening but they are often serendipitous. We haven't seen it as a national goal."

Certified Goal...

Here in Kansas City, a training system that can develop a career track for youth workers has at least become a citywide goal.

At the prompting of YouthNet, Kansas City's Kauffman Foundation-supported collaboration of 18 community- based youth-serving organizations operating in low-income neighborhoods. Longview Community College here is introducing this month an associate degree program certifying graduates in youth development. Starting in the fall, similar programs will be offered by all branches of the city's Metropolitan Community College.

"Certification," predicts Deth Im, YouthNet's coordinator for youth worker professional development, ''will help create a sense of fraternity and belonging, and will eventually become an aim, something to-shoot for." Endorsed by 300 organizations in the Coalition for Positive Family Relationships of Greater Kansas City, Im hopes credentialing also will translate into improvement in wage levels for underpaid youth workers.

"Youth work is an in-between job people fall into," he observes. "Because of the pay and lack of resources they do it for a while until something better comes along — often leaving with regrets because they know they can make an impact on kids." Im is a law graduate whose commitment to youth led to a youth work internship with Trinity Church in East Los Angeles. Just how bad are pay scales in the field?

A National Collaboration for Youth (NCY) survey of eight youth development organizations authored by Kim Pawly Helfgott shows average starting salaries ranging from $40,287 for an executive director to $19,247 for a youth work supervisor and $14,878 for front-line youth workers. By contrast, 1994 average starting salaries for bachelor's degree graduates entering physical education were $22,768, $28,594 for nursing and $31,783 in computer science.

Helfgott's project, "Charting the Future," has looked into salaries and benefits paid in each of 51 benchmark occupations within youth development, made a directory of internships and has tracked moves toward credentialing within youth development and related fields. The research was supported by the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. Agencies included in the salary survey were Big Brothers and Big Sisters, Boys and Girls Clubs, Camp Fire Boys and Girls, Girl Scouts, Girls Incorporated, National Network for Youth, the YMCA and the YWCA.

...$60,000 a Year?

Kansas City's new academic program is modeled after a training and qualification structure consisting of 12 core competencies developed by the Chicago Youth Agencies Partnership (CYAP), an organization representing 83 agencies and funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Behind Chicago's push to upgrade training, says CYAP executive director Bill Conrad, is retention.

There is no way in the world they are going to stay. First, there is no status or credibility to the Job — anyone can go and be a youth worker. Secondly, they say there is no way I can feed my family, no career path. On current salary scales In Chicago a youth worker with a family of four is marginally in the poverty area."

Illinois' Aurora University, host to the former YMCA-sponsored George Williams College, has used CYAP's structure to design an associate degree of B.SC. Groupwork: youth service programming and management.

Program director Ronald Campopiano claims the course is attracting huge interest — some 150 inquiries had been received prior to even the opening of admissions. Such popularity he attributes to use of CYAP's core competencies and three other distinctive features.

First, the program has a non-traditional format geared to the working person and his or her employer, such as classes offered in the morning before youth agencies get busy and an accelerated program that allows the course to be completed in 16 to 18 months.

Second, the university is also developing LEAP — a Life Experience Assessment Program — to encourage workers to put together a portfolio of their past experience and gain academic credit of up to 30 units. In addition, there is an academic partnering program whereby the university will assess training offered within partner organizations and, if it meets quality standards, offer credits against the degree.

"Everyone wins," says Campopiano. The student is paying greatly reduced rates to get their credits, and the agencies can open up their training to workers from other agencies who are interested in gaming credits in this way."

The course will start on other campuses in February 1997 with university programs coming on stream later this year. Campopiano states that it is geared towards the front-line worker seeking to move up, and there are finance, management and leadership courses. Nevertheless, Bill Conrad says that ultimately their training must ensure that one does not have to become a director to move ahead. "We need to keep people in youth development; we need people to say I can work in youth development and earn $60,000 like a teacher — not every teacher wants to be a principal." He adds:

"We're creating from scratch a profession. First comes the conceptual model, then the competencies are defined, then you get to certifying youth workers. When this continuum is complete the public will begin to look at youth workers just a bit differently."

Spreading the Concept Getting academia to buy into the competencies approach and adapt their curricula to suit the youth organizations has been a big breakthrough, says Conrad. As well as Aurora, CAYP is developing partnerships with the University of Chicago, Chicago State University, Harold Washington College (part of the Chicago City College) and Roosevelt University.

"I see a nice array of degrees available and at reasonable prices from social work with an option in youth development to a bachelor's degree in youth development. If all this works, it will have an enormous impact over the next five years in Chicago." Conrad said. And, no doubt, elsewhere.

A conference was set for January for CYAP directors to address the issues of reflecting training in pay and the implications of making certification a requirement. These are processes that the NCY credentialing report identifies as making a critical difference in the path towards professionalization.

A third new strategy for pre-service training is emerging in Milwaukee through the Child and Youth Care Learning Center (CYCLC), a partnership between the Wisconsin Association of Child and Youth Care Professionals and the University of Wisconsin (WACYCP). The two have devised a 40-hour certificate program in youth development aimed at improving the practice of front-line workers in at-risk situations. While it attracts staff from detention centers and group homes, it is also widely used by youth work organizations such as the Boys and Girls Clubs. Certification with the WACYCP also has requirements including length of service and letters from colleagues.

The DeWitt Wallace-Readers Digest Fund, for some time a supporter of training within national youth organizations, has in the past few years also started to focus on building metropolitan-wide training capacity, including YouthNet and the CYCLC. DeWitts Pam Stevens said that the foundation's motivation in supporting youth worker training was initially about improving the quality of services. But "field-building" now-is also their concern.

"We soon realized that the reason for the lack of training was the lack of status in the work — both at individual and organizational levels. People now perceive that if they are better skilled, they will get more recognition and so it starts to build upon itself." A priority will be to bring together national affiliates and local groups to share skills and resources and create training in common.

"Change must be systems wide," agrees Gene Wilson, the Kauffman Foundation's president for youth development. "Institutional philanthropy is hard pressed to bring around systems change. We're new and naive enough to believe it has to happen. Where's the supply of trained workers? For youth development it doesn't exist. That's why we support working with a community college to move toward an associate degree to produce trained workers at every level." Another partner with Kansas City's YouthNet has been the Washington. D.C.-based Center for Youth Development, also a DeWitt Wallace grantee, which produced in 1996 a resource kit Training Youth Workers at the Community Level." This document describes local capacity-building organizations such as YouthNet and the Chicago Youth Agency Partnership as promising vehicles for delivering training.

The kit offers key definitions of youth work development and what its skills base might be, including 10 core competencies. It thereby tries to answer Gordon Rale's plea to clarify a professional territory and Deth Im's plea for a common language.

"Without a clear rationale for the importance of youth work, it is difficult for organizations to recruit and retain highly skilled youth workers," states the CYD document. "Without specific goals, principles and practices, organizations can neither consistently plan, implement and evaluate their programs nor assess the training needs of staff."

CYD's stab at defining the purpose of youth development is: "to nurture lives, foster self-direction, and generate skills and commitments that enable young people to make positive contributions to society." The kit also provides a brief summary of its partnership with YouthNet and nine other organizations in piloting a new curriculum and training program for youth workers, developed with the National Network for Youth and funding from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

American Humanics Expands

Another positive development in tandem with community-level certification (raining is the rapid expansion of American Humanics, a program head-quartered in Kansas City that links non-profits and universities in nonprofit management curricula, especially for youth-serving organizations. After 40 years of rolling along quietly AH is now being backed by the Kellogg Foundation to expand its activities and in the last three years has gone from accrediting courses in 12 universities to 23.

"In the last nine months we've spoken to 50 — we're in the middle of an explosion," says chief executive Kirk Alliman.

Having consulted with its nonprofit partners to identify the skills they expect in staff. AH works with universities to formulate accredited courses. The expansion, says Alliman, is a result of the increasing demands being put on the nonprofit sector, the increasing complexity of management and the lack of diversity in qualified applicants. Campus expansion director Phyllis Wallace is targeting historically black colleges and institutions serving Native American, Asian and Hispanic communities.

Alliman also cites an improved image of a career in nonprofits: "At least no one laughs at the idea any more.” Wallace, who once worked on youth employment issues for the national YMCA, agrees that retention of staff is a big factor: Trained people will go in with real expectations," She explains. They will not walk away because it's not like they thought, or at the first crisis or when fatigue sets in."

Too Superficial?

But while AH graduates are going to find their role in youth organizations. The program is clearly not going to address the issue of training and professionalizing direct service work.

"AH trains students to be managers of youth organizations. I don't train those who work directly with youth." says Margaret O’Donnell. campus director for AH at the University of Houston.

The focus is on matters such as fundraising and volunteer management. I may have 14 different majors taking my course, such as a business major who's interested in nonprofits, to, say, psychology majors who are really interested in young people. I don’t want to minimize their role with youth but really they are training to be directors.” O’Donnell readily acknowledges that there is still an educational job to be done for youth work in the U.S. “We don’t value and train those who get on the floor with the kids. That’ s what this country has to do – value and respect, and it doesn’t. That's why we have low paid, poorly trained people.”

AH, she says, has found its niche but it would need a shift of focus for it to develop a youth work certificate. Ask Kirk Alliman how he feels about training direct service workers and he takes a deep breath and looks at his in-tray: "I know deep down we need to develop that but we have too much to do. It's coming and we'll welcome it, but for now we're focusing on what we're doing,"

While Alliman is confident that AH programs are serving up highly employable entry-level managers, the lack of direct youth work in their training may yet count against them. Bill Conrad of CYAP describes the AH approach as having a weak conceptual model of how nonprofits work, of simply putting together "a nice series of courses." He says it sends a false message to students that you do these courses and you are on your way to management. "You are not. They underplay the need for experience. Ultimately, I believe the courses are superficial."

America's youth work field is clearly way behind teacher training, or even training child care workers. Standards for qualifications are still a mirage on the horizon. It is hard to see the federal government taking a lead as. For example, the British government did in 1960 with the Albemarle Report, which decided the needs of England's youth were so pressing that It created at a stroke the National College for Training of Youth Leaders and implemented a crash program to build youth clubs around the country for newly qualified workers to staff.

Some may not like the idea of a centralized model here. But at least communities, nonprofits and the foundations that support them are becoming aware that they need a plan to tackle over the next decade the intricate process that links training, status, pay, and the quality of youth work.

Resources

Credentialing Activities Related to the Youth Development Field, available from National Collaboration for Youth, 1319 F St., NW, Ste. 601. Washington, DC 20004, (202) 347-2080. $5.

Training Youth Workers at the Community Level: A Resource Kit, Center for Youth Development, 1875 Connecticut Ave., NW. Washington, DC 20009-1202.

Child and Youth Care Learning Center, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 161 W. Wisconsin Ave., Ste. 6000. Milwaukee. WI 53203-2602. (414) 227- 3354.

Chicago Youth Agency Partnership, 625 W. Jackson Blvd., Ste. 300, Chicago, IL 60661. (312) 627-2700.

Ronald P. Campopiano. Program Director, Lake County Campus, 13 N. Genesee St., Waukegan, IL 60685. (847) 662-0100.

American Humanics, 4601 Madison Ave., Kansas City, MO 64112. (816) 561-6415. AH runs an internet service matching trained staff with job opportunities. Find it on http://www.humahlcs.org. (915) 689-1065

YouthNet, 301 E. Armour, Ste. 460, Kansas City, MO 64111. (816) 931-9900.

Sidebar:

Credentialing of U.S. Youth Workers Plods Onward: What Is Distinctive About Youth Work?

Burke, Tim. "Credentialing of U.S. youth Workers Plods Onward." Youth Today, Jan/Feb 1997, p. 1.

©2000 Youth Today. Reprinted with permission from Youth Today. All rights reserved.