Council Grant Saves Work Force Program

Late in October, Steve Davis began laying off the members of his five-person support staff at the Cambridge Housing Authority's Work Force program. He closed up shop at two of the program's on-site operational facilities.

And in perhaps the most severe blow to the city's innovative job placement program for teenagers, he began trimming the Work Force's clientele down from 120 to 18.

But Davis now says the Work Force program may soon be seeing better days, thanks in part to a new funding package approved at last week's City Council meeting.

Since its doors opened in 1984, the Work Force has helped to provide jobs, education and counseling to more than 100 teenagers living in public housing developments, according to Steve Swanger, the city's director of tenant services.

The Work Force targets youths through referrals from teachers and parole officers, working closely with schools and parents. It gives participants a stipend for attending work experience training classes, and then finds them jobs, usually in the private sector.

The program pays the youths minimum wage and asks the employers to make up the difference.

"It's a good program to build a foundation upon," said Councillor Jonathan S. Myers, who directed the Work Force during its first two years of existence. "It can really help break the cycle of poverty. It provides kids with a sense of opportunity.

The program had been fighting for its life ever since it was eliminated from the state budget in late September. Ironically, on the same day that their $250,000 budget was slashed, program directors were on their way to New York to pick up a $100,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, which had named the Work Force Program one of the country's 10 most innovative small social projects.

"Kids were understandably upset when the program got cut, because it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people," Davis said. "For some it's the employment aspect, for some it's the adult role model, for some it's getting into college."

Most of the teenagers, some of whom had relied on the Work Force as their employer-of-record for two or three years, had to scramble to find other work. But for many, the loss of a support structure and the implied rejection from "the system" was a bigger blow than the loss of a job, Swanger said.

"One of the really terrible things about this is what it did to the kids," Swanger said. "They've been burned many, many times. These kids, even though they're very young, have savvy about this sort of thing and it really hurt them when the funding was cut."

Fifty percent of program participants are 13 or 14 years old--ineligible for employment--and the remaining 50 percent fall between the ages of 15 and 19, Davis said "Employment is just the vehicle for working with the kids."

Until the council action last week, however, the Work Force was running on borrowed time, despite a sudden rush of media attention and several proposals to duplicate the program in other cities. Directors of the program were planning to shut it down completely on February 1.

But on January 14., the council approved a $40,000 infusion of funds, coupled with an additional $40,000 grant from the state's Executive office of Communities and Development, the new funds should keep the project running through June, according to Dan Wunchell, executive director of the Housing Authority.

"What you're doing is very important," Wunchell told the council. "We're very hopeful that this extra boost we need will keep us going."

The Work Force also plans to solicit grants from the private sector to reach the $320,000 it needs to survive another year, and Swanger said he will appeal to the federal and state governments for long-term support.

"Historically it hasn't been easy to get private sector funding," Swanger said. But he added that project directors had received very positive indications."

The program will probably be able to begin rehiring staff members in April or May, Swanger said.

But Davis predicted that the program will not be up to its previous performance level for two or three years.

The Work Force Program was part of a package of state-supported services cut in September as a result of a tightening state budget, according to Mayor Alice K. Wolf. "This is a very good program and an important program," she said, adding that the city will have to "find different ways of being able to fund the programs that are being lost because of cuts at the state level."

Councillor Timothy J. Toomey Jr. suggested at the council meeting that the city work towards inclusion of the Work Force on its annual budget. But Myers said that "many, many programs have been cut right now and we aren't going to be able to fund on an annual basis every program that's been cut."