Delta Community Supports Emotional Intelligence Assessment for Success

Program Description

Our program is a comprehensive integrative life skills readiness assessment system for youth in a supervised independent living (SIL) program. The emphasis is to ensure that emotional intelligence skill sets are examined, assessed and periodically evaluated. The goal is to assure that our youth become more capable to successfully navigate “life” after our program by becoming more self-aware of who they are and who they are around others, learning to manage their emotions more effectively, becoming more self-motivated to execute daily tasks, exhibiting empathy to others and retaining healthy social skills. By initiating a two-prong approach in investing in staff and reinvesting in our youth at the same time, we firmly believe the combination of affirming their resilience and emotional intelligence assets, provides a platform for limitless and continuous program success. At the root of this program success is our five component Emotional Intelligence Tool Kit, which includes: 1) Our Case Managers’ self-assessments of their personal and professional attributes, 2) The use of our Case Managers’ resilience and youth stories, 3) Our youth ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) scores, 4) Our youth’s emotional intelligence assessment scores and 5) Our youth’s storytelling narratives.

Creativity

This child welfare specific Emotional Intelligence Assessment Form is what makes this program initiative distinctive. The assessment addresses the common issues with aging out of foster care. Linda Rich from Drexel’s Healing Hurt People helped us administer the assessment in a trauma informed way. Lisa Nelson-Hayes from Philly Young Playwrights taught us how to ask questions to help youth tell their story. Our staff gained the confidence to utilize the assessment to create an individualized plan for success. We have recognized that our fellow industry counterparts focus on the needs of the youth now while they’re in the child welfare system; whereas we are constantly striving and focused on the successful life skills sets needed when our youth will be a 25-year-old adult. The assessment results coupled with ACE’s scores will also help inform best practices so that we can help more youth age out of care into successful adulthood.

Leadership

Emotional intelligence is the ability to accurately perceive your own and others’ emotions; to understand the signals that emotions send about relationships; and to manage your own and others’ emotions. We would like demonstrate that the adoption of the corporate model usage of the Emotional Intelligence assessment to predict leadership is applicable to the aging out population. It begins with the premise that emotional intelligence is necessary in order to absorb and apply the taught life skills. This initiative serves as template for other organizations to implement and develop the best possible outcomes for success regarding this targeted population. We will have the ability to educate and enlighten other service providers about this program at conferences related to youth programs. We believe our leadership model will increase the percentage of youth that will have the skills for successful “adulting” thereby breaking generational cycles of poverty and homelessness.

Sustainability

Our assessment methodology has an approach that assesses baselines, monitors goals and objectives and then re-evaluates progress to consistently achieve quality improvement approaches for programmatic sustainability. Delta uses the DMAIC tool (define, measure, assess, improve, control). Our electronic case management system is used to collect and score practice data, it also auto schedule services and tasks that maps out a plan to guide our practice. We also believe that replicating these field standards will also sustain the future growth and development of other youth programs across the region and country. As an added compliment to the program, we will be partnering with homeless at-risk youth/young adults from the Youth Services Incorporated organization in Philadelphia. We will be conducting intentional group conversations about the dichotomies of being homeless on the streets versus housed with social services support. We also serve on inter-disciplinary city wide youth program committees where information is shared.

Replicability

Our core framework model can be replicated by offering training opportunities for other organizations to implement within their program objectives. Our youth adapted Emotional Intelligence Assessment Form can be shared with other organizations, serving this population, not limited to foster care, but could also be used in schools and mentoring organizations. As another partnership model, we are scheduled to collaborate with the City of Philadelphia, led by the Office of Homeless Services, Youth Services Incorporated and Valley Youth House, during their annual “Point-In-Time” homeless count. The exposure will continue to assist our staff in learning about the prevalence and causes of youth homelessness. This experience coupled with our new found knowledge in Emotional Intelligence will guide our practices to prevent non-compliance in the program and homelessness and thereby foster success. Sharing our stories and methodologies with other organizations servicing youth will enhance the impact of successful outcomes for youth populations.

Results/Outcomes

In order to be successful in implementing and utilizing the assessment to create an effective aging out plan, we believed it was important for the staff to understand the statistics and issues related homelessness. We conducted a baseline knowledge “the state of national homelessness” awareness survey for our staff. The survey results revealed that our staff averaged a score of 90% proficiency, regarding prevalent national and regional homeless issues. We trained all existing staff on integrated storytelling methods and trauma theory, in order to get accurate EI assessments. The staff increased their knowledge pertinent to local homeless issues, how to creatively extract their story in their voice and how to effectively document our youth’s adverse childhood experiences. More importantly, it increased their confidence in effectively implementing and executing the emotional intelligence assessment form. The comprehensive results will be used to develop a realistic life goal setting plan for our youth.