Report to Oswego County, New York An Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Action Plan

November, 2015

Contents

Introduction 3

Executive Summary 4

Part 1: Diagnosis 9

Poverty in Oswego County Today 10

Part 2: Action Plan 24

Develop a Comprehensive Economic Development Plan 25

Implement One Stop Shop and No Wrong Door Strategy 27

Focus on Youth and Schools 29

Prioritize Community Development 32

Build a Culture of Constant Improvement 33

Best Practices 34

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Introduction czbLLC (czb) was asked to provide insights on the challenge of responding to the problems of poverty in Oswego County. In partnership with county and private sector officials, czb spent the last several months analyzing conditions in Oswego County, conducting individual interviews and focus group with key community stakeholders, and surveying service providers.

From preliminary work, czb produced an initial, draft “Findings and Recommendations” report. In response to that document, members of the Oswego County Community Health and Poverty Reduction Task Force came together to debate and consider the forces behind stubbornly high (and rising) poverty rates in the county, and ask themselves how local governments, non-profit groups, schools, faith-based organizations, foundations, and private entities might adjust or expand their own efforts to address poverty.

The Task Force established five working groups to collaborate on specific poverty-related challenges facing the county (economic development, community development, social services, youth programming, and the policies and programming designed to support vulnerable individuals and families). Quantitative and qualitative findings were then synthesized from initial analysis of County conditions with feedback received during the Task Force’s (and its subcommittees’) work.

The merged result – this document – is meant to help the County continue making progress toward a new, strategic approach to helping individuals and families in crisis. It describes czb’s understanding of the challenges facing Oswego County – both the scale of the problem (the size and composition of Oswego County’s poor population) and also the roots of the problem (what stands in the way of individuals and families climbing out of poverty and what stands in the way of service providers getting a larger impact from their efforts). This document also lays out what is considered to be the county’s most important next steps, based on feedback we at czb received from stakeholders in Oswego County, as well as on a nationwide review of best practices in service delivery.

While more comprehensive than czb’s initial draft, this document is similarly meant to be a working document: one that can guide action (realistic goals getting implemented) and one that gets continually revised and refined as the county works through the review, begins implementing, obtains new data and insights, and keeps moving forward.

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Executive Summary In spite of everyone’s best effort to improve, Oswego County continues to rank at or near the bottom in the State of New York when it comes to unemployment, childhood obesity, child abuse and neglect, and harmful health behaviors.

The County has suffered significant overall job loss the last 12 years (-1,881), and in particular, has shed 2,398 manufacturing jobs since 2000. That’s a slow and continual loss of more than a dozen manufacturing jobs every month since before 9-11.

While the County economy has gained back 517 positions, in general, good salary manufacturing jobs have been replaced by lower wage service jobs. Miller, Birdseye, and Nestle have left. Soon, New Orleans-based Entergy will shutter the Fitzpatrick plant, laying off more than 600, a $70M direct hit to the County economy that will, in turn, reduce demand for retail real estate by at least 80,000 square feet, and thus have substantial secondary and tertiary effects.

Six years ago, 10 percent of the County’s population received food stamps; today that figure is 21 percent.

In response to these and related challenges, the County Legislature created the Community Health and Poverty Reduction Task Force in February 2015. Members of CiTi, Oswego County schools, and the Shineman Foundation came together, and more than 250 people were interviewed.

To categorically examine strategies for digging out, the Task Force broke into five multi-disciplinary working teams: economic development, social services, youth and schools, community development, and policy. This action plan is the culmination of the work of these teams and czb, the consultant group retained by Oswego County to examine these issues and help co-create a County-wide response.

Many hours of community dialogue, discussion, meetings and research went into the effort to dissect and understand the economic and related poverty challenges facing Oswego County. The resulting plan reflects the acknowledgment on the part of many in Oswego County that the County’s level of poverty is far too high. The plan reflects recognition that the unemployment rate is also unacceptably high, and that to respond appropriately, many in the County will have to come together to act, and act boldly, and do so now.

There is also a recognition that the County has severe substance abuse issues requiring attention, that the housing needs of the homeless must be addressed, and that there needs to be better care for those with mental health issues or disabilities. czb heard time and again from County experts that people can’t get jobs if there are no jobs, and if the jobs the County has aren’t accessible to people because of a lack of necessary training and skills, change is needed, and needed now. Furthermore, though there’s success

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throughout much of the County’s school system, educating children from resource- poor environments continues to be a substantial challenge.

While the full report is comprised mainly of data that is a reminder of how much work there is to do, perhaps the project’s most valuable contribution to the greater Oswego community is not the presentation of particularly new information, but the observation that these problems have been long known and in their stubborn resistance to the community’s best efforts is a mandate to change existing approaches. Not only must the County act now, but success will very likely hinge on a departure from how the County has done business for years. As Lao Tzu wrote, “a journey of 1,000 miles begins with one step,” and as President Kennedy said in his inaugural address, “…so let us begin…”

It is czb’s learned view that Oswego County should not and need not accept the current situation as fixed, or somehow unrepairable; the County can do better. Over the course of this project, czb interacted with such a wide range of committed and expert stakeholders that it is impossible to not envision positive change if everyone in the County comes together around this issue. The many experts czb worked with during this project share the ambition of joining forces and implementing an aggressive set of actions that can, over time, dramatically reduce poverty in Oswego County.

Doing so will require many kinds of effort on the County’s part. Chief among them is that Oswego County cannot, in czb’s view, wait for the State or Federal Government to fix this. The County itself — experts, residents, business leaders, clergy, everyone — will need to come together and improve its aim, taking specific, focused actions to make a measurable, positive, and lasting difference.

This Executive Summary outlines in condensed form the main report, which includes a specific plan containing a range of action steps that are divided into five categories.

Implementation will require an all-hands-on-deck approach. Change will require a willingness to experiment, an appetite to fail and learn, and a dogged determination to keep pushing forward.

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Action Steps 1. Create and Implement a Comprehensive Economic Development

Strategy Prospects for economic growth in the County won’t come without a specific and focused effort. czb strongly recommends that the County prioritize the development of a strategy to retain existing and attract new businesses, and in the process, diversify the Oswego County’s economy. At the same time, the County needs to improve its infrastructure, and improve its labor force through better job training. These necessities cannot wait for distant state and federal dollars, either. czb strongly encourages the County to step forward and act. The effort to self-underwrite bold and costly endeavors carries the parallel (and lasting) benefit of improving the capacity for self governance and will contribute greatly to increasing the County’s resilience.

2. Adopt a No Wrong Door Strategy and One-Stop Approach to Service People struggling with poverty won’t find a ladder out if the County doesn’t make programs and services easier to access and if those programs don’t share an alignment of desired outcomes. The County’s aim must be for people struggling with poverty to enter the economic mainstream and fully participate in the community, not — as is so often the unintended result — of staying impoverished but with less discomfort. Best practices in human services start with integrated and well-coordinated programs, regardless of who runs them or which agency they are a part of. Oswego County needs to build a culture of coordination and collaboration that shares a clear focus, has shared goals and evaluates progress using common metrics.

3. Youth and Schools Combined with targeted annual steps, a long term view of the County’s youth and schools can enable Oswego County to help the youngest generation get free of poverty’s grip. Early childhood programs like home visiting and pre-K, teen pregnancy prevention programs, mentoring, and other systems all can work to give students a better chance at success. The County’s schools must coordinate their efforts and adopt a 15 year view of student progress, starting with a few grades each year. The goal must be that every child who enters pre-school today will be on a 15 year path to breaking generational poverty.

4. Community Development as a Priority The Oswego County community, itself — more so than any other entity, including the State of New York or the federal government — must create the path forward. This project serves as a reminder that the greater Oswego County community wants to be involved in progress, and more importantly, has much to contribute. Through mentoring, civic ambassador programs, and other such efforts, everyone in the County is a stakeholder and has the chance

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to exercise leadership. It is strongly recommended that County officials work to bring the whole community on board; success depends on it.

5. Culture of Constant Improvement Good enough is, in fact, not good enough. With limited resources, the County must be guided by facts and data, and must focus on those programs and initiatives that have produced or are producing the best outcomes. Authorities owe it to stakeholders to fix or end programs that are not measuring up. Officials need to identify, categorize and prioritize ineffective policies and programs, following evidence and best practices to improve and upgrade them.

This action plan is the culmination of hours of community dialogue, discussion, meetings and research. It took years to create the problems of institutionalized and generational poverty and it will take focused work to fix those problems. This plan is a thoughtful, action-oriented set of steps for Oswego County New York to take. The point of this plan is not to follow it with perfect fidelity but to learn and change as progress dictates. The point of this plan is that Oswego County starts moving forward, stops making excuses and begins to tackle, one by one, the obstacles to economic independence.

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Part 1: Diagnosis

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Poverty in Oswego County Today As with so much of the nation, Oswego County was hit hard by the Great Recession of 2007-2008. However, while in recent years much of the country (including most other counties in New York State) has largely recovered (or at least substantially begun recovering), Oswego County has settled into a “new normal” of higher unemployment rates, high poverty rates, and greater reliance on public services. These new norms arrived with the economic downturn.

According to Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the unemployment rate in New York State as a whole and in each of its counties increased dramatically between 2007 and 2009, and has remained high in the years since. This statewide pattern has been true for Oswego County which has had one of the state’s highest unemployment rates; in most years, Oswego County’s unemployment rate has been second only to Bronx County, and greater than that in sixty of the state’s sixty-one other counties.

! Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS); czbLLC.

Oswego County’s high unemployment rate is a reflection, at least in part, of the fact that the number of jobs in the county has been declining for at least a decade. Figures from the Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns suggest that the county lost nearly 2,000 jobs between 2003 and 2013.

The number of jobs in Oswego County in 2013 (23,568) was actually nearly identical to the number of jobs in the county in 2009 and 2010 (23,616 and 23,370, respectively), when the county’s economy “hit bottom” during the recession.

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As the total number of jobs has declined, the average wage in the county has remained roughly unchanged (in constant dollars). Oswego County’s typical worker earned roughly $37,000 during this entire decade.

Sources: County Business Patterns; czbLLC.

Sources: County Business Patterns; czbLLC.

Fewer jobs and stagnant wages, as well as other destabilizing forces brought about by the economic downturn and housing market meltdown, forced more Oswego County individuals and households to turn to public programs during the latter half of the first decade of the 21st century. Ongoing job losses and wage stagnation have kept these levels high. During the boom years (2005-2006), approximately 4,800 households received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in Oswego County. By the end of the recession (2009-2010), this figure was closer to 8,000 households. As of January 2015, after roughly five years of recovery, this figure was nearing 10,000.

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! Sources: New York State Department of Health and Human Services; czbLLC.

These recipients also represent a growing share of all Oswego County households: while roughly 10% of all Oswego County households received SNAP as the recession hit in 2007, 21% did in 2013.

Sources: New York State Department of Health and Human Services; czbLLC .

The share of households receiving SNAP increased the fastest between 2007 and 2010 but has steadily increased (although at a slower pace) in the years since. The recent increase (the uptick in recipients as a percent of all households between 2012 and 2013) runs counter to trends in the state as a whole.

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2007

90%

10%

PctPopReceivingSNAPRestofOswegoCounty

2013

79%

21%

PctPopReceivingSNAPRestofOswegoCounty

Sources: New York State Department of Health and Human Services; Census; czbLLC.

The same trends have held for Oswego County’s most vulnerable individuals and families. Between 2001 and 2014, the number of public assistance cases in Oswego County more than doubled – from 752 to 1,722.

Sources: New York State Department of Health and Human Services; czbLLC.

As with unemployment rates and SNAP benefits, but to an even greater extreme, Oswego County public assistance trends run counter to those found across other New York State counties.

In the years leading up to the Great Recession, less than 2% of Oswego County households received public assistance – a rate equivalent to roughly half of the statewide rate (which hovered just over 4% during these years). By 2013, though, public assistance cases represented nearly 4% of the county’s households – putting the county’s rate among the top 10 statewide (for this ranking all NY counties are combined). As cases grew relative to households in Oswego County, they remained steady everywhere else except for a handful of counties (Chautauqua, Broome, Oneida, and Orleans).

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Sources: New York State Department of Health and Human Services; Census Bureau; czbLLC.

As the number of public assistance cases has risen, so has the portion of recipients relying on subsidies for a longer period time. By 2014, most (51%) public assistance cases were supported using Safety Net funding rather than the federally-funded Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). This was true of just one-third (33%) of cases pre-recession.

Sources: New York State Department of Health and Human Services; czbLLC.

At the same time, the number of individuals receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) has also been on the rise, up from 2,844 in 2001 to nearly 3,600 by 2014. Together these trends suggest that an ever larger portion of Oswego County’s most vulnerable individuals and households is finding it harder to regain their financial footing than similarly situated individuals and households in years past, and that some may not be equipped to join the workforce at all (due, for example, to some type of disability).

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Sources: New York State Department of Health and Human Services; czbLLC.

Another concern is the rise in the number of Oswego County residents being treated for serious drug dependency. Medicaid recipients going through detoxification or receiving methadone treatments have both roughly tripled since the Great Recession.

Sources: New York State Department of Health and Human Services; czbLLC.

Between 2009 and 2013, the number of Oswego County residents being treated for heroin addiction increased eight times over (from 12 to 95), while the number statewide increased by just 14%.

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Sources: New York State Department of Health and Human Services; czbLLC.

Taken together, these trends convey several important messages to service providers and community stakeholders.

• First is a clear need to proactively facilitate the transition back to work, which is proving increasingly difficult. There are a number of levers the county can pull in order to do so. These include increasing the number of jobs awaiting new employees (economic development), enhancing the training and preparation that out-of-work adults receive (workforce development), and ensuring that programs and policies facilitate rather than impede the transition to financial independence (creation of a mental health services system, as well the enlargement of emergency and transitional housing options).

• Second, there is a clear indication that a growing segment of Oswego County’s most vulnerable are not prepared to enter the workforce at all – and may not be able to do so for quite some time (if ever) – due to a disability of some kind, or drug dependency.

While the Great Recession and the absence of a local recovery have had serious implications for Oswego County adults, the county’s children are suffering to at least as great a degree. This is true because poverty and its consequences are not evenly distributed across all Oswego County household types. Rather, they are particularly concentrated in families that include children under 18.

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Between 2009 and 2013, for example, the poverty rate among County families remained nearly identical to the poverty rates for families for the state as a whole, as well as for the nation as a whole.

By contrast, the poverty rates for Oswego families that include children under 18 years of age has been steadily increasing since 2011, and is now pulling further away from statewide and national rates for these families.

This is true to an even greater extreme when looking just at specifically female-headed families with children under 18. Among these families, nearly half (49%) live below the poverty level, compared to just 40% across the United States and only 38% in the state as a whole.

Sources: American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013); czbLLC.

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Fully one-fourth (25%) of Oswego residents under 18 – or one out of every four county children – lives below the poverty level. On average, these children do not do well climbing the economic ladder.

Current estimates of upward mobility suggest that the typical Oswego County child with parents at the 25th percentile of national income (equal to about $26,000 today) is expected to reach just the 43rd percentile as an adult. This puts Oswego County among the highly-troubled third of New York State Counties that are the worst at offering children springboards to opportunity.

!

Sources: Chetty & Hendren, 2015; czbLLC.

To be sure, the challenges that Oswego County adults face in finding and keeping a job play a part in this. But of great importance is what awaits these children at school.

A recent survey of school staff and teachers in Oswego County highlighted how suspect (rightly or wrongly) many are of the academic capabilities and ambitions of poor students. Of those answering either “true” or “false” (and excluding those responding with “I don’t know” or “not sure”),

• The vast majority (94%) figure poor students have a more limited vocabulary and have difficulties recognizing the importance of staying in school

• Three-quarters (73%) feel that poor families have a negative view of education,

• Two-thirds (62%) feel that poor students are more likely to have learning disabilities than non-poor students.

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! !

Sources: Barbara Recchio (CiTi), 2015; czbLLC. Note: Percentages do not include respondents answering “not sure” to these questions.

These expectations, along with the greater amount of stress and the often less amount of preparation that poor children bring with them to school – when not countered by explicit policies and initiatives to address achievement gaps – translate into significantly lower proficiency rates among economically disadvantaged students.

Across the county, just 3% of economically disadvantaged middle school students tested as proficient in reading or math; half, or nearly half, of poor students tested below basic in both subjects. Another, if cruder, way of saying the same thing is that almost none of the Oswego County’s poor middle school students are reading or math proficient. Since this is well after the key learn to read, read to learn inflection point that occurs between the 3rd and 4th grades, it means current strategies require a fundamental rethinking. 1

Low-income 4th graders unable to meet NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) or similar 1

proficiency standards today, “are all too likely to become our nation’s lowest income, least skilled, least productive, and most costly citizens tomorrow”. See “Early Warning: Why Reading By The End of Third Grade Matters” by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (2010), and also US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics (2007).

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Sources: New York State Department of Education, czbLLC. Level 4 - Excels; Level 3 - Proficient; Level 2 – Partially proficient; Level 1 – Well below proficient

Improving the Prevention and Response System In terms of responding to the growing challenge of poverty in Oswego County, the underlying “problem” (and possibly therefore “opportunity”) has two parts. One is that the many efforts in the county to tackle poverty are not typically all rowing in the same direction. Even when they are, those doing the rowing do not feel that to be the case. The other is that while those endeavoring to tackle poverty are overseeing a number of programs and initiatives, the current menu is plainly not sufficient. In terms of reducing poverty rates and reducing reliance on public assistance, it is not getting service providers and their partners where they want to be.

The first needed step will be to shift the role that government programs, particularly federal- and state-level programs, play in Oswego County.

Having a program has become more important than achieving results. The time to meet program reporting requirements often crowds out time available to actually help people. Delivering a program and counting its outputs can take attention away from smartly delivering a program and tailoring deployment to achieve specific outcomes. This is a central and serious core issue requiring attention. It means Oswego County must proactively move away from business as usual in key areas. Providers’ and public officials’ current focus on implementing individual programs and monitoring implementation needs to move towards the county’s bigger goals of reducing poverty and ensuring children’s and families’ long-term success. There must also be a shift in the focus of time and energy from qualifying (or disqualifying) recipients for particular programs and towards investing time and energy to work with individuals and families to connect them with whatever it is that they need, no matter who provides it or who pays for it. This is what it means to have everyone rowing in the same direction.

Making government programs, as well as those run by local governments or nonprofit groups, means rather than ends will require that they be better coordinated and streamlined with one another. This is one aspect of the work. “Optimizing” these

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programs requires improving the intake process through which recipients can access them. (The One Stop Shops, No Wrong Doors, and Community Ambassador strategies described below all speak to this.)

At the same time, “optimizing” these programs also requires that better case management be provided as recipients work towards and successfully transition to independence. (Reducing the number of people receiving support through these programs only saves the county money overall if the households that do leave assistance successfully stay out of crisis and do not end up in emergency rooms or living on the streets and otherwise undermining their children’s prospects for educational success.)

Optimizing public programs, though, must occur inside a larger contextual framework. These programs need to be seen as tools — some, but not all of the tools — to achieve the county’s broader goal of improving the health of county residents and reducing poverty rates. This is very different than considering the goals of these programs to be the goals of the county, or considering the net of these programs to be the strategy for addressing health and poverty in Oswego County.

This report begins to describe — and pushes stakeholders to further consider — what, in addition to and separate of government programs, might be created or modified in Oswego County (tools funded by the county, individual municipalities, the schools, local corporations, nonprofits, or foundations) that would smartly co-exist with state and federal government programs.

This larger contextual framework must be clear. Specifically, the planning and community engagement processes associated with this report identified six overarching themes that require focus.

• First, there was agreement that greater levels of cross functional and cross departmental and cross agency collaboration are going to be essential. It means that each program — regardless of which agency is managing it — has to become a tool re-aimed at helping individuals and families in crisis first get out of crisis and then make their way towards self sufficiency. Each program has a potential role to play in this effort, and successful delivery of program assistance cannot be considered success unless the recipient of help is in fact making progress out of crisis and onward.

• Second, there was consensus that a “One Stop Shop” approach shaped by a “No Wrong Door” culture and attitude will be helpful. Such an approach and ethic can increase the opportunities for individuals and families in need to connect with the services and programs the county provides. The work being modeled in Arizona at the Pima County One-Stop is an excellent example where such an approach is in use.

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• An important third theme was that merely linking the right program at the right time to one in crisis will often not be enough, even though just that will be an improvement over the status quo. Promoting and instituting a personal empowerment approach to service delivery can make receiving assistance a positive, life-changing, and empowering experience. The Bishop’s Storehouse of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints demonstrates the breadth and sophistication of Mormon social networks and is a model for volunteerism and stewardship of a shared community challenge. In how The Bishop’s Storehouse distributes assistance - pay what you can, but pay your tithing first - personal empowerment is a key element of what the Mormon’s regard to be a community partnership.

• Fourth, instead of working in isolation, there was agreement that multi-disciplinary, full-family services need to be better coordinated. It is important that case management co-evolve with recipient progress. This much needed approach to social services delivery in Oswego County has very successful analogues in Team-based Medical Care provided to patients at the Mayo Clinic, Salt Lake-based Intermountain Health Care, and Geisinger Community Health.

• The fifth big theme was the unilateral agreement that schools have to be the county’s springboard for opportunity. Figuring out how to ensure that all children in Oswego County are given the opportunity to succeed is paramount, so developing the systems that make progress towards ensuring all children in Oswego County graduate from high school with the academic skills required of work or college, and with the life skills required to manage a household is critical

• Finally, improving the path out of poverty for more Oswego County individuals and households is made more successful by — and increases the success of — complementary efforts aimed at increasing the quality of life across the county and growing the county’s economy. Because these are inherently linked, it is important to connect social services, community development and economic development.

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!

Keeping an eye on this larger mission, not letting it (the larger mission) be overtaken by the objectives or rules of individual programs, and acting upon these six overarching themes, requires a multi-pronged approach and a commitment from top to bottom to the following:

• Shifting the County’s Approach to Social Service Delivery • Making Schools a Springboard to Great Things • Filling Key Gaps in Physical and Mental Health Services • Filling Key Gaps in Support for Ex-Offenders • Building wealth for individuals and families while also building thriving

communities in a strong economy • Continually Assessing Progress toward the Larger Mission and the

Effectiveness of Particular Programs

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Part 2: Action Plan

The following Action Plan has been created to help to address the challenges outlined previously. This plan is not an end point. It is intended to be updated and refined regularly as some tasks are completed and new ones are added. It should evolve as new information is learned. Through regular reporting, clear metrics and governing oversight, it should become a guiding document to focus Oswego County efforts. The following Action Plan is presented as a to do list of projects and tasks for Oswego County to undertake.

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Develop a Comprehensive Economic Development Plan Even if Oswego County’s economy were restored to pre-deindustrialization strength, as many as one in every two impoverished Oswego households would still need intensive support as they are not presently ready to participate in the economy in a meaningful way. Nevertheless, without jobs, there is no path out of poverty. Oswego must develop 2

and implement a comprehensive economic development plan that engages every aspect of the community.

Take Responsibility for the Economic Development Strategy [Effective Practices to Model: SC Coordinating Council for Economic Development] • Identify, and if needed hire, key staff. • Identify key community partners and agencies to work on this effort. • Establish time-lines and deliverable dates for all tasks. • Develop clear and trackable metrics to monitor progress on this work. • Develop clear reporting on the status of the Economic Development Strategy. • Create a regular cycle of review and updates to the Economic Development

Strategy to ensure it evolves and changes as Oswego County learns and implements.

Attract New Businesses, Retain Existing Businesses and Diversify the Economy. [Effective Practices to Model: Manchester/Bidwell (Pittsburgh), YouthBuild]

• Promote infrastructure. For example, Oswego County’s High Speed Internet Loop, the Port of Oswego, and Oswego’s Electric Transmission Infrastructure.

• Work to develop and attract businesses along the High Speed Internet Corridor.

• Work towards having Universal Broadband in the County. • Promote tourism and quality of life resources, water, weather, woods, etc. • Explore avenues to promote agriculture and businesses involved in “growing,

distributing, and eating local.” • Continue promoting business development with the tools Oswego has, the

IDA, and tax exemptions. • Consider other incentives to attract new businesses.

This is an important note, for it clarifies the both-and nature of the county’s challenge. Oswego must BOTH 2

develop a stronger economy AND, REGARDLESS, successfully address the fact that half of those in crisis, job presence aside, aren’t ready for employment.

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Develop a More Skilled and Diversified Workforce. [Effective Practices to Model: Manufacturing Advocacy/Growth Network (NE Ohio]

• Work with businesses to align training to their workplace and their businesses needs.

• Develop and fund more apprenticeships, on the job training and internship opportunities.

• Develop better ways to collaborate on trade training and business skills curriculum development.

• Fund training to allow for more local people to be “job ready.” • Tailor career specific job training and college degree programs at CiTi and

local colleges. • Track the number of certificates and credentials earned by Oswego County

residents and use these to attract related employers.

Reduce unemployment rates by reducing the number of able workers on assistance. [Effective Practices to Model: SCWorks (Greenville, SC)]

• Fund investments in people. • Identify “able but unemployed” workers and support them to prepare for a

job or career. • Each head of household that returns to the workforce represents avoided

spending that can be spent elsewhere.

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Implement a One-Stop and No Wrong Door Strategy for Human Services Delivery A lack of coordination, especially with scarce resources, makes it difficult to ensure all programs are focused on the same goals and coordinated for the best results. Oswego County needs to develop a countywide “One Stop and No Wrong Door” connection to public assistance in collaboration with every provider in the County. The emphasis must be on collaboration, integrated casework, and multi-generational and multi-disciplinary care delivered to entire families. This has been identified as one of the most critical steps to improve services and outcomes in Oswego County. The National Institutes for Health, many state and local governments from Washington State to Illinois and others are beginning to work in this way. Underlying this work must be a focus on evidence based practices. All programs, whether workforce or health care, must move forward with a goal of adopting and embracing evidence-based strategies that are proven to work and discarding old approaches that do not produce the desired results. 3

Adopt Shared Vision Across Relevant Agencies and Organizations • One central location for assessment and orientation • Culture shift

• Collaborative input on One-Stop design and purpose. • Empowering experience.

Deploy An All-Hands-On-Deck Approach To The Work • Establish clear roles for local government officials, emergency service providers,

and school personnel • Train ambassadors to be familiarized with the “Menu of Services Available” and

the methods to contact the “One Stop” intake system. • Establish regular communication, training and collaboration opportunities for

service providers and volunteers. • Ensure all service providers (government, schools, counselors, social workers,

criminal justice system) are working on a common intake and referral methodology, vocabulary, and protocols.

• Begin work on common data sharing and related efforts to easily support clients between various programs.

• Help ensure service providers follow similar crisis intervention protocols. • Ensure service providers utilize coordinated reporting and tracking methods.

National Institutes for Health, czbLLC, West Coast Poverty Center at the University of Washington, 3

Mathmatica Policy Research, The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, Washington State’s work on Best Practices in State and Local Coordination Research, An evidence-based approach to organization evaluation and change in human service organizations evaluation and program planning by Schalock, Lee, Verdugo, Swat, Claes, van Loon, and Lee.

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Focus On Helping People Change Their Lives. • Administrators and recipients are partners in a “life-changing experience.” • Emphasizing dignity and respect and goal setting. • Team approach to coordinate “casework” among service providers. • Address the integrated needs of children and their families.

Create A System That Is Trusted And Credible. • Institute and enforce robust job search and work requirements. • Enforce existing sanctions for violation of program requirements. • Increase agency accountability and improve program management.

Make Sure The Resulting Welfare System Is Flexible. • Enhancing eligibility requirements to ensure recipients also work to help

themselves. • Ensuring eligibility requirements and program end points don’t discourage

people from earning more and rising out of poverty. • Discouraging enrollment through more effective use of diversion programs. • Institute more robust job training, search and work requirements. • Impose stricter time limits on length of services. • Enact tougher sanctions for violation of program requirements.

Governance Must Be Coordinated. • Develop a governance model that brings all programs from social services,

courts, human services and schools together on a regular basis to set goals and share information.

• Establish common metrics and goals for human service programs. • Establish common metrics and goals for school-based programs help identify

best practices between school districts. • Undertake team building and capacity building efforts so that counselors, case-

workers and the like can share, collaborate and learn from each other. • Establish a team to devise a new intake approach. • Establish a team to devise guidelines to help coordinate case management. • Establish a team to develop priorities and plans for data coordination and

sharing between programs, starting with the easiest information to share. Identify disclosure and other legal documents that clients can sign to authorize the sharing of information.

• Establish a team to develop advocacy goals and priorities to improve the state and federal guidelines of relevant programs.

• Develop a model, test, refine and then roll-out a system of community-based intake centers utilizing a range of partners from non-profits to schools to faith and other community organizations.

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Focus on Youth and Schools Children in poverty deserve support more than any others. First, because they are not at fault for their economic standing and should not be expected to solve it. Second, because helping them rise out of poverty will reduce the instances of poverty in the future which benefits them and the entire community.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services maintains a database of effective and proven youth programs. From extensive efforts of others such as the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, American Honda, and the WK Kellogg Foundation, much is known. From Home Visiting, pre-K, mentoring, pregnancy prevention and a range of other programs, youth policy is an area where there are extensive evidence-based programs to follow.

Effective programs don’t always deliver immediate results, but they do produce results, and provided Oswego has the patience and focus to carry them out with fidelity, good results can materialize in Oswego County.

These are programs that have been proven to help youth around a range of topics. As Oswego County re-imagines its focus on its youth, it must first start with an iron-clad commitment to follow evidence-based practices that are able to help move children forward.

Improving literacy rates in early elementary school, decreasing teen pregnancy as well as early childhood programs that reduce toxic stress from poverty on a child’s brain during sensitive times of development are all areas that deserve focus.

This means that much loved programs, if they do not have evidence behind them for impact on school success or other metrics, need to be re-evaluated against other programs that may have greater impact. Resources are not endless, so a focus on evidence-based practice is essential.

Oswego County should and can be place that nurtures and develops children who are happy, healthy, self-confident, considerate and well-rounded, and able to live up to their fullest potential. While there are important efforts, like teen pregnancy prevention, that have have quick results, other youth initiatives will require Oswego to take a longer term view of its progress. A 15 year plan with annual benchmarks, progress tracking and regular review and refinement is recommended. This cohort strategy requires the long-view, but it helps break out of the constant cycle of crisis and instead focus on year-to-year progress and improvement.

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Governance And Expectations Must Be Aligned. • 15 Year Planning

• School districts should agree on a system to regularly report on the progress of students, especially those in poverty so that they can review difference, collect and share those “best practices.” This system then needs to be created.

• School districts should develop a series of annual targets for student progress over 15 years that start with earlier grades and ultimately that cover pre-k and every school year. This effort should be designed to track students throughout their academic career. The objective is to create ladder to success for children with appropriate interventions targeted when children are not moving up to the next rung on the ladder fast enough.

• A countywide governing structure should be developed to help school districts and programs that serve youth coordinate goals, metrics and training.

• School and county officials should review whether there is a role for a Superintendent of Superintendents who can help coordinate, encourage and facilitate best practices.

• School districts should work with human service programs to devise ways to share information as much as possible to help coordinate the needs of their students.

• Lifetime Relationships • Oswego should adopt the goal of giving every child in poverty a long-term

school and community-based adult contact that can follow them through their academic career.

• Schools should keep track of each student’s consistent adult contact(s). • Schools should report on the number of children that have consistent,

engaged school or community-based adult contacts that have been in place for multiple years.

• Prevention • Oswego should establish a county-wide teen pregnancy prevention initiative

that works in coordination with the schools and charge it with following best practices to reduce teen pregnancy in the County. The initiative would identify and promote every existing program that works to deter teen pregnancy. Gather data needed to further promote and fund them, especially those that are working the best.

• Collaboration • Counselors should be given opportunities to coordinate with human service

case workers to establish common intake, referral and crisis management systems.

• Promote collaborations that will facilitate a “One Stop and No Wrong Door, Multi-generational” care system.

• Develop a work group to develop and implement a 15 year plan to help children rise out of poverty with clear metrics, goals and progress tracking.

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• Career Planning • Mix goal-setting and career-track planning into the normal curriculum

starting in elementary school. • Develop “Career Ladder Maps.” • Promote business tours and job fairs at County schools to let children know

about local career opportunities. • Track and encourage technical certificate attainment by students to help

develop students prepared for the Oswego workforce. Ensure certificates are aligned with Oswego workforce needs.

• Work with businesses to align training at CiTi, One Stop and Colleges to their workplace.

• Develop and fund apprenticeships, on the job training and internship opportunities.

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Prioritize Community Development As demonstrated in focus groups and the civic participation that supported the development of this report, it is known that Oswego County residents want to help reduce poverty. To that end, mechanisms need to be developed to enable that to happen in consecutive ways and at scale. It will be useful to develop a system of public outreach to facilitate the “One Stop and No Wrong Door” collaboration among government, schools, and faith organizations to enhance human services delivery and strengthen communities. During the development of this report, much energy was also directed to the transportation challenges in Oswego County that those in crisis face. Developing an urban transportation system in a rural area is very difficult. Yet, there is a need to improve access to services as some families miss appointments and don’t avail themselves of help because of transportation. To address these realities, a focus on local points of contact for services — all that strategically feed into the proposed One- Stop system — is suggested.

Develop Community Participation Opportunities. • Implement an Ambassador Program to provide community mentors and

guides that can help support residents throughout the County. • Develop, test and then roll-out community intake centers utilizing school, faith

and other partners to bring services to the residents that need them. • Train a first group of mentors to work in the community. • Develop metrics and tracking of the work of mentors and ambassador’s to evaluate

these efforts and refine them over time. • Encourage and track the participation of adults in youth programs. Give

recognition to communities/neighborhoods that have high levels of participation.

Develop A Local Version Of The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) To Rebuild Infrastructure

• Develop projects based on Community needs. • Based on project needs, generate funding to create on the job training programs,

community service projects or apprenticeship programs. • Find ways to get the community involved and promoting specific projects. • Find ways to recognize or reward participants. • Creatively tie packages of additive benefits to CCC projects, wages, and do so

through a marriage of LDS Bishop’s Storehouse approaches and those deployed by organizations like Las Artes in Tucson, Arizona, Youth Radio in Oakland, the Eagle Rock School in Estes Park, and the Living Classrooms Foundation in Baltimore.

Increase community pride, increase property values, encourage property ownership.

• Develop a county-wide housing plan to address the complexities of stabilizing weak areas in Fulton and Oswego while aiming for a supply of affordable housing.

• Accelerate efforts to create and operate a County Land Bank, and engage town and village officials in associated planning processes.

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Build a Culture of Constant Improvement There were a number of areas of policy brought up during this process that require additional thought, work and evaluation. Previous notes speak to what needs to be created or modified or otherwise improved. In contrast, the following represents areas where more research and consideration are needed. It is important not to get distracted by research such that the above actions items are not taken. The following are questions that merit additional attention:

How Can Oswego County Change Its Welfare System To Break Generational Poverty And Encourage Independence?

• Embracing a genuine shift in approach so that human service professionals and those in crisis are partners will be tremendously beneficial. So too will tying benefits (especially well crafted packages of meaningful extras) whenever possible to tangible means for those in crisis to contribute. Making this a joint effort will help make the relationships formed in the process potentially life-changing. Evaluating the impacts of these shifts towards partnership and mutuality will be a worthy area for constant improvement.

How Can the County Modify Program Benefits So That Doing Better Isn’t Discouraged By Abrupt Changes To Benefits?

• The best intended policies and programs can unintentionally undermine progress towards independence. When a good employee tells his employer that “he doesn’t want to take an extra 8 hours of work and become employed full time because he will lose benefits,” that is a policy that should be looked at.

• Evaluating the extent to which the range of policies and programs in use serve to incentivize or weaken progress towards work and independence will be very valuable.

How Can A Rural County Like Oswego Build A Transportation System That Supports Those In Poverty At A Reasonable Cost?

• Rural counties across the nation are challenged by the great distances imposed on struggling households to find and hold onto work, attend school and access training, and obtain help when in crisis. Researching what works in places like Maine (Coastal Maine Enterprises in Wiscasset), and Kentucky (Mountain Association for Community Economic Development in Berea) will have long term value to Oswego County.

How Can Mental Health And Substance Abuse Systems Be Re-Imagined? • Perhaps the single biggest hole in the County’s network of well-intentioned

systems is the glaring absence of a meaningful mental health system with tools for tackling addiction that is accessible to those in crisis. Researching the ways other challenged counties are addressing this will be very valuable.

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Best Practices

System Change According to recent research (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2992332/), “[f]ragmentation presents one of the biggest service delivery challenges for a range of human service delivery systems.” This is true since multiple actors typically serve the same client. Simply pooling efforts and resources, though, was found to be “insufficient for coordination.” Successful collaboration, this study found, means that care is “delivered in a consistent manner” with everyone “on the same page,” and that it is “continuous or seamless” as clients transition to different levels of care. Case management services are a key way to achieve this kind of service integration.

According to another analysis on program collaboration, integrating and coordinating health and human services programs “can yield significant gains” (http://aspe.hhs.gov/ report/examples-promising-practices-integrating-and-coordinating-eligibility-enrollment- and-retention-human-services-and-health-programs-under-affordable-care-act). Effective strategies include allowing one program to determine eligibility based on information gathered through the intake process for another program, or even jointly developed and operated eligibility infrastructure. These strategies save on administrative costs (as they avoid duplication) and also ensure that “more consumers can receive benefits for which they qualify.”

The following are additional resources to guide the creation of a central intake system and gearing data collection to improve coordination between providers:

• http://www.clarityhumanservices.com/2014/12/best-practices-data-collection- centralized-intake-and-coordinated-assessment/

• http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/Page/Name/integrating-evidence- based-clinical-and-community-strategies-to-improve-health

The following describes effective case management services: • http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/~/media/publications/PDFs/

labor/ case_management_brief.pdf

The following is a searchable database of best practices in the area of substance abuse and mental health:

• http://www.nrepp.samhsa.gov/

The following summarizes best and promising human service practices: • http://www.workfirst.wa.gov/reexam/reexamdocs/Introuction.pdf

See (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014971891400038X) for approaches and “real life examples” for “how human service organizations can use an evidence-based, self-assessment approach to organization evaluation to facilitate continuous quality improvement and organization change.”

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Schools All Oswego County school districts must share the common goal to nurture children who are happy, healthy, self-confident, considerate, well-rounded, and able to live up to their fullest potential as constructive citizens. All county schools must have as an explicit goal to graduate healthier students who are more prepared for work or college. All school districts in the county must take a deliberate, comprehensive, unified approach to assuring those students (and their families) who are most at risk for not graduating are mentored and supported through deliberate, collaborative interventions proven to increase their educational success.

• Make Pre-K available to all children • Emphasize “reading at grade level” through school career • Focus on A, B, Cs – Attendance, Behavior, and Course Failure • Engage parents in their children’s education and school • Focus on confidence building and goal-setting – The 15 Year Plan • Increase collaboration between Oswego County school districts and create

more opportunities for sharing best practices between them.

The following is a guide to school based health care to support children’s mental health needs:

• http://www.schoolhealthcenters.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/NASBHC.CSH- Mental-Health.pdf

The following are searchable databases of evidence-based youth programs: • http://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/oah-initiatives/

teen_pregnancy/db/tpp- searchable.html • http://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/oah-initiatives/teen_pregnancy/db/ • http://www.del.wa.gov/publications/elac-qris/docs/Best_Practices_D3.pdf

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Health Care Roughly half of Oswego County’s struggling households face not just financial burdens but health-related burdens as well. Substance abuse, physical or mental health problems, and/or cognitive deficits stand between these householders and any hopes of employment or long-term financial independence. The county needs to build the capacity to help individuals address these challenges. The follow contains a guide to the best evidence-based practices in the field of substance abuse and mental health:

• http://www.samhsa.gov/ebp-web-guide/substance-abuse-prevention

The follow contains a guide to system change in the field of mental health for children in poverty:

• http://www.nccp.org/publications/pdf/text_1016.pdf

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Closing Statement Through the process of developing this report, the Community Health and Poverty Reduction Task Force has taken the first steps of an enormous self-help project. The results, if achieved as envisioned, will begin to reduce poverty and government dependency in the County, and have the potential to increase the quality of life for all residents. However, success will require an all-hands-on-deck approach from the community. Everyone interested in results — anyone with expertise, experience or simply the energy to help implement any aspect of the action items recommended — is strongly encouraged to join the effort.

Lasting impacts can be achieved by mobilizing every ounce of effort and good-will the community has to offer. It took many years to create the problems of institutionalized and generational poverty in the County, and it will take focused work to turn things around. To it's credit, Oswego County is headed in the right direction.

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