WEB SITE INFO: OCT. 96



WEB SITE INFO: OCT. 96

The Community Support Skill Standards Project @ HSRI

Background:

The Community Support Skill Standards (CSSS) Project, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, has developed standards defining the contemporary skills, behaviors and knowledge that human service workers in direct service use in their jobs every day. The field of human services is rapidly changing in response to mandates to provide more individualized, community-based services and with the advent of managed care. As a result programs and staff knowledge and skills must change to reflect the demands of the new environment.

Human service workers must know how to work with service participants and families to weave together a vast array of community resources, specialized assistance and natural supports to promote well-being, empowerment and community membership. The Community Support Skill Standards provide a new and comprehensive framework of skills that incorporate the changes and values shaping the field, in a competency based format.

How will the CSSS help? Individuals who rely on services and their families will receive more effective and responsive support from workers who master these standards and will know what skills competent workers should possess. Employers can design their training programs to reflect these nationally validated competencies to ensure productive and effective employees. Educators will have a window into the knowledge and skill sets most valued by employers, thereby making curriculum more responsive to the workplace. Workers will enjoy enhanced job status and recognition of their competencies and will have greater opportunities for career advancement by mastering nationally recognized standards.

History of the CSSS Project:

In 1993, the Human Service Research Institute (HSRI), In collaboration with the Education Development Center (EDC) received a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to develop practice standards (skill standards) for direct service positions in the human services industry. This grant was one of 22 projects funded to develop skill standards in a number of important national industries including bioscience, healthcare, manufacturing, retail and electronics (22 industries received grants in total). HSRI is a nonprofit firm with a national reputation in research and policy analysis in the field of disabilities. Education Development Center (EDC) is an international nonprofit education research and development organization.

The following summary describes the recent changes in the human services field that dictate the need for skill standards, the purpose of the project, definition of the training occupation, the project methodology, and a listing of project collaborators.

Introduction and Background:

Since the 1960's, a number of changes in both the locus of human service delivery and the increasing advocacy role of people who use human services and family members have placed new demands on human service providers. Foremost among these changes has been the shift of service delivery from large centralized institutions to smaller, decentralized community based sites, the increasing demands of participants and family members for personalized services that address individuals' unique needs, and increased inclusion of persons with disabilities into mainstream society. These shifts have generated the development of "community support systems", designed to meet participants' basic living needs and to promote access to a range of services to enhance people's abilities to live in and participate in the community.

The shift from an institutional to a community focus requires a drastic reconfiguration of staffing patterns and staff training. Regardless of the type of human service needed (mental health, child welfare, substance abuse, etc.) services are increasingly being delivered by a cadre of community support workers. These individuals require training in an array of new skills in order to implement the profound changes that are shaping the way we think about services for people with disabilities.

Some of the hallmarks of change taking place in the human services are:

* Focus on the participant and on participant empowerment

* Shift to person centered planning processes to help participants achieve more desirable futures

* Development of an integrated approach that stresses collaboration across stakeholder groups

* A focus on the gifts and contributions of people to encourage their full citizenship

* A strong emphasis on the inclusion of children and adults with significant support needs in their communities

* A flexible use of resources and funding mechanisms

* The downsizing of organizations and a concomitant deemphasis on hierarchy

* A view of the helping relationship as a partnership between worker and participant

These changes are coupled with general changes in the U.S. work place as documented by the Department of Labor

* Organizational structures that encourage staff participation, teamwork and communication system that flow up and down chain of command and across functions

* Integration of work as a whole job rather than discrete tasks

* Encouragement of job flexibility and rotation

* Supervision that emphasizes coaching rather than discipline

* Encouragement of creative solutions to problems and openness to conflict and disagreement

* Available formal and informal education programs

Project Rationale and Purpose:

Traditional training programs have not taught human service workers, especially those workers without college degrees, the range of skills needed to provide services to a variety of client groups, in varying settings within a community support system. There is a consensus in the field that current preparation of many human services workers is grossly inadequate. The poor preparation, and the resulting lack of fit between attitudes and competencies of these workers and the demands of their jobs, is one major cause of extremely high turnover rates in the industry.

The development of skill standards is recognized by all stakeholders in the industry as an important next step in improving services to participants, increasing the marketability of workers, and improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the industry. The federal Departments of Education and Labor have provided support to coalitions of employers, educators, and labor unions to develop national skill standards for a number of industries (22 industries as of July 1993). These coalitions have analyzed occupations, requiring less than a baccalaureate degree, to create standards for what workers must know and be able to do in contemporary work settings.. These standards will be used as output criteria for the development of career education programs in secondary and post-secondary schools, and work places throughout the country. The National Skill Standards Board, recently authorized by federal legislation, is charged with the goal of shaping and integrating a national system of voluntary skill standards.

The purpose of the Community Support Skill Standards project was to develop industry-wide skill standards that meet the needs of employers throughout the human services industry and increase both horizontal and vertical career opportunities for human services personnel. The resulting skill standards are performance-based and reasoning skills, work activities, values and attitudes, and knowledge sets that lead to effectiveness in human service roles. The standards include performance indicators validated at the expert performance level.

Project Activities:

The development of industry-wide skill standards was not be a new task for the HSRI/EDC team. It does however, for the first time, represent a national effort in which all parts of the human services industry was involved and engaged. The project activities were guided by a team of national stakeholder representatives of major sectors in human services delivery and education (the Technical Committee). Working with this Technical Committee and it's working groups, the project team developed skill standards by analyzing tasks found in a range of occupations across a variety of employers and work settings, developing a master list of commonly shared tasks, analyzing the competencies required and attaching outcome criteria (norming), and clustering the competencies and tasks into a standard format that demonstrates the integration of higher and lower-order cognitive processes and skills. Grouped together, these skill standards will provide a shared, powerful foundation for education and training. Taken alone, or in clusters, they will provide the baseline for a variety of education and training modules useful to employers, professional associations, secondary and post-secondary schools and labor.

To develop the industry-wide skill standards, HSRI has assembled an extraordinary consortium of partners for its Technical Committee representing employers, labor, professional associations, and participant and family organizations. Consortium partners include the Consortium of Citizens with Disabilities, the National Assembly of Voluntary Health and Social Welfare Organizations, the American Association of Community Colleges, the Council for Standards for Human Service Education, the National Association of State Directors of Vocational/Technical Education, the National Organization for Human Service Education, the Service Employees International Union, the Child Welfare League of America, the Arc National Headquarters, the International Association of Psychosocial Rehabilitation Services, the National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services, and the National Association of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Counselors Certification Commission. These partners were responsible for overseeing and performing much of the work involved in the development of skill standards.

Strategies Used to Develop Skill Standards included:

* Identification of the current and anticipated knowledge and skill requirements for people in entry and mid-level direct care human service occupations in the entire range of industry work settings

* Development of standards for skills whose achievement demonstrate mastery of the required bodies of knowledge and competencies

* Validation of Standards by relevant stakeholders including representatives from labor, the provider community, educators, human service workers, and participants and family members.

* Demonstration of the Community Support Skill Standards as benchmarks for the creation of high quality courses of study, curricula, and as the framework for teacher development programs in secondary and post-secondary education

* Dissemination of the information produced by this project to educators, employers, labor unions, participant and family organizations, and other relevant parties.

Scope of the Community Support Worker:

This project focused on those community support workers who provide direct help within a community setting to individuals, families or groups of individuals with extraordinary support needs. An extraordinary support need is defined as any need other than income maintenance or health care, that cannot be met by available natural supports. The "XX" in the graph below indicates the target occupations.

| |Community |Institutional |

|Normal Population |NA |NA |

|Vulnerable Population |XX |NA |

As a result of these parameters, a number of human service work roles have been excluded from consideration including health care staff, administrative personnel, custodial or security personnel and intake workers. The occupational clusters and functions that are encompassed within the larger training occupation of community support worker included:

Community Service Broker: This category includes a range of coordinative and organizing functions including service brokering/case management and family support.

Social/Interpersonal/Behavioral Supports: This catagory includes a range of functions directed at teaching skills and/or providing therapeutic assistance and includes such areas as early intervention and training in activities of daily living.

Residential Supports: This functional cluster includes a range of activities that support people in their homes such as live-in support and residential management.

Personal Care and Assistance: This functional cluster includes all of those activities that involve personal support for an individual in the home, on the job and in the community.

Employment Supports: This catagory includes a variety of job-related supports including job coaching and mentoring and job development.

Leisure/Recreation Supports: This category includes a range of support personnel who function in leisure setting including leisure-time assistance.

Some Specific Human Service Occupations which Share a Common Core of Competencies: (this is not intended as an exhaustive list)

* Advocate

* Assistant Counselor

* Case Manager

* Case Manager Aide

* Child Care Worker

* Companion

* Counselor

* Early Intervention Worker

* Family Support Worker

* Foster Parent

* Group Home Worker

* Housing Specialist

* Instructional Aide

* Outpatient Worker

* Outreach Worker

* Peer Facilitator

* Personal Care Assistant

* Residential Counselor

* Service Coordinator

* Sheltered Workshop Worker

* Shelter Worker

* Substance Abuse Counselor

* Supported Work Coach

* Teacher Aide

* Vocational Counselor

* Volunteer

Skill Standard Project National Technical Committee List:

Mary DiGiovanni, The Council for Standards in Human Service Education

Aase Righter, American Network of Community Options & Resources (ANCOR)

Kimberly Kubiak, National Association of State Directors of Voc/Tech Education

Paul Marchand, Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities

Richard Berkobien, The Arc National Headquarters

James McKinney, American Association of Community Colleges

Margaret Piesert, Service Employees International Union

Gordon A. Raley, National Assembly of Voluntary Social Welfare Organizations

Franklin M. Rother, National Organization for Human Services Education (NOHSE)

Darvin Hirsch, National Assoc. of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services

Bruce Lorenz, National Assoc. of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Counselor Certification

Dianne Weinstein, International Association of Psychosocial Rehabilitation Services

Maureen Leighton, The Child Welfare League of America

(linkages - see files on disk)

Skill Standards Project Summary:

Project Updates:

Technical Committee List: (Complete version)

The Soul of Our Work:

Skill Standards Summary:

Hypertext Resource Guide:

Skill Standards Demonstration Project: (Executive Summary)

Skill Standards Validation Results:

Survey of Human Service Higher Education Programs:

Survey Results of Skill Standards Receptivity Survey:

Building an Integrated Workforce Development System Through National Skill Standards

A project of the Human Services Research Institute funded by the National Skill Standards Board

The proposed project will provide workforce development professionals throughout the United States with critical information about National Skill Standards and the ways in which they can be used in the context of assisting people in becoming employed, especially displaced workers (at-risk youth, people moving off welfare, etc.). It will also demonstrate a collaborative process that integrates workforce development activities and mobilizes key actors in the community (e.g., employers, trainers, job developers, and participants) through the vehicle of National Skill Standards.

Proposed Activities:

1. Demonstrate the utility of the National Skill Standards in health care and in human services in building the capacity of employment and training agencies, educational institutions and other community based organizations to support displaced workers and out of school youth in finding jobs and vocational interests. This activity will be accomplished through the development of a local partnership in Massachusetts concerned with the health and human services workforce.

2. Provide examples of best practices demonstrating industry involvement and utilization of skills standards in general workforce development services and in training of displaced workers and out of work youth. This product will feature relevant activities completed by the 22 National Skill Standards project initiatives and other exemplary efforts.

3. Inform One Stop Career centers about the National Skill Standards projects and products and provide useful tools for career exploration activities using the knowledge and results of the twenty two industries developing national standards (such as, industry and occupational profiles, sources of training, descriptions of exemplary curricula and programs, recommended training endorsement criteria. content of skill standards, etc.)

4. Develop an analytical narrative summarizing the Community Support Skill Standards project including decisions regarding definition of the occupational cluster addressed, structure of the resulting standards and assessment approaches within the high performance workplace.

The following is a description of methods associated with activity #1, the Massachusetts Partnership for Health and Human Service Skill Standards.

With the assistance of Project Staff coalition partners will:

• Become familiar with the National Skill Standards Board and mission, the National Skill Standard Pilot Projects and the potential uses of National Skill Standards in each partner’s respective work role and mission;

• Use the cross functional skills common to both the Health Care and Human Services National Skill Standards as guides to strengthen basic work place readiness training programs offered by coalition members;

• Use the Health Care and Human Services Skill Standards as tools to guide participants to career directions in health and human services;

• Using the Health Care and Human Services Skill Standards as benchmarks, examine curriculum currently used by coalition partners to identify gaps in relevant content;

• Examine exemplary curricula and programs in the Human Services and Health Care field and assist/advise project staff in modifying this curricula to meet partner needs and better reflect the health and human services skill standards.

Regional Planning Activities

• Summarize challenges in serving the region’s population of out of work youth and displaced workers;

• Identify the workforce needs of Health Care and Human Services employers within the region and correlate these with competencies described in the Health Care and Human Services National Skill Standards to identify entry level criteria of local employers;

• Identify human services and health care educational and training programs that could help prepare the targeted population to meet the entry level requirements of health care and human services employers and devise strategies to facilitate access to these programs;

• Develop a certificate of mastery of entry level criteria devised by the partnership that could be conferred by qualified training /education programs and that would be recognized by partnership members;

• Identify gaps in availability of health care and human services education to meet employer or participant needs and devise strategies to address these gaps;

• Devise strategies to assist regional health and human services educators and workforce development trainers who are not part of the partnership to benchmark their curricula to the Human Services and Health Care Standards and to confer the certificate of mastery;

• Develop plans with partnership members and other regional human services and health care employers regarding training apprenticeships and employment of trained displaced workers and out of work youth;

• Develop strategies to reach out to displaced workers and out of work youth to interest them in health and human services careers;

• Compile these activities in a unified work force development plan addressing the Health and Human Services industries.

The Partnership for Healthcare & Human Service Skill Standards

Partnership List - November 1996

|Betty Jane King |VNA Care Plus, Inc. |Cambridge, MA |

|Elisa Volardo-Nolan |Vinfen Corporation |Cambridge, MA |

|Jennifer Hight |Bay Cove Human Services |Boston, MA |

|Mark Gyurina |Jewish Vocational Services |Boston, MA |

|Rose Quinn |Metrowest Ctr. for Indep. Living |Framingham, MA |

|Mike Delia |East End House |Cambridge, MA |

|Ruth Harrigan |Advocates, Inc. |Framingham, MA |

|Mary Moorhouse |Aguirre International |Bethesda, MD |

|Barry Schwartz |Vinfen Corporation |Cambridge, MA |

|Debbie Hirshom |Newton-Wellesley Hospital |Newton, MA |

|Brian Donnelly |Urban College of Boston |Boston, MA |

|Charna Heiko |Urban College of Boston |Boston, MA |

|Eugene DuBois |Urban College of Boston |Boston, MA |

|Chet Roskey, |Framingham State College |Framingham, MA |

|Mary Muir |Dept. of Employment & Training |Waltham, MA |

|Cynthia Butters |Middlesex Community College |Bedford, MA |

|Dolly Raja |Dept. of Employment & Training |Waltham, MA |

|Ronald Fitzgerald |Minuteman Technical/Scientific H.S. |Lexington, MA |

|John Niles |MA School-to-Work Office |Boston, MA |

|Kathleen Flynn |MA School-to-Work Office |Boston, MA |

|Barbara Rosenbaum |Jewish Vocational Services |Boston, MA |

|Pamela Edington |Middlesex Community College |Bedford, MA |

|Robert Semler |Department of Labor |Boston, MA |

|Mary DiGiovanni |Council for Standards in H.S. Educ. |Haverill, MA |

|Eddie Sanabria |Department of Mental Retardation |Boston, MA |

|Walter Swett |Quinsigamond Community College |Worcester, Ma |

|William Kiernan |Institute for Community Inclusion |Boston, MA |

|Margaret Van Gelder |Institute for Community Inclusion |Boston, MA |

|Ed Maloy |Service Employee International Union |Cambridge, MA |

|Philip Campbell |Department of Mental Retardation |Boston, MA |

|Michael Kan |Exec. Office for Admin. & Finance |Boston, MA |

|Susan Darnell |Horace Mann Educational Associates |Franklin, MA |

|Jeff Handler |South Middlesex Opportunity Council |Framingham, MA |

|John Keegan |Walnut Street Center |Somerville, MA |

|Gailanne Reey |Coalition for Competence |Boston, MA |

|Tom Ford |The Work Place |Boston, MA |

|Francis Currie |Department of Labor |Boston, MA |

|Judith Klimkiewicz |Department of Education |Malden, MA |

|Carol Collin |Advocates, Inc. |Framingham, Ma |

|Janice Ngau |MA Rehabilitation Commission |Natick, MA |

|Floyd Alwon |Albert E. Trischman Center |Needham, MA |

The Partnership for Healthcare & Human Service Skill Standards

Project Staff - November 1996

HSRI Project Staff:

Valerie J. Bradley, HSRI President and Principle Investigator

Marianne Taylor, Research Associate and Project Director

Ralph Warren, Research Associate

Julie Silver, Research Associate

Barbara Raab, Research Associate

Hedi Bylicki, Research Assistant and ILEX Fellow from Germany

Pamela Kramer, Administrative Coordinator

Project Consultants:

Amy Hewitt, University of Minnesota, Institute on Community Inclusion

Sri Ananda, WestEd, San Francisco

Sylvia Beville, Metro Southwest Regional Employment Board

Nancy Jackson, New England Consortium for Families & Youth

NSSB Project:

Partnership Activities:

Partnership List: (Complete version)

Demonstration Activities:

Best Practices Monograph:

Guide to the 22 Skill Standards Projects for Work Force Development Personnel:

The Community Support Skill Standards Project

Key Project Staff:

Valerie J. Bradley, HSRI President and Principle Investigator

Marianne Taylor, Research Associate and Project Director

Ralph Warren, Research Associate

Julie Silver, Research Associate

Barbara Raab, Research Associate

Hedi Bylicki, Research Assistant and ILEX Fellow from Germany

Pamela Kramer, Administrative Coordinator

Current Project Collaborators:

Sri Ananda, WestEd - San Francisco, CA

Sylvia Beville, Metro Southwest Regional Employment Board - Norwood, MA

Amy Hewitt, University of Minnesota, Inst. for Community Inclusion - Minneapolis, MN

Nancy Jackson, New England Consortium for Families & Youth - Boxboro, MA

Previous Project Collaborators:

Judith Leff, Education Development Center, Inc. - Newton, MA

Joyce Malyn-Smith, Education Development Center, Inc. - Newton, MA

William Ebenstein, Consortium for the Study of Disability at CUNY - New York City, NY

Marcus Lieberman, Responsive Methodology - Alburquerque, NM

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