Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative: e-Update

Gary Stangler

In this issue of the e-Update, you'll learn more about the life of one of the founders of the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative: Kent "Oz" Nelson, the former chairman and CEO of United Parcel Service who helped steer this foundation from the beginning and who very recently retired from our board. As you'll read below, he's a most remarkable man who has spent his life making a difference for others. I truly miss his guidance and inspiration.

In this issue, we're also pleased to tell you about progress in educational outcomes for our Opportunity Passport™ participants. We know that nationally only about half of youth in foster care finish high school. Improving educational attainment is one of our Initiative's five main outcome goals for young people transitioning from foster care. Our most recent data show an increase in Opportunity Passport™ participants with high school diplomas or GEDs as well as an increase in the number going on for post-secondary education. We should encourage innovative approaches, such as the new DREAM Academy in Wayne County, Mich., that help youth in foster care finish high school.

Sincerely,

Gary Stangler signature

Mentoring and Other Supports Increase Education Gains
for Youth in Foster Care

Stacey Kline (left) with her mentee, Alicia.

Stacey Kline's father was in prison, and her mother was unable to care for her. For most of her life, she lived with her aunt but has been fending for herself since age 14. Stacey worked two jobs in high school and often was homeless and without food. She attended seven or eight high schools in Detroit and finally graduated in April 2003 from a Job Corps high school completion program.

"I've faced so many obstacles," says Stacey, an Opportunity Passport ™ participant in Wayne County (Detroit), Mich. "I didn't have any confidence or self-esteem. I was beaten down as a child. I didn't think I was good enough to attend college."

Today, Stacey is 22 and attends Wayne County Community College District, and credits her mentor, Lynda J. Naylor, student services administrator and counselor, with helping her to get and stay on track. Wayne County Community College hired her to work in the college's student services department. "Mrs. Naylor took me under her wing and has helped me so much," says Stacey. "It's so good to know I have someone who genuinely cares, supports and loves me with all my flaws."

Because she knows first-hand the obstacles older youth in foster care must overcome to get an education, Stacey today serves as a mentor for a current high school student. It's all part of a new program started by the Michigan Youth Opportunities Initiative called the DREAM Academy, which stands for Dreams Realized through Education and Mentoring.

Initiatives by Jim Casey sites, such as the DREAM Academy, are aimed at improving education outcomes by young adults aging out of foster care. New data shows encouraging progress in that critical outcome area. Among Opportunity Passport™ participants not attending high school, the percentage with a high school diploma or GED rose from 80 percent to 89 percent, according to surveys the participants completed between 2002 and 2006. Almost all participants with a high school diploma or GED were enrolled in or completed education or training beyond high school. That increased from 91 percent of Opportunity Passport™ participants to 93 percent, the surveys show.

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Oz Nelson's Legacy: United Parcel Service CEO Delivered for
Youth in Foster Care

Kent Nelson
Kent "Oz" Nelson

In 1959, Kent "Oz" Nelson was close to graduating from Ball State University when he got a call from a new company in Indiana where two fraternity brothers had landed positions. A day after graduation, Nelson drove to Indianapolis and met with the sales manager who offered him a job on the spot, saying, "I understand you are a close friend of Lou and Charlie's, and if you are half the man they are, we would love to have you on board." Nelson was so stunned that he didn't even ask what the salary was: "I didn't look at it as a lifetime decision."

But it turned out to be just that – and more. The company getting started in Indiana was United Parcel Service. Two days after graduation, Nelson signed on as a sales and customer service rep in Kokomo, Indiana, and stayed with UPS for 43 years, moving from city to city and rising steadily through the ranks to become chairman and chief executive officer from November 1989 to January 1997.

He didn't stop there. Nelson continually has used his position as a national business leader to provide opportunities for disadvantaged, vulnerable young people. Among his many civic endeavors, he has served on the boards of the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative and its parent organization, the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Nelson retired from the Initiative's board last month and from the Casey foundation's board several months ago.

"What motivates Oz Nelson is a commitment to making a difference, and that making a difference requires giving credit to others, respecting the people on the ground doing the work, and helping people become more effective," said Gary Stangler, executive director of the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative. "For that, he brings his business skills to bear on measurement and accountability, so that we know if we are doing what we said we wanted to do, and know if we are making a real difference in people's lives. He wants people to be successful, and directs his energy to that. His fingerprints are all over the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative, as they are at the United Way of America, the Centers for Disease Control Foundation, and in countless education reform efforts around the country. Personally, he is one of the most wonderful men I have ever encountered, and I have profound respect for him."

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Jim Hoke Starts New Chapter as Initiative Chief Financial Officer

Jim Hoke

Jim Hoke sees many of his contemporaries retiring and hitting the links. After nearly 40 years managing the finances of numerous for-profit and nonprofit organizations, he has accepted a new position as chief financial officer for the Initiative. "This opportunity came up, and the more I learned, the more fascinated I became," says Hoke, who started in late November. "I really like the idea of being associated with an organization that is not only trying to change the system, but also is advocating for better services for young people who face so many obstacles."

Immediately prior to the Initiative, Hoke was chief financial officer at the United Cerebral Palsy of Greater St. Louis, where he worked for eight years. Before that, he was executive director of the St. Louis Association for Retarded Citizens and previously CFO and director of development at Goodwill. The early part of Hoke's career was spent in the for-profit sector where he held various domestic and international assignments in the finance sector of Monsanto, NCR and the bio-tech startup, Kinetic Systems.

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Jim Casey Investment Yields an 'Extremely Impressive' 6.5:1 Return

A new report says that the investment of funds by the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative in its demonstration sites has yielded an "extremely impressive return." In a report supported by the Initiative, the Cornerstone Consulting Group says that the Initiative's $3.9 million investment in its sites during the most recent program year yielded at least an additional $25 million. "For each Jim Casey dollar invested, sites have garnered in excess of $6.50," the report says.

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Emotional Support for Young Adults in Foster Care Most Needed,
New Study Says

A new study by Chapin Hall Center for Children shows that emotional support is the most needed – and missing – support for young adults participating in the Initiative's Opportunity Passport™. The study, commissioned by the Initiative, tries to examine the question: "How do we form family-like connections and supports for young people aging out of care when we have failed to do so while these same young people were in care?" To answer that question, author Gina Miranda Samuels conducted in-depth interviews with 29 Opportunity Passport™ participants to better understand what sort of supportive relationships and networks these youth do have and how these relationships serve as permanent family connections, or do not. Among the other key findings:

All of the participants have an existing support network, typically composed of adult biological, adoptive, foster family members and friends.
Supportive relationships with adults include child welfare professionals, though participants did not see those relationships as permanent, even though some wished that they were forever.
Loss was a theme in the stories of participants as they explained how they learned to cope with people coming in and out of their lives. Most expressed hope for permanence in relationships but weren't confident it would happen or that they had any control over it.

The study also makes important recommendations for the child welfare field:

Emotional support is an essential support among this population both while in care and in early adulthood. Emotional support should be considered an umbrella term that covers a range of supports such as formal mental health interventions, counseling or therapy, peer or co-facilitated counseling, support groups, a reconsidered role of case workers and foster parents, and the development of existing informal network members as emotional supports.
Child welfare practice should help young adults develop relational skills to sustain interpersonal connections. "This includes challenging the very notion of 'independent living' toward more interdependent and interrelated notions of healthy adulthood," the report says.
The role of biological family must be extended beyond that family's official or legal status in a child's permanency plan. Biological family remains psychologically present for participants despite their physical separation. Taking a family-centered approach which recognizes multiple family relationships, memberships, and affiliations could represent an important philosophical, policy, and practice shift.

This report will be available on our website in the near future.

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April 20-23, 2008. The National Indian Child Welfare Association will host its 26th annual Protecting Our Children National American Indian Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect conference in Minneapolis. For more information, visit www.nicwa.org/conference.

May 12-16, 2008. The National Foster Parent Association will host its 38th Annual Education Conference in Atlanta. For more information, visit http://www.nfpainc.org/content/?page=CONFERENCEINFO.

May 14-16, 2008. The National Resource Center for Youth Services at the University of Oklahoma will host the Pathways to Adulthood 2008, National Independent Living/Transitional Living Conference in Pittsburgh. For more information, visit http://www.nrcys.ou.edu/conferences.shtml.

June 7-10, 2008. The Court Appointed Special Advocates will host its 27th Annual National CASA Conference in Washington DC. For more information, visit http://www.casanet.org/conference/index.htm.

July 13-16, 2008. The Foster Family-based Treatment Association will host its 22nd Annual Conference on Treatment Foster Care in The Woodlands, Texas. For more information, visit, http://www.ffta.org/conference/.

September 15-17, 2008. The Child Welfare League of America is hosting a Western Region Training Conference in Portland. For more information, visit http://www.cwla.org/conferences/default.htm.

Daniel Memorial Institute logo September 2008. The Daniel Memorial Institute will host its 21st Annual National Independent Living Conference called "Growing Pains 2008" in Orlando. For More information, visit http://www.nilausa.org/upcomingn.htm.

2008 It's My Life Conference — Call for Presentations. The It's My Life conference takes place Oct. 31 to Nov. 2 in Hollywood, California. If you're interested in presenting a workshop, please submit your proposal by March 26.