NWX-CFPB HQ Moderator: Heather Brown February 21, 2019 2:00 pm CT Coordinator: Good afternoon. Thank you for standing by. I'd like to inform all participants that today's call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. You've been placed in listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session of today's call. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 and please make sure that your phone is unmuted and record your name clearly when prompted. Thank you. You may begin with your host, Ms. (Bukola Dada). (Bukola Dada): Hello everyone and thanks so much for joining us in this second installment of our third Thursdays Community College Webinar Series. Today we will focus on financial education resources for young people. My name is (Bukola Dada). I work at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Office of Students as an Outreach Specialist. We have five great speakers lined up today. From Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, we'll hear from (Meina Banh), (Lissan Anfune). We'll also hear from (Jenn Smith) from Department of Labor, Rachel Strawn from Virginia Community College System, and Aaran Kelley with Virginia Department of Social Services. Before we get started, I have to give our legal disclaimer as an employee of the CFPB. This presentation does not constitute legal interpretation, guidance, or advice of CFPB. Any opinions or views stated by the presenter are the presenter's own and may not represent the Bureau's views. We are not affiliated with and do not endorse any of the speakers or entities participating in today's presentation. With that being said, I will turn things over to our first presenter (Meina Banh). (Meina Banh): Thank you, (Bukola). Hi everyone. My name is (Meina Bahn) and I am the Senior Policy and Innovation Advisor in our Office of Financial Education. We are one of the five offices that's part of the Consumer Education Engagement Division. And you'll hear more from some of our other colleagues. But today I wanted to talk to you a little bit about our work around youth financial capability - particularly in the evidence and practice space. Next slide. So before I begin, I just want to take a step back and explain to you our Bureau strategy for youth financial education. It really breaks down to three different channels. One is around evidence which is providing the research data ideas for capturing metrics. The other is practice, and this means programs and resources to support those that are actually providing youth financial education. You may think of these as teachers or yourselves if you're in community colleges. And the other is tools for parents and caregivers. So ways to reach younger kids probably in the three to thirteen-year age with some materials on how to begin financial education in early age. Next slide. So I'm going to begin by talking about some of our evidence work. Next slide. And to really get that started, I want to root it in how we have our evidence work, which is that we believe that there are building blocks to youth financial capability and that these building blocks layer over time. So there's ways to incorporate financial capabilities starting at a very young age. So for example in early childhood you can focus on executive function. And these are things like self-control, self-perseverance, planning, problem solving. In middle childhood we found that you can focus on financial habits and norms. And these are rules of thumb. This is also when your peer effects are important to you - what your friends are doing, what you're seeing from your parents. And then as you're approaching adolescence and young adulthood, you can start to incorporate financial knowledge and decision-making skills. So this is the ability to say hey, you know, if I'm planning to buy a cell phone, how can I conduct research to see what's the best plan for me? Or thinking about ways to finance your purchases. So using our building blocks, we really help root the rest of our research and evidence around this. I think this makes it easier for folks to think about, you know, as I'm engaging with different age groups, what is it that I can focus on if I'm a program leader? Next slide. So the next step that we took the building blocks is actually to create a measurement guide. We've heard a lot from program leaders and practitioners that while you have really amazing programs, how do you know that these are effective practices for the audience that you're serving? How do you know that you're helping them achieve the objectives that you set out to? So our measurement guide is an attempt to provide stakeholders with a means of assessing young people's progress towards the achievement of building blocks - which I talked about earlier - which are executive function, habits and norms, and financial knowledge and decision-making. And a number of stakeholders can use this measurement guide - anybody from youth program leaders to researchers to education policy leaders. And this measurement guide will allow you to be able to track your participants or students' progress over time and provide you evidence about your curriculum strength or opportunities for refinement. It also helps us deepen the understanding of youth financial capability and how that leads into adult financial well-being. Next slide. So let me take a moment to go through our measurement guide and how to use it. And before I continue on, I just want to say that all of the materials that I'm going to be talking about today and the reports that I have are available on our Web site which I'll talk about later on at the end. They're available for free download as well. So for the measurement guide it begins with an introduction to the building blocks of financial capability, which I quickly went through. And then it talks about suggestions on how to assess the progress towards development of the building blocks. So for example it breaks it out by different age groups. And I'm going to say let's say I'm working with teenagers. And you can see here on this slide that on the left side there's the building blocks - executive function, financial habits and norms, and financial knowledge and decision- making skills. And then here on the right side you see the associated questions with it. These are the program metrics in which you're trying to measure as an implementer. So I'm going to say that if I'm working with a group of teenagers, I want to be able to increase their financial knowledge and decision-making skills, and specifically I want to make sure that they're able to identify trusted sources of information. You can see that red arrow is pointing to that question there. The next set of tables basically shows you that for the financial knowledge and decision-making skills building block, here are the selected measures that you can use. So for whether or not an adult can identify trusted sources of information, we see two specific studies that will help you be able to do this. Next slide. So once you click on that, it actually brings you to the different studies. This one is a cognitive reflection test. In each study we break it out by telling you what is the building block that we're trying to measure, for which age group, what is the milestone - in this case, can the young adult identify trusted sources of information - the format of the measurement, who it is completed by, and then additional background and testing information. So this is just one of the measurements that I'm showing you as an example but we have many more in the measurement guide. There are measurements that are surveys, test exercises, interview questions, and more. Next slide. So we hope you'll be able to utilize this measurement guide to look at your own programs to also use this as a way to think about how to refine your programs as well. The next thing that I wanted to talk about is a resource that we've developed called a Guide for Advancing K Through 12 Financial Education. Next slide. This guide was originally aimed at state and policy makers who want to bring financial education into their states but may not know where to start or how to expand their programs. So we actually found that this guide is also really useful for anyone in this financial education space - whether you are a community college leader or a teacher or a financial education practitioner. If you're just looking to increase financial education in your state, this kind of gives you a roadmap on how to do it. We - you can think of this almost as a resource guide that's broken out into three different sections. One is laying the groundwork. So how do you get momentum and excitement for advancing K-12 financial education? Then the second section is related to actually building the initiative. So how do you identify partners to bring to the table? And then the last section is really focused on extending the impact. So once you have a program, how do you collect metrics for it or deepen the engagement? And so within each one of these sections, there's different topics that you can go to. And, next slide. And based on what your needs are, you can go jump to the topic of your specific interest. This one is comparing state and financial policies. And so you'll see that in each one of these we give you a case study along with the grade that it's aiming to, the audience it's for, and then a link to the Web site. I think this is great for the sense that if you're not sure what's happening in your own state or other states, this is a resource guide that basically compiles all of the promising practices and gives you an idea of what is happening at different states or what's happening at the local level. And you can use this as an opportunity to connect with these programs or learn from them. Next slide. So now I want to switch my attention to educator resources that we've created. Next slide. And this is our main page as I mentioned to you where you'll be able to find our links to the measurement guide and the building blocks research and the resource guide that I talked about. There's a link there on the bottom. But one thing that I do want to point out is that we are very proud of this. We recently released a set of teacher activities that financial educators can use. And I don’t want to scare you off in case you're not a teacher, so you're maybe thinking this is not useful for you. I think if you have an audience where you're working with young individuals, you can definitely adapt this for them. The great thing about these financial literacy activities is that you can sort by building blocks. So if you want to help them develop financial habits and norms, you can mark that. You can also sort it by school subject area. So let's say you are not a financial capability teacher but you're maybe a math teacher and you want to incorporate this into your classroom. We have a bunch of different activities that's focused on that. In addition, you can search by topic, earning, saving, protecting, spending, borrowing, the grade level, the age range, and then the duration of the activity - so 30 minutes, 15 minutes, one hour. Next slide. So this is an example of one activity that we have. It's called distinguishing between credit myths and realities. We have 11 different statements that you could post around the room. And the idea is to bring in the young folks that you're working with and they look through the 11 different statements and they take post-it notes and basically stick on each one of them whether or not they think it's a myth or a reality. And this is an opportunity for us to engage and talk about why they believe certain things are the way or an opportunity to talk to them about why something that seems like a reality may actually be a myth. So, great way to create conversation in your classroom. Next slide. And finally, I want to spend just a little bit of time talking about our parent resources. Next slide. We have a Web site called Money as You Grow. And on Money as You Grow, you can find different activities for parents to have with their young children. So again, this is broken out by age group. It's very simple. All the activities are already on our Web site. You usually don’t need to have anything extra except to print out the activity itself. And it takes the stress away from thinking about what should I talk to my children about. The other thing that we also have is a Money as You Grow Bookshelf Program. These are about 12 different books that you can get from your local library that talk about various money topics. And the idea is for you to go with your young child to the library to pick up one of these books. And we've created a parent companion guide for the books. So what you would do is read the book to the child and then afterwards utilize our companion guide to ask further questions to deepen their learning. It also proposes different activities that you can do around the house. And sometimes it's activities like taking your child to go shopping with you or taking your child to go to a market with you to deepen the engagement. So I just want to point out that we'll be releasing new titles to our Money as You Grow Bookshelf Program later on this year. And some of these titles are also in Spanish as well. Next slide. So as I mentioned to you if you're interested in any of these materials, this is the web page that you would want to go to. It's our youth financial education web page. We've broken this down by consumer tools, practitioner tools. So you'll be able to find all of our research on there as well as the different programs that I talked about. There's a lot more that I'm not able to cover, so I hope you will go and visit. Next slide. And if you are interested, you're able to order any of our materials for free. We'll ship them to you in bulk publications. This is our bulk publication page. You can go here to sort by the categories that you are looking for resources on and placement order. And we will again ship these materials to you for free. And please note a lot of our materials are in different languages. So if that's a population that you serve, we definitely have resources there. Next slide. Is that it? Okay. I'm done. Great. Thank you. So with that I'm going to turn this over to (Jenn Smith). Thank you so much. (Jenn Smith): Okay. Thank you. Thank you for having me, everyone. Yes, so I am going to be talking a little bit this afternoon about the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and in particular some youth financial literacy resources that had been developed because of that act for the youth that we serve. Next slide. So again, I'm (Jenn Smith). And I am the Youth Build Program Director for the Department of Labor and I am housed in the Division of Youth Services. And within the Division of Youth Services, we have three key programs and I'm going to talk more about the first two, really. It's where I'm going to focus. Although all of these programs offer some financial literacy education and access through our programs. But the first is the WIOA or Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act Youth Formula Program. This is by far the biggest youth serving program that we manage. And this goes to every state through a formula that determines the funding amount that goes to each state. And the idea for the Youth Formula Program is that it's focusing on youth - in school youth ages 14 to 21, out of school youth ages 16 to 24 - and providing a lot of workforce development, education resources. And so I'll talk about that in a moment. The other big program that I want to talk about is the Youth Build Program, which is differently from the Formula funded program. It is a competitive grant program. Organizations locally apply to get a Youth Build grant award. But it is a program that serves out of school youth ages 16 to 24 and focuses specifically on helping them to get their high school credential or equivalence degree as well as giving them training in both the construction industry and other in-demand industries locally. So I'm going to focus on those two programs. Next slide. Both of these programs were reauthorized through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act which was passed in 2014. And we began implementing it in 2015. Prior to the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, we had the Workforce Investment Act. I don’t want to spend too much time on this slide, but I think there are some key things that I kind of want to highlight form how WIOA is different from how we focused on populations under WIA. With WIOA, it really increased the focus on serving out of school youth. It was only 30% under WIA. And now 75% of funding has to go to serving out of school youth. There's a big focus on work experience, naturally - being the Department of Labor. I already mentioned the age for in school and out of school youth. But one of the key things that also happened at the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act is that it added five new required program elements to the Youth Formula Program. So program elements are required services that have to be provided to youth participants in the WIOA Youth Formula Programs locally. And, you know, there's some of the obvious ones you would expect - tutoring, alternative and secondary school services, occupational skills training, education concurrently in the context of workforce preparation, leadership development, mentoring, et cetera. But these five new program elements, one of the key ones that was added with WIOA was the financial literacy education requirement, which means that now through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act all of the WIOA Youth Formula Programs are required to provide financial literacy training. And that was not a requirement prior to WIOA. So this has been a relatively newer area of work for us and we've really been diving into this. So, next slide. So just to give a little of the highlights of exactly what financial literacy education activities could look like under WIOA, it's a pretty diverse range. Everything from establishing bank accounts, budgeting, learning about credit, focusing on making informed financial decisions, and key issues of identity theft and the need to protect personal identity and financial data. Next slide. One of the goals of making sure financial literacy education materials are targeted to a youth audience served by WIOA, you know, means that it's also about making sure that financial literacy materials are available in multiple languages, that they're responsive to the learning needs of youth with disabilities, and that they're age appropriate and timely. The goal of all of this is to build financial capability in youth who may be receiving their first paychecks through WIOA programming. Many of the opportunities tied to the WIOA Youth Formula Program include the opportunity for paid work experience, summer jobs, year-round work experiences, et cetera. So WIOA was really that sort of shift in thinking for us to realize that as the place where many youths may be getting the opportunity for their first paycheck, there's a responsibility to help them be accountable for that money and help them understand how to be financial capable. Next slide. So one thing that I wanted to highlight here is that the employment and training administration has a within the Department of Labor has a web portal that we use for resource sharing with the public and practitioners. The site is called Workforce GPS and can be located at www.workforcegps.org. Within Workforce GPS there are a variety of communities of practice and resource collections. And I'm going to highlight two of them today. This site that we're looking at the screenshot from right now is the WIOA Youth Formula Program Community Practice which is called Youth Connections. Within this community practice they have many different resources but they have specifically resource pages for each of the 14 required program elements. And so this snapshot is looking at the financial literacy education resource page. Content is continually added to this page as, you know, made available. There are technical assistance resources that are developed for the youth formula program organizations to use locally, helping them to understand about financial literacy and how to incorporate it into their program. This also provides resources on curricula and training materials for financial literacy and capability as well as some research and reports from some of the partners that we're going to be hearing about today. So there's a lot of great information on this page and I would certainly encourage you to check it out. Next slide. So as I mentioned, the other program I'm going to talk a little bit about is the Youth Build Program. The only program that had a required program requirement for financial literacy education was the WIOA Youth Formula Program. However, some of the changes that took place with WIOA in terms of changing the target populations that are being served in the Formula Program really helped to better align it with the population that Youth Build was already serving. So overall now WIOA is more focused on an older, out of school population with multiple barriers to employment success and, you know, self-sufficiency. So both, you know, the Youth Formula Program and the Youth Build Program as well as our Reentry Employment Opportunities Program where the programs that serve youth are focusing on youth who may have, you know, connections to justice system. They may be foster youth. They're low income youth as well as being generally out of school youth. So we're looking at a population that really may not be getting any sort of access to financial information at home. They may not come from a background of financial stability. And so there's, you know, really a population that has a great need for financial literacy assistance. So in Youth Build we also realize that we needed to adopt some of these behaviors. And also that many of our programs of their own accord were already doing a lot of financial literacy work. But we wanted to get a better sense of the lay of the land of what the programs were doing. So in late 2016 we used our technical assistance provider to reach out to our programs and get an assessment of how if they're using financial literacy training materials, how they're helping to support program - their participants, excuse me, in the programs with financial capability and just generally what that looked like - what sort of resources they were using, what the barriers were. And we got a lot of great feedback about, you know, their understanding of the importance and their responsibility for helping youth to understand financial literacy and helping to grow that capability. But it also highlighted some barriers that are, you know, maybe more specific to youth and in particular the opportunities that are served by Youth Build Programs. Next slide. So I wanted to give just a couple of highlights of what we found with that assessment that we thought were really sort of telling and interesting for the population we're serving - which again is 16 to 24 year olds who have dropped out of school, do not have a high school diploma or equivalency, and again have multiple barriers - low income, offenders, could be a child of incarcerated parents, migrant youth, youth with a disability, or low income youth, or foster youth. I don’t believe I mentioned that one. So looking at that and some of the interesting things that we found out were, you know, we asked a specific question around direct deposit simply because, you know, we feel like that's one strong financial practice that can lead to higher savings and more responsible spending habits. And Youth Build Programs actually generally provide stipends to youth while they're participating in the program as well as sometimes actual wages while they're doing construction or other in-demand industry training. So that means again, going back to this idea of helping them to be accountable because we may be the first place that they're getting access to steady money, you know, a lot of the programs because they're the ones paying the youth, we thought it would be interesting to find out how many programs are doing direct deposit. Interestingly, the majority of the programs are not doing direct deposit - which kind of surprised us, to be quite honest. But a lot of them, you know, the reasons why had to do with just sort of their policies and practices related to direct deposit being used for employees or not having the right payroll system set up or sort of the cost of doing direct deposit. And then also some of the issues that probably no surprise to this audience were some of the barriers of not having a bank account or not having the right identification to get a bank account, not having any sort of credit history in some cases or sometimes having a black mark because they have an account and had over drafted and so the account was forced to be closed. So those were interesting things that we started seeing as barriers to the use of direct deposit. Next slide, please. Also we asked our programs if they encouraged students to open bank or credit union accounts, how did they help them to do that. We definitely saw some really positive things for that. Many of the programs have partnerships with local banks or more often what we heard was with credit unions where they felt that the it was easier to have a - they had a more flexible relationship with the youth and were more willing to sort of work with the youth where they were in terms of their history and their identification and things like that. And a lot of them would have those partners come and provide the actual financial training. So we thought that was a great approach. Many of the programs actually also help you to do savings by creating sort of a separate savings account for them where they kind of require that half the stipend go into a savings account. Some of them provided incentives for saving and, you know, rewarded the participants for hitting particular savings milestones. So those were some great practices that we saw. Next slide. We also asked them generally about the types of financial programs that they offered. And you know, what they liked or didn’t like. And we saw pretty diverse - you'll see here from the list - pretty diverse types of curriculum. Everything from Money Smart, (Bonsai), National Endowment for Financial Education, Junior Achievement, My Path, (Ever Fi), Financial Literacy - all programs that are being used variously. And then they also talked about other ways that they provided financial training - sometimes in house, like I said having the bank or the credit union deliver some of that training, or sometimes they even incorporated it into the contextualized learning. If they're doing, you know, math learning, they would sometimes try and incorporate into that some of the concepts of accounting or budgeting. So they're kind of getting to learning in a more natural way. Next slide. So here was sort of our takeaway of some of the things that our programs found to be the most important lessons for managing money with the youth that they're working with. So I just think that this is sort of a great snapshot of, you know, what they sort of the pitfalls that they see youth getting into and how important it is to help them get out of those. The biggest one that we would hear with our youth is the importance of credit. In some cases, some of these youth have actually had their credit damaged by their own parents who had opened accounts in their names and then hurt their credit. So some of them are even coming in at a credit deficit before they've even really actually opened their own accounts. A lot of the programs did try to work with banks to make sure that even if youth was under 18, they could get an account that didn’t have to be, you know, cosigned for by a parent - a noncustodial account. That was a big thing that we saw. But also, you know, predatory lending and some of those, the payday lenders and some of those bad behaviors that end up costing them in the long run - those are a lot of the behaviors that our programs were really trying to undo as well as helping, you know, participants to understand wants versus needs. I think that was a key thing that we also saw. So we found this to be a very helpful exercise. Generally what we saw is that our programs were all doing some level of financial literacy but they were approaching it in many different ways and sort of different levels of involvement in terms of how much they're working closely with youth. But we really wanted to take that - those learnings - and put it into a technical assistance resource to kind of help our programs understand the lay of the land. So, next slide. So these are some of the best practices that were shared with us by some of the programs that we thought were really interesting. Again I think you'll see here like make the lessons real (unintelligible) idea that I talked about incorporating it into actual learning, you know, making sure that they are kind of taking in the knowledge while they're doing, you know, math applications or things like that, the online stock market game to help get these youth familiar with the idea of investing - something that they're probably really not seeing anywhere outside of this context. And again, I think that savings program for students has been a big one where some of the programs are implementing that practice. Next slide, please. So the last thing that I really wanted to share here was just that this is the Youth Build Community Practice. Again, this is another one of the communities of practice that exists on Workforce GPS. And what I'm showing here is the actual snapshot for the financial capability factsheet that we developed last year for our grantees. And this was as I said sort of a sharing of the best practice strategies that we learned from the field, sharing about different kind of curricula and sort of the plus and minuses of using those, some of the barriers to youth and ways to sort of work around them. And so this is a big resource that we put forward recently. We continue to share with our grantee organizations any sort of resources or information that is, you know, made available to us. So we're really just, you know, focused on trying to get the word out about the importance of this, continuing to help programs access learnings and resources and information, and this is really sort of the way that we often share it is through our community of practice. Next slide. So unfortunately, I will not be able to stay until the very end of this webinar as I have a conflict. So I wanted to make sure that you had my contact information. And would just recommend that if anybody has questions or wants more information about any of the resources or the program elements or the communities of practice that I shared, please feel free to reach out to me directly via email or phone. So I am now going to turn it over to (Lesean Anfunay). (Lissan Anfune): Thanks, (Jenn). And we'll want to put it on the first slide for folks. Great. So my name is (Lissan Anfune). Good afternoon everyone. I'm looking forward to sharing a few existing resources with you all. I'm a Specialist in the Bureau's Office of Community Affairs. I'll also be talking a little bit about some upcoming materials that I think would be useful for folks on the call today coming out of our youth employment success work. So I'm glad I have the opportunity to go right after (Jenn) because she provided some great context for that conversation. So I also have a disclaimer slide just stressing the point. But I'll leave it there for a second for folks. Just to give you all a bit of background, the office I'm representing today, Community Affairs, actually falls under the Consumer Engagement and Education Division. Our work primarily aims to help economically vulnerable consumers improve their financial well-being and achieve their financial goals. And what I always think is important to point out to folks is that economically vulnerable consumers aren't only those who are low income. As many of you know, there are many people who may have sufficient income but due to other circumstances or debt, they're often at risk of kind of losing that sense of economic stability with just one family emergency or unexpected expense. So with that in mind, our work really serves a great deal of the public in America. And as a federal agency, it can often be difficult for us to reach consumer directly. So our office actually focuses a lot of our work through national and local agencies and organizations that are already trusted sources of information and support in their communities. So reach consumers really where they already are. We help build the capacity of these organizations to address the financial capability needs of the people they serve. So that's one of the reasons I'm excited to be on the webinar today - to speak with folks at community colleges. So what I'm going to start off by talking about is our youth employment success work. And this is a perfect kind of follow up to (Jenn's) background on some of the work the DOL is doing in this space. So for the past five years, the bureau has actually been working in the youth employment program space across the country to learn how we can continue to support the development of strong financial capability offerings. And when we speak about financial capability here, it's important to note that we're talking about knowledge and practicing the financial skills, but we're also talking about expanding access to financial products and resources so people will really have the opportunity to really put those skills into action. And when we launched (Y.E.S) we actually did that with (Jenn's) team - Division of Youth at the Department of Labor. And we did that work from 2015 to 2017 working with 23 city programs across the country and doing some additional deep technical assistance for five cities, some of which you all may be in - Nashville, Indianapolis, Indiana, Virginia, Boston, and Louisville. And as (Jenn) mentioned, you know, the power of working with these programs is that we know that young adults taking on their first jobs, receiving their first paychecks, are already building financial skills. They're already building financial habits. They're already building relationships with financial services providers, whether that be banks or credit unions or payday lenders. And all of these practices are things that they're going to take with them throughout their lives. So we really have an opportunity here through these programs to provide them with the information and resources that can really help them start their financial lives on a stronger footing. So knowing that and knowing that DOL has really taken on a commitment to serving folks with more financial literacy materials - particularly the fact that the WIOA formula funding serves these out of school out of work youths who are ages 16 to 24 really gave us an opportunity there. So since it's a requirement for these programs to offer financial aid literacy resources, we're focusing a lot of our technical assistance and our work on those programs. And as (Jenn) mentioned a lot of these programs, there are people in these programs are often those most in need of work. They may have experienced homelessness, be a part of the foster care or juvenile justice system or may otherwise be primary breadwinners in their homes. And access to affordable financial products and skills around things like building a positive credit history or saving for expected and unexpected expenses are really critical to their ability to achieve economic security. In the first iteration of this project, we really focused on writing these programs with our existing resources - really doing that work to help them imbed them into their existing workflow. And also helping these programs build partnerships with financial institutions similar to the ones (Jenn) discussed that work to offer accounts that would meet their needs whether they be non-custodial accounts or accounts with fee structures that really suited folks who were just starting on their first jobs. So what I want to talk a little bit about here is our resource page which we really built out just last year as an opportunity for us to pull together these resources for folks that are kind of existing on our resources as well as some of our partners. What you see here is the landing page. And you can see on the sidebar some of the additional resources from DOL which (Jenn) spoke about, FDIC, (NCUA), and some of our bureau resources from Youth Fin Ed which (Mena) spoke about earlier. Particularly folks are interested in working with financial institutions to either offer financial products or improve the offerings they already have. I think it's great to take a look at the expand (unintelligible) page you see there that you can link to. It covers some regulatory and legal guides on offering accounts to minors, on offering payroll cards, on those pieces. But we also actually link to some a little more practical pieces. For example, FDIC has a model safe account template. That template provides guidelines on features and fees of what they identify as quote safe, low-cost transaction and saving accounts for underserved consumers. And what's really important about that piece is FDIC actually conducted a pilot study and found that these accounts that kind of use this template had a higher retention rate - meaning folks were able to stay in those programs and have those accounts for longer without having some of the issues that (Jenn) spoke about people having to drop out or have those accounts closed on them. But it was actually about the same cost to the banks. So these tools are really important for conversations that some of you all may want to have with financial institutions if you're thinking about ways that your program could be offering accounts - savings and transactional - that work for the young people that you're serving. We also have some information about payroll cards and some of the resources that we have there might be helpful if you have some internal HR departments that are thinking about how to help your students access certain financial products. They're also helpful when, you know, folks have to deal with adjusting kind of payroll systems in the way that (Jenn) spoke of earlier in order to serve young people more effectively. So we also have that financial skills and knowledge page that you see on this landing page that is linked. And that really aggregates relevant bureau resources. And some of those resources include worksheets that could help students do things like read their paystub or understand their credit score, manage their checking account and the associated fees. So that you can of course explore that at your leisure. But one thing that we're actually planning to do in the future after having worked with all these programs through our technical assistance in the past several years. We heard from a lot of these programs that they were hoping for something a little more specific designed for younger adults - whether it be in the way that it's interactive, online, the way the language is kind of speaking to young people and the way it's addressing topics that are relevant specifically to them - a lot of the findings that you saw in (Jenn's) Youth Build Report. And what we decided to do was build a tool that would really give people the chance to practice some of these skills by helping them to make an important financial decision that is relevant for many young workers and I'm sure relevant to many of the folks you're working with. And that decision that we're talking about is transportation. So helping youth kind of address this concern, whether it means transportation to and from work, transportation to and from child care, transportation to and from school or any programs that they're taking part in - really helping young people address this concern also gave us an opportunity to delve into and help them practice some key financial topics that kind of surround this major decision. So one topic that we'll be talking a bit about in that tool are transaction accounts. And that's really because young adults who were talking about are often working and paying things like rent, utilities, childcare costs as well as transportation costs. So access to a transaction account structure that work for them can be critical to their success, helping them to make those payments. And we want to really provide an opportunity for them to think about whether a transactional account is a good option for them for managing their money and making those critical payments. On the other side of that, we'll also be talking about savings. And when we're talking about savings in this case, what we're really thinking about is that while young adults that we're talking about often have multiple expenses and limited income, savings aren’t necessarily completely unattainable. So a lot of the work we're doing here includes supporting access to savings accounts similar to what we were talking about before - helping people really understand the structures of the savings account options that are available to them and identifying ways to help them regularly put money aside such as direct deposit or, you know, regular reminders of progress toward saving goals that can really help them plan ahead. And then one other piece that we'll be talking about is credit. As (Jenn) noted, that came up at the very top of some of the youth bill findings. And what's important there is that we find that for young people we serve who are old enough to have a credit profile, they often have either thin credit files or none at all. As (Jenn) mentioned, some folks are just pulling their credit report for the first time, just becoming eligible to pull it and finding there's already inconsistencies. So generally we think it's really important for us to communicate to young people the true impact of their credit histories on their broader financial opportunities. So not only the opportunity to make transportation decisions like getting an auto loan, but things like identifying housing, obtaining certain jobs, and really how to follow through with disputing any errors and handling any issues that they have with their credit reports. And beginning to build a stronger credit history. So I just want to give you sneak peek of some of the things we'll be covering. We're still in the early ages so - early stages of building out the tool - so everybody feel free to keep your eyes peeled for this tool in the coming year or so. And I also wanted to take a little time to talk to you all about another set of resources the Office of Community Affairs offers that I think would be very relevant to the folks you are working with. And that’s our Your Money Your Goals Materials. You may be familiar with them already. All of the resources are available online. They can be downloaded for free or ordered for free. And our materials also include slide decks and other training materials so that you can train your staff or others on how to use them. You can go to the link on the screen if you want to explore, which I suggest you do because there are quite a few pieces that I won't be able to cover in this period of time. So Your Money Your Goals Resources were developed and designed to help staff of community organizations and entities begin to have these important money conversations with consumers. We've worked with organizations across the country to embed these tools into their work. And they've integrated them in a lot of really creative ways - through case management sessions, coaching sessions, online lessons, and even adapted them into their teaching curriculums. So while the original toolkit - which we have a bit of a screenshot of some of the toolkit at the very top of this page - that original toolkit was really designed to review a lot of key financial topics from budgeting to saving to credit to debt and includes many worksheets and scenarios to really help people practice at some of these pieces of information. And it also offers some guidance on how to broach these often-sensitive topics. And so while folks are welcome to use the toolkit in its entirety, it's meant to be used as kind of pick and choose, pick your own adventure when you see something, a topic that comes up during conversations with folks, you can flip to the appropriate section and really dig into that piece with folks. But we actually also got a piece of feedback in the early days of the Your Money Your Goals work form the field that certain communities have more specific financial challenges and opportunities that are worth addressing. So in response we developed three companion guides that can be used in tandem with the toolkit or even standalone. And these guides focus on three key populations that I'm sure many of you serve. They include native communities, reentry populations, and people with disabilities. And to just give you a quick idea of some of the really critical tailored context that these guys provide, the people with disabilities guide for example covers topics such as paying for assistive technology. And it also covers how to set up an able account or achieving a better life experience account. Those are a type of savings product that are designed to offer people with disabilities an opportunity to save for some of their disabilities related expenses while providing flexibility on how these savings affect their asset limits and social security benefits. So, really critical information. It helps folks review their able account options and see if they're eligible to open an able account. And that's something that I think many folks aren't familiar with so it's really critical that we have this information available. Similarly our reentry guide includes a debt tracker that specifically takes into account criminal debt and that acknowledges the kind of amplified consequences of unpaid debt for this population. That really helps folks prioritize their debt and how they're going to address it. The guide also touches on things such as how to review a background screening for errors to ensure that folks don’t have their employment opportunities affected due to inaccurate or out of date information. Finally, I also wanted to talk a little bit about our newest set of Your Money Your Goals resources. We decided that we really wanted to create less expansive more approachable materials that were issue focused in response again to things we're hearing in the field. So we developed the Your Money Your Goals Booklet. They're bright, they're interactive. They're meant to be used in paper format but they can also be downloaded as you can see in this picture on the bottom of the screen there. That's one of our booklets right there of the polar bear breaking through the wall of bills. So they're bright. They're interactive. They include about eight worksheets that focus on helping someone work through one financial topic. We have one called Behind on Bills - the one that you see on the screen there - and that focuses on budgeting and general money management. Another called Debt Getting in Your Way, which as you can guess reviews how to get organized and begin to address your debts. And we also plan to release one on credit this year and another on savings the year after. And to give you guys a little bit of a look of what this actually looks like, I want to give you a quick sample. The debt booklet includes one credit tool in it which I want to share with you all. But obviously our credit booklet will get much more in depth into addressing credit. So here's kind of the front page - what you see on the right of the screen here. And that's the front page of one of the tools. So what you see on there is the title, How Do I Check My Credit Report, a kind of prompting question for somebody who may be working with somebody on this tool, when was the last time you reviewed your credit report at the very bottom. And then it covers what the tool will be discussing - getting a free copy of your credit report, understanding what's include, et cetera. So the way these tools are designed you then unfold that one page - it's a trifold - and inside you find some kind of worksheet or additional information. In this case it provides you with three clear steps for checking your credit report and some tips. First, getting your free copy of your credit report by going to the only federally authorized source for free credit reports annualcreditreport.com. And then the second page is just about reviewing the information found there, some common errors you might find, what you should be looking for, why it's important to review these pieces. And then finally a quick checklist that you can complete in order to make sure that you're looking for specific things that may be errors that you may need to dispute. And then once you fold it back up you see on the back page the - what you see on the right side here, (unintelligible) our step further page. And that page provides additional resources, here a little more information on how you would go about disputing an error and a template that you may submit in order to dispute an error with a bureau. And really this is just one example. And there are several of these on each of the pages or for each of the booklets. So this is where I'm going to hop off and hand it off to our next presenter. I just want to note that as we continue to develop resources to improve the financial capability of both young adults and other economically vulnerable consumers, we're open to learning from any organization that works within this population. We also invite you to reach out to us if you would like to learn any more information about our resources. And with that I'm going to hand it off to Rachel Strawn. Rachel Strawn: Lissan. Hello. This is Rachel Strawn. I'm the Program Director of Great Expectations which is Virginia's program for community colleges to help foster youth navigate higher education and get onto a self-sustaining career. Next slide. Next slide. Thank you. A little bit more about it - we know that college education is the best way for a young person to gain independence - be that a postsecondary associate degree or a going on to bachelor's degree or even a non-credit workforce degree that leads to fields like welding or nursing. We know that education leads to employment and we try to improve the likelihood that these people will achieve their educational goals. We offer support as they finish high school, work through postsecondary education, and then transition beyond that. Next slide. So what we do - primarily we're a coaching program. We have coaches at 21 of Virginia's 23 community colleges and they help with all the things that a parent might help a young person with in terms of postsecondary education - applying, figuring out what they're going to study, applying for financial aid, career exploration. Most of our coaches are career coach certified. We try to get them prepared for jobs either through internships or shadowing experiences, provide life skills training, mentoring opportunities. And then one of the biggest aspects of our coach's role is connecting the young people to all the area resources, be it housing, food, transportation, social services. Next slide. So a little bit about why we're here - in 2008 folks in Virginia realized that we needed a solution to the high number of foster youth that were aging out of the foster care system in Virginia. We were number one in that. We had more youth aging out of the foster care system than any other state in the country. And these youth were, you know, not going on to postsecondary education for the most part. And not succeeding. This chart at the bottom kind of shows our program growth form 2008 when we were at five colleges, 84 students to today when we're at 21 and we serve about 1,400 students. Next slide. So I said there were, there were some conversations in Virginia about the need to help foster youth. And these sort of started with (Ann Holton) who is our former director and former juvenile court judge and a former governor's wife, our chancellor (Glenn Dubois) who's still there and then our fabulous donors (Mark) and (Barbara Free). (Mark) has passed. Now (Barbara) is still a donor and involved in the program. But I think (Mark) had a conversation with our chancellor about how we had this high number of youth aging out of foster care and that the community college system that was kind of geared to help everyone wasn't necessarily really reaching this population. So he challenged the chancellor. He said, "I will donate $1 million if you can raise 4 million more to do something to help with this problem in Virginia." And so that's how it began. And the reason why the chancellor is shown with a bicycle is he went on a bike tour in Virginia to raise awareness and raise funds for the program. So that's how it began. It still is Great Expectations is almost completely philanthropically supported in Virginia. Next slide. So this is just a graphic of where we are in Virginia. Like I said, we began at five colleges. The gold stars show where we are now, at 21 of the 23. We're just - the two out in the Shenandoah Valley in the Roanoke area that we are not at yet. Next slide. And so I talked about how folks realized there was a need for something like that. And I'll give you a little bit of why there was a need. We know from a pretty comprehensive study called the Midwest Study of Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth about this really difficult outcomes for young people that experience foster care. By the time that they're age 26, almost 60% of these young people will have been incarcerated. Of the male population, it's 76%. And we know around 30% will be homeless or housing in secure at the age of 26 and that 60% will be relying on some type of public assistance. Next slide. And this, you know, these difficult outcomes where they are incarceration and use public assistance, homelessness, but also just earning gap. When young people experience foster care don’t get to achieve the milestones in terms of postsecondary education that their peers do, at the age of 26 their peers are making an average of $32,000 a year and young people experience foster care are only making 13,000 -ish a year. So that's a huge difference. And we are really hoping in Virginia and trying very hard to narrow that gap. Next slide. What the program was based on - a model that came out of (Casey) Family Programs. It's a very comprehensive model and we are trying to tackle all of these areas from designated leadership - which we have in all of our coaches - to financial aid to academic advising. One of the areas that we're really working on now is right there at the top of the graphic - one that we really hadn’t been able to address which was housing and other basic needs. The community colleges as a whole are starting to have food pantries and the like and we specifically within great expectations are trying to work on the housing piece - which is the biggest challenge for youth. Next slide. So we do track performance measures to see how well we're doing with our students. And these are the four we track - increasing the percent of students that graduate or retain the following term, the following year. How many we're serving in a potential pool. So we know in Virginia how many college age foster youth there are. There's about 4,500. And so we're serving about 1,400 now. We hope to get to serve about half the population. We think that's a reasonable goal. So we work on that. And then increasing the number of credentials earned each year because obviously a credential is what leads to the job. Next slide. So these graphics just show how our students are persisting overall. So this is the fall to spring over time. The students in the GED program even though they're kind of the most at risk of all challenged populations, they are persisting in a number very similar to their non-foster peers within the community college system. So we're pleased about that. Next slide. And then fall to fall is a more difficult to measure. So these are the kids that were here in the fall. They maybe made it through to the spring but a lot of them fall off over the summer or challenges come in the way - work or different life things get in the way. And so our persistence fall to fall again is in keeping with the general Virginia community college population of about 48-50%. Next slide. And then our reach in Virginia - so we work with young people who are enrolled in classes currently. We work with young people who are trying to overcome barriers to enrollment and that whole number this fall was around 1,369. And then we know how many college age foster youth in Virginia and right now it's about 4,100. Next slide. And then graduates - this is a really uplifting graft to see. This is the number of graduates that we have within the program each year. And as you can see, it’s growing over time. We're really proud of that. As more students we reach, the more students over time are gaining their credentials. And last year we had about 116 youth gain a workforce or associate degree or bachelor's degree. Next slide. And what this all means nationally is nationally if you were in foster care in America, you have about an 8% chance of ever getting - or about 8% of those students I should say ever get any kind of college degree - be it an associate degree or a bachelor's degree. But among the Great Expectations population, we're now at a 20% graduation rate which we're really pleased about. And we hope to see that number grow even more over time. Next slide. And this is going to take us close to when we talked to the Virginia Department of Social Service folks in a couple of minutes. But one of the ways we can help our students is through our Virginia tuition grant for former foster youth. Most of our students are PELL eligible but if they're not eligible for the PELL grant, there's this other grant which will pay full community college tuition for the youth if they qualify. Next slide. And then a little offshoot of our program that we're really proud of and which is helping us in Virginia is our leadership program. It's in our fifth year. We have a hybrid online-in person leadership training for our students. We have about 12 students that participate in this leadership program. They use a secret Facebook page. They use Blackboard and they learn about leadership and advocacy online. And then in the spring we gather them together for some in- person leadership training in conjunction with our graduation celebration. Next slide. And this is at our celebration. All of our leaders create advocacy projects and they present these in poster form to our guests at the graduation celebration. It's a really fun day where we bring in all the graduates that can come from all over the state that got a credential that year that come in with their coach and we have a lunch and invite our donors and other interested supporters and we celebrate those graduates. It's a great way to celebrate their success and to encourage those that are working towards their success. Next slide. This is a screenshot of all of our coaches at the different colleges with their contact information. Next slide. And that’s it. That includes my contact information. And I'm happy to answer any questions after the regular program. Thank you. Aaran Kelley: Hi. This is Aaran Kelley. And I use she/her pronouns. And I am the Youth Services Program Specialist at the Virginia Department of Social Services. I am going to piggyback on Dr. Strawn's presentation and just take a few moments to share some additional ways in which Virginia's foster care system offers postsecondary education to four or two years. I would like to start by acknowledging the Virginia Department of Social Services' appreciation for the Great Expectations Program. We are proud to partner with Great Expectations in the wonderful work that they do with youth who have experienced foster care in Virginia. As Dr. Strawn explained, youth who age out of foster care are at an extremely vulnerable population who face a myriad of complex barriers to postsecondary educational attainment and their successful transition to adulthood. Great Expectations offers supports and services that can reduce or eliminate some of these barriers and we are grateful for the work that they do and the partnership we share to support this vulnerable population. No single system can solve these types of complex issues. Multipronged strategic actions and meaningful collaborations between systems, however, can and do have a positive impact. Next slide, please. The federal John H. Chafee foster care program for successful transition to adulthood act provides states and tribes the opportunity to and responsibility of ensuring that youth who age out of foster care have additional supports and services in place to promote positive, lifelong outcomes. One of the ways the act does this is through the education and training voucher or ETV program. The purpose of the ETV program is to fund goods and services designed to assist eligible youth in successfully completing a postsecondary educational or vocational training program. It provides up to $5,000 per year for up to five years in grant funding to use those who have aged out of foster care. These years do not have to be consecutive. So for instance a youth could complete a two-year degree, work for a couple of years, and then decide to return to school and be eligible to receive ETV again. Or as Dr. Strawn pointed out, a lot of our youth who participate in Great Expectations are going to be eligible for the federal PELL grant and/or the Virginia Community College Tuition Assistance Grant. And so they actually may not have a need for the additional ETV funds at that time. If they complete their community college degree with the grants and scholarships that they need to pay for that and then move onto a four-year degree, they can begin using ETV at that time and continue in a graduate level degree if they so choose. Next slide. The Virginia Department of Social Services operates as state supervised locally administered system, meaning that foster care services are provided at the local level and that includes ETV. States and tribes who participate in this ETV program nationwide administer these funds in different ways. In Virginia, the funds are administered through the local Department of Social Services. So youth apply through their local department where they currently are or formerly were in foster care. Youth who are eligible are between the ages of 16 and 26. They have their high school diploma, GED, or equivalent, are attending an approved postsecondary educational institution or vocational training program, have completed the Virginia ETV application, have applied for federal financial aid, and maintain satisfactory academic progress. Next slide. Each of these funds can be used to pay for such things as tuition and fees, room and board, textbooks, equipment, materials, supplies, tutoring, transportation, childcare, or other goods and services that are included in the total cost of attendance for the program they are participating in. Next slide. In addition to the ETV program, Virginia's local Departments of Social Services are able to offer additional support. Fostering Futures is Virginia's extended foster care program for youth who would have otherwise aged out of foster care system at 18. Fostering futures allows youth to stay in foster care until their 21st birthday. This program provides living expenses and case management in partnership with the youth. Youth who choose to participate in Fostering Futures once they turn 18 must be going to school or working at least part time or participating in activities that will reduce barriers to these. Attending community college and participating in the Great Expectations Program is an excellent way for you to meet these requirements. Finally, additional Chafee program funds separate from ETV are utilized to provide independent living services to youth. This flexible funding offers youth additional services, activities and programs that support them in their successful transition to adulthood. These can include goods or services purchased for individual youth as well as group activities or workshops. For instance, a local Department of Social Services may partner with their local credit union to host a financial literacy workshop for youth in foster care. And they can use these funds to help provide the materials, food, snacks, beverages for the workshop or even incentives for youth who participate. By offering these multiple supports, we hope to provide youth with the opportunities they may need to reach their goals. Next slide. If there are any questions, please feel free to reach out directly to me or see our youth centered Web site fostermyfuture.com. And with that, I will turn the floor back over to (Bukola). (Bukola Dada): Thank you Aaran and thank you so much to all of our speakers today for all of the information that you shared. Before we open it up for questions I just want to note that if you're wondering how you can get a copy of today's presentation, we will have it available on our Web site within a few weeks. The Web site is consumerfinance.gov. That’s C-O-N-S-U-M-E-R-F-I-N-A-N- C-E dot gov. You can also contact us via email of you want to receive additional information about this presentation. Our email address is CFPB_finex that's F- I-N-E-X at CFPB dot gov. Now I will turn things over to our Operator so that she can open it up for questions. Coordinator: If you do wish to ask a question over the phone lines, please hit star 1 on your phone. Make sure your phone's unmuted and please record your name clearly. Thank you. There are currently no questions in queue. (Bukola Dada): Okay, great. Everyone has provided their contact information. If there are no questions today feel free to reach out to any of the speakers directly. And again thank you all to our speakers and our participants. That concludes today's webinar. Coordinator: Thank you for joining today's conference. You may now disconnect at this time. END NWX-CFPB HQ Moderator: Heather Brown 2-21-19/2:00 pm CT Confirmation # 8398724 Page 41