Prof. Collins & PhD Student Adrianna Spindle-Jackson Publish White Paper on Workforce Development for Vulnerable Youth
Professor Mary Collins and PhD student Adrianna Spindle-Jackson of BU School of Social Work (BUSSW) published a new white paper featuring learnings from two studies focused on the challenges and opportunities in workforce development for vulnerable youth.
The studies, conducted at BUSSW between April 2020 and March 2021, examine how state and local workforce development boards address the needs of vulnerable youth facing barriers to employment, particularly those in child welfare and juvenile justice systems and those in urban areas. Collins and Spindle-Jackson write that the studies seek to answer two quintessential questions: “How do localities meaningfully address youth-specific needs?” and “How are they responding to imperatives related to race equity and COVID?”
Their findings address these core questions in five areas – youth in child welfare and juvenile justice systems, youth-centered practice, career pathways and industry-specific sector strategies, race equity, and impacts of COVID-19 – and outline next steps for optimizing the impact of workforce development boards at federal, state and local levels.
The white paper was supported by BU Initiative on Cities with an Early Stage Urban Research Award and by the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
About the Authors
Professor Mary Collins is an internationally recognized expert on child welfare. She is the author of the book Macro Perspectives on Youths Aging Out of Foster Care (2015) and her research has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed publications including Child Welfare, Social Work Education, and Journal of Social Policy. At BUSSW, Prof. Collins has previously served as associate dean for academic affairs; director of the dual degree program in social work and theology; co-coordinator of the specialization in children, youth and families; director of the doctoral program; and chair of the social welfare department.
Adrianna Spindle-Jackson is a BUSSW doctoral student interested in physical and cultural displacement, engagement with housing assistance, and the use of qualitative and mixed-methods approaches to understand experiences of homelessness and housing insecurity. She is a graduate student fellow at BU’s Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, and was recently awarded an Early Stage Urban Research Award from BU’s Initiative on Cities.