The rapidly growing scientific knowledge on self-regulation and executive function skills provides new information that employment and related human service programs can use to redesign their programs with an eye towards improving outcomes for individual program participants who have not benefited from current approaches. In this webinar, LaDonna Pavetti from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities provides a goal-oriented framework that human service programs can use to reshape their programs using this new knowledge. The webinar includes examples of programs that are already using executive function principles to guide the design and delivery of their programs.
Executive Function News – May/June 2015
Using Executive Function Principles to Build More Effective Employment and Human Service Programs
In This May/June 2015 Issue
What Are Executive Function Skills?
The Relationship between Poverty and Executive Function?
Upcoming Webinar: Applying a Rapid-Cycle Learning Approach to Accelerate Progress in Employment and Related Programs
Previous Webinar: Executive Function Skills: What They Are and Why They Matter
Resource of the Month: Poverty Interrupted
What Are Executive Function Skills?
Executive functions are a set of processes that all have to do with managing oneself and one’s resources in order to achieve a goal. These processes include the skills we use to organize and plan, control how we react to situations, and get things done. Executive function skills are critical for success in school, work and life; poor executive function can lead to poor productivity and difficulty finding and keeping a job. Like all skills, executive function skills vary from one individual to the next and their development is influenced by a number of factors.
The Relationship between Poverty and Executive Function
There are three ways in which executive function skills can be impacted by poverty:
- Living under the conditions of scarcity imposes a “bandwidth tax” which reduces the cognitive resources that individuals have available to devote to activities aimed at achieving long-term goals. Researchers that have studied scarcity liken living in poverty to living perpetually on a missed night of sleep. As is true with all individuals who are functioning without sleep, the bandwidth tax reduces individuals’ abilities to effectively consider all options and their consequences which can lead to less than optimal decisions.
- Adverse environments that expose children to high levels of stress (i.e., “toxic stress”) can disrupt brain architecture and impair the development of executive function skills. Because executive function skills aren’t fully developed until the mid-twenties, the longer the exposure to adverse conditions, the greater the impact on their development.
- Living in poverty places greater demands on executive function skills. Managing life as a single parent or without a car or without the technical skills that employers are seeking or without extra financial resources to weather crises requires exceptional executive function skills such as planning, organization, and time management, among others. In addition, individuals living in poverty deal with very high levels of stress which is one of the factors that is known to impair executive functions.
Applying a Rapid-Cycle Learning Approach to Accelerate Progress in Employment and Related Programs
Date: June 17, 2015
Time: 1:30 pm EST
Presenter: Corey Zimmerman, Senior Project Manager, Frontiers of Innovation
In this webinar, you will hear why the Center on the Developing Child believes that building adult capabilities is critical to achieving “breakthrough outcomes” for children and why they believe “rapid-cycle learning” is a critical component of getting to these breakthrough outcomes. Adoption of this approach to learning will help to ensure that as we begin to apply executive function principles to our work, we maximize our learning about what works best and for whom. In addition, this webinar will provide information on how the Center, through its Frontiers of Innovation project, is spurring innovation by finding opportunities to apply scientific knowledge to real world practice situations.
Executive Function Skills: What They Are and Why They Matter
Presenter: Silvia Bunge, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology and Director of the Building Blocks of Cognition Laboratory, University of California at Berkeley
Bunge provided an an excellent introduction to how neuroscientists define executive function skills for adults, how executive functions develop and the factors that influence their development. The executive functions that Silvia has found critical for adults are:
- Self-control which involves controlling one’s thoughts, feelings and behaviors. It is important for not getting distracted from a goal and not immediately getting angry when someone upsets you.
- Planning which refers to the ability to outline long-term goals and identify obstacles and possible solutions. It is the skill that is used to lay out the series of steps needed to achieve goals, including setting appropriate deadlines and reminders.
- Monitoring which refers to the moment-by-moment awareness of thoughts, feelings, behavior and one’s progress towards a goal. It is important for assessing how well I am doing at completing the task at hand and whether my behavior is appropriate for the setting
A recording of the webinar and a copy of the slides are available in the link below.
Poverty Interrupted by Ideas 42
Ideas42, a non-profit organization that uses the insights of behavioral science – which helps us to understand the choices and decisions people make – to design innovative solutions to social problems at scale, recently released a report titled, Poverty Interrupted, that presents behavioral insights that “shed new light on the many challenges facing families with low incomes and those who seek to support them.” The report puts forth three design principles that flow from these insights:
- Cut the costs of living in poverty by reducing burdens on time, attention, and cognition;
- Create slack by helping individuals and families to build an adequate cushion of time, money, attention and other critical resources; and
- Reframe and empower individuals and families by crafting services to help people do more of what they want to do and less of what they don’t want to do – and to ensure that service providers are capable partners in that task.
Share this email with other colleagues and have them join the mailing list using the link below.
Applying a Rapid-Cycle Learning Approach to Accelerate Progress in Employment and Related Programs
This webinar explains why the Harvard Center on the Developing Child believes that building adult capabilities is critical to achieving “breakthrough outcomes” for children and why they believe “rapid-cycle learning” is a critical component of getting to these breakthrough outcomes. Adoption of this approach to learning will help to ensure that as we begin to apply executive function principles to our work, we maximize our learning about what works best and for whom. In addition, this webinar will provide information on how the Center, through its Frontiers of Innovation project, is spurring innovation by finding opportunities to apply scientific knowledge to real world practice situations.
Building Adult Capabilities to Improve Child Outcomes: A Theory of Change
OPRE – Testing the Next Generation of Subsidized Employment Programs
Launched in 2010, the Subsidized and Transitional Employment Demonstration evaluation from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Enhanced Transitional Jobs Demonstration evaluation from the Department of Labor are studying 13 subsidized employment programs in 10 locations across the United States. The programs encompass three broad categories: Modified Transitional Jobs Models, Wage Subsidy Models, and Hybrid Models.
The goal of these complementary large-scale projects is to evaluate the effectiveness of the latest generation of subsidized employment models that aim to improve participants’ long-term success in the labor market. This report introduces the projects and presents some preliminary findings about implementation of the demonstrations.
At this early stage, a few cross-cutting themes stand out:
- Most programs struggled initially to meet their recruitment targets due to somewhat narrow eligibility criteria, selective screening protocols, inadequate referral partner-ships, or a combination of these factors. Ultimately, the programs were able to meet their goals.
- Programs were better able to place participants into fully subsidized, temporary jobs than into subsidized, permanent positions.
- The policies and practices of the criminal justice, public assistance, and child support systems may affect the outcomes of both pro-gram and control group members.
In 2016, the ETJD and STED evaluations will begin to release interim study results.
Testing the Next Generation of Subsidized Employment Programs
Recovery: Job Growth and Education Requirements Through 2020
This report looks forward to the year 2020 and predicts the state of the American economy. Recovery 2020 provides vital labor market information such as which fields are expected to create the most jobs, the education requirements required to gain employment in the U.S., and the skills most coveted by employers.
Recovery: Job Growth and Education Requirements Through 2020
Executive Function News – April 2015
Using Executive Function Principles to Build More Effective Employment and Human Service Programs
In This April 2015 Issue
Welcome!
Why Focus on Executive Function Skills for Adults?
Webinar Series
Over the last year, we have made significant progress in identifying ways in which human service programs can use executive function principles to build better programs. Our plan is to use this monthly newsletter to share what we have learned with you. Here is what you can expect in future newsletters:
- Details on upcoming webinars (see below for the first webinar on May 20, 2015)
- Information on key executive function principles and how they can be used to design and deliver employment and other human services in new ways
- Tools that you can use to integrate executive function principles into your programs
- Links to additional resources
Why Focus on Executive Function Skills for Adults?
The impetus for this work comes from Frontiers of Innovation, a project of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University that posits that building adult capabilities is an important strategy for achieving “breakthrough outcomes” for children (but is also relevant for adults without children). This 5-minute video describes their theory of change. As its name implies, a key feature of the work of Frontiers of Innovation is to encourage human service programs to think outside the box and come up with new ideas that will produce better short and long-term outcomes. Our hope is that by providing a forum for sharing new information and innovative ideas, we can contribute to that endeavor.
Adult Executive Functions: What They Are and Why They Matter
Presenter: Silvia Bunge, Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Date: May 20, 2015
Time: 1:30 to 2:30 PM (EDT)
On May 20th, we will launch a monthly webinar series that will provide human service professionals an opportunity to hear from experts in the field and program administrators that are using executive function principles in their work. In the first webinar, Silvia Bunge, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology and Director of the Building Blocks of Cognition Laboratory, University of California at Berkeley, will provide an overview of the science behind executive functions with an explicit focus on adults. Silvia is a leading neuroscientist who excels at making technical information accessible and relevant to practitioners.
Share this email with other colleagues and have them join the mailing list using the link below.
Poverty Interrupted: Applying Behavioral Science to the Context of Chronic Scarcity, by Ideas42
Ideas42, a non-profit organization that uses the insights of behavioral science – which helps us to understand the choices and decisions people make – to design innovative solutions to social problems at scale, recently released a report titled, Poverty Interrupted, that presents behavioral insights that “shed new light on the many challenges facing families with low incomes and those who seek to support them.” The report puts forth three design principles that flow from these insights:
- Cut the costs of living in poverty by reducing burdens on time, attention, and cognition;
- Create slack by helping individuals and families to build an adequate cushion of time, money, attention and other critical resources; and
- Reframe and empower individuals and families by crafting services to help people do more of what they want to do and less of what they don’t want to do – and to ensure that service providers are capable partners in that task.
Poverty Interrupted: Applying Behavioral Science to the Context of Chronic Scarcity
Using Executive Skills Concepts and Principles To Help TANF Recipients Achieve Their Goals (February 2015)
On February 19 and 20, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Mathematica Policy Research and Abt Associates co-sponsored a convening for state TANF administrators and their employment service partners. The purpose of the meeting was to provide participants with information on Executive Function Skills (or executive skills) principles and concepts and generate practical ideas about how we – as individual programs and as a collective – may work with these insights to craft more effective programs and learn from these experiences.
Pre-meeting Reading Materials
“Executive Functions,” Adele Diamond (2013)
“Using Brain Science to Design New Pathways Out of Poverty,” Elisabeth D. Babcock, MCRP, PhD (2014)
Executive Skills Questionnaire
Executive Skills Profile for Adults
Executive Skills Profile Instructions
Presentations
Goal-Setting and Planning: How Can We Get It Right? Gabriele Oettingen
How Can We Use Executive Skills Concepts and Principles in Practice? Dick Guare
- Resource Center Vision – Your Bridge to Success
- Operational Definition – Employment Services Philosophy 2014-2018
How Can We Build an Evidence Base? The Job Search Assistance (JSA) Evaluation and Other Evaluation and/or Knowledge-Building Opportunities:
“Opportunistic Experiments and Rapid-Cycle Evaluation,” Alexandra Resch
“Applying a Rapid-Cycle Learning Approach: The Family Mobility Project,” Chuck Carter
Moving Beyond Work First Conference Presentation Slides, Notes and Additional Resources
PowerPoint Presentations
Moving Beyond Work First: Creating a Framework for Work Programs that Simultaneously Promote Opportunity and Maintain a Safety Net
Elizabeth Lower-Basch’s Slides
Matching Needs and Opportunities: What We Know About What Works Best and for Whom
Donna Pavetti’s Slides
Ruthie Liberman’s Slides
Jason Elchert’s Slides
Talking Strategy: Tools for Mounting an Effective Issue Campaign
Louisa Warren’s Slides
Putting Strategy Into Practice: Examples from the Field
Ed Bolen’s Slides
Getting the Message Right
Melissa Boteach’s Slides
Meeting Notes
Additional Resources
CLASP’s CCDBG Reauthorization and Implementation Resources
CLASP’s WIOA Game Plan for Low Income People
National Dialogue on Career Pathways
Department of Labor’s webinars to strengthen existing and/or develop new career pathways systems in states, regions, local areas, and tribes.
National Dialogue on Career Pathways – webinar archives