Step 3: Adult-Centered Implementation
Student Support - Provide Social Support Services
Learners are vulnerable to a number of possible crises that can derail their efforts to stay in an adult learning or training program. Some of the most common challenges facing all adult learners have to do with their personal lives, such as the demands of work, the demands of family including the need for child care, secure and good quality housing, or reliable transportation. Low-income individuals are particularly vulnerable because they do not have enough income, assets, stability and reliable relationships to create a safety net (DCHD, MassCAP, & Commonwealth Corporation, 2003).
There are a number of ways to approach the provision of support services:
- Do It Yourself. Some organizations attempt to provide comprehensive, or “wrap around” services, largely on their own. The Instituto del Progreso Latino, for example, provides family literacy, after-school programs, voter registration, citizenship preparation, job search, counseling and child care at the center (Chenven, 2004). Providing such a broad range of services can be difficult when your primary organizational focus is training and skill development.
- Establish Peer Support. Another model is to develop a system for the learners to help each other. The STEP program in San Francisco hired “multi-lingual rank-and-file” workers to provide support services to the program participants. This model helps the learners feel more at ease while giving them access to someone who can help them through their challenges (Chenven, 2004).
- Establish Partnerships for Support Services. Rather than providing everything in-house, many organizations establish partnerships with social service agencies and other organizations who can provide the social supports that learners might need. In a 2002 study of job training and microenterprise organizations funded by the Levi Strauss Foundation, all of the interviewed organizations reported that they had established systems for referring clients for social service assistance. These organizations had found that developing relationships with social service organizations for the purposes of referrals is a much more efficient and effective strategy than trying to meet every social need internally (Klein-Collins, 2002).
Some colleges and other training providers combine the different approaches in order to best meet the needs of the program participants. Project Quest, for example, not only provides support for direct training activities, but also helps to subsidize transportation expenses to and from school. The organization then uses case managers to work directly with participants and help to address any problems that could keep the participants from completing the training program. Case managers leverage whatever resources they can to obtain the needed support services (Rademacher, 2002). The College of New Rochelle also utilizes multiple strategies to provide a wide range of support services to its students.
Related Organizational Example