Over the past year Cradle to Career (C2C) has had the opportunity and privilege to employ exceptional part-time team members. Our part-time team members include four data interns, a student specialist, and a parent specialist. Even though, each of these individuals works part-time their contribution and impact on the organization is huge. Let me introduce you to them:   Ayooluwa, our evaluation intern, focuses on helping us understand the effect of our work and makes suggestions on how to improve and increase our impact. She is a senior at John Marshall, so her perspective from the student and school environment is invaluable.  Deneene, our parent engagement specialist, brings parents voices to network meetings by collecting and summarizing feedback on our work with [...]

There are two patient advocacy foundations that you should know about:   The National Patient Advocate Foundation (NPAF) team works at the local, regional, and national level advocating for better access to affordable, quality health care for people with chronic or life-threatening illnesses.   The Patient Advocate Foundation (PAF) team provides patient services with the goal of removing obstacles to accessing quality healthcare. They provide various services and programs to help patients with chronic or life-threatening illnesses.   While PAF focuses on the patients and caregivers, NPAF collects the PAF experiences to help drive change within the overall healthcare system.     Valuable information on their websites  The PAF website provides information about the support they provide, how to contact them, and who qualifies for [...]

My name is Sahejpreet Gill and I am an intern at Cradle 2 Career. This Spring, we started working on the Data Code of Ethics report. This report would contain community input on how data should be presented at Cradle 2 Career. The process started off with a survey that was sent through personal networks of the members of the project, who were students at the University of Minnesota Rochester. The survey contained around 6 topics regarding data presentation, such as labeling, that participants were told to rank in order of importance. From this survey, we also developed questions surrounding the topics to use [...]

The Olmsted County Community Health Improvement Plan for 2021-2023 has identified their top three community health priorities: mental health, financial stress, and substance use.   Financial stress occurs when the household income is less than expenses, creating an inability to meet basic financial commitments and needs. Basic financial commitments and needs include; rent/mortgage payments, utility bills, medical care and (hopefully) insurance, transportation, food, child care, and things critical to supporting the home environment. In additions, financial stress is considered a contributor to mental health issues. This plan also states that 33% of Olmsted County adults report being financially stressed. The biggest financial stressors are credit cards, medical bills, and housing costs (including rent, mortgage, and utilities).    Let’s look at the numbers and resources  The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) 2021 poverty guideline for a family of four is an income of $26,500 (for each [...]

An interesting study took place starting in 2011 through 2021 with the goal of learning about the early public school experiences of children who had participated in Head Start. Nineteen to twenty-two (depending on the year) Minnesota Head Start programs across the state participated and collected data on their four year old children over this time period. The approach was to match the Head Start children’s data with their K-5 grade-level student data. The K-5 data was from the Minnesota Automated Reporting Student System (MARSS). MARSS (an individual student record system) is the Minnesota Department of Education's primary reporting system for student data. Please, note tribal and migrant programs chose to not participate in this study.  Study results  The study results were characterized as follows:  Outcomes related to the years a child participated in Head Start Outcomes related to a child’s attendance [...]

To learn more about findings covered in this post read the report issued by Education Minnesota's Educator Policy Innovation Center (EPIC). Their advocacy work centers on equitable school funding, full-service community schools, universal pre-k, teacher recruitment and retention, student discipline, teacher training, and early childhood education. The epic report Disrupted Learning, COVID-19, and Public Education in Minnesota is available at web address: EPIC-Disrupted-Learning-Report.pdf (educationminnesota.org)    COVID-19 is not the only traumatic event causing learning loss in the 2020-2021 school year. There are additional stressors hindering many student’s education. The stressors include repeated exposure to the murder of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) at the hands of police, the current political turmoil, job loss, and the impact of natural disasters on our nation.  Observed effects of COVID-19 and these collective traumas   COVID-19 and these traumas have [...]

According to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED), Minnesota’s seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate dropped to 4.5% in January, down from 4.7% in December. The number of unemployed fell by 7,652 and the number of employed fell by 14,851 which means on the whole, Minnesota’s labor force shrank by 22,503 on a seasonally adjusted basis.  There are two important things to consider:   When the number of employed and unemployed are both falling at the same time, it can be due to an increase in the number of discouraged workers. That means there are positions open and hiring, but workers are either not finding those job postings or there is a [...]

There are many tools out there for team development. One of the most effective and accessible tools is Clifton Strengths. Not only is it validated in numerous countries and languages, it is also asset based.   In our American culture, we spend a lot of time discussing weaknesses and deficits. However, Clifton Strengths gives the top 5 results of our 34 strengths. When we put more effort toward our strengths, we will naturally yield more results than trying to pour into the bottom tier of strengths and end up feeling exhausted and demotivated.   Cradle 2 Career values community. We focus on what connects us [...]

Countless studies show that young adults who pursue and attain a college degree or other technical/professional training shortly after high school increase their earning potential in the early years of their careers. This reality effectively increases their lifetime earning potential. The pandemic is also having an impact on employment opportunities for low and unskilled labor. The federal government has stated that young workers among others are facing a tough job market potentially compromising their futures.    Consider the statistics  The following statistics looked at students who graduated from Rochester Public School District (RPSD) in the 2013-2014 academic year. We identified students who have been awarded an academic certificate, associate degree, or bachelor’s [...]