Congratulations to Catalyst Life Services’ Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) team for their work toward earning high marks on their 4th Quarter Report on program performance measures.
This dynamic program serves nearly 200 Richland County youth, ages 14-24, with barriers to their employment and educational goals, with an emphasis on out-of-school youth with multiple barriers, some of those barriers might include youth who are:
- Basic skills deficient
- An English language learner
- Offenders or subject to the juvenile or adult justice system
- Homeless or a runaway
- In foster care or who have aged out of foster care
- Are pregnant or parenting
- Have a diagnosed disability
- Youth who require additional assistance to complete an education program or obtain and maintain long-term employment
In serving these youth participants, staff members on this program emphasize a number of program elements individualized to the participant and designed to remove or minimize these barriers to the youth participant’s goals and increase employment and educational placement outcomes.
In the WIOA program, measuring success comes in the form of five specific outcome measures, of which the Catalyst team “exceeded” or “significantly exceeded” four of these items.
One such measure of which the Catalyst team was particularly proud was that 79.4% (77/97) of eligible participants achieved a measurable skills gain, which is accomplished when an individual achieves one of the following:
- Improvement of at least one educational functioning level
- Passing 5 credit hours or more on the most recent progress report
- Graduating from a secondary or post-secondary education program
- Passage of an exam to attain a credential such as CDL/STNA
For this particular measure, the statewide rate was 28.8%.
These performance measures are reported at the state level quarterly and dispensed to the areas locally where the program receives governance and oversight from a local Workforce Development Board comprised of representatives from government entities, non-profit organizations, and private for profit businesses.
If you know anyone interested in this program contact Stephanie Jakubick at 419-774-2250 or at jakubick@catalystlifeservices.org
