Table of ContentsIntroduction
Helping young people thrive is one of our most important commitments as adults, and youth workers live and breathe this task every day. This work directly impacts the 20.4 million youth enrolled in after-school and summer programs. Based on this number, it’s estimated that there are at least 2 million professionals working in youth development programs nationwide (not including formal and informal child care staff, teachers, sports coaches, and others who also support young people in a variety of settings).
Despite the importance of this work, staffing vacancies and turnover in these programs have become commonplace, a trend exacerbated in recent years. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of program providers reporting they were extremely concerned about finding staff grew by 20 percentage points between spring and fall 2021 alone. Moreover, surveys suggest approximately half of professionals working in-person jobs would now prefer to work remotely, a luxury that most youth development direct service jobs cannot afford. Finally, emerging data show Millennials and Gen-Zers increasingly seek employment opportunities with strong work/life boundaries, pushing employers to demonstrate commitment to nurturing professional and personal wellness. At the same time, little investment has been made in the youth development workforce, as described by American Institutes for Research and the Wallace Foundation in 2023: …While investments in afterschool programming have continued to rise (Peterson, 2022; Neitzey, 2023), youth-serving workers have remained below the radar. Unlike in K–12 education, policies intended to expand and enrich youth-serving programs have often focused on access and quality standards while neglecting the need for a workforce that is qualified, experienced, supported, and sustainable. Lack of support for workers’ pay, benefits, and growth opportunities leads to high staff turnover and staff shortages.
Staff shortages and turnover lead to inability to enroll youth in programs and burnout among existing staff, among other hardships. In practical terms, every youth services leader we know has asked us the same question over the last few years: How do we find and keep high-quality staff?
There are a myriad of potential solutions: referral programs, incentives to stay, staff engagement events, and more. Many of the solutions used in the corporate world aren’t readily available to the youth development sector (yet), such as paying more and providing sign-on bonuses. We’re starting to see innovative strategies emerge – such as providing affordable housing and mental health services for staff – but these are the exceptions, not the rule. This paper focuses on a strategy that is accessible, low- or -no cost, and advances two goals simultaneously – creating career pathways for early career youth development professionals and boosting positive outcomes for children and youth. With investments in staff, we not only improve program quality, but we invest in the workforce and advance individuals’ earning potential. It’s time to ask ourselves how we can make youth work jobs a springboard to skill-building, credentials, and a flourishing career. In short, how do we make youth work jobs good jobs? This isn’t a new question, of course, and our ideas draw inspiration and recommendations from decades of work in the youth development sector. In 1999, the Partnership for After School Education (PASE) first wrote, “It is difficult to create and support a culture of professional development [in youth development]. Such a culture is critical if staff are to make a long-term commitment to enhancing their skills and knowledge, and feel that becoming an afterschool educator is a professional identity worthy of building a career around.” These words could have been written today. Nearly 20 years ago, Harvard Family Research Project published a study in which the majority of out-of-school time (OST) leaders interviewed named staff development as the most important contributor to OST quality. In 2009, ExpandED Schools (then TASC) named a need to articulate sequenced, informal trainings aligned to formal training to build toward higher education degrees, and to collect data on wages and career advancement, among other recommendations. Investments and efforts in making youth work jobs good jobs aren’t new. However, today’s context has shifted so dramatically that we need new solutions to this challenge. About This Paper
The National AfterSchool Association (NAA) has led the way in recent discussions on job quality, publishing its job quality framework in 2023. NAA writes,
Quality jobs need intentional design… Those in out-of-school time often discuss preparing youth as the workforce of tomorrow. We shouldn’t tout this as a benefit of OST without taking care of our own first. We should be just as concerned about building our afterschool workforce for today and beyond.
In this paper, we focus on the pieces of NAA’s framework that support a strong future for youth workers – training and career development. As a capacity-building organization, Change Impact has collaborated with numerous agencies and systems and has developed promising strategies. While still in the early stages, many have been embraced by our partners and have shown early success. While we know those with the deepest expertise are those who are closest to youth work, we answer a compelling call to action to share our insights, actively seek feedback, and champion the widespread adoption of promising practices.
Expanding upon decades of research and practice, we offer three strategies for career development for youth workers and tools that can guide a more equitable approach to workforce development. We provide examples from our partners to demonstrate the benefits of investing in youth workers. Finally, we’ve included a curated list of new resources on this topic. We invite you to borrow and use what is helpful for your work as you join us in building stronger youth work career pathways. Part 1: Career Development Strategies for Youth Workers
How would you navigate a map with no street names? As described in the 2023 Power of Us youth workforce study, “ …The lack of clearly defined career paths means that people who are entering the workforce or looking to change careers may not identify work with youth as a career option or know how to get started if they do. Those who do find their way in may step out if they cannot see a clear path...” Career development can be supported at every step of an employee’s journey in a youth-serving organization, from the way we structure your job postings to the way we provide feedback. The three strategies that follow, based on research and our experience, show early promise in creating and advancing career pathways for direct service staff.
Strategy 1: Align roles to professional competencies, skills, and goals at every step of the employee journey.
Especially important for entry-level staff with limited work experience, having a clear job description with specific responsibilities, skills, and competencies is a relatively easy way to support employees’ professional growth. Why? First, you’re providing new staff a roadmap to be successful in their role, which will orient them to future opportunities. For example, linking to specific observation tools or quality standards in the job posting helps everyone visualize what strong performance looks like. Second, you’re providing language for new staff to use to describe the skills they are developing, which they will also demonstrate in their resumes and in interviews as they progress in their career. Finally, you can offer structured development opportunities aligned to a set of professional competencies. Consider the following ways to do this across the employee journey (see figure 1).
Figure 1: Employee Journey
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Promising Practice Example: Roads to SuccessRoads to Success (RTS), based in East Harlem, NY, leads a network of after-school, summer, and college and career readiness programs to advance its mission: to inspire and empower all young people to take control of their future. Recognizing a need to overhaul its human resources framework to improve staff recruitment and retention, RTS partnered with Change Impact to align its infrastructure to a set of local professional competencies. The results included job descriptions that explain the competencies needed to be successful; a clear escalation protocol for when staff need support; revised performance review tools that provide space for self-assessment, feedback, and goal-setting; and PD plans for staff that cover state-mandated training, in-house workshops, and self-directed courses on the Change Up Learning platform that can be taken anytime, anywhere. "Youth-serving organizations like Roads to Success are great places to launch a thriving career. We are now being even more intentional to ensure staff receive clear guidance and ample support to grow and exceed their own professional goals." 
Promising Practice Example: Family League of Baltimore CityFamily League of Baltimore City is undertaking a multi-year strategy to roll-out the NAA Core Knowledge, Skills, and Competencies (CKSC) framework across its citywide network of out-of-school-time programs. This effort kicked off with professional development for organization and site leaders on developing career pathways as a strategy for staff recruitment and retention, and using a common set of competencies to develop upskilling tracks for staff. Family League is now partnering with Change Impact to build toolkits aligned to the CKSCs to support hiring, professional development planning, and performance management. Family League aims to shift how programs across the city approach staffing, building a culture of job quality and economic mobility for OST professionals in Baltimore. "We know that having quality youth development staff leads to quality programming, which in turn leads to positive youth outcomes. While it will take years to create the system of supports that youth work staff deserve, we are encouraged by the collaborative spirit among Baltimore's stakeholders and look forward to working collaboratively to strengthen programming and develop career pathways as we deepen our work together.”
Strategy 2: Provide both supervision and coaching, ensuring equitable and constructive support.
In youth work, like many other sectors, when you’re good at your job you get promoted and become a people manager. We all know being good at working with kids does not necessarily mean you know how to work with adults, and many of us have learned how to be a manager through trial and error. One skill that every manager should have, and often needs support to develop, is being an effective coach. Supervision and coaching can be mistaken as interchangeable concepts. However, supervision is purely about oversight, whereas coaching is about helping a person set and achieve goals. Adding intentional coaching to supervisors’ responsibilities ensures staff learn how to set and achieve goals, navigating and overcoming roadblocks along the way.
How might a youth work supervisor effectively coach an employee?
Promising Practice Example: Laureus Sport for GoodLaureus Sport for Good is an international network of foundations that uses sport as a tool to help youth overcome violence, discrimination, and disadvantage in their lives. With Change Impact, Laureus Sport for Good USA developed an Emerging Leaders 10-week professional development program for middle managers seeking to advance as leaders. Alongside live and self-paced workshops on organizational culture, equity, and management, participants received coaching from a sports-based youth development leader. Coaches used a series of prompts to help participants reflect and plan; sessions included topics such as setting career goals and how professional learning now can support their future career trajectories. This provided space for reflection and forward planning, complementing but distinct from support they receive from their direct supervisors. "There is a deep pool of talented, passionate young professionals in the sport for development sector, yet not enough pipelines are devoted to their growth and development. In partnership with Change Impact, Laureus USA seeks to address this need through our Emerging Leaders cohort program and Virtual Training Camp series. We are seeking to professionalize career pathways and help make sure the next generation of sector leaders—including many who were program participants as kids—are well prepared.”
Strategy 3: Ensure training aligns to credentials and college credit to the greatest extent possible.
By making microcredentials, certificates, degrees, and other credit-bearing training opportunities available to staff, we build a path to a successful future rooted in their youth work experience. While it’s important – and mandatory in many cases – to provide training aligned to state requirements, these training certificates are often not portable to other jobs or sectors. To bolster their career journey, managers can support staff to add these trainings to their resumes and describe the skills they have developed through them, but we suggest training plans do not end here.
College credits are a particularly important piece of this puzzle. In our career mapping work described below, we found a bachelor’s degree is still required for most jobs that may follow youth work. Based on the best data available, it is projected that 50% of youth work professionals have a high school diploma or some college experience but not a degree. While community colleges such as the City University of New York (CUNY) are cited as “the most reliable springboard into the middle class,” research shows the majority of adult students leave school before they earn a credential typically due to costs such as transportation and textbooks. Change Impact has partnered with CUNY’s Office of Academic Affairs and its Credit for Prior Learning program to begin to address this opportunity through our Change Up Learning training platform at Borough of Manhattan Community College and the School of Professional Studies. According to the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, students from marginalized communities who earn credit for prior learning earn a degree more frequently and faster compared to their peers who do not receive credit for prior learning. Ultimately, because we know front-line youth development jobs do not pay a family-sustaining wage, a springboard to higher education is needed to prepare youth workers to climb a career ladder into education, social work, nonprofit management, and other related professions. “CUNY welcomes working adults into our colleges with recognition that their workplace experience and training are meaningful in the college classroom. We are thrilled to be working with Change Impact to create pathways into degree programs for youth development workers.”
Change Up Learning self-paced courses are approved by a growing number of CUNY campuses for credit equivalencies, and staff can earn up to six free college credits while taking trainings that are 1) paid for out of organizational budgets and grants (both the cost of training as well as paid time to participate) and 2) pre-approved by New York State to meet school-age child care training requirements. Based on this work, there are now several courses in Early Childhood, Secondary Education, and Youth Studies for which Change Up Learning trainees can receive credit at CUNY’s Borough of Manhattan Community College and School of Professional Studies. More information can be found here.
Promising Practice Example: New York EdgeNew York Edge, the largest after-school program provider in New York State, hosted a forum on earning a college degree for staff, exposing them to a range of career pathways and the degrees that lead to them. As a Change Up Learning partner, New York Edge told staff they can earn free college credits by completing trainings already required for their jobs. These credit-bearing trainings will be offered to all staff, including professionals who do not yet have the requisite college credits to advance roles. Staff indicated this is a high-impact benefit to being employed at New York Edge. "Staff are the heart and soul of our programs, and we know we must invest in them as they invest in the children we serve ever yday” Part 2: Tools to Support Youth Worker Career Development
Part 3: Current Resources on the Youth Development Workforce
The resources below from 2022-2024 provide insightful frameworks and tools related to workforce development in the youth work sector.
About Change Impact
Change Impact is a capacity-building organization with specialized experience in education, youth development, and workforce development. Since launching in April 2017, Change Impact has trained over 40,000 professionals, raised $200 million in grants, and designed strategies for more than 125 partners. Change Impact is a certified minority- and woman-owned business (M/WBE).
In 2021, Change Impact launched Change Up Learning, an equity-driven online training platform for youth work professionals and educators, with live and self-paced courses designed to deepen learning, bolster professional habits, and support career pathways. Change Up Learning is approved by a number of states to provide required training for child care and after-school professionals, as well as teacher and social work continuing education credits. To learn more, email [email protected]. Connect with us on LinkedIn, Bluesky, and Instagram. |
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