Page 30 - BusinessWest February 6, 2023

economic opportunity and family well-being.
As she spoke about Springfield WORKS and its
broad mission, Kandilis characterized this area as being “rich in programs and poor in systems.” The main goal is to build such systems through those traits she mentioned earlier — especially innovation and collaboration.
Partners include organizations from the commu- nity, including Holyoke Community College, Head Start, Square One, Home City Development, Spring- field and Holyoke public schools, and employers such as Baystate Health and Big Y, as well as larger national organizations like the Aspen Institute and the National Fund for Workforce Solutions.
Kandilis, noting that the first step was to partner with 413Cares, a website for people in the 413, to increase the visibility and access to programs and services offered in the area.
The online tool allows individuals to search through lists of organizations to find the resources they need, like housing, job skills, early education, healthcare, and more. Its main goal is for everyone, no matter which door they come from, to be able to access a resource.
“We wanted to make it [our partnership] tighter so we’re actually working with them directly to create a Springfield WORKS component where we have our direct partners and our resource partners in a space
needs are addressed together.
“Oftentimes, there’s programming for parents and
programming for children, but parents can’t focus on making the most of their education or job-training opportunities without early education or a safe place for their children,” said Kandilis, adding that partners for this model are mostly education institutions, such as Holyoke Community College, Tech Foundry, Head Start, Square One, the Department of Transitional Assistance, Springfield Partners for Community Action, the United Way of Pioneer Valley, Springfield public schools, and Dress for Success of Western Massachusetts, which delivers a career-readiness program called Foot in the Door.
Through the Community Empowerment and Rein- vestment Grant, $400,000 was dedicated to helping facilitate systemic socioeconomic changes in the city of Springfield; the main goal is to mitigate the nega- tive impacts of incarceration by identifying those most at-risk individuals at a younger age.
Nearly half of people with criminal backgrounds, nationally, are still jobless a year after leaving prison, and a criminal record can reduce the chances of a second interview by 50%, said Kandilis, adding that the unemployment rate among formerly incarcerated people in the U.S. (27%) is higher than at any other point in the nation’s history.
“We realized that there just wasn’t any data in the system about the barriers for after incarceration or the families that are connected to somebody who
is connected to the justice system,” she noted. “The issue is not only inside, but outside of the justice system within the families. So when we started the project a year ago, Springfield WORKS administered a survey directly to those connected to the system through their partners.”
Roughly 200 people answered that survey — 51.7% of local adult respondents were formerly incarcerated, while 90.8% have family members who have been incarcerated — indicating exactly what they needed to move forward, and Kandilis said she certainly wasn’t surprised by the two biggest needs identified: employment and housing.
Springfield WORKS came up with the solution of creating programs that kept the family at the cen- ter, addressing the needs of both the parents and children.
“A lot of people can’t afford to go to school and not work. So what are some of the policies employers can put forth to support workers and upward mobility?”
that we call Ready, Willing and Able,” she explained.
The Ready, Willing and Able model was created to allow Springfield WORKS and other organizations
to learn how to better support local families, a need evidenced by statis- tics showing that 40% of them didn’t know where, or to whom, to turn for resources, whether for job searching, housing and food insecurity, health- care, or other needs.
ANNE KANDILIS
Over the past few years, Kandilis and her team have been working with these organizations to start programs like the Whole Family/Two Generation model, the Western Mass Anchor Collaborative; the Ready, Willing and Able model; and efforts to counter the so-called ‘cliff effect’ (more on these later). Experi- ence has shown that these groups can do more work- ing together than they can individually.
“You think about the scarcity of resources, but over time, what our partners have committed to is what we’ve shown: this is not a zero-sum game. Just because you get funds doesn’t mean I won’t get funds; what we’ve done is bring more funds into the region through our collaborative work,” Kandilis said. “The changes that we make need to be scalable and sus- tainable so that all of our neighbors thrive and our businesses thrive.”
For this issue and its focus on employment, BusinessWest talked at length with Kandilis about Springfield WORKS and its collaborative approach to creating opportunities, putting people to work, and enabling them to advance in their chosen field.
Work in Progress
Partner organizations allow Springfield WORKS to work directly with not only employers, but the people who need the resources and help the most: families and residents of Western Mass., said
The individual is asked a series of questions to see if they are ready, willing, and able, said Kandilis. These include: do you have the resources in place that will support your success? Do you have a reliable childcare plan? Is your transportation such that you can get to training and work now and later, not just for today, but over the long haul?
This approach allows Springfield WORKS and its employer partners to meet individuals where they are instead of having them find the resources themselves.
“Families are receiving resources, but no one partner can provide all the resources a family might need in order to set up the worker for success,” she explained. “The second step, which is what we’re doing now, is to work directly with residents and fam- ilies collaboratively to see what those system silos look like and break down those silos.”
While working in a collaborative fashion, Spring- field WORKS and its partners will work with 160 individuals to see what this program looks like in practice. The hope for the Ready, Willing and Able model is to promote the systems in place and cre- ate needed change in how they serve individuals and families collaboratively, trying to keep families at the center of the equation.
This model is part of the list of strategies that goes into the Whole Family/Two Generation approach to careers — a model in which children’s and parents’
“It can start with being parent-focused first and then the child, or child-focused first and then the par- ent,” Kandilis said, “so if we work with Springfield public schools or Head Start, they’re working with the child, but they also have family engagement,
so now we can connect — we are connected — to those organizations so that we’re not increasing the burden of
work in those
institutions.”
WORKS
>>
Continued on page 40
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