Adult, Dislocated Worker, and Youth Activities

California uses WIOA statewide funds to develop and fund innovative and dynamic initiatives that pilot new service delivery strategies and target specific populations throughout the state. These initiatives are aligned with the mission and direction of WIOA by assisting job seekers, especially job seekers with barriers to employment, with access to employment, education, training, and support services they need to succeed in the labor market while also matching employers with the skilled workers they need to compete in the global economy.

Below are high level summaries of California’s key initiatives.

Workforce Accelerator Fund

The Workforce Accelerator Fund (WAF) awards funds to design, develop, and implement projects that accelerate employment and reemployment strategies for California job seekers. These projects create and prototype innovative strategies that bridge education and workforce gaps for targeted populations, and implement promising models and practices in workforce system service delivery infrastructure.

The WAF fosters regional coordination among key partners and promotes relationships with new partners, leading to enhanced resources and augmentation of existing services strategies. By working with similar or established programs, organizations are better equipped to anticipate complications and can instead focus on methods and success. Organizations participating in Accelerator also improve their working relationship with stakeholders.

The WAF also recognizes that strong relationships with employers are necessary to create pathways to gainful, long-term employment for participants.  Collaboration with industry leads to well-crafted trainings and jobs for participants with employers who value them. As a result, service providers receive high-quality job placements because there is a mutual benefit to employers.

 The primary goals of the WAF include:

• Improve labor market and skills outcomes for target groups through the development of strategies that fill gaps, accelerate processes, or customize services to ensure greater access to workforce services and employment opportunities.
• Create new models for service delivery and funding alignment that can be replicated across the State and tailored to regional needs.
• Implement, replicate, and scale successful innovations that emerged from previous WAF projects.
• Leverage state investments with commitments from industry, labor, public, and community partners.

Regional Implementation Grants

Regional Plan Implementation (RPI) grants provided funds to California’s 14 RPUs to support efforts to implement the priority goals of the regional plans and build off the lessons learned from the SlingShot initiative. These awards will help ensure more people have access to training, good jobs and economic security, and achieve greater intergenerational income mobility.

The following are outcomes the State hopes to achieve through the RPI grants:

• Demand Driven Skills Attainment:
  • RPU has developed a team that jointly convenes industry and is led by industry champions.
  • RPU has shared industry sector focus and pools/shares resources to meet demand in the region.
  • RPU has a process to communicate industry workforce needs to supply-side partners.
  • RPU has policies supporting equity and strives to improve job quality.
• Upward Mobility and Equity for Individuals with Barriers to Employment Outcomes:
  • RPU has shared target populations of emphasis.
  • RPU deploys shared/pooled resources to provide services, training, and education to meet target population needs.
  • RPU utilizes shared/common case management and capacity building strategies such as co-enrollment and professional development to develop shared responsibility for providing services and ensure quality outcomes.
• System Alignment Outcomes:
  • RPU has shared/pooled administrative systems or processes to achieve administrative efficiencies and program outcomes.
  • RPU has created formalized structures for decision-making. 
  • RPU has developed a process for evaluating performance that includes:
    • Qualitatively evaluating progress towards meeting regional industry and occupational demand;
    • Tracking the number of industry-recognized credentials and apprenticeships;
    • Aligning negotiated performance measures to regional indices

Workforce Navigator Pilot Program - ELL and Immigrant Workers

California made funds available to develop and implement a Workforce Navigator Pilot Program targeting English Language Learners (ELL) and immigrant workers. The goal of the initiative is to promote increased access, create/enhance program structure and availability, and provide supportive services within the workforce system for California’s ELL Population. Grantees are expected to work in collaboration with community based organizations (CBOs) and other workforce partners, including adult education entities.

Specific goals of the pilots include: implementing a workforce navigator model; enhance/establish collaboration with CBOs and other partners to provide supportive wraparound services; support dual enrollment in WIOA Title I and Title II programs; and create “no wrong door” access to services.

High Road Training Partnerships Initiative

The High Road Training Partnership Initiative (HRTP) supports eight demonstration projects — ranging from transportation to health care to hospitality — that model a sector approach that addresses critical issues of equity, job quality, and environmental sustainability. HRTPs are industry-based, worker-focused training partnerships that build skills for California’s high road employers—firms that compete based on quality of product and service achieved through innovation and investment in human capital and can thus generate family-supporting jobs where workers have agency and voice.

Along with these program investments, the CWDB works with California Labor Federation, University of California (UC) Berkeley Labor Center, and UCLA Labor Center to support, advance, and institutionalize these model partnerships. Through these partnerships, California is producing a body of policy, principles, and practice, defining the high road strategy for the state. UCLA has crafted eight project overviews describing each partnership model and highlighting impact and transformation within each industry. They are currently developing a formal HRTP evaluation, assessing partnership successes and challenges along with identifying opportunities to transform California’s workforce development system. UC Berkeley is responsible for developing essential elements and best practices for sector partnerships that start with the jobs along with guidelines for workforce stakeholders to more directly attend to supply and demand in the labor market.

California started to integrate this high road approach across other workforce initiatives and will invest in further partnerships starting in 2020. California is committed to delivering on the initial purpose of this initiative: to advance and document a field of practice that simultaneously addresses urgent questions of socioeconomic mobility, economic competitiveness, and climate change through regional skills strategies designed to support economically and environmentally resilient communities across the state.