Welcome!
The Jobs to Careers program is gaining momentum, and with it so is the UNC Evaluation of the program. To facilitate communication between our office and the individual programs, we will be publishing this e-newsletter on a semi-annual basis. This newsletter is for you, so if you have any comments, suggestions, or ideas to make it more useful and informative, please share! You can contact our program assistant, Matthew Edison at edison@unc.edu.
New & Noteworthy
A Helpful Resource: IOA PubAlerts
You might be interested in signing up for the Frontline Workforce Pubalert, available from the UNC Institute on Aging Information Center. Each Pubalert lists new publications about the frontline workforce, including journal publications, grey literature, and general news. Information about subscribing to the Pubalerts is available at the link above.
Meet Your Evaluation Staff
The Jobs to Careers Evaluation website is still under construction, but we have developed a staff introduction page so you can see who we are and what we do. Further information about our role in the Jobs to Careers program can be found in our first press release.
Gentle Reminders
Please Return Your Partnership Form!
At the Jobs to Career annual meeting, each grantee received an “Initial Grantee Partnership Form” during your individual meetings with the evaluation team. These forms will be integral in planning the initial site visits by helping us plan enough time for all the people we need to meet and helping us plan transportation between different organizations. Program Assistant Matthew Edison is starting to schedule site visits now and he needs your form before he contacts your Evaluation Liaison. Please fax these forms to Matthew at (919) 966-0510. If you need a replacement form, please contact our project office by phone at (919)-966-0496.
We Need Your Help!
To help us understand your partnership, we would like to see any documentation about your organizations that we can (employee handbooks, mission statements, etc. - a more exhaustive list is below).
There are two methods that you can get your documents to us:
1. Mail to Matthew Edison c/o Jobs to Careers Evaluation, 720 Martin Luther King Blvd., CB# 1030, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-1030
2. If you have a site visit coming up for your partnership, you can hold your materials and deliver it to our team during the visit.
If you have any questions, please contact our project office at (919) 966-0496.
Examples of Program Documentation:
• Course guides
• Employee handbooks
• Brochures
• Mission statements
• Annual reports
Common Questions
Q: What are evaluation site visits? What can I expect?
As the UNC Evaluation of the Jobs to Careers program gets underway, members of our team will travel to your location to meet your team and learn about your partnership and program. This initial data collection will allow us to understand the nature of your partnership and intervention, including key barriers and facilitating factors for your program. This process is distinct from the Jobs for the Future (JFF) visits and seeks to understand general issues facing programs working to improve frontline care work.
Typically two evaluators will visit your partnership for two or three days, depending on the size and geographic location of your group. The visit will begin with informal meetings with the lead partner and Evaluation Liaison to review the evaluation process (i.e., what you can expect from us, what we need from you, and how we can help you). Then, we will conduct interviews with your key partners and focus groups with your frontline workers and frontline supervisors. During these visits, we will be on-site and interacting with staff in your organizations. We know our presence is a distraction, but will try to be as unobtrusive as possible.
We will confirm exact dates of the visit as soon as possible. Then, a member of our staff will contact your Evaluation Liaison approximately one month before your scheduled site visit. We will review the data collection activities and ask your Evaluation Liaison to consult on the itinerary. Your Evaluation Liaison will work with the different members of your team to schedule the activities and arrange meeting space. Itineraries will be available two weeks prior to the site visit.
We look forward to meeting your team!
If you have any questions you would like for our team to address in future newsletters, please submit to project assistant Matthew Edison at edison@unc.edu.