Stevens questions effectiveness of Beacon outreach to chronically absent youth

The RFP in 2017 required Beacon to conduct targeted outreach to reach chronically absent youth and encourage providers to employ dedicated outreach coordinators.

What feedback has DYCD collected on the effectiveness of those outreach requirements?

We've received positive feedback as far as having dedicated personnel to do outreach.

It allows the program to have that individual meet with local NDAs, meet with

local potential partners, the co-locators, so that it will alleviate the work of a director and or assistant director.

And so this dedicated person is able to bring in and make connections.

to hard to reach young people.

And so how do you guys use that work, I guess, to me also thinking about to educate not only just speaking programs, but across the spectrum, right?

Because, you know, there's so many programs that are working with young people.

Yeah, we've over the years, well, that's one thing that we definitely want to take a deeper dive because that was part of the 2017.

So as we're looking and unpacking all the different components of the current model, that is going to be one area that we're going to take a deeper dive on and see what's been working, what has not been working, and the effectiveness, to your point.

However, we have been able to strategically...

Target those outreach coordinators to provide them with technical assistance for themselves.

How do you do outreach?

How do you engage a young person?

How do you engage families?

And so we've hosted meetings specifically for the outreach coordinators, and we've also made intentional connections on the ground with

our local cornerstone programs and also our cure violence groups in the neighborhood.