Strategic Orientation: Owens Valley Career Development Center
Hokan Media LLC contracted with OVCDC's Porterville TANF site to do a five-day training academy. (Photo: Hokan Media LLC)
In 2014, OVCDC was struggling to get some of the Tribal TANF program clients it served across its six-county service area to meet their mandatory work participation rates. In response, OVCDC staff developed its Economic Development Initiative Strategic Framework (EDISF) from scratch. This long-term action plan seeks to end the dependency of all OVCDC clients on government benefits by preparing them for employment, while simultaneously fostering partnerships with local organizations and businesses to expand job opportunities they can pursue. Advancing six overarching goals – from tribal cultural awareness to funding diversification – EDISF delineates concrete action steps for each goal, reinforced by a “logic model” that outlines staff members’ input, activities, outputs, and measurable outcomes that they must achieve. EDISF mandates quarterly data tracking of OVCDC’s progress, enabling staff to evaluate and strengthen their work on an ongoing basis. As OVCDC explains, EDISF allows staff “to communicate, collaborate, and form those internal partnerships that are really the focal point of what we should be doing for the results that our clients need.” EDISF is already bearing fruit, as OVCDC’s cash assistance caseload has declined by 16% over three years, with caseload closures due to employment and/or excess earnings increasing 15% over the same period of time.
CONNECT: Ryan Howard, Executive Director, Owens Valley Career Development Center, rhoward@ovcdc.com
Workforce Development: OWENS VALLEY CAREER DEVELOPMENT CENTER
To learn more about OVCDC’s workforce development story, click on the resources below.