Travis County Commissioners Court
March 31, 2009,
Item 11
>> and since we have you all there, what if we just call up number 11.
11.
revised language: receive update on efforts to enhance employment opportunities for ex-offenders in Travis County including the status of the move the box hiring guidelines and offender workforce development program.
>> I'm roger jeffreys, executive manager of justice and public safety.
i'm here with mary more rant director of the criminal justice planning, raber with the adult probation department here in Travis County, kristen nelson, interim manager of hrmd, the director linda Moore smith and finally kimberly pierce in criminal justice planning and manages the -- the rwds program.
what we wanted to do is take a few minutes and give you a brief update on initiatives that we have here in Travis County to enhance opportunities for employment for ex-offenders.
first of all we have the offender workforce development program which began in 2007, we wanted to give you an update on that, talk to you a little bit about the partnership that we have with the national institute of corrections, dr.
nagy is here, thank you.
the whole network of community partners, many of whom are here as well.
give you a chance to be introduced in a second.
often we wanted to give you a status of move the box initiative.
as you will recall about a year ago at this time the Travis County Commissioners court adopted hiring guidelines that removed the -- the box on the application that indicated criminal history and a lot has gone into implementing those hiring guidelines, we would like to give you an update on that as well.
by the way I think there's representatives from the reentry round table here who -- who were instrumental in -- in advising us on that project.
so thank you all for coming.
what I will do is hand it over to mary, she is anxious to tell you about the program.
>> judge Biscoe, thank you, Commissioners, good morning.
i'm here to -- to present the workforce development program and what I would like to do is show a -- a powerpoint presentation that -- that will show some of the information that I have to show this morning.
i would like to explain the logo for the workforce development program here in Travis County.
i would like to show the pivot point for the model, shows the community, community providers and employers providing balance as they play by the role and collaborating, community, connecting opportunities with the offenders and if the offender is the key of role player in this and steps away from the process, then there can be no successful outcomes for anyone involved.
and in June of 2007, the national institute of corrections invited -- invited the -- the -- the Travis County criminal justice planning to tampa florida to form a team of 12 videos to get training and offender workforce development specialist training.
this is the master level training for individuals to go back and into the area and locally build capacity to have -- have an employer offender employer outcome for other offenders.
and we have been working with diligently here in Travis County to help offenders prepare for employment.
that is the offender workforce development specialist training we went to.
it also covers 11 competencies which I'm not going over, career development theory and application to the role of information in computers of career planning for offenders.
we also have a training here in Travis County -- oh, what I would like to do is present the current team members that are here from owds and they are the trainers for this owds training that we have here.
if they could please stand up.
>> let's tell the folks what that acronym stands for them.
>> offender workforce development specialist.
>> all right.
>> these are the trainers right now that are training 32 individuals.
we started in April and we end in may.
>> thank you.
>> thank you, team.
>> welcome to all of you.
thank you, too.
>> we also as you can see these individuals come from different agencies here in town, goodwill, new entry, city of Austin, criminal justice planning, network for life, workforce solutions and all of them work tremendously in helping place offenders in -- in employment, but also in connecting them to job readiness training programs and -- and community resources.
also, what we do is Travis County on a quarterly basis conducts offender employment specialist training.
oes classes.
and the oes demonstrates best practices and discusses ways for overcoming challenges and identifying tools and strategies for improving outcomes in offender employment.
we bring together organizations, community non-profits, law enforcement, businesses and employers and probation officers and the main -- the main concept of this training is to build relationships to connect a network to better help the individual that comes to their agency for services.
so that's the oes program.
so you will be hearing me saying owds and oes.
so owds is the master level training and the oes is the basic training for community providers here in Travis County to help them work more effectively with their offenders.
what I would like to do right now is to turn it over to ms.
terry rayburn to let you explain the accomplishments of the Travis County adult probation office in connection with -- to the offender workforce development program and I want to thank her for her help since June, August of 2007 when she came on board because she has helped tremendously, helped me build the offender workforce development program.
terri.
>> thank you.
>> good morning.
>> the adult probation I was hired in August of 2007 and one of my first accomplishments was being trained as an offender employment specialist within the first week of starting the job.
and since then we have trained or certified 36 probation officers in the offender employment specialist and with this group they have come together as a team and have put on -- on two job fairs specifically for those persons currently serving probation.
one was held October of last year, one was currently held at the beginning of this month.
both were considered very successful job fairs.
we also -- we also in my position, I developed a series of -- of 16 brochures or pamphlets to assist people with criminal histories on employment, on how to fill out a job application, how to create a resume, so there's a series of brochures that are currently being used in all of the -- all of the probation offices and at the state jail, the county jail, the job fairs, and community agencies.
and the -- and the the -- the other thing that I currently do is I do a weekly job listing of -- about 200 jobs that -- that are considered offender friendly and this job listing goes out to all probation officers and to a number of community resources who use this job listing in helping their clients with criminal histories find employment.
and on a -- on a monthly basis, mary and I have been doing what's considered the offender workforce development orientation for people who are currently job searching.
we help them learn about the job opportunities that currently in our area and work with them on getting job ready, I'll turn it back to mary.
>> thank you.
>> uh-huh.
>> we also are going to partnership with the human resource management department and collaborated with human resource staff to conduct a hiring survey of all county departments.
christine nelson will discuss that further in her presentation.
also, we have assisted hrmd staff with two focus groups with recently hired t.n.r.
employees and again christine will discuss that further.
and we reviewed training programs here in Travis County offered to employees and have looked to see how conducive they are to working with offenders recently hired and seeing what we can do to upgrade those if needed.
apparently right now we have good training programs already offered here in Travis County.
we have also trained three hrmd staff to become employment -- offender employment specialist certified.
one t.n.r.
h.r.
staff also certified as only oes person, if they have that hrmd staff or t.n.r.
staff here can they please stand up to show that they have been certified.
>> thank you.
>> that's great.
as I mentioned earlier, Travis County offender workforce development program also has -- has -- has conducted quarterly trainings of oes classes, we have conducted seven classes since August of 2007 for the 169 community participants involved.
and out of the 169 community participants, 84 of these individuals worked directly with offenders.
out of 84 who worked directly with offenders, 36 are probation officers.
i will let you know, judge and Commissioners, we do ask each to send us voluntarily reports on a monthly basis regarding individuals they have assisted and referred to jobs or community resources or job readiness training programs, as well as given us information on those that they have placed in employment and also -- also what industries they have been placed.
so we keep stats of that information and you have some of that information in some of your backups that are in your packet there.
and we are going to conduct three more oes classes for this year.
we usually do four, but we had to cancel one of them because of the training we are doing here currently in Travis County that is going to take us over a period of three months, one week at a time.
that's kind of intensive, so we've had to to cancel one of the classes for this year.
the oes numbers, for those who voluntarily surgeon in their information to me, we show that we have assisted 695 offenders, and they have placed 92 offenders in employment.
the the offender workforce development program, the owds team, they have assisted 2151 offenders in fiscal year 2008.
and placed 326 of these offenders in employment.
as I mentioned before I do ask what industries they worked in.
the top three industries they have been placed in have been in food services, 118 of them hired there, 108 construction, temp agencies 67 of them.
now the combined numbers between oes and ows for fiscal year 2008 were 2846 assisted with job referrals.
>> [reading graphic] I as the offender workforce development administrator have assisted 206 and helped 43 find employment.
>> [reading graphic] we are very proud of those individuals working here in Travis County.
other accomplishments in the offender workforce development program.
we have helped plan, organize and participated in two county jail career/resource fairs in collaboration with the sheriff's office.
>> [reading graphic] we have also presented job readiness training to the ctc folks, a commitment to the program at the state jail.
also created an offender friendly employer database with over 200 contacts.
in Travis County criminal justice awarded a $25,000 grant from the national institute of corrections.
>> [reading graphic] workforce has given us the site to do it.
we had our first week in March.
and what I would like to do is if there are any owds trainees here in the audience, if they could please stand up.
>> it's an intensive first week.
hard work.
and they are glad to be here to be able to -- to build capacity in our county and they will be -- some of the individuals that will help me towards -- towards building this program further.
i really thank them for that.
>> I also want to take this time to thank media services because they have created a wonderful, wonderful psa to encourage employers to hire individuals with criminal background.
looking at that p.s.a.
at the end of christine's presentation.
also, we have completed an action plan for '09 with numbers that I hope to increase with the people that I work with and that's in your packet, also.
and -- and for fiscal year to date '09 figures, we already are showing that we are 15 -- 3,085 individuals and have -- have helped 292 of them placed in employment so we are doing pretty good for just being in -- being in February.
so thank you, I will turn this over now to -- to christine.
>> good morning, judge, good morning, Commissioners.
I'm chris nelson with human resource management department, I work in the staffing training and employee relations division.
before you and your backup the powerpoint slides for information regarding ex-offender hiring practices over the last several months.
earlier last year criminal justice planning issued a survey, h.r.m.d.
collaborated with them to collect positions, information about positions that -- that could be identified as positions for criminal background, people with criminal background.
so -- so out of the 47 departments, 39 completed the survey, 8 gave us verbal feedback.
so the statistics since then are 676 approximately 676 classified positions were identified.
surveyed.
90% of those required criminal background checks.
the other 10 percent were identified as not requiring a criminal background check.
also, the -- the approximately 66% of those position requiring a criminal background check are open to ex-offenders pending evaluation of the criminal history and then the other percentage is not open to those because of statutory state and federal statutory reasons and sensitivity of the position.
hrmd has been working with the departments since -- since April with -- with conducting criminal background checks and -- and since then we have conducted about 185 criminal background checks on the positions that require them.
and out of that, 147 applicants were hired.
20 of those applicants did have -- revealed a criminal history background.
12 -- 12 were not hired, 32 consultations were done with managers to look at different things around the type of physician, the nature of the offense, the length of time since the off fence, the nature of the job that -- offense and the nature of the job they were seeking.
out of those 32, 20 of those were hired and 17 of those are still employed.
the three that left were from temporary seasonal type of positions, we have an 85% retention rate on those that we have hired since may with criminal history background.
we also made a new vacancy request to help eliminate some of the ambiguity with some of the criminal background investigations.
we have over 400 new var's received since implementing the new form back in may.
all departments are utilizing this new form and indicating on that form which positions require criminal background check.
all of the job postings, the long list, short list, notify applicants of those positions that require criminal background check and those positions that do not.
over the years, hrmd and recruiting staff made a concerted effort to recruit in venues that promote the county's employment opportunities with ex-offenders.
recently in the last year we have increased our presence in the travis state jail resource fair, project related job fairs and work source career center fairs.
hrmd has partnered with adult probation to conduct quarterly targeted job fairs for all Travis County job openings.
the first one was held in October, we have -- we have recently in March, two more scheduled later this year.
we anticipate having -- having -- participated in over 20, 20 plus job fairs this year that are -- that are related to the ex-offender population.
in the survey, we developed a new ex-offender guidelines brochure that you see in your backup, a copy of.
these -- the staff and t.n.r.
employee also -- also attended the offender employment specialist training.
also the focus group sessions were conducted with various employees that we identified as having criminal background records.
because there were some issues with hiring and also things that they were looking at that we could follow up with and we will show you that on the next slide.
had he put together a workforce development referral form for the departments and for h.r.
to refer any individuals with criminal background, those that are having trouble finding employment or looking at other different types of resources, she may want to mention that later.
the final slide is one of the hiring conferences that we had over last year, targeting -- targeting 16 open positions with transportation natural resources.
these positions are identified as those that don't require criminal background check.
so we held a one day conference, this that conference -- in that conference there were over 150 people who attended and 65% of those were ex-offenders.
there were several -- there was several weeks of planning prior to this event.
hrmd recruitment staff along with t.n.r., h.r.
developed group meetings, interview preparations for these individuals, looked to help -- helping them find resources for getting cdl permits for the positions that required them, and then all positions were filled that day.
and out of all of the positions that were filled, 80 percent of those were ex-offenders.
we have been following their progress since then and that was the group that we conducted the focus groups.
about three months after they were hired later in the summer we sat down with them, hrmd, t.n.r., mary more ran, terry raber, talked to them and found out what kind of issues they've had with people starting all at once.
t.n.r., h.r.
staff, management, put together a follow-up action plan and looking at ways to help make sure that their employment with us is successful.
since then, seven out of the 20 are no longer -- no longer work for the county.
six of those were ex-offenders, three of them left involuntarily, the other three left for personal reasons or final employment elsewhere.
we have a 65% retention rate out of this hiring conversation that happened a year ago.
>> okay.
i'm going to touch a little bit about those referrals that christine talked about.
one of the referrals that --
>> [one moment please for change in captioners] to me and I will assess the situation and see what community resource they need to be referred to.
that community roars department will -- resource department will provide me feedback and I will provide the feedback to the supervisor to let them know the situation has been handled so we can have successful outcomes for the offender or the employee in question.
what I would like to do right now is if -- that had, if you can put on the psa so we can show it to the Commissioners court and also to the people in the audience.
i would really appreciate it.
>> years ago I made some bad decisions.
today I'm an ex-offender.
>> I'm Sam Biscoe, county judge on the Travis County Commissioners court.
the Travis County Commissioners and I have modified hiring guidelines within county departments to provide more job opportunities to qualified ex-offenders.
we ask you to do the same.
>> I was persistent.
i wasn't going to give up.
i hope other employers will give ex-offenders an opportunity.
>> thank you.
and this is the psa that is being shown on channel 17 right now.
we hope to expand it to other media outlets.
thank you.
>> thank you.
>> that's an outstanding psa.
>> [ laughter ]
>> really, I mean, y'all ought to give yourselves a round of applause because this has been a long struggle, judge.
>> [ applause ] really, I'm serious.
>> [ applause ] this has been a long time coming.
i remember a lot of instances where we looked at situations where we were asking other employers, for example, to hire ex-offenders, who is out there and available in Travis County, per se was involved in it.
so the process even with moving the box being one of those issues, round table initiatives, other initiatives.
and it's really been an outstanding results.
i looked at the presentations, the retention rate of those ex-offenders who are still with Travis County, and I don't know what the retention rate is of the referral list of those that are not employed by the county.
it would be good to know what their retention rate is at those levels, but I have a couple of questions, judge, that I'd like to present at this time.
that is, I'd like to address this to you, ms.
miera.
i want like to know what the process is and how does one actually get the referral list?
let's say that here's an ex-offender, wants employment, and they need to know who is actually hiring or who is sympathetic, is hiring and giving ex-offenders a second chance as far as employment is concerned.
how do they get that list?
>> we do not actually put out the employer list out to anyone.
if you're talking about the job listing that terry puts out, she mails it out to anyone asking for it, but the employers have -- we have a list of employers, they do not want that list out.
>> okay.
let me ask this question because it was brought to my attention that a person may have discussed and actually -- went through the process, but they did not get referred at all, an ex-offender.
so I'm kind of concerned about that as far as what procedure must they take to make sure they get referred as far as employment opportunities because they hit a brick wall.
and of course, I need to maybe see what they can do to overcome that brick wall because they were not referred.
>> well, there's some individuals -- anyone that calls me, I do talk to them, have them come in and I assess them, I give them an assessment and see if they're job are ready.
if not, I do make sure that they are connected to the right resources to get them job ready.
one of the things in working with offenders is the quick satisfaction.
they want the quick work.
now, if they're really wanting work, we will connect them to temp agencies, but we want them to have career jobs, jobs that they will be able to want to wake up in the morning and stick with.
so that's what we work at, career development.
we do connect them to temporary jobs.
they're referred from anybody.
they can be self-referrals, referrals from other agencies, but we do work with them.
i will let you know this.
i do make appointments with some individuals and they do not show up.
>> they do not show up?
>> they do not show up.
and I leave it up to them because it's their responsibility.
i have too many offenders calling me to follow up on why did you not make it to your appointment?
i let them know that they are scheduled at a certain time, I really need them to be there.
that's why me and terry created the offender workforce development orientation so if they really want to know about this program -- because I get too many phone calls on a regular basis.
they need to come to this orientation, hear about how it works, the program works, and what we can do, and they leave there with at least five or 10 job leads when they come.
we have had some successes when they come to this orientation because they will call us back and say those jobs that you gave us really panned out.
i'm now working at this place and that place.
but it's really the follow-up part of where the individual has to take responsibility and come to these appointments.
some of them do not follow through.
and to me that sometimes lets me know they're not job ready because if they don't come to my appointment, how are they going to show up for the employer?
>> because again, I -- I have come in contact with ex-offenders in community and they ask me questions.
and of course, I answer them the best I can, but I want to make sure that they are getting the attention that they justly deserve.
>> every single one of them does.
>> that's why I asked you about the process.
so next time I have one of them, I'll have them call you directly and we'll go from there.
>> okay.
>> secondly, the -- I'm concerned about the ex-offenders that just may have recently gotten released, and they need services such as id, different things.
does this have any bearings on preparation to dealing with you as far as having basic things in place such as identification, such as whole lot of necessary things for possible employment opportunities?
there are some low just ticks that may need -- logistics that may need to be obtained.
and if those logistics may not be present -- it's just basic stuff -- how is that dealt with?
>> in the building bridges with the sheriff's office and also the reach around table, I know for sure are working on the identification problem.
in trying to form collaborations with social security and d.p.s.
to get all that squared away.
we are doing something in the travis state jail with cindy with the group going on in there to help them create portfolios.
that when they leave they will have a portfolio filled with all the certificate they received inside the state jail for vocational or education.
and also, to be able to have their social security card and their birth certificates so when they come out they will be able to get their id.
that is something that we're working on right now.
now, if they come and they don't have that information, I do refer them to faith-based organizations that will help give them vouchers to connect and to get those documents one one thing that is a chal register right now is the collaboration with the social security office and the d.p.s.
with what keep of information to take to them.
so that's being worked on as I said with those two groups right now.
>> that's being worked on now?
>> yes.
>> I'm glad you brought that point up because it appears there may be a disconnect where the nexus is really not there and it need to be.
that's why I brought that point up.
and the last question, sometime ago when we listened at different comments coming from the community as far as having some basic other relief, such as food stamps, for an example, at the state level.
i can recall some of the concerns that were brought before us, something that basically just having food, has there been any relief on that particular level at the state level to make sure that some of these folks are qualified and they also filter down to the local level?
>> right now I think that's in the legislature, they're working on that bill.
>> they're working on it now?
>> yes.
>> because that's a big concern.
something as basic that we take for granted, for instance.
there are some things that may not be there.
so that was my last point.
>> yeah, that's at the state level being worked on right now.
>> thank you.
>> the following four departments have really assisted us in this effort, transportation and natural resources, facilities management, health and human services, medical examiners office.
we made a lot of progress, but there's still more to get done.
thank you very much.
>> thank you.
>> okay.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Tuesday, March 24, 2009 1:42 PM