Promising Practice #2
Counseling Customers About Income Goals, Career Paths and Work Supports
Overview
Counseling that focuses on income goals, career paths and work supports can make an enormous contribution to the customer's ability to achieve self-sufficiency. Such career counseling strategies help customers set realistic goals and make better decisions about potential career paths and the education or training needed to pursue them.
The use of automated self-sufficiency calculators provides an added assist by simplifying the budgeting process and integrating work supports into budget calculations. The most sophisticated calculators enable the customer to test different combinations of income and work supports to understand the impact of those factors on their short and long term capacity to be self-suffi cient. Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs) have found that the combination of user-friendly tools and a skilled counselor who can provide guidance and feedback offer job seekers the greatest likelihood of making choices that will lead to self-sufficiency for them and their families.
Case Studies:
WIA Law/Regulations
While the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) does not detail services to be delivered under the broad heading of career counseling services, the Department of Labor Employment & Training Administration (ETA) has signaled its recognition of the importance of financial literacy and budgeting skills for WIA customers. ETA issued a Training and Employment Guidance Letter (TEGL) in 2001 encouraging One Stops to use the FDIC’s Money Smart curriculum to teach basic financial literacy and budgeting skills to WIA customers.
"If you enroll a low-wage worker and then give them access to work
supports, then before you ever spend a WIA dollar, you have increased their self-suffi ciency."
-Kris Stadelman
Chief Executive Offi cer
Seattle/ King County
Workforce Development Council