Welcome to the CCRY Network

• Background
• Areas of Interest

Communities across the country have begun establishing links between a range of agencies working to reconnect youth to school and educational opportunties, work and civic life. The CCRY Network aims to support communities in creating comprehensive service delivery systems and innovative peer-to-peer networking to improve the lives of youth.

Background

Over the past several years, many communities have invested in considerable capacity-building and innovation to reach and reconnect youth who are disconnected from school and employment. While federal funding for much of this activity is retrenching, many of these communities continue to engage in this important work. Several communities have come together to formalize a network to:

• Serve as a communications vehicle to bring attention to the work and innovative practice that is occurring in communities across the country
• Serve as a collective learning environment, promoting peer-to-peer learning and hands-on assistance in disseminating and expanding best practice especially in communities with high levels of youth distress
• Have a collective voice and make input into state and federal policy on issues affecting disconnected youth in distressed communities.

Specific Areas of Interest

Education

• Elevate the discussion of flexible funding and financial assistance to at-risk youth
• Integrate or coordinate workforce development with post-secondary education
• Identify successful community credit retrieval/credit recovery options
• Identify best alternative education practice for justice-involved youth
• Find innovative learning strategies for youth with low literacy levels
• Find effective strategies in leveraging education dollars
• Share information on how communities are formalizing their relationship with their school districts
• Identify examples of effective presence in local schools and what this relationship can look like

Justice

• Increase coordination/formal linkage with juvenile justice
• Enhance employment opportunities for ex-offenders
• Successfully attract/redirect funding from justice
• Shift youth case workers to employment focus
• Handle court-mandated participation and keep offenders engaged and connected
• Create an integrated support structure using the One-Stops and support services to target youthful offenders to complete high school and go on to college

Foster Care

• Create better connection with foster care
• Identify examples of success in accessing Chafee funds to service youth in foster care

Business linkage

• Create pipelines to burgeoning areas of the economy— construction and health, for example
• Integrate social strategies with economic development strategies to build competitive workforce